i have no identity

and i crave having no identity

I am nothing. No name, no label, no box to check. No flag to fly. I drift like smoke, shapeless, inhaled and exhaled by a world that needs me to be something, anything, just not this—just not empty. But I am not empty; I am unclaimed. There’s a difference.

People around me seem to anchor themselves to things: careers, relationships, passions, pronouns, ideals, religions, even rebellion. They say, "This is who I am," like staking a claim on a patch of land. Me? I never felt the need to plant a flag. I’ve spent my life untethered, not out of defiance, but because nothing felt permanent enough to stick. It’s not that I hate the idea of identity. It’s that I can’t seem to hold one long enough before it slips through my fingers.

I’ve tried wearing masks, telling myself I could pretend to be something. But even in the pretending, I was a fraud. Trying on roles was like trying on clothes that never fit quite right. Too tight, too loose, too bright, too dull. Nothing tailored to me, nothing screaming, Yes, this is you. And so I stopped. I stopped looking for the right box to fold myself into. Instead, I began to crave the shapelessness, to revel in my own ambiguity.

Maybe I don’t want to be known, or worse, reduced. Maybe I don’t want the permanence that comes with identity. To be defined feels like a trap—final, irreversible. If I say, "This is who I am," it comes with an expectation to stay that way, to live up to it, to defend it against change. And change is all I know. It’s the only constant.

People say identity is freedom. To claim yourself, to name yourself, is to take control. But I think freedom is in the namelessness, the ability to be fluid, to exist outside of the categories. My lack of identity isn’t a lack; it’s a canvas. Blank, yes, but full of possibility.

There’s something deeply, painfully satisfying in admitting I am nothing. It’s not resignation; it’s liberation. It’s my own quiet rebellion against a world desperate to define me. To have no identity is to refuse to be pinned down. To live in the space between definitions, to be undefined in a world that demands clarity, is my way of existing on my own terms.

Do I crave it, though? A name, a box, a place to belong? Yes, sometimes. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? To say, "Here I am, here’s who I am." To find community, solidarity, even validation in that declaration. But in my own fucked-up way, I don’t want easy. I want this nothingness. I want the freedom to crave something and never have it, to want identity and resist it all the same.

I am nothing, and somehow, that feels like everything.

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