the idea that we sometimes feel like ourselves and sometimes don’t is both widely accepted as coherent and in conflict with reality, which says that we are always ourselves, by definition. Even when we are being inauthentic, we are expressing something true about ourselves: inauthenticity. Does that make you feel crazy? I’ve struggled to grasp this concept for basically my entire life: That my personality is not the rule, but every exception and rule combined into one chaotic knot.