A different version of me.

Hello, lovelies. Have you ever woken up one morning, looked at yourself in the mirror, and wondered ‘who the heck am I?’ No? Just me then. Could it be all due to my radically altered appearance and hair loss? Is it because I can no longer do all the things I loved to do? Are the heavy dose medications that I am taking daily the real reason that I no longer feel in charge of my own body? Could it just be down to the fact that I am hurtling towards 50, and I can no longer expect my aging body to do the things it once did? Maybe it’s everything. And maybe it’s none of those. So why doesn’t the inner me match up with my refection? Is it okay to feel like this? Or with our lives zooming by as quickly, is this the downside due to the pressure of always being Instagram glamours? Should I try to hold on the person I once was? Or is this the perfect time to reinvent myself to whatever I want to be? I know that everyone changes as they age. But for some, it is a seamless experience. A few grey hairs peppering their temples. Their skin is flawless, as the late-night drinking binges are a thing of the past. Greasy fatty foods are replaced fresh organic buck wheat and raw vegetables. But for me, when I lost my waist length brown hair, what replaced it was fag ash grey fuzz, that has grown in as a mullet. Honestly, at first, I looked like a microphone with my grey fuzzy hair. That then grew into what can only be described as a toilet brush/longer mullet. My sallow skin, changed by the lifesaving but retched chemo, from a soft pink, to yellow, now an off white, just think of a dead chicken kinda colour. There are two types of cancer – fat cancer and skinny cancer. And I bet you can guess which one I had. My life long slender figure has been replaced by a puffy, sweaty overweight body that hurts when I do almost anything. I only need to look at a glass of water and I put on 5 lbs. No wonder when I look in the mirror, I see a total stranger looking back. So, is this it? Am I destined to be unrecognisable to myself? Or should I think about how I can grow into the person I always should have been. I have never really liked who I was. I always looked at other people and wished that my life could be more like theirs, and a lot less than like mine. For other people, life had all sorts of opportunities, endless pathways that they could take, whereas for me, each path I took was full of dead ends and endless potholes. I have always been told that I am far too opinionated and loud. That I can’t just walk into a room quietly or speak at a normal decibel. I was once told that I scare people, as I can be all ‘actorly’ and unpredictable, all when I was just being myself. I am fascinated by people and tend to talk to anyone and everyone. And yet instead of being seen as a good thing, I was told that it made me strange and an oddball. But now, isn’t a good thing to be different and odd? How can just trying to be myself turn out to be such a bad thing? Growing up I learnt to tone myself down, to make myself small and ‘normal.’ And yet, it didn’t make me happy. My ex-husband would repeatedly comment and use negging to put me down and belittle me. I would endlessly diet, starving myself to lose as much weight as possible. I would dye my hair, staving off the relentless march of time. I wore make-up morning, noon, and night. All trying to be the very best I could be. But still I wasn’t happy. My then best friend, who was in fact my worst enemy, as she would criticise me, pointing out all my myriad of failings, would say that she had my back and was only trying to make me a better person. Spoiler, she wasn’t, and she didn’t. She had her own Machiavellian and toxic reasons for doing it. So, I was never truly me. I presented the shapeless and hollow image of who I was told that I should be, all while hiding the real Emma behind a wall of smiles and jokes at my own expense. So, do I really want to go back to being that Emma? It may feel comfortable, like a well-worn pair of slippers, but is that the real person I want to be? I have let go of a lot of my past. All the negative people and bad influences. And I have learnt to put boundaries around my own life and mental health. That it is okay to say no. But that still doesn’t help when it comes to who I am. There is also the question, who I do want to be. What do I have to do to change? Is there any point to changing at my time of life? If it isn’t broken, why try and fix it? But I am broken. Like so many people. We were told to not be ourselves. It is hammered into us from the very moment we are born. To be like everyone else. To make ourselves small to fit into the mould of modern-day society. Just so we can be quieter and more pliant and easier to control and manipulate. But then so much beauty, creativity and light are crushed out just to make it easier for everyone else. I honestly have no idea of who I can be in the future. But I do know who I really don’t want to be. I don’t want to be the person I once was. The scared, quiet, and apologetic person that would always take the blame and would try to mirror everyone else. I no longer want to hide behind the wall of smiles but embrace the true me. I no longer want to be what everyone else wants. And the good thing is that anyone can do this. And can do it as many times as we need to. As every new level of our lives will demand a different version of you.