All or Nothing Interpreting Your Identity
Transcriber: Thị Minh Hoài Trần
Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Ever since I was young,
my parents had always told me
that my involvement in things
needed to be all or nothing.
Of course, by this
they had good intentions:
They wanted me to choose clubs and sports
I’d become deeply involved in,
rather than spreading myself
thin amongst multiple.
This was something that I took seriously.
While this advice worked well
when it came to cross-country,
which I loved,
and Future Business Leaders of America,
which I left after one meeting,
this advice did not work so well
when it came to my identity.
To dig deeper into this concept
of all or nothing,
we first must look
at the definition of identity.
One of the ways that this is defined
by the Merriam-Webster dictionary
is in stating that identity
is “the distinguishing character
or personality of an individual.”
“The distinguishing
character or personality.”
The way that this was worded,
to me at least,
seemed as though you get one thing -
one thing that encapsulates you,
and there’s one way
that you are perceived by the world.
As an avid reader of “Harry Potter”
and as a fanatic of the television series
“Sherlock” growing up,
this idea of identity
was constantly being reinforced for me.
Harry was a wizard
and Sherlock was a detective,
much like my mom was a nurse
and my dad drove trucks,
and seeing everybody
knowing exactly who they were,
I became obsessed
with what my identity was
and how others perceive me.
As I grew older, this only
became more complicated,
especially with this idea
of all or nothing.
Something that I’ve been dealing with
and the earliest personal example
of this grey area between the black
and white of an all-or-nothing identity
is invisible illness,
something I’ve been dealing with
since I was in seventh grade or so,
albeit not formally diagnosed
until my junior year of high school.
This illness was a trauma from the inside
that no one could pick up on
unless you clued them in.
As a kid, I was nervous
about everything all the time,
having constant stomach aches
and extremely sweaty palms.
But it wasn’t something
that I thought was unusual.
Eventually it became a struggle
to pull myself out of bed,
even despite these growing fears
about what would happen
if I didn’t turn in an assignment on time
or if I didn’t get enough
practice for softball.
Even when I was formally diagnosed
with anxiety and depression,
I still didn’t feel
it was something I could face.
So many others had it so much worse,
so how could I be depressed or anxious?
Knowing that I could still achieve
outside of this illness,
I didn’t feel that it was all of me,
so I chose to make it none of me.
Somewhere along this time
came the next circumstance of this sort.
As I had mentioned previously,
I thought that my life was perfect.
I was a straight-A student athlete
with plenty of friends, a loving family,
and in a long-term relationship.
Something important
about this relationship
and something I’m sure many of you
might have pictured already
is that it was with a man.
We had been dating from the time I was
in eighth grade to a freshman in college.
And as many of you know,
and if you’re young,
you’ll find out eventually,
is that you change a lot from the time
you are 14 to nearly 20 years old.
Few people are the same
that they were six years ago,
and quite frankly, I think
that’s a good thing.
These teenage years are especially
formative in terms of finding yourself,
becoming aware of who you are
in the face of others.
When I was 14, I thought of myself
as an activist for many things:
animal rights, climate change, education,
and justice for the LGBTQ community.
It wasn’t until I had the opportunity
of going to Pittsburgh Pride in 2019
that I had the realization
that I could be queer myself.
I loved the guy I was with deeply
and envisioned myself marrying him.
so it was hard for me to even consider
I could be anything
other than heterosexual.
In our society, there’s a weird deterrence
from anything in between.
It’s OK to be gay
and it’s OK to be straight,
but to stray from there is just too much.
It wasn’t until July of 2019
that I came to terms with the fact
that I was indeed queer.
But even though I knew this deep down,
I wanted to repress it
because I was a cisgender woman
dating a cisgender man.
I felt that because this wasn’t all of me
that I had to make it nothing.
The most recent example
of this identity crisis
came last February, the winter of 2020.
I was feeling a little bored
and for fun and on a whim
decided to take a “23 and Me” test.
having no idea what my ancestry was.
The lines got even blurrier as my
dad’s father was never in the picture.
To say that I was astounded
when my test came back to show
I’m nearly one-fourth Ashkenazi Jewish
would be an understatement.
In addition to myself,
my parents and my paternal grandmother
decided to take this test.
It was revealed that my dad’s father
must have been 100% ethnically Jewish.
It was insane for me to think about
how different my life would have been
if this culture
would have been introduced,
but not having ever known a life where I
was Jewish and not being fully Jewish,
I felt wrong in trying
to identify that way.
Being Jewish was the greatest
part of my ethnicity than anything,
but because it wasn’t all of me,
I felt that it had to be nothing.
As time has passed and I have continued
to grow, I’ve learned a few things:
First, your identity does not
and frankly cannot be defined
by one sole characteristic.
My mom was a nurse,
but she was so much more than that:
a daughter, a student,
an avid video game player,
but most important to me, she was my mom.
The next thing that I learned
is that just because
you do have these identities
does not mean that they
need to make up all of you.
I am a Jewish, queer, mentally ill woman,
but not at all completely defined
by any or all of these things.
I am a student, a daughter, an activist,
a leader, a Jeopardy fan,
among many other things.
In shifting to acceptance
of these identities,
I realize that you do have to look inside
of yourself and see how you have grown.
As many of my peers
around me are learning as well,
this is not something that is easy to do.
Nevertheless, I pushed through
and recollected all of the moments
that helped me find solace
in the fact that I am queer, I am Jewish,
and I have mental illnesses.
It came with many philosophical
chats with my roommates,
some catching up with old friends,
rereading the same card over and over
and over again for hours,
and a few more tears
than I’d like to claim.
But even throughout all of this,
I can firmly say
that I am confident in who I am
and that I am proud to share my journey.
I urge you to never let anyone aside
from you determine your identity.
You are valid, and you are loved always.
Thank you.