WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

Three writers stop to really consider this conundrum

‘I felt like I was meeting myself for the first time’

‘How can we know so much, but not ourselves?’ ‘“WHO AM I?” IS A QUESTION THAT CAN NEVER BE FULLY ANSWERED,’ SAYS SARAH HEPOLA. BUT THEREIN LIES THE BEAUTY.

Istarted keeping a journal at 13 years old. I was only a girl, but I was eager to turn into a woman, and the journal was evidence of my becoming. Thirteen is an age of conformity. I wore the approved jeans, rarely spoke in class lest I say something dumb and stuck a bow in my hair because others were doing it. But in the pages of that journal, I could be anything I wanted to be. Messy. Lovestruck. Opinionated. It’s as though two people were growing up alongside one another: the private one, who was all exclamation points and longing; and the public one, a shy observer so torqued by the needs and judgement of others she could be rendered mute by the question, ‘What do you want for dinner?’ What if I got the answer wrong? What if I made a choice and nobody liked it?

As I grew older and discovered the liberating power of frosty pints and bottles of Cabernet, I gained more direct access to my turbulent inner self. Alcohol gave me permission to say what I thought, grab what I wanted, tell my friends exactly how I felt (several times in a row, it turns out) and, over the next two decades, I went from the girl nervously watching the party to the girl dancing at the centre of it. Drinking was so fun back then: I leapt on tables, argued with men, shoved pizza in my mouth and other people’s mouths (because everyone loves pizza!).

Funny thing about liberating elixirs, though: if you need them too much, they become a trap. By my early 30s, the journals had turned into a catalogue of pre-dawn despair. Why did I say that? Why had I done that? What secrets buried inside me were forcing themselves to the surface at 2am? I had split into two people again: the brassy lush mouthing off to strangers; and the self-recriminating wretch who woke up with a palm to her forehead. I quit drinking at 35, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to, and in the muted, lonely days that followed, I made a rather astonishing discovery: I did not know myself.

Easy questions stumped me once again. What did I like to do on the weekends? What brought me pleasure? It was insane that I didn’t know given that I took pride in my own self-awareness. I even wrote about myself for a living. And yet the rollercoaster ride of my drinking years had so thoroughly occupied my habits and downtime that tearing down that structure left nothing but a blank plot of cement. Was I a hermit or a people person? Was it possible to be both? Friends of mine had similar reckonings around this time, although their transformations went by different names. Divorce. Motherhood. Diagnosis. I had dinner with a woman raising three children, and when I wondered out loud about her hobbies, she looked at me as though I asked her to name the capital of Uzbekistan. How could we know so much, but not ourselves? Out on the validation machines of social media, we were #winning and #yoloing, but in the off-line corridors of our own unfolding lives, we were stumbling and lost.

In those first years of sobriety, I often felt like I was meeting myself for the first time. I didn’t like crowds; not sure how I’d forgotten that. I loved making things with my hands; had I ever known that? It was a season of long walks, endless podcasts and deep conversations with friends whose active listening allowed me to hear my own voice. Those conversations were like journalling, but less isolated. I was also starting to realise that whoever I was, she was neither a swashbuckling badass nor flinching hermit, but a more ordinary woman; an integrated version of these extreme personality traits. Opinionated, but very sensitive. Introverted, but also extroverted. The less I stopped trying to hide these parts of myself, the more they could sit side by side in all their human contradiction.

I was right, aged 13, when I saw beauty in the act of becoming. But I was wrong to think it only happens once, as though a little girl turns from chrysalis to butterfly, end of story. We are always becoming. Humans are highly adaptable creatures who make alliances with the world, who surface some aspect of ourselves while quieting another, only to reverse that down the line. The question ‘Who am I?’ can never be fully answered, because it keeps changing. The point is not to solve the riddle, but to marvel at its complexity. To look inside ourselves is to be returned to the astonishing possibility of a human life, and the gift that we are not done yet.

Wear leopard print. And never change your spots. AFTER YEARS OF DRESSING FOR OTHERS’ EXPECTATIONS, SARA COLLINS REFLECTED ON HOW SHE REALLY FELT ABOUT CLOTHES, AND CHOSE UNAPOLOGETIC SELF-EXPRESSION INSTEAD.

As a child of the 1980s, I got my early sense of style from American gossip magazines. Back then, I was in awe of shoulder pads, back-combed hair and Jordache jeans. I loved Jane Eyre, but I also loved Hollywood Wives. Throughout my teens I happily spent hours trawling Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, because doing so made me feel less like a bookworm cursed with glasses and orthodontia, and more like someone on the verge of a much more glamorous life. I would never have Iman’s cheekbones, or be as thin and striking as her, but there was no reason I couldn’t strut around in clothes that made me feel that way. Surely it was just a question of attitude, although I wasn’t yet sure how I was supposed to go about cultivating the right one.

Years passed. I qualified as a barrister. Motherhood, my career and real life intruded. When I found time to shop for clothes, nine times out of 10 it was to purchase something black. During 17 years as a lawyer, I never dared to wear bright colours at work, I kept make-up to a minimum and I straightened my afro into submission. I worried about being seen as frivolous, so complied with an unwritten dress code for those who want to be considered intellectual. In order to be taken seriously (especially as a young black woman in an older white man’s profession), I gave in to the notion that brains and glamour can’t go hand in hand.

We use fashion to reinvent ourselves, but we also use it to judge and be judged. We’re all guilty of this (imagine your surgeon arriving at the operating theatre dressed like a Kardashian). The idea is planted early and buried deep, starting with school rules governing skirt lengths and hairstyles – our first clue that academic excellence won’t be conferred on those of us who care too much about make-up or what we wear – and conditioning us for the assumption that we can be valued for how we look or how we think, but not both.

I’ve now traded in law for writing novels and, while packing for a book tour recently, I found myself wrestling once again with the ‘clever woman’ myth, as I stood over my suitcase clutching a leopard-print dress, questioning whether it was too ‘loud’ to wear on stage. Miuccia Prada once said, ‘Few women dress the way they think.’ There’s more diversity in how we express ourselves than ever before, but still the ‘clever woman’ myth persists. Debunking it is the premise of one of my daughters’ favourite movies, Legally Blonde, which chronicles the adventures of a Harvard-conquering heroine who is underestimated because she’s blonde and fashion-mad. I used to scoff at the film for being frivolous and frothy, but I recently had to admit that I’d misjudged it after I found myself drawn in by the way it completely dismantles the ‘clever woman’ myth. Elle Woods triumphs because she understands that self-love goes hand in hand with full and unapologetic self-expression. Isn’t that what every woman should be aiming for?

I didn’t hesitate for long before packing my leopard-print dress, because I consider myself both a ‘serious’ writer and a woman who will no longer allow someone else to define what that’s supposed to look like. True self-acceptance means no longer shrinking to fit the expectations of others. It means you can be an intellectual powerhouse while dressing to please yourself. It means you can be Michelle Obama with bared arms in the White House. Or a serious writer in a leopard-print dress. I’ve long admired writers who are identified as much by their iconic style with clothes as with words: from Joan Didion projecting a persona as cool and acerbic as her writing, to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Afro-centric chic. A truly clever woman would follow their examples.

‘I worried about being seen as frivolous’

‘I realised being older was a blessing’

‘The confidence that comes from having lived should be valued’

ALTHOUGH ERICA DAVIES IS NOTICING THINGS ON THE OUTSIDE ARE CHANGING IN HER 40s, SHE’S ALSO REALISING THERE ARE PARTS OF HER INSIDE THAT NEVER WILL.

Ihave just turned 43. I can’t quite believe that, because in my head I am still 24. I’m still the person who was so smug about skincare that she often went to bed with make-up still on – and who had NO CLUE at that stage how wonderful a double cleanse and a great retinol really are! Yet, it feels different, this being 43. When I was in my early teens, I chatted to my mum as she put on make-up in the bathroom. As she looked in the mirror, she said, ‘It’s funny… you never feel any different inside – then you look at yourself and get a shock!’ Those words – which I couldn’t understand then – stayed with me. Because now, I get them completely. I spot little changes in the mirror. I feel ‘in-between’. Without make-up, I look tired. My hair doesn’t just do its beach wavy thing. I can’t leave it to dry naturally; I have to DO it. The greys sprout aggressively from the top of my head – and rather than go for occasional hair appointments, I am now regimented in the process. I see lines that weren’t there before. Teenage-style spots appear on my chin (alongside the rogue hairs that also pop up there out of nowhere). I have tweezers in the bedroom, in my toiletry bag and the downstairs toilet, just in case another errant chin friend makes an appearance.

Yes, this new in-between stage feels more high maintenance (although that strays into another conversational topic. Beauty regimes – you do what’s right for you!). But does it feel depressing? Weirdly, no.

As an ex-fashion editor now working in digital, I’ve always worked alongside younger women. In the past, I tried to stay in touch with their interests and cultural touch points. I tried to keep myself at the same age, lest the fact I was a decade older ‘put them off me’.

In my last editorial role, I was one of only four or five mothers in the office, and I was terrified about allowing that fact to be my narrative – ‘Of COURSE I can stay late’; ‘Yes, I’ll be at that meeting’ – while frantically making alternative childcare arrangements on my phone.

All it served me was stress (which probably didn’t help the grey hairs) and unnecessary angst, when what I should have been is proud. It took me time to realise that being older was a blessing. I’d made those mistakes, I’d been through that crisis, I’d worked out that issue before and yes, I could help.

There’s a meme that did the rounds on social media recently that said, ‘If I do a job in 30 minutes, it’s because it took me 10 years to learn how to do that job in 30 minutes. You owe me for the years not the minutes.’ It’s how I feel about where I am right now. The confidence that comes from having lived should be respected and valued – and that should start with ourselves.

Being kind about the fact that our exterior is changing – even when the insides stay fixed at an unspecified, younger period of time – helps you view yourself in a different way.

In some ways, fundamentally, you will always be you. On a long car journey during the last school holiday, my children took over the music. In between Disney, Taylor Swift and 1980s rock, they picked tunes I’d shared with them years before. ‘This one’s for you, Mummy,’ they said, as Say Something by James came on. Instantly, I was 14 again. The sound of nostalgia made my eyes prick with tears – memories of my best friend, teenage crushes, nights spent listening to it on my Walkman, dreaming about what-ifs.

But there are parts of me that have changed. Cliché it may be, but becoming a mother unleashed a whole gamut of emotions I wasn’t aware I had. My family time is now first on the mental check list of ‘Important Things’. I am able to say no, loudly, when something might impact that. I don’t mean that in a callous way; I don’t care less about the important things. But I DO care less about the little decisions that would once have led me down an unhappy, people-pleasing road.

My career confidence has grown, too. It feels as though – with almost two decades of work notched into my belt

– I know exactly what it is I can offer. That’s a great feeling. Never too old to still learn; old enough to share what you have.

That’s what matters, not the grey hairs, not the rogue chin upholstery, not the extra padding around the middle that seems to have just arrived and shows no sign of leaving. Remembering that even though the external you is starting to change ever so slightly, the inside of you hasn’t. All the things that make you tick and productive and happy haven’t changed – they’re just wrapped in a kick-ass new package that can definitely tell a few more stories. For that, we should all be really proud.