Stolen identity

Every now and then I get incensed. You may have noticed it.

This time it is not just for me. I know I am often wronged, but in the main I can deal with those injustices, this time I am deeply unsettle (to put it mildly) because of the insidious creeping strategy to steal young people’s identity and disenfranchise and disenchant them with one foul swoop.

How is this done? To whom is it done?

I believe this crime is committed at school, in the shops, on the street, in youth clubs, and in homes across the country.

While in primary school, children usually retain a sense of belief in equality; they are all the same, they play together, eat lunch together and learn together.

When they are fed into the secondary school system it all changes. Many of the staff that deliver the lessons fail all the pupils because they cannot deliver information that they do not believe it. This machine of dictated and organised thinking has a fixed, out-dated model of Britain and it is devastating lives every day. The damage done at school continues throughout life. Meritocracy as an ideal is debunked at every turn, in most subjects across the spectrum. Divisions and disadvantage are taught in a formal manner and take root, like concrete boots.  

I’m talking about English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish people: British people. These British people, like me, are home but are still treated as foreigners.

When I worked in the computing and banking industries my CVs often when ahead of my interviews. There were many occasions when the interviewers – without disguise – said, in total shock, “But ... you’re black! From your CV I thought ...” I got used to it, however, the painfulness of the blows left deep marks especially as despite my outstanding qualifications and experience I didn’t get the positions I went for.

Nowadays the scenarios are being repeated, with subtle tuning changes. Some young people are told that they can’t be English because their skin colour is not white: the perpetrators of these lies (teachers and other pupils) are infrequently and ineffectively challenged. The children whose identity has been attacked are now in a state of flux. They have been taught to believe all they hear at school. Can this be right, they don’t belong here? If that is true where do they belong?

This is particularly true for those children with a mixed cultural heritage, if they try to align themselves to people darker than them they are told, “You’re not black enough”. If they try to align themselves with people lighter than them they are told, “You’re too black.”

They will eventually make their own tribe and fashion their own uniquely British identity and woe betide anyone who stands in their way. When you deny a person their identity and remove it by stealth you will be faced with uncontrollable fury.

Self identification and alignment is at the root of most wars and always comes with a heavy price – especially civil wars.

It is time all British people accepted that there is black in the Union Jack!

Be ... who you are

To be who you really are you need the right space, the right passion and the right reasons.

In other places, with other people, it’s like you’re on vacation from your own life. When it’s right, you’re THERE: fully present and active in your own life.

You can’t be WHO you are otherwise.

Find it (space), find it (passion) find them (people). 

Be who you really are.

Who are you?

“Who am I?” Is just as valid a question. If someone who knows you well ever asks you that question then it really is time to stop and think about who you are at that time. 

Why would someone close to you ever have to ask about your identity? This can only occur when you are pretending to be someone you are not. Then you will understand why this person, who knows how you usually act, will be both shocked and amazed that you can behave so differently.

They may gently guide you to a different place or they may have to walk away and leave you alone.

The questions that you need to ask yourself at that time are:
Is this really me?

Was that really me?

Will the next expression really be me?

Sometimes we can get caught up in the tidal wave of behaviour and lose ourselves. If there is a moment of clarity and redirection (whether coming from ourselves or from others) we should seize the chance to change to who we really want to be.

Nobody is continually impressed by people pretending to be who they are not. I’ve found that pretence is not a good basis for building any relationship.

Multiple identities

Living multiple identities sometimes cannot be avoided; it is a matter of the most basic survival desire. When there is an option and people still choose to live within multiple identities they seem to exist in a state of ‘edginess’.

A negative of living multiple separate identities is that you could open yourself up for multiple separate bouts of discrimination, but not always. I guess it depends on just how good you become at splitting your personality and reality. It needs perfect balance.

Balancing acts were never my strong point but I have honed the skill of a high-wire tight-rope walker over the years – because I had to. I learnt to live ‘edgy’. Everything that I did was at high speed and intense (thankfully some of the intensity has stayed with me, although the need for speed is diminishing).

At church and in the community I was permitted to share my spirituality and elsewhere I tried to find a safe place to share my sexuality: in the later endeavour I failed for many years. It was only in the last decade that I shared with one of my siblings the fact that I had been far too close to succeeding in suicide that she realised how strenuous it was becoming for me to manage my separate identities. My eldest sister was the first safe person in my family that I chose to come out to. I managed to start breathing as a whole person then.

What I didn’t realise for many years was my coming to accept my wholeness was the opening up of the fragmentation of my family as they dealt publicly with their new position as a relative of a gay person. They then took turns inhabiting multiple identities as they went into the closet I had broken free from.

Being allowed to be yourself seems such a simple desire (as so many people do this without a second thought) but for some of us we are still pushed to the edge of sanity and society and forced to wear the straight-jackets of multiple personalities.

My garden

It is spring time and the plants are beginning to grow again. It is wonderful to see the green shoots bursting above the ground. They are so strong and vibrant. Frequently, in the depth of winter, I forget that they exist. When the ground is hard or covered with snow the possibility of new life is hard to envisage. But a few weeks ago I was reminded that these plants, some of which I had transplanted from my father’s garden, are here to stay. They come up every year and they blossom without any intervention from me.

Now all I have to do is to keep the weeds at bay and water the plants regularly.

I have discovered that my garden is unique. Some plants thrive in there and others do not fare at all well. This is because of the soil that I have in the small area. When I first decided to put some plants in I had to do a lot of preparation work (some of it included paying someone else to do the work!). This friend came with all his rippling muscles and removed bricks, crockery, gravel and other household debris. Then he fed it and finally he planted in it.

Now, several years later, with repeated help from friends, I can just watch my plants grow.

My life is like my garden. It had been worked on and turned over and when it is thriving I can see so many things grow from it.

One thing I know is that, like the garden soil, my life cannot give what it has not got. I can’t produce carnations when my soil is only suitable for roses. I am remembering to allow myself to bring forward the best of myself and not try to be a vegetable patch if I am perfect for growing tulips.

How does your garden grow?