Who am I?

I have thought about this a lot recently. The answer is not an easy one. I really do not know who I am anymore. I feel like the years of mental illness has robbed my identity. I am no longer the person I thought I was. Maybe I am not really anybody at all. I look in the mirror but that is not me. I do not see the person that I used to see looking back. How can 3 years of mental illness rob me of who I am? I do not smile the same, my eyes are not bright like they used to be. I look tired all the time. I smile at my reflection in the mirror but it looks fake, almost like I can look deeper and know that I am not truly happy.
The world that was once so big for me, has become small. I do not participate in any life outside of my home. I want to go out, I want to be an active participant in life and not just watching on as life passes me by. My mind just will not let me. I am a prisoner of mental illness. An unwilling participant of an invisible disease that has stolen my bright future from me.
I have had good months when the medication has worked, but it has always been just a small window of wellness. Just enough to tease and tempt me. Enough to let me start believing that maybe there is an end to this mental nightmare. As soon as the hope has built and my heart begins to feel excitement again, it is snatched away from me.
I have tried to be upbeat and positive about this journey, but I feel weak right now. I feel hopeless and helpless to what is happening to me. I know this is just a low place right now. A place that I do not like. A dark place that I have been before but not a place I like to stay. It is a place of dark thoughts and many tears. A place that is lower then I could have even imagined feeling.
I know it is not all real, it is a figment of medications that are not working properly. Of chemicals and hormones that are out of sync with each other
I know that I will start a new medication and have new hope again. I will look for each day for the bad feelings to subside and for the good days to become more frequent. I just hope that I am not let down again.
I hope that in a few weeks when a new medication has saturated my brain that I will be able to better answer the question of who I am.