The Power of Me

The beginning of my life and my childhood were not an ordinary one by most people’s standards, it started in a world far away from the place I live now and was raised. Guinea in Africa is where my parent’s happened to be as I made my entrance into this world, a place most people would consider different and exotic for parents with a European and Canadian background. Still, this is where we lived for the first few years of my life as my father’s career had brought us there and when we spent time traveling the world, living among, and visiting various cultures and communities which left me believing that this was what everyone did, that that was what life was all about. But I had a bit of a rude awakening once we stopped travelling and settled in a rural Canadian community, I realized rather quickly that most people are born and live within the same area most of their lives and only travel to different parts of the world as part their vacation if travel is not viewed as a luxury.

As if this wasn’t enough to make me stick out from this new world we were settling into, my father had to build his dream house, a concrete castle among a rural landscape of dirt roads and farms. Yes, this house was a house that looked like a castle with 2 towers at each corner and turrets along the roof. At my new school I quickly became known as ‘the girl who lived in the castle’. For most this would seem to be a coveted moniker, but for me it brought on feelings of dread, shame, and embarrassment every time I heard it.

My insides would scream every time that phrase was spoken because the truth was, we didn’t live in this castle my father was building, we were a family of 5 living in a two-bedroom trailer right beside this castle. A trailer that seemed to always be infested with mice and where the pipes would freeze every winter when it got too cold, leaving us to have to collect and boil down snow to have water to use. This grand life that everyone imagined I was living was an illusion that felt like a lie to me, the truth was that all my parents’ money and affection was being sucked into this dream house, a dream house that took 9 years to build, but yet was never finished.

I was embarrassed to have friends over because I didn’t want them to see how we lived, I was worried what they would think if they knew that every weekend, holiday, and summer I spent helping build this house. I essentially became a construction worker at age 5 and was submitted to being berated and yelled at every time I didn’t do something right, which happened quite often since I was a child and not a construction worker.

Yes, I was different to those at school and even though I had gotten good at pretending to be happy and normal I never felt like I belonged there. At home, was more pretending, I learnt early on that I needed to behave and act differently than how I wanted to because it was what my family expected and could understand. There was a time when I tried to be myself with my family, tried to show them my sensitive, affectionate, and emotional side. But it caused chaos and turmoil both among them and within myself, so pretending is what I believed I had to do.

It got to the point where I felt like I was in a prison of my own making by holding my true self back and not giving life to my true emotions. My unhappiness came out as aggressiveness and anger, I got into fights at school and yelled backed at my parents and anyone else who would light my short fuse. It got so bad that one day a teacher was trying to break up a fight I was in, and I jumped on her back. Yes, happiness did not live here anymore.

Then at the age of 14 I unwrapped a copy of The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. I devoured it quickly as with the turning of every page it felt like I had found my holy grail. The adversity the main character faced was definitely different than mine and his life circumstances were part of a world that was foreign to me, but still within the pages of this book I found some relatable feelings and frustrations. I finally felt like someone knew exactly what I was going through, I felt understood and like I mattered. For the first time I saw being different as a gift I was given and not as a curse I needed to escape. It opened my eyes up to hope and the bigger picture, to the faith that the power is within us to create our own happiness and the life that we want. It helped me to see that even though I had no control over the adversity I was facing in my current life circumstances that didn’t mean that my reaction to it had to stay the same.

I saw the bullying and abuse that Peekay endured at school as a reflection of the prison I had created within myself which allowed me to connect with the part in the book where his nanny summons the medicine man to cure him. Part of his cure was to teach Peekay a new way to draw on his inner strength called “the power of one” which for me taught me a new way to look at myself and find ways to tap into that strength. The Power of One is a coming-of-age story that came across my path at the right time in my life, a time where without it I could have gone down a very dark and dangerous path. This book in a round about way taught me how to love myself and not accept an others outlook on who they think I am or should be as truth and something that cannot be changed. This book taught me to see my world and circumstances as something I had to go through, something I had to learn from instead of something that happened to me. I saw Peekay’s journey into boxing as his outlet from the circumstances in his life and at the same time it gave him a sense of control. It was the one thing in his life that he chose and that brought him joy. This encouraged me to think about what my outlet could be. What could I find that would bring me peace, joy, and a sense of control, that’s when I started writing.

The Power of One not only opened my eyes to the history of a world before my time, but it also gave me hope, it gave me strength and put me on a path where embracing who I am was my priority. It showed me that I am not defined by my circumstances or others’ expectations but instead, defined by the power of me.