Identity Theft

I've been aboard this plane for many hours now; the sun has slowly set; the dark is clear and oddly bright.

In the wake of what we have discovered to be an incident of identity theft (sigh, stress, sigh), I've been wondering all trip about where our identities lie resident.  We acquire so many different ID's; I think of how many email addresses I have, online identities, national and state identifications.  Licenses that are ID's, names, nick names....  You get the picture.  I've been trying to sort out the confusion by distinguishing identities from identifications.

Identity theft is not funny, by any means, but I alternately amused and terrified by the idea that my identifications could be stolen from me.  Who would take them?  Could take them?  How might they start?  I see theft as different from erasure; believe me, I know how *that* happens.  So, I have begun to reframe the question.  Instead of thinking about theft, I have begun to ask where am I resident?

I am resident in my real life at home.  That's partly in my relationship and partly in our physical space.  I think it is probably easy to imagine how any of us could grow into and with our partners; it is still surprising to me to find that architecture can be a significant contributor to my sense of my life as meaningful.  The spaces I live in literally and figuratively "house" me and my body.  And being able to live, work and move in such spaces has given me a kind of expansiveness that I can bring to everything else I do.

I am present in my dancing, but not I think resident.  I don't know what to make of that.  Perhaps, it is one of the things I should work on.  Perhaps it is a sign that I am not run by dance.  Either way.

Oddly enough, this blogging persona is a useful place for me to check in with myself about such things.  Tomorrow is my 5 year blogging anniversary.  Hooray!!  Wheelchair dancer was just a name I gave myself five years ago for a place where I recorded what I did and ranted about disability nastiness.  Over time, though, I think the posts have revealed a strong and consistent personality.  Only a small portion of my life and thoughts end up on this blog, but those that do reflect, for the most part, the person I would like to be.

Stealing my identity and my identifications is more than getting my user name or even access to my financial details.  To actually steal my identity you would have to claim my identifications and live as me, with them.