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.