Pursuit of honesty in our broken identity

Well we have been radio silent for a while now, and honestly it’s because I have had no idea how to put into words our mental state these last few weeks. It’s funny because we’ve tried to explain to people a few times through text or on video call and everyone seems to glaze over it, move onto the next topic. No-one seems to really understand we’ve been struggling so much, or even seem to realise that we have been trying to ask for help. Thankfully, I can say we seem to have worked through it, and are coming out on the other side. Weirdly though the thing that has shook us so deeply was the breakdown of somebody else’s relationship. Bare with me, because I’m starting to think that everybody out there thinks we shouldn’t care about other peoples relationships, but the truth is we really do.

Part of me wonders if everyone else just pretends to be ok. Or maybe its because other people have many things to preoccupy their lives with that they can push it to the back of their mind, whereas we are out here with nothing but free time to ponder. I don’t think that’s true though because when we found out about our travel buddies relationship breakdown just before this trip, we were both super busy, yet we really struggled to come to terms with it. We both went into a state of shock, we were both mourning for the loss of their relationship, or the relationship we thought it was. It was so unfathomable to us that there would be cracks or flaws, because we thought they had it all figured out, they were living the dream, they seemed so happy. We couldn’t escape the pain of their broken relationship. It felt like the world had come along with a bat and knocked our legs out from under us. This time though, it was more like the world came a long with an axe, hacked off our legs and beat us over the head with the bloody stumps.

It doesn’t matter if its friends, family or random YouTube couple you follow living in a van - the break down of other peoples relationships seems to really affect us. Philly and I were walking home alone from Machu Picchu and I am sobbing my heart out and Philly is trying to help us navigate the path through this to help understand why this is affecting us so much emotionally and how to come through on the other side. How can the breakdown of somebody else’s relationship make us feel like this. We have both felt so empty inside, void, like someone has died. We literally felt like nothing mattered anymore, like there was no purpose to anything. We felt like we couldnt trust anyone or anything. We were shadows of oursleves. On the long walk down those hundreds of steps, Philly spoke some serious wisdom. He said that we need to learn to identify with people not build our identity in them.

Philly had realised that we seem to have built parts our identity upon these key people in our lives. It was only when randomly talking to my little sister about religion did I really understand what he meant. I was explaining to Ciera how if people base their faith in God upon the actions of Christians (similarly for any religion) they will ultimately stop believing in God, because we are all humans and we are flawed. Your faith cannot be built on people it has to be about a relationship between you and God. Then I realised this was what Philly and I were experiencing. When our beliefs in certain lifestyle choices, our belief in love itself, in honesty, when these are being shaken by the failings of those around us, we have clearly built our belief systems in the people rather than the ideals themselves. This is what we have found so hard about all the various perceptions we have of people in their happy relationships and happy lives, because we’ve realised we put our belief in those life choices and systems ultimately in the success stories of these people. So when people we respect are full time travelling, or self employed, not following the 9-5, pushing for the dream, raising kids that fit around their lifestyle, living in a van, whatever it is... whenever their relationships breakdown, for us we lost hope in all ideals we associated with them. The things that underpin our identity we had built in people who we identify with, so when those people fail our identity failed with them.

Over and over again people we love and respect are coming out as not being truthful with themselves or those around them and this is really difficult to come to terms with. Philly says I am a rare breed, someone who is so unashamedly open about themselves and their failings, but I cant live in a world where I believe this is rare. A good friend of mine asked why I shared everything online and not just write it for myself and the truth is I want people to critically engage with their own mental state. I hope that being brutally honest about our own headspace rather than pretending everything is ok will encourage more people to be honest with themselves. Maybe someone is going through what we are, putting their identity in the wrong things, or maybe someone is struggling to come to terms with something and are too afraid to reach out for help, or maybe someone is in the midst of their own relationship breakdown, I don’t know. But what I do know is you have to be honest with yourself, don’t pretend everything is ok. I truly believe the truth can never be wrong.