Every family system has roles — the caretaker, the scapegoat, the responsible one, the entertainer, the invisible one. These roles are assigned in childhood and enforced long after anyone has consciously decided on them. You become the role so thoroughly that finding the self underneath it is the work of years.

Anonymous thoughts about unchosen roles posted here are from people who spent years being what was needed — and the specific process of locating what they actually are underneath it.