I just don't recognise myself and that’s okay

       Hello, lovelies. 

          When we are born, we are given a name of someone else’s choosing. Growing up our clothes are picked out for us. The schools are chosen, even our religion is handed down to us. We strive to make our own way in the world. Some of us rebel, I, myself, was a goth for my later teenage years. We refuse to listen to our parent’s music, never watching the same TV and films that our parents enjoy. What we really want is to take control of our own lives and bodies and grow into the person that we want to be. Well. That’s if we are lucky. But what happens when we think we know ourselves and our bodies, but life changes us, and we no longer can rely on how we used to be. What then? Do we have to learn who we are all over again? Or is that the perfect time to be whomever we want?

         From my earliest memory, I have always known what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be an actor. Yes, I went through the usual vet and nurse stages, but deep down I always wanted to act. Being on stage makes my heart sing. Okay, I’m not the biggest fan of learning lines, but it’s all part of the acting journey. But once all the lines are learnt, and the costumes and blocking are in place, stepping onto the stage and feeling, breathing and acting the character, for me there is nothing like it. As soon as I went to drama school, I shaped and moulded my life into the world of acting. I read more plays than novels, go to the theatre at least twice a month, as well as working at one of the most beautiful theatres in the world and have surrounded myself with those like myself who live, love and breathe the theatre. And that’s who I am. Or is it? Am I nothing more than a theatre brat? A West End Wendy. Surely there must be more to me than that? But what if there isn’t? What if that is who I am. Would that be so bad? 

       So, I always knew what I wanted to do with my life. How I wanted to live and work, but what about my personality? Who was the real Emma? Growing up, I had a best friend. We met when I was six and she was seven, and we did everything together. I thought I had it made, as I was a painfully shy child and she always had my back, or so I thought. I had no idea that she had begun to try and change who I was. It was nothing too large, but from my earliest memories with her, she would tell me who to like, and what to wear. She even told me how to feel, and what to think about myself. But was she trying to make me a better person? Or was she just trying to keep me all to herself? Sadly, it was the latter. She had wanted to keep me all to herself, so over the years she tired to break my spirit, so I relied on her. Then I met my ex-husband, and funnily enough, it was through her that we met, and they were two peas in a pod. And they hated each other. I never really understood it for years. They both confessed to loving me but could hardly sit in the same room together. It was only years later that I understood the reason why. They were both trying to manipulate and control me for their own ends, and both thought that I belonged to them and no one else. I am so happy that neither of them are in my life, as years of therapy have taught me to really see me for who they are. But the damage had been done. 

           I had tried to be who and what they had wanted me to be. And for nearly a decade I forgot who I was. And as my children came along, I became the mother, wife and friend that was expected of me. And that was okay. But the Emma that I had always wanted to be had gone. That Emma had to be buried so I could put on the mask of the Emma that other people wanted and needed me to be. So, I became the mask. Fearing that the real me behind the façade was nothing more than a memory. And then the question that began to burn its way out to the front of my mind was, what if there was nothing behind the mask? Or if I was ever going to find out who the real me was, what would happen if I didn’t like the person who I was. What then?

           It goes with a shadow of a doubt that I love my children more than anything in the world. I would lay down my life for them without a second’s thought. So, after many years of being told that a life in the theatre was a waste of time, all I wanted was for my children to grow up away from the stage, to live ‘normal’ productive lives. But I failed. My eldest daughter graduated as a stage manager and theatre technician, and she rocks at it. She is totally amazing, far better than I ever could be. She is blazing her way across the West End, working with some of the most amazing and talented actors and performers. And the plus side is that she keeps getting me free tickets and passes to the after-show parties. It’s a win-win for me. And my youngest daughter, too, wants to work backstage, and from her tender age of fourteen she has such a better understanding of stage management than most children her age as well as some adults I have worked with. But should I be persuading them to a life of normality like I was? Or is it their time to find out who they are as people?

          Last year, I was diagnosed as having stage 3B ovarian cancer. I put my Emma mask on and acted my way through the whole saga. I would crack jokes, laugh at the seriousness of my life, and try not to think of the life-threatening situation I had found myself in. Losing my hair, I spent nearly seven months not looking at myself in the mirror. Who knew that not having eyebrows would be the final nail in the coffin. It broke me. I would joke that it made me look like a reptile, but deep down it hurt me more than losing my waist length hair. I had completely lost who I was on the outside, and with not really knowing who I was on the inside, I no longer recognised who I was. I had spent most of my life trying to be what other people wanted me to be, I had no idea of what I needed me to be. 

         But hair grows back, even if it is at an alarmedly slow rate. I have eyelashes and eyebrows again, and I couldn’t be happier. Even the hair on my chin is back, and between you and me, I’m okay with that, for I am a person who can now grow hair. But looking in the mirror now, I no longer look like I did, but I no longer feel the way I did. My body has aged. I creak when I bend down. My back nearly always aches. And if I sit down for too long, then I struggle to stand up. And don’t get me started if I ever sit on the floor. I’d need a winch to get me up. Who the heck is this new Emma?

         But there is one thing I can rely on is that although the Emma on the outside may have changed, the deep-down Emma never truly left. As much as I buried her, she never really left me. She was always there waiting for her moment to come crashing out. And boy, here she is. I may not recognise this new and older version of me, but I know that this is the most perfect time to be the Emma I always was. I may have once allowed people to change me, but not anymore.