Yes, That's Me

What does a traumatic experience do to my sense of identity?  Personal identity is a slippery thing, a moving target, the wave front of an individual history.  It is made up of physical continuity, a mass of memories continually reprocessed, my reflections both in the mirror and in the eyes of those who know me.  Identity is the ongoing story I tell me about myself.

For the most part, that story unfolds gradually and steadily and incrementally.  We are made to perceive rapid changes best, and to impose continuity on a series of discrete frames when the change is slow.  That’s what makes it possible for us to watch motion pictures and to see continuous movement rather than a herky-jerky set of still images in series.

It is the speed of change rather than change itself that is the issue when trauma strikes.  I can’t be sure how and what and who I might be if Anne hadn’t died.  There is no trauma-free doppelganger Lowell who provides an experimental “control” for comparison to my life.  But I do find myself adjusting to, adapting to, re-calculating and re-discovering who I am.  I find myself doing that in ways that I have never before experienced.

For example, I am fifty pounds lighter than I was eighteen months ago.  There are moments when I still do a double-take at the mirror—wondering who that stranger is looking back at me.  He looks a lot like my dad did at about age thirty-five.  Sometimes I have to say out loud, “That’s you, you silly ass.  Get over it and on with it!”

I’m not unique in my experiences.  Events in my life are not even uncommon.  Lots of people drop big pounds in a short time.  Lots of people change jobs or careers.  Lots of people lose spouses in sudden, tragic and dramatic ways, and often still with kids at home.  Lots of people re-marry in relatively short order—especially males.  Lots of people go through various combinations of such rapid changes.  So this sort of thing happens to people all the time.  I’m not special.  Of course, it hasn’t happened all that often to me.

It seems that basic identity doesn’t change all that much over a lifetime.  The psychological set point for happiness is genetically determined within a certain range (although trauma can drive it into the lower end of the range).  Personality traits tend to be consistent over time.  Personality strengths remain relatively unchanged over the years.  Identity structures really are fairly stable, although memory is notoriously plastic and undergoes revision throughout a lifetime.  The content, experiences, and activities lived out of and through those structures are the elements that change.

What kind of parent and spouse am I now?  What sort of pastor can I be—compared to what I vaguely remember that I used to be?  If the substance of my identity is relatively constant, why do I feel so different about myself and about life in such deep ways?  The foundation and framework of existence haven’t changed, it would seem.  But the superstructure and functions have been altered significantly.

I find that I am more emotionally vulnerable in short bursts and more emotionally resilient in the long run.  I find that I pay far more attention to gut feelings and intuitions.  I am more open to the future and less certain about precisely what I ought to be doing with myself.  I am less subject to bad moods that last.  I am more grateful and also sometimes more grumpy.  I am even more deeply connected to the transiency of life and to the beauty of the world.  I know the power of the Resurrection gospel like never before.

What I am coming to realize is that struggle and suffering can have the effect of making me more fully me…if I can allow that growth to happen.