This is a monologue on identity that I wrote a while back.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Who do you think you are?

I’ll ask again who do you think YOU ARE?

Are you who people say you are or are you what you say you are?…

Every day I wake up to doing the same thing, over and over and over again. I brush my teeth; have a wash and fight to get on the repulsive, germ infested public transport, ONLY to be met by the detestable boss at work.

Oh she makes my life a living hell! Boxed in by the cubicle not having the freedom of communicating with my peers, you dare not speak above a whisper or it’ll be straight into her office to be reprimanded. I wish someone would give her a good stiff kic…argh! Slaving away hour after hour, sifting through documents, to extract, in my mind, useless information for an even more useless cause.

I spend most of my time here, trying to do the best I can and to be recognised for it, but after years of being at this job, that is yet, to happen. I never thought this is where I would end up.

After graduating with a good degree in my hand, I was ready to take on the world! And then somehow, here we are. This was six years ago, now what the hell was I still doing here? Everyone working like busy bees for the honey queen, a vast contrast to what she really was, as she was anything but sweet.

Clocking in and clocking out that’s exactly what I did, watching the clock, tick tock tick tock, hoping that close of business would fast approach but nope only one minute more had past. Damn it!

Once it did come around I morphed into the road runner, one minute you saw me, the next just a whirl wind of paper flying everywhere. Can you blame me?

My love life paahhah! What LOVE life! I don’t know where to begin with that. My ex-boyfriend left me to travel the world and within the space of a year is married and expecting his first child, what a bleeding cheek! I felt like curling up into a ball and hibernating for a few months. 5 years I spent with him, 5 WHOLE YEARS and within a short space of time he has given her what I would have wanted. Well screw him and his wife!

I had a boyfriend after him but that lasted 2 months, he wanted to move in with me, erh no! Too much, too soon. I didn’t want that.

On another occasion, I went speed dating with a friend and boy was that a complete disaster. I met one guy there, who was recently divorced with four kids, now what am I going to do with FOUR kids and an ex-wife? NEXT! Another gentleman seemed sweet at first, but quickly became obsessive with the innermost parts of my life. Where were you born? What time? What is your star sign? When did you lose your virginity? PAUSE …NEXT! There was even a lesbian, a lesbian! Am I running out of options that I have to consider the same sex?! It is a thought though. With my friends getting married, having babies or in thriving and successful careers, it begs the question, what have I got going for me?

To top it off my younger sister just had a baby with her fiancé, so if I thought it was bad before with my parents hounding me about my future and progressing, the stares are even more pitiful now, especially at family gatherings, which I have now come to loathe “Sophie when are you going to get married and have some kids” yeah when you mind your business and disappear from the face of the earth is when, I would think to myself.

Ugh the look on my mother’s face whenever she sees me, I can even hear it over the phone in her voice. What’s a girl to do? I swear the next time I go to my parents’ house, I’m going to hire an escort, just to get them off my back. A good looking guy, 6ft plus with dark hair, maybe someone exotic with a cute accent and *sigh* how sad is that.

As much I want to be in a happy relationship and have kids, I just don’t want to end up with the wrong kind of person. My parents have had a long lasting healthy marriage of 35 years, and I want that! I don’t want to settle for anything less and by that I mean someone with less money. Who wants to have waited all the this time to end up with somebody broke, IM BROKE for goodness sake, two broke people won’t work, so until that time comes ill simply wait, I think…

I am currently renting a place, place is a fair word to use. I have done my best to make the place into a home, but there’s only so much I can do on the peanuts that I am paid. I cannot even fathom the idea of being a home owner. Who has ten to twenty thousand pounds lying around to put down as a deposit for a house? I’d love to meet that person and marry them, man or woman, right now anything goes. OK, I take that back I’m way into men to do that…I think.

Sometimes I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I get home and pick up a bottle of wine, plunk down on my sofa, grab the remote and flick, flick, flick, till I find something interesting to watch and gradually fall asleep with the wine glass in my hand. Sad I know, but what’s a girl to do?

I think sometimes who am I and what I have become, I can barely identify myself when I walk past a glass shop window. Who is that girl with mousy hair, uncool glasses and a poor dress sense?

All these things occurring in my life aren’t me, are they? Do these things define who I am? The no man having- job loathing-barely attractive-penniless Sophie?

Somewhere along the line I have turned into this person I don’t like much-pretentious, depressing and negative. I’m not sure at which point it all changed but the person staring at me doesn’t seem happy. The constant fake smile worn on my face has subsequently caused the lines currently living next to my mouth. God life sucks.

If only my knight in shining armour can ride in on a Mercedes SLK with his dark, shiny but flowing hair and his fluorescent gleaming teeth, as I step out of my penthouse suite having the concierge open the door for me to walk out to my chariot that awaits me. Dressed in a silver sequinned dress, reminiscent of something Diana Ross would wear and my now blonde hair romantically curled like the infamous Ms Marilyn Monroe wearing shoes that Cinderella would be jealous of. To live a life that amazing, no care in the world, no struggle, no cruelladevile for a boss and no more being the butt of every joke amongst my family and friends. Wouldn’t that be great?!

Only that my reality presents a stark difference and pending gloom with nothing to show for it. Is this the life I have chosen to live? I might as well not exist any longer, after all there isn’t much to it is there?

Hmmm let’s consider another thought. Say hypothetically speaking I do get my dreams fulfilled as previously described, will that then be my true self? The real me? Are only the outwardly things a determination of the inward part of me? They say your surroundings are an outward expression of what lies within and if that’s the case then my current circumstance is befitting of my stature. That being said, it has presented food for thought, if that is to be true does that mean I have the power to change on the inside in order to affect what is seen on the outside, kind of like believing is seeing?

Although, I am still struggling with the idea of whether or not that makes me…me.

Will these things be counted as an authentic reflection of the person I am? Or is that all just a superficial covering of what being “you” really is? I have always believed that if I received my deepest most yearned for desires, it will make me a better person, a more respected person, isn’t that what everybody wants?

To have become the person everyone else wants to be, however is too afraid to do so… but wait, hold on. If becoming who everyone else wants to be is the goal, then it draws the question again, is that you? Those dreams are they your dreams or who society tells you, you must be? Search within yourself, what defines you? The you that nobody else sees when you are all alone and no one is watching, you now proceed to remove the mask from your face and what is it you see underneath? A person or a lifeless soul regretfully moving through life, never really experiencing joy or the good things in it because you are too consumed with trying to be the person that everybody else wants to be. People and their fragmented pictures plastered all over social networks, purporting to be living these wonderful lifestyles, whilst you sit there feeling the pang of emptiness because you want to be out there doing amazing things and having others revere the life that you live. Note, it is but a small percentage of their lives they reveal, and more importantly what they want you to see. They post all these glamorous existing’s, then call you to worship and bask in their greatness and ability to have good fortune yet they neither have an extra head or magical body parts, a human is a human is a human. So if everybody is trying to be somebody else…who is actually being themselves? Or am I being completely ridiculous, as being completely you is a myth and has never really existed?

So what is all the fuss about, why try so hard to live up to an unrealistic expectation of only what you have been privy to see, like I said before, they are just humans.

I’m starting to get a grasp on this whole identity thing it doesn’t matter what you, you or you think because in actual fact your ideas and your notions are simply regurgitated information fed to you by your environment, that is your family, your friends, your work colleagues, the media and pretty much anyone and anything you come into contact with so what gives you the right stake claim on the way I, Sophie should live her life.

Everyone is searching and looking for a higher state of being, no one person being better than the other so why do you seek this validation from those who are not entitled to give it? I’m still a fully functioning, breathing woman who has a lot to offer and live for, having attempted to uphold the expectations of those unknown to me has kept me feeling like an unsuccessful and worthless mess but everyone has it completely wrong. I am the one who decides who I am not anyone else.

I am who I say I am and who I wish to be, I have come to realise the only persons opinions that truly matter are those that start and finish with me.