This Time, I’ll Do It My Way

On identity and how easily you can become a version of yourself built from noise, validation and repetition.

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“You have never actually met yourself,” said David Hume.

Instead, a memory appeared, then a feeling, then a fear, then a desire, then a sensation, all constantly moving and replacing one another.

Mine started off with the first time I went to a nightclub.

The summer I graduated from eighth grade we went on a family vacation. My sisters would go out every night while I stayed in our shared room, my gaze drifting toward the ceiling in frustration.

What came after were those mornings when I would plug my ears with imaginary cotton to avoid listening to their adventures like kissing random boys, dancing till the morning and vomiting inside their palms when no one was looking.

One night, they decided to take me with them.

I was as excited as a thirteen-year-old can get. My sisters basically put a new face on me with makeup that left me with no choice but to sneak out of our hotel. I knew that my makeup would be too much for my father not to get angry.

I was his little girl.

Both he and my mother had to work constantly while my sisters were growing up. It was my grandmother who raised them.

The only child he got to fully experience parenting with was me. Still, his overwhelming affection did not feel like grief over his youngest growing up.

It felt patriarchal.

When we arrived at the club, my sisters asked me to hold hands with one of their male friends to make my entrance easier.

Apparently, that’s what a male presence does.

The bodyguards at the door, though, still asked for my ID, but I was prepared. My sister had given me hers, and I had placed it in the easiest pocket of my bag. One that would not make the guard suspicious, because I was so sure of myself.

I was never sure of myself.

Just ‘being’ never felt enough for people to stay. Silencing myself for the sake of being seen, I grew into an identity I thought would free me from the burden on my chest.

My mind linked experiences together through memory and habit, then created the impression of a stable self standing behind them.

I lived with the illusion that one day I would walk through a door where I would no longer feel restless, as if life was a 9 to 5 job where I could come home and throw off my jacket.

That night, I heard the song that became the anthem of my being.

“It is now or never.
I ain’t going to be just a face in the crowd.
You’re gonna hear my voice when I shout it out loud.”

We returned from our vacation the next day, but I never returned from my new motto that Bon Jovi laid out so beautifully.

It gave certainty, causation, identity, permanence.

But if my voice was going to be heard, why did I need to shout it out loud?

Hume argued that what we really experience are sequences and impressions, while the mind fills in the rest like a narrator desperate to turn fragments into meaning.

My environment complemented my extraverted nature, and I filled my time with socialising even when I did not want to. I mastered elevator talks, the kind that helps you avoid awkward silences with strangers.

I was comfortable with strangers. I was not comfortable with silence.

Convinced that I was chasing interactions, I was really chasing validation.

Hume would say, “You never directly perceived reality itself, only your perceptions of it.”

Maybe he needed shouting as well. Because that was when the idea of turning into a person who would make my father proud granted me an easy exit.

Up until recently, I saw it as a sacrifice. Only now I’m realising, I was avoiding who I was.

My father imagined a future for me that looked a lot like my mother’s as a lawyer. Until one day my sister came home from school and started telling me about her crush acting arrogant.

“He must like me, otherwise why would he annoy me, right?”

My entire future was set out when I said, “Yes, you are right sister.”

Her eyes brightened with the kind of spark that looked like it was borrowed from the North Star sitting on the top of our Christmas tree.

She leaned closer and said, “Imi, you would make a great psychologist,” and laid out a perfect ten-year plan for me.

I was sold.

Pursuing a career in psychology made me dream of publishing papers, of being hosted as a guest speaker.

Later, I realised I hated research. But my father was a big “I told you” person.

The gap between who I was and who I felt compelled to prove myself to be became the heart of perfectionism.

I strived to prove that I could make it, that I would not be just a face standing in the crowd, until one day I could no longer hear Bon Jovi the same way I did before.

What if I became faceless for the sake of not being just a face in the crowd?

I was no longer sure what purpose I was serving. Or more accurately, whose purpose I was serving.

Everything was borrowed besides those quiet hours that I kept journaling.

I remember one time during Covid when I told my sisters that I was the funniest person I knew, as one of the reasons why I journaled so often.

Humour is an avoidance strategy too.

I was being seen. People were noticing my presence. Acknowledging my role. Validating my “identity” on their terms.

Even if someone sees you, their perception shifts your reality.

Someone understanding the meaning behind what I say, was a lottery I never won. Holding space for how I feel rather than how I appear, meeting me where I am, not where they want me to be.

I was never being heard.

Days did not follow. Nights did. They looked like empty bottles, forcing me to swallow each of my dreams with the next sip.

While sleep remained the only resolution between me and the next day, the clouds pulled the curtains.

I vanished. The person who I never got to meet.

They took the wheel, together with the version of me who did not know how to be.

I started to feel detached, like I was watching life from the outside. Almost too quiet to participate.

Until I found myself in tears, struggling to breathe while my eyes resisted drifting toward the ceiling.

That was when the panic attacks began.

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22/04/2026, 00:12:56 imi: I’m not doing very well these days.
22/04/2026, 00:13:00 imi: Please come.
22/04/2026, 00:13:05 imi: I feel so alone.
22/04/2026, 00:13:14 imi: I’m not happy.
22/04/2026, 00:13:30 imi: This is my call for help to you.
22/04/2026, 00:13:59 imi: I’m not okay, and having you here would mean more than I can say.

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Last Friday, after my sister arrived in London, something in me softened.

Her presence felt grounding, like being brought back to where I came from.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be back there.

On Friday morning, we were excited. The weather was perfect for a pub-crawl. I relied on noise to feel less alone with myself.

Earlier that day, though, I had a session with a client that I’ve been working with as a trainee therapist.

An eighteen year old, who came in not only extremely anxious, but anxious about being anxious.

That loop where you get stuck inside the feeling itself. The kind that leaves you frozen while trying to diminish uncertainty.

David Hume believed uncertainty is not a flaw in our existence but one of its most fundamental conditions.

Imagine someone leaving you repeatedly after you became emotionally vulnerable. Doesn’t your mind begin believing: “Being vulnerable makes people leave.”

But Hume would say what you truly experienced was a repeated sequence first vulnerability then abandonment. The mind then creates causation and expectation from the repetition.

While my peers gave their clients thought diaries as homework, I asked mine to write a poem. I hadn’t done anything structurally with her. Yet, somehow, after five sessions, that day I saw something shift.

She wasn’t trapped inside the anxiety. There was concern that allowed her to move, to respond, and to actually create change.

Movement is possible without total certainty.

She had more self-compassion and acceptance. Less guilt and self-criticism.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

For months, or maybe even longer than I realised, I’ve been draining myself with the same questions.

Who am I?

What am I going to do with my life?

Which direction am I supposed to go? Is there even a direction?

Maybe I do not need a complete answer to live.

Self-compassion can coexist with incompleteness.

I just want to live while I’m alive.

But this time, like Frankie said, I’ll do it my way.

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