Identity crisis

The term “identity crisis” was coined by Erik Erikson and refers to that miserable trap between youth and adulthood.  It’s when we struggle with parents, puberty, and peer pressure to figure out who we are, where we are going and, for me at least, why on earth am I here?

It’s those teenage years fraught with the struggle of becoming an adult.  Trying to find our voice (how we express ourselves) and our place (where we belong and with whom); to make decisions for ourselves.  It’s wanting to be responsible, not having a clue about life, yet feeling so sure and confused at the same time.

Isn’t it the strangest thing that each new generation can find the one mode of self-expression to annoy and perplex the previous one?

When I hear today’s popular music, I find myself thinking the very same thing that my parents’ generation thought about Rock and Roll. “That’s music? It just sounds like noise.”

I remember sneaking torn bellbottoms in my bag to high school and changing into them there because my mom wouldn’t let me leave the house if she saw me in them.  Today, I find myself thinking, “Look at how those kids are dressed! Why would anyone want to dress like that!  Does their mother know they dressed that way?”

Not long ago I thought, “I’m hip. I embrace new music, new dress and hair styles.” But , somehow in this last decade or so, I lost touch. I got old!

But at least I can be accepting.  When my husband’s two youngest kids moved in with us, my 13-year-old stepson had blue hair and wore chains and spikes and my 15-year-old stepdaughter had a banana yellow Mohawk, that turned hot pink (along with the bathroom) within days.  Rather than freak out and make them dye their hair back, as I think my husband wanted to do, I suggested that we say nothing.  If the worst expression of their identity crises was pink and blue hair, I figured it wasn’t too bad.

For me, self-expression and parental approval were major problems but I think I felt the crisis the most when I was in college, trying to choose a major, understand sex and love, and (looking back, I realize now) fighting a pretty bad depressive episode.  I wanted to be an artist, but passed up opportunities to apply to art schools, doubting my talent without family support. 

I was lucky to get into a good university with a strong academic program, but the focus was on students taking in information, not expressing it creatively.  I was miserable.  I felt the weight of picking a major.  I didn’t feel old enough or like I knew enough to make that seemingly monumental decision.  I wasn’t very good at learning yet, didn’t feel very smart and felt I was wasting the education I should have been receiving. 

And, all of my relationships were awful.  I wanted to leave home, travel around the country, and support myself as a waitress to get by.  I figured that somewhere along the way I find out what I’m good at and would enjoy and then be more prepared to go to school.  But people scared me into thinking I’d never come back and finish college.  So I stuck it out and graduated; but then I floundered for years not feeling smart or talented, not assertive enough for the jobs I was interested in and over-qualified and too intelligent for the jobs (and relationships for that matter) that I was getting.

Jump ahead about 30 years:  My stepdaughter, bright and mature now with normal colored hair, graduated high school, and had a college lined up that she was excited about.  Then, at the last minute she balked and took a year to travel around the country to work, support herself, and then figure out what she wants to do.  Today she’s a Corporal in the US Marine Corp and has a million options and opportunities available to her.  And my stepson?  He graduated high school with honors in art and was courted with offers and scholarships from art colleges, but he, too, has decided to take some time off from school and is considering the Navy to build skills and serve while earning a living, gaining independence and maturity, and giving his mind time to open more before committing to loans, more academics, and an uncertain career path. 

I’m so proud of both of them and believe that they’ve learned from me that education is important, but not at the cost of their development and aspirations.  There are many ways to get a good education and even more ways to prepare to receive it.  I’m so glad that they were able to make pretty good use of the pink and blue hair, i.e, they expressed themselves and are making the most of the many opportunities available to them while they’re young.

Even though the identity crisis takes place during adolescence, it has felt to me like I’ve been in constant state of identity crisis that is culminating in this mid-life crisis, which may be just as important.  At least it’s not as intense or dramatic!