Em Powers

Who the fuck is she?

Not Nikki. She was quite clear about who she was. She was in possession of a raw and seemingly uncontrollable honesty and openly owned her whole self fully. Even the aspects that would be challenging to acknowledge, let alone accept she defiantly shared with the world.

We saw her. We heard her. We received her.

But what if I am the she in question? And how about if I don’t feel like I’ve ever been seen, heard or accepted? Who is that she? Like, really?!

I have always thought I was being true to myself, and it’s not like I was ever lying about who I was but, in hindsight, I definitely shrunk, filtered and edited her. I didn’t even know I was doing it, because apparently even the diet version of me was still controversial and far too much for mass consumption. I was convinced I was living my life authentically by disingenuous people who benefited from me being watered down and subdued.

As someone who is very much conflict avoidant, I found I was constantly put in situations that demanded I fight, so I had adopted the practices of holding my tongue, stilling my body and never doing anything that could be considered starting a row.

It didn’t work though. People seemed determined to fight with me anyway. To the point I have had more than one person start rows with me whilst I was asleep. Yup, apparently even unconscious me causes arguments.

I thought not engaging was enough, but clearly it never was, and I was still taking the blame for causing disruption even when other people had spent hours shouting at me in front of a public audience. I was unwittingly taking that responsibility on, even though I knew it wasn’t mine and thought that fact should have been obvious to everyone who had ever experienced me. In reality, I needed to learn to stand up for myself without trying to reason, justify, explain or be led into engaging in nonsense “disagreements”. And, actually, if I had raised my voice and asserted myself a bit, the cowards probably would have backed down quicker, but my silence and my measured over explanations that I thought was a blatant rejection of arguing were actually taken as acceptance.

And that kids is how I was complicit in perpetuating being chronically misunderstood by people determined to deny my truth.

I let them.

I was so determined to prove I wasn’t argumentative whilst seemingly everyone told me I was that I never actually fought for myself. And no one else fought for me either. And eventually I was completely lost. I had no idea who I was. I had been bullied into submission. Taught that everything I thought and felt was wrong. 

And that’s when I had to learn to fight for myself. Bit by bit. No one was coming to save me – of course they weren’t, no one could even see me! – So if I was going to survive, I had to save myself. And that meant learning who the fuck I am and fighting for her.

It’s been a long old road like, and I am yet to find my people, but I recognise now where I was allowing others to project their shit on to me and I’m definitely not doing that any more.

And my actual important relationships have genuinely changed. They had to if they wanted to keep me around, because I’m not allowing unhealed arseholes to avoid responsibility and displace the blame and work to me. So either you see me as I am or you don’t see me at all. Ever again.

I’m still not arguing with anyone but I am fighting for myself.

I fought so hard just to exist and no one is taking my sense of self away ever again.

And finally, truly releasing the need for external acceptance is what has led me to fully accept myself. And fuck me is that the most liberating thing I’ve ever done.

Seriously. No drug like it.

So, who is she?

Well, that’s a complicated question to answer, but she knows who she is and is ready to share the journey she took to discover her.

If you’re curious, you should definitely stick around and find out.