Would you like me to say “a father, a brother, a grandson….” lol?

I’m the same person you are, broseph.

@Blackberry No, that’s exactly not what I want, as I said in the details. I want to know who are you in your secret core? What hidden bit of history explains why you behave the way you do? What is the kernel that explains you? If you don’t want to answer, that’s ok. But since you put down a joke answer, I’m guessing you secretly do want to answer. Please give in to the urge.

In my secret core, I’m still the poor little girl without a father that wanted to be like all the other kids with a real family, a mom who wasn’t loud, and a real home. Still seeking daddy’s approval which makes me a people pleaser. I want to make the world a better place for all children.

I am the culmination of every thought which has occurred to me.

I’m not anything except another human like you. I don’t really define myself by labels and I don’t believe in “cores”. I have beliefs regarding politics and culture etc, but those can change over time.

I’m just some guy.

There is no secret core. There’s a story about the continuing adventures of this little dude, but it’s only a story and not to be taken too seriously. Put the story of the little dude aside, and there’s nothing other than this continually unfolding moment. There’s no one part of it that’s more “me” than any other part. Nothing secret about it. It’s all there is.

No secret to me. Ready my profile.

I am a poet, a wit and a dreamer who is trying to find the overarching purpose of my life. I have been subjected to love and abuse by narcississtic people but have many nurturing, dynamic relationships in my life including those with my adult sons. I am in recovery from the break-up of my marriage and thank g-d my self-esteem is relatively intact.

I’m a fun loving, happy go lucky, super chilled out, thoroughly nice chap.
There was always laughter in our house when I was growing up & I credit my mother for bringing me up as a do-right kinda bloke.

How much time do you have?

All the time you want to put into it. Please give it a start and maybe a paragraph or two. More if you are inspired to.

I… am me.

I’m not entirely sure there is a correct answer to this.

I am who I am.

@KNOWITALL “In my secret core, I’m still the poor little girl without…”

Upon your confession, it ain’t so “secret” anymore. And if that’s all you ever “thought” about, then that’s all you’d be. But “Who you are” is vastly more expansive than your comments imply. For “Who you are” is now “Who you were”…

What’s most important, for everyone, is “Who you are becoming”.

I am the product of my experiences filtered through my perceptions, which are the product of my experiences.

So…

i = e∞÷(p*e)

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Yes and I get that, but in my real life, not many people know that about me. I am not the past or who my parents are or were, but I am still pretty scarred from a few things that affect who I am today.

I am becoming—-a much more loving, giving and open person than I ever thought I could be. My anger issues were causing a LOT of rebellion.

Congratulations @KNOWITALL. You’ve reclaimed authorship of You away from chaos, and give it back to Who it rightfully belongs. Bravo!

No one special. Some days it’s easier to remember than others.

At my core, I am a flamboyant, out, and proud gay man who is also sober and responsible. I am often motivated by my wit and intelligence. I have a flair for the dramatic, and I am innately optimistic.

Simultaneously, I’m given to bouts of mania and depression due to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder type one. I manage those symptoms by taking medication religiously and by following a laundry list of practices that keep me on a more or less even keel. I am committed to recovery from this illness and educate myself about it daily.

I have no hidden bits of history on Fluther. To know me better, check out the blog interview with me.

You are asking the wrong person. I have no idea who I am. It’s like asking a house what it looks like.

@Hawaii_Jake Love the blog interview, thanks for sharing so much of yourself! Wish we could hang out! :)

I am a strong, loved old woman. I’m aware that the years have piled up. I make a lot of verbal references to my age in order to prove that I’m not delusional, but I really am delusional: I feel like I’m 35, which is what I was when I met my husband and my whole life was completely overtaken by responsibilities I hadn’t predicted. Now he’s gone and I’m scrabbling with what you do when you can’t go back to where you used to be (e.g. I don’t “date”).
I’ve done occasionally-extraordinary work in the world as an artist, teacher, psychotherapist, but no aggressive branding. I see from most of the other jelly-answers that most of us refuse to identify ourselves as unusual. I find that interesting and a little sad. Thank you @Hawaii_Jake for your openness and clarity. Nothing like strenuous necessity to teach us who we are.

One of my best & oldest friends once said being with me produces an experience of a) color and b) integrity. That’s been like a spell or a charm for me. I like it. I try to earn it.

@KNOWITALL Thank you. I would like to hang out with you and many other jellies. :-)

@bomyne There is no correct answer and no wrong answer. It’s just the attempt and the integrity of the attempt to answer that makes the difference. I think you can see some nice examples of people who tried hard to come up with an answer here. That’s all I was hoping for. But trust me. I understand why you might not want to do so, and don’t blame anyone for not doing it. I just encourage people to try.

I am fanatic about chocolate. I should have gone to work as a high end candy maker, but I didn’t. Still, I love the stuff and I do work in my own kitchen and I think about it way too much. Tomorrow is one of chocolate’s big days, and that has occupied a lot of my attention recently.

I’m more than chocolate, but that’s my kernel. My core. A warm, molten, sweet core.

I love, I slay, I am content.

But actually, I have no idea. If I have a core, and if it’s responsible for how I behave, then I guess I have more soul searching to do, because I frankly have no idea. Wouldn’t that be things in my subconscious that I have no direct access to? I mean I can always try to put one and two together, but I’d just be guessing and using basic logic, but knowing nothing about psychology it probably wouldn’t be very accurate.

One thing I’m pretty sure of; I’m a neat freak, and I value order above all else in my own, personal environment. I can only attribute this to my near hatred of society’s chaotic rat racing, and how I’m forced to partake of it every single day. That is if, manifested compensation can be a part of my core? O_o

At my core I think I am much more ADD than I like to admit. My mind hops from one topic to another and I lose interest quickly.
I wonder what others are thinking about, if they have thought about the same things I am and if they think the same way I do. I want to know that I am “normal”. I guess there is some insecurity at work here.
I dislike conflict but sometimes instigate it just to get a reaction.
I like to read and in many ways am a solitary being or, more correctly, being alone does not bother me but I do not mind small groups. In fact, I work better in a group where ideas are flung out and worked upon by all.
I enjoy Fluther because many times one topic or thought leads to another or a different perspective that has not occurred to me and it is like having dozens of heads searching the internet for interesting factoids or providing insight into something that has caught my attention.
Look! A new question!

1. Most days, I don’t know who I am.

2. I had to have been a cat in a past life.

3. I’m a mother, a wife, and a woman. I think I have repressed some terrible memories, because I have mostly blank spots from my childhood, and because I have all the symptoms of sexual trauma. Because of that, I’m often a withdrawn, depressed person, and prefer to socialize on the internet, usually via some sort of humor.

Believe it or not, I’m somewhat of a people pleaser, which means I get taken advantage of a lot. I think this goes back to trying to impress my daddy when I was little. I’m a weird combination of ADD and IDGAS (I Don’t Give A Shit). I guess, at my core, I’m just a human who has problems like everyone else does.

@burntbonez: It’s a great question and you’ve provoked some interesting responses here. But I don’t believe I have an unchanging essential core. I just have to pretend that I do (or at least not bring it up too often) in order to get along in this world without going crazy. I have to balance taking care of myself with keeping in mind the mystical vision. Some days I’m better at this than others. I was crazy back in high school, and I had to teach myself how to appear to be un-crazy.

I could tell stories about how being diabetic from a very young age, and also being transsexual, being an introvert, etc., have affected my life trajectory in great ways, and I certainly have, all over Fluther, but those have nothing to do with an ‘essence.’ It’s just a mass of experiences that I tend to attach to what I have to refer to as ‘my self’ in order to maintain employment and move around in the world.

Thanks, @bookish1. And thanks for trying. Your core could hardly be unchanging, but I think you might have a core at the moment and another core ten minutes from now. What is central and essential to you right now? I’m sure things like being transexual must seem to have a long term importance, since they are a process. Same with diabetes. But there’s probably sometime that is more you right now than those things, which perhaps are a framework for you but are not what you really want to identify with. Though I could be wrong.

To know me is to love me!

I am obsessed with falling into a sea of love. I want everyone to like me, except only on my own terms—for being me, and not for trying to please others. Yet I want to please others by being myself. It seems like a crazy contradiction; impossible to do, but I have hope that I will learn to commit that magic that will get people to love me even if they don’t love me. Yah. It’s a paradox. But it is honestly the thing I crave most in life.

Hmm. I’m a survivor of trauma, one of the lucky ones. I think that makes me want to help everyone else survive their trauma, too.

Just another person who wants to love.

I spent between six months and a year in therapy looking for that ‘hidden kernal’ that would explain why I was having such a difficult time. Turned a lot of true things into a lot of inflated bullshit, made my life more complicated, and then I collapsed.
So I don’t believe in secret cores.
I’m just an insecure affection seeker. Beyond that, I’m my skills, ambitions, morals, thoughts, instincts, and loves. Hopefully I’m enough of a person that it takes some time to know me. But I’m not a secret.

I am a person who knows way more than they let on.

Nobody knows exactly how much I see or even what I see, because I’ve never shared it before. I don’t want people to look at me like they think I’m crazy or stupid if I tell them. I know they will, too.

I don’t want anyone to have the kind of mind I do. Sometimes I want a break from all of the analyzing my brain does involuntarily and get some rest. Not even sleep does it anymore. I wish I was a kid again, so I could enjoy being around people no matter who they are. But now that I see, I just can’t.

I see things in people that most people don’t and chose to hide these things from everyone so we can get along better (even if people don’t seem to like me much, anyway).

What angers me about all of this is that I can’t express my observations in words, I can’t tell them what I observe.

Most people say I look mean. Maybe it’s because of the way I look at them and everything else. I see it how it is, but don’t say anything. Nobody would like me at all if I did, even if I could.

This must sound like gibberish and stupidity. I’ve changed my wording about five times already! Haha.

You are exactly who you think you are…always

This culiminates is knowing you are the one with absolutely no contradiction
which results conclusion that , I am That I am.

You cannot know it unless you understand it.
And you cannot understand it unless you know it.

Someone may tell you, but most certainly they are are not able to teach you…

I was going to say I yam what I yam, but there have been far too many Popeye references lately.

I am a boyscout.
I am someone who loves movies.
I am a rocker who can’t sing, and an artist who can’t draw.

My secret inner core is a zany, rare, ENTP personality style female that is a creative at heart, an insatiable seeker of truth and knowledge, a poet, a writer, a comedian, living in obscurity in the middle of nowhere with my cats and geese.
By day I deliver flowers to high end rural estates, puttering about in a Smart car.
By night I bask in my hot tub enjoying a wee bit o’ the herbal essence and cracking myself up my random thoughts.
I have always lived in the gray zone, I don’t even question my “normalacy” anymore.

I have always taken the road less traveled and gave up trying to explain myself eons ago.
I keep a 5×7 photograph of my adorable 3 year old self on my fridge to remind me of my inner child.

Bring on the Play Doh, bubbles and Strawberry milk.
Gotta keep that little darling happy and amused. :-)

I’m someone that was raised in a loving caring environment, given a solid foundation, and then hurt so bad repeatedly that I just wanted to curl up and die. And we still had a farm to run. So I had to suck it up and go on. But it taught me the value of people and how to love others and try to make a positive affect on my little corner of the world. It also taught me to value those people that are positive and upbeat, and to care for others and help them if I can, and ignore the jerks in the world. Life is too short to waste on idiots. I think i’m a better person for what I went through, but I’d never wish that on anyone.

City lights lit by mouths
Hungry and gaping,
Like that of a hurricane.
A mistake I’ve made.
Fleeing into the realm of foolish colonization.
The day I left… I wasn’t me.
Still I went where I pleased.
Now a spirited daughter.
Only a ghost.
Only a shadow.
I have disappeared into the secrets of my parents little dry wall world.
A crayola sketch from my sisters coloring book, tacked to flaking paint like Jesus.
I am a stick figure family.
Crumpled and torn.
Thrown in the trash after ears have passed.
Memories of my own spirit,
Of my own flesh, blood, and heart have been forgotten.
I do not think that I am significant anymore.
I do not think that I am even acceptable.
Distant and filtered in the minds of every family I had ever come to love.
After I left, I knew… That eventually, with time, even their memories would forget my name.

@AshLeigh That is beautiful.

Thanks, @Adirondackwannabe.

I want to have fun with this. Part of me thinks this is crap. Even onions don’t have cores and to think we define ourselves is arrogant.

I am a tree growing beyond the safety of my peers. I look down at their sheltered carefree lives envious, alone. I hear them whispering amoungst themselves, musical rustling calming and annoying.

Scraggly, strong, scarred, layered. Knotted and burled, twisted by the wind. I get to look out and see new saplings growing and a forest of dead and dying trees falling down cracking and withering.

I also notice the birds and the wildlife but sometimes I get so caught up it is hard to appreciate it.

I am sadness, it is echoed in the faces around me and reflected in the water and mirrors. Trying not to be accentuates it. Punctuated.

But this is just a layer a ring, one day it will just be a space an ingredient. Fused into my ethos and soup.

One day I won’t laugh at pain. I will laugh with joy. It will come out of my pores sticky and sweet and bold.

I started out in this world a scrappy survivor. Life is so much richer.

I feel as though I’m acting in a movie and was given a shitty part. I just have to play it out. I’m pretty sure that a good 80 percent of the people in my life don’t know who I really am.

Just acting.

At my core is a self-centered creature who feels a need to be the best. That core me has been disappearing as I strive to be the person I want to be, more giving, understanding, selfless and, above all, kind. I recognize aspects of my core self in others and it re-enforces my work to not be like that.

Mr. Curiosity

Hard to talk about myself without my ego taking over, but here goes:

In my better moments I want to be compassionate, reliable, and ambitious. I often fall short. I really do have an open mind, and whenever I feel I might harbour a dislike, an aversion for the different, I pry that mind open even further. Most of the time I am happy-go-lucky about my life. Going with the flow, and then complaining things don’t go my way.

I use double standards and behave like a hypocrite when nobody’s watching, and I’m feeling like somebody “owes me”. I suspect I might be somewhat of a narcissist too. It’s not pretty.

On the flip side I try to call myself on my bs, there is some ambition left in me to better myself.

Mostly I am just as lost as the rest of you, sometimes even lostester :P

I am one insignificant speck destined to disappear and be forgotten in a Universe that itself will eventually disappear. This is not a cause for despair. It is a reminder to seize the moment and make the most of it. “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” as it says in Ecclesiastes. I also believe that the surest way of getting the most is to share with the other insignificant specks to make this place a little better.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

I’ll tell you as I can when I know you better… and know myself better.

The similar instruction, “Tell me who you are” is a koan used in a dyadic enlightenment exercise. When one repeatedly answers that, one quickly peels away all the superficial labels and roles.
When done relentlessly, the mind melts, and one can approach a direct experience of existence. But that’s just the way koans work anyway.

“I am this particular point of consciousness” is the best expressible answer I found.

I am human…I need to know things, I need to understand things, I need to explore, I need to go where no man has gone before! I am my own identity, I am my own person and I am free.
I play in the wind, I sing in the rain, I chase after rainbows, I lay and stare at the stars, I sit and wait for sunrise and listen to morning sounds. I love life and love to live. I do all of this because that’s who I am…I am only a human who loves his life.