I confess: one of my worst traits is my struggle to accept things beyond my control.
Whether this is just human nature, I cannot tell. Whether I am “controlling” or not is another question someone else would have to answer. I know that for all my talk of trading in mystery (to borrow a phrase from Carl Phillips), I minimize the unknown in many scenarios of my everyday life. What I can research beforehand, I do: the parking at a new place I am driving to, the “right” answers to give at a doctor’s appointment, last year’s photos of an event I am attending in order to create and manage expectations. Knowledge is power, as the adage goes, and often it is the only one I feel is within my reach.
For a long time I did not think of myself as powerful. I don’t have a particularly commanding presence. I am barely five feet tall. I am a woman, so in many cases I have to prove myself twice in order to earn the level of respect freely given to my male peers who need only show up. My wit, a kitchen knife that needs sharpening. My self-esteem, often in fluctuation. My social intelligence, this elusive ability to charm, connect, disarm, or read between the lines, is budding at best. Being quiet and conflict-averse don’t help sustain a sense of power I so badly crave. So, for a long time, I clung to intelligence as the source of my power.
The years have shown me how fragile this source is. Not only is it impossible to know everything at all times, but many situations require something other than intellect. It is, for certain desired outcomes, ineffective. A simple mistake or lapse in memory is absolutely crushing for someone like me. Drawing power from elsewhere became a matter of sanity.
When I say power, I mean it in the most general sense: the ability to act. Upon myself, others, the world I move in. But before the ability comes the belief, so power, at its root, is a belief — but belief without practice is a hollow wish. A chicken and egg problem, like many things: do I have power because I believe I do, or because I act like I do?
Other clichés that come to mind relevant to this question include: fake it ‘til you make it. Believe in yourself. These tell us that power is largely mouldable in our hands. As trite as clichés sound, I don’t think I have heard one that doesn’t carry truth. A combination of faking it, actual development, sheer luck, and age have turned me into someone unrecognizable to all my previous selves. I possess the most power — over my ego, my wellbeing, my living situation, my work — I have ever had. Beyond intellectual growth, I have also consciously tried to strengthen my body, cultivate my friendships, and reflect deeply on my values. To answer my own questions truthfully. After years of trial-and-error I have finally articulated my own style, in fashion and writing, to myself. Hurdles I could never have imagined I have overcome (with many bruises collected along the way). There is a new clarity. There is a sureness in my step that my 17-year-old self would be in awe of.
In this coalescence, things, too, are lost and passed. Control is not absolute (a relief), and one’s power shifts (it should). As I recognize and honor all that I have gained, I see with some sadness what I will never have back. The time I should have spent with my grandmother, carefree teenage years I instead lived out mostly in the solitude of my house, career opportunities I could have pursued had I been more honest with myself, that demeaning remark I had failed to protect myself from. I see these what-ifs as checkpoints that shifted the power I perceived I had, because while power is mouldable in my hands, I do not do so in isolation. Some people, exercising their own, will want to take mine away. At other moments, I will probably need to surrender it. More often, it needs to be shared; fought for and defended together. It shifts, and knowing how to both seize and lose it seem to be the primary lesson of my recent past. I suspect the years ahead hold similar choices, the same ebb and flow.
A glimpse: despite all efforts towards health — the costly gym membership, time-consuming homemade food, limiting my alcohol — I become more and more susceptible to illness as I get older. This is not a revelation, just a fact that fortune and circumstance has, for many years, kept far from my mind. But even now, as young as I am, I am witnessing changes in my body I struggle to accept.
Despite my work performance, I know I can be laid off from my day job at anytime. I can write as much as I want and my work, subject to the unpredictable preferences of editors and institutions, may never go anywhere beyond my drafts folder.
Despite all efforts to minimize my ecological footprint — one of the core intentions behind our choice to live in a tiny home — my lifestyle still leaves a wake of plastic and smoke I can’t seem to avoid. Garbage still washes up at the beaches I go to. Pesticide residue still clings to many of the vegetables in my favorite grocery.
Next to every mundane gesture of kindness I try to practice in my daily life — bringing my coworker their favorite drink on a long day, holding the door open for strangers, anticipating my partner’s needs where I can — is the specter of horrors that unfold every day in so many places; in the fields back home, or in Gaza, or to women in abusive relationships, or to wrongfully convicted men on death row. I don’t know what to do about those, in truth, except to bear knowledge of them as much as I can. To have faith that when the time comes, I’ll know the moment has arrived and that I will have the courage to make brave choices.
Now in my mid-twenties, I have never been more powerful, but I have also never been more acutely aware of my vulnerability. The stakes in every crisis I face rises. I know now a hundred ways a life can fall apart, and this knowledge drives me to acquire the necessary power to protect myself. To survive, to thrive. The veil of invincibility that came with my youth has been lifted, and what I see is the importance of learning not only how to exercise gained power, but to accept its inevitable loss. Intentionally letting go is a kind of power too. I must be prepared for both.
In one of my favorite songs from Dedicated Side B, Carly Rae Jepsen sings: “You could hurt me, baby, and I could hurt you too. Oh, but love isn’t cruel.” As I navigate the changing shapes of my power, I hope to always ground it in love: for myself, for the communities I belong to, for the rivers and the trees. I invite you to do the same.
Many deepest, deepest gratitude to everyone who bought a copy of my chapbook, gave it a read, and shared warm feedback. I’m still in awe.
About the author
My name is Lian. I am a writer from Manila currently based in a small town in central Texas. These days, my time is split between working full-time at a local museum; writing poetry, this newsletter, and the occasional freelance project; tending to my tiny home, which includes weekly sourdough baking and exploring new recipes almost every day, and; dreaming of the woman I want to now and eventually become.
