Who are you to take yourself so seriously?

When I was in my twenties, and a little into my thirties, I had a sort of alter-ego. Her name was Billy. And Billy was a lot of fun.

She was sexy, confident, a little wild, and genuinely carefree. Billy got away with things; she had a certain magnetism – people were drawn to her. My best friend had her own version of Billy, we called her “the Kid” and together we'd put on these sparkling identities the way you might slip on a statement coat before stepping out into the coolness of the evening.

Some of Billy’s charm was the drinking, if I'm honest. Billy was often a few in. But the drinking isn't the part I keep coming back to. The part I come back to is that Billy never seemed to carry the cost of anything. She just set it down. That got left for me the next morning, in the body I had to keep living in. I won’t turn this into the story of those years and what they cost me (that's a different essay and a heavier one). What I want to talk about is what Billy actually was. Because I don't think she was a mask, exactly. I think she was proof of something.

A very wise person told me once that I was nobody and nothing. Before you brace for how disturbing that sounds, let it in. It’s deeply liberating. He said I could wear different identities like garments, out into this world, and play – and that none of them were really me. It’s a lovely thing to know that – to recognize the joy of play and the freedom to not be fixed to some idea of myself.

Looking back, I realize I knew something about this first when I was in the fourth grade.

I was asked to give a speech in front of the entire school. My teacher was retiring, and I was to stand up and say something about how wonderful she'd been. I was terrified. Terrified in the specific, physical way I've been terrified of public speaking my whole life – the shaking, the red face that comes instantly and without permission, the days of spinning about it beforehand. And then, somewhere in all that dread, I had a thought that for a few moments set me free, I could do this if I weren't me.

If I weren't me, I could walk up there. If I weren't me, my hands would be steady. So I did it more or less as not-me, and I got through it. I was still nervous — it wasn't instant fourth-grade enlightenment, I didn't float back to my seat glowing. But the door had opened a crack. Because if I could do the terrifying thing the moment I stopped being myself, then I had to ask the obvious question. Why was I so afraid to do it as myself? What exactly was this "me" I kept guarding, that couldn't survive one speech?

That's the question. That's the whole thing, really.

Here's a strange one I've barely told anyone. Sometimes I meet a person who annoys me so completely that my whole system recoils just being near them — something about the way they move, the way they take up space, is so foreign to my senses that I can't find a single door into their point of view. And when that happens, quietly, only ever to myself, I imitate them. Their gestures. Their voice. The kind of thing they'd say. Not to mock them, but to see whether moving the way they move might let me feel my way into being them for a second.

And it works. The moment I take on the shape of a person, some of my judgment falls away and something like understanding walks in through the space it left. Turns out you can borrow a self to do a scary thing, and you can borrow a self to understand a person you can't stand. Same trick, different reason.

Which brings me back to the country road I live on now, and to Billy, who I hadn't thought about in years.

I was walking the other day and she just surfaced, and on impulse I put her on. Not the drinking, not the party, just the energy of her for maybe five minutes. And it felt good. Not because I want to be her again, and not because I don't like who I am now. It was simpler than that. It was the sheer ease of remembering that I could exude a certain something whenever I chose to try it on. That it was still hanging in the closet. That none of it had ever really been the whole of me, which meant none of it could ever be taken away.

So, who am I to take myself so seriously?

Nobody. And I've come to think that's the most freeing thing about me. Not that I'm empty, but that I'm not fixed. Taking yourself less seriously isn't self-erasure. It's range. It's a closet full of coats and the whole cold night to wear them into.