I Am Who I Am But What Am I? Blogging Lounge No 1

I wrote the title and put my keyboard back on my pillow, then wondered how I would type it without the keyboard. You ask me, *Who am I* the prompt for me to blog or not, no pressure, no hassle...in this place here...

https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-blogging-lounge/prompt-1-january-8-2014-who-am-i/1384964898428844

You ask me that and I go to try to answer by first putting my keyboard out of my reach, what chance do I have? It is a question I have asked myself many times. I am not terribly well at the moment or wonderfully ill, going by the pairing of terribly and well. I meant to say I am not awful but not great at the moment. I am according to some assessments disabled by illness that I experience far more than is polite, if illness were a visitor that could be asked to leave and it would. I am an artist according to my degree, I have sold a little bit of artwork and could sell more if I was able to produce and market it. I am a writer according to my collection of notes written in many different sized notebooks, journals and sketchbooks, scraps of paper, diaries, letters photocopied or carbon copied and digital files some of which can no longer be read that hadn't been printed. I haven't actually written a book and have a tendency to write things people call poems from time to time, some are not too bad and others are pretty dire but it is therapeutic and like a compulsive obsessive deal of needing to share.

I am a woman of the human race born in an area where accent can be easily recognised in Middle-ish England and learning how I have to become a grown up in the Shires of Pembrokeshire, Wales. I am not short though, 5'8" and due to malnutrition somewhat slight. I get care now so that is something I am recovering from more than maintaining. I didn't like maintaining being only just well enough to survive, well I did or I would have died but I always would have chosen help to recover so inability is not so much of a problem. That takes the strain off. It also leaves me sometimes less switched on than I am when I am well. I have been quite well at some point at that time I would have said I am quite vibrant and what were those other words someone was reminding me of the other day? Bubbly, sociable, only quiet when drawing but even then still talking to people as they came to see what I was doing. I was outgoing and worked hard, played hard and rested quite well.

I have been lots of things, many roles, many jobs and personal life roles, none of that really makes me who I am but builds a picture of what my experiences have been and how they appeared to myself and different people who will all give a slightly different viewpoint according to their perspectives of life and how they label me through it. I have had many opposite sides of experience, been seen as glamorous/ugly, brave/cowardly,
wise/stupid, to be figuratively speaking put on a pedestal/to be spat on, weird great/weird scary, good/bad, and much more and less. I became a non car owner a couple of days ago. I hadn't been well enough to drive for a while. I am a recluse it could be said now. I am in some ways happier than when I was able to do more of what I want and need to do. I am peace within chaos, I am calm within my own storm. I am thunder & lightening in my dark nights of the soul.

I am still not quite sure what it all makes me or I. The same as you are to me, I am me to me and you to you.

I am a part of the human kind, illness takes me out the race, suffering pain causing slowness and in that grace, I have made peace with what I face...

I am Love experiencing fear, maybe. As I have faced so many pretty awful things that can cause more fear and self perpetuating pain. Love has helped me deal with fear...I may just be a meditating hippy, who knows, it really depends on who is labelling me.

I used to think I knew. I was ok, not often confident my self image wavered and was often insecure, then I became empowered during art degree before my world turned upside down time and time again. It shook me to the core, shattered dreams I'd only recently dared to dream. Through times of against all the odds I kept pulling through and make peace with another layer of pain and fear. The counselling in college and subsequent counselling skills training all helped and the creativity and me taking it as an opportunity to discover more about myself and what makes me tick, how to avoid self sabotage and how to disconnect the trigger on some buttons that have had itchy-hair-triggers much of my life...

I understand much of my wrongly learned perspectives and ideas about how the world works. I still don't really know exactly Who I am or What but I don't think it is anything like we think we know. It doesn't matter though for all our knowledge and understanding it is all still very much a mystery as to how things really work...I am energy that doesn't know how to maintain itself at the moment, next week I may still be the same in quite a different way...

I was going to add a photo out of my sketchbook that I have an album on facebook done December 2010, interesting to look at what I was dealing with then and how to the untrained eye I am probably not much different to then or worse, actually....it may look like I have not made progress...who I am is both different and the same...

https://www.facebook.com/elainee3/media_set?set=a.475972406750.257047.546281750&type=3

Or something like that...