I often find myself imagining what it would feel like to float inside of a sensory deprivation tank. Apparently, it’s supposed to imitate what it felt like being in your mother’s womb. Since the water is the same temperature as your skin and is also saturated with salt, you aren’t supposed to feel like anything. Absent from all outside stimulation.

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I suspect the reason why I continuously return to this imagery and long for what it feels like is because I’m trying to grasp who I was in my mother’s womb. The only period of time we are not perceived and not interacted with, dark from who the world will see us as once we exist in it. Metaphorically, who I really am.

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I realize this isn’t a perfect recreation because the unborn version of ourselves isn’t dirtied from the outside world that is polluting the water we float in as ourselves now. Or have we inhaled so much of the pollution that it isn’t seeped in the water but rather fully internalized in our self? Regardless of which theory of how it attaches itself to us, our experiences with variables outside of ourselves shape our sense of self and identity. 

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When I talk about identity with others, I’ll bring up how people have described me or what situations have made me out to be. “No, who do you think you are? Who are you when no one’s around?” is what I get in response, implying that in order to find x I have to isolate myself from y. Okay then, what is x? It’s a symbol whose value is dependent on other factors in the equation. In the confusing, long, too-many-variables word problem of identity, it’s a symbol that people think inherently has value in and of itself.

So who are we when we don’t have anything to be contingent on? When there are no social interactions putting up a mirror to reflect back what people see in us? 

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When I open the door to this question, the room is empty. In fact, it’s so hollow that stepping in and trying to explore it has inevitably sucked me into what’s actually a black hole. A vacuum. Back to the dark nothingness that I was in the womb. And this is the exact paradox that I’ve unknowingly trapped myself in. A paradox that wants to remain a paradox so much so that it won’t let me leave and the only thing I can do is float in it.