I guess what I’m trying to say here is that we evolve in unpredictable ways.

Parts of your identity as human being are inherited, like the colour of your skin and the culture you were born into. Other parts are absorbed over time, we create it to ourselves with the guidance of the community around us, while others are enforced upon us by the ways this mad world has been evolving.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that identities are a beautifully complicated mash.

I inherited my Syrian origins, my culture is loud, funny, intimate and savvy. My people are warm, helpful and nosy. We’re storytellers who love to tell you about their day, and listen to you tell them about yours.

I inherited the religion of my father, but that’s an identity I negotiated with myself. I respect the Islam my grandmother taught me. She used to take care of her plants, and she told me that every unique being worships in their own way, and that Allah will accept all those forms.

I don’t believe in Allah, but I respect the purity and the love that woman had for Him.

I realized my own identity as a queer person on my own; it grow within me like a flower seeking the sun. I had that unimaginable attraction towards men; to talk to them, to listen to them, to touch softly.

My society was homophobic, but that didn’t matter to me. I felt that love within me, it felt pure, it felt funny and joyful. I would know sin when I do it; and that didn’t feel like a sin to me.

The changing world around me forced me into the identity of a refugee. This is bigger than just my story, it’s the story of over 6 million Syrian refugees who did not choose the identity of a refugee.

But I embraced it; being a refugee is being resilient, strong and smart. It takes guts to be a refugee, and to make it to the other side of the world. Being a refugee is being a survivor.

It also opened the door for new identities of mine to emerge.

I’m a settler in Canada on the ancestral, traditional and unnceded Aboriginal territories of the First Nations People; on its land we all live, work and play. An equal immigrant to the many here before me.

I’m a person of colour, trying still to understand the intersectionality of this identity.

But I’m also the Vancouverite, loving my Blenz Café’s Matcha Proteinshake, and taking up hiking.

As I was saying, our identities evolve in unpredictable ways, and I want to tell you about mine.