Ep4 On My Identity Crisis: external projections, Orientalism, and post-9/11

Here I trace the long, complicated arc of an identity crisis that began in childhood, in the misunderstandings and misreadings that quietly shaped how I learned to see myself. I talk about how hard it can be to unlearn the stories we never chose.The episode quotes Edward Said’s “Orientalism” to make sense of the context in which I was emerging and the larger forces that had already been shaping the lens through which others inevitably saw me. I revisit the post‑9/11 moment, which was a time when Arab and Muslim identities were cast under intense suspicion, to understand how those pressures deepened the fracture between how the world saw me and how I wanted to be seen.This is about the complex realities of defining yourself after years of being named by others, the tension between internal truth and external projection, and the slow process of self-awareness.Many thanks to TorGado for composing the music just for this podcast. Art from my sketchbook. Instagram: @notestoselfpod