How do words affect our identity? How can gossip and slander change the way we view ourselves? This monologue in the style of a spoken word written and performed by Sophia Pollock attempts to unpack these questions.

Who am I?

The mirror, chatters, slanders, and gossips

Behind my back

A visual representation of who I am inside.

A swirling mess of confusing adjectives

My soul a wandering nomad

I sit on my bed with a writing pad trying to sort out who I am.

Who am I?

Simply a sum of every opinion ever spit my way.

A never-ending freeway, speedway of judgements

The jury of my peers deciding my fate.

My self confidence due date constantly being delayed.

But wait a light ahead,

Compliments, the food to my soul.

I could eat a whole bowl and never be satisfied.

I can picture myself as the title role.

Those words direct me.

I am their slave.

Who am I?

Suddenly venom

The poison sinks into my veins

There lies entering my brain.

My entire sense of self clouded

There words shrouded with passive aggressive intentions.

They place me in detention.

I look in the mirror.

Looking back is twisted hate

Words bouncing back and forth in a debate.

Which side will win?

Is there no in-between.

No way for me to direct my own view.

As if my personality could ever make a debut.

Who am I?

I am just trying to have a breakthrough

I just want to be who I say I am

Instead of being a reflection of others opinions

What if I dictated my own destiny

My sense of self located inside myself

Instead of in someone else

Ah if only this could be

Who am I?

I am an individual influenced by the words of others

Like a bird smothered

Silenced so they are less annoying

Quieted as to not disrupt the peace.

But finally breaking free I learn to fly

I can’t deny

I like myself better this way

When I am who I say I am

Instead of who I am around others.

That is who I am

 

 

Identity is something we all struggle with. As teenagers especially we are all just trying to figure out who we are. In this day and age, where the majority of teenagers have social media, and we are more plugged in then ever it is easy to get overwhelmed with the number of opinions we are being bombarded with everyday. Opinions of close friends and even strangers can have a huge impact either positive or negative on me and how I see myself. In this way I think other people’s words affect my sense of identity and they truly shape how I view myself and the world around me.

In my spoken monologue I used literary devices to emphasize my point. First, I talk about self-image in terms of appearance. This is something lots of teenagers struggle with. I talk about how the mirror gossips in an effort to draw a connection between how we see ourselves based off of the bad things’ others have said to us in the past. Often if someone points out one (seemingly) negative physical feature that is the one thing we focus on. I continue to talk about self-image and how positive words can also have a huge impact. I talk about them like food. Food is something our bodies need to survive and in the same way we can often rely on compliments to improve our mental health. This is also an allusion to how unrealistic standards can affect many teenage girls and boys and their relationship with food. This can sometimes morph into something extremely unhealthy and destructive, and it is another way one’s identity can be formed and hinge on their outward appearance.

I then moved along to personality and how this also affects my identity. My personality is the core of who I am and yet like many people I often feel like I need to mask it or tone it down to fit in. I bring back the mirror analogy as to create more flow and to reemphasize how the opinion of others not only affects our self- esteem when it comes to outward appearance but also when it comes to our character. I painted the picture of a debate to symbolize how my view of myself and others view of me are constantly at war. I also used the imagery of a bird being silenced because birds often represent freedom and, in a way, when we feel forced to hide who we are we are not truly free.

Overall, this monologue attempts to convey a very simple message of holding your own opinion on yourself higher than the opinion of others. We all have things we need to work on or maybe things that we cannot change about our appearance that we wish where different but at the end of the day you cannot let the words of others control or dictate how you live your life in any way. Letting others control you only leads to further pain and more suffering. Be who you are and not who others want you to be!

 

 

Reflection:

What you learned about the project?

I learned the importance of self reflection. This project forced me to confront many different insecurities and required me to think earnestly about how seriously I take the words of others. This was very important for me because as I continue on my journey through school and life I will be faced with the opinions of others everyday. It is something that has always been difficult for me to balance. The way I weight the opinions of others has historically been much higher than how seriously I took my opinion on myself. Something this project has made me reflect on is that I care more about what others think of me than I should and this has lead to an even further investigation on how the words of close family and friends change me. Words have shaped my entire life and they continue to influence me but I have learned that I have to be more selective on what words and who’s words I let influence my self image. Furthermore it is important for me to remember how my words influence others. Something that I have taken to heart is that “life and death are in the power of the tongue…” (Proverbs 18:21). Meaning that your words have the power to seriously hurt others or to uplift them. I would like to be the reason somebody feels uplifted in life and not the reason their self image is damaged.