How did I end up here?

“I thought we’d take it to the party next week.”

I could feel the weight of silence.

Outside, waiting for me to respond.

Inside, like a suffocating blanket drowning out the loud NO my whole body was speaking.

I stared at the BMW Z3, an innocent bystander to this interaction, with a cellular level of loathing and managed to squeak out a clipped, ‘Oh, ok.’

What is the matter with me? I thought.

It wasn’t as though I could even claim surprise as a good enough reason for my evasion. I’d known this car existed for six months. I’d happily assumed it was a wreck from the height of the nettles surrounding it.

And perhaps, that it wasn’t an instant yes or no, that I had a few days to find a better response, dragged procrastination to my rescue too.

I left soon after, and spent the night tossing my bedsheets around to end up staring at the ceiling and facing an ugly truth.

How is it that all my friends and family know me as a fiercely independent, strong-minded woman, yet all of my personal relationships are a car crash of compliance?

Is this a cycle I cannot escape?

A cycle that starts again right here with a car?

These moments of self-disparity often arrive without warning. An unexpected question, a proposition, an interaction. The person we think we are seems to disappear off stage and we slide into the role of another character. Answering in ways we later scream into a pillow over.

This disparity exposes how we all assume identities written for us, long before we had the capacity to write our own.

As a recent Forbes article highlighted, identity is ‘predetermined by your family, village, religion, class, gender, occupation and ethnicity”. Identity is modelled for us from the moment we arrive on the planet.

These identities help guide us through life’s choices, even when they are in conflict with the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Often leading to a rupture where we have to confront that the life we thought we were building, and the life we have, feel so far apart.

Staring at the gap, wondering, ‘How did I get here?’

Staring at a car I have known for six months I would not get in. And which I have never once spoken about. And which, now that the request is upon me, when asked if I want to use it for an upcoming social event, I squeak out an ‘oh, ok.’

This can’t be me though, I accuse the bedroom ceiling.

I’m the person who can say No.

According to my mother, the first word I ever uttered was ‘No’.

And the person who received that word?

My father.

While this gives me no end of satisfaction, it is undoubtedly far less than the pleasure my mother took from the event.

It’s not that my father was a bad person.

It’s just that he was an alcoholic, an adulterer, and a misogynist.

Not great role models for either myself or my older brother.

Not great husband material either.

Saying No was labelled as ‘being difficult’ at such an early age that I suspect that Being Difficult is my true name, according to the lore in Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series.

Therefore, indubitably, I Am Someone Who Can Say No.

It is even a belief that I once practiced, for a year, down to a fine art.

The art of saying No. And nothing more.

No explanation, no debate, no apologies, no maybes or evasions. Just, ‘Ummm, thanks, but No.’

I made it a point to say No on a daily basis, as a form of devotion, to remind myself that this was completely within my character. It’s intriguing the number of opportunities a day can present to say No, when you aren’t busy saying Yes on autopilot.

Within this year long campaign of self-certainty, I addressed the ‘new-to-me’ experience of work social events.

Having been almost entirely self-employed since I was 18 until 46, I perhaps wasn’t entirely prepared for the etiquette of social work events.

I thought it was optional. I mean, it's out of work hours and unpaid.

Of course it's optional. Right?

Did I want to attend a vegan, organic, dairy/nut/kiwi/soya allergy-free potluck?

No. I liked the people I work with very much. I really didn't want to accidentally kill any of them, or eat the proposed menu.

So I responded to the WhatsApp group message with a simple 'Count me out, thanks.'

Over the course of the next week, every single member of the workforce came up to me and asked me why I wasn't going. Individually, personally, to each of my colleagues, I had to give a reason for my No.

Seven times.

Seven times I had to repeat that I didn't want to go. Sometimes I had to actually defend myself.

Between the two owners of the business alone, I had to repeat myself another four times.

By the end of the week I was exhausted with standing up for my No.

Saying No wasn’t about indifference, arrogance or contempt, though apparently it conveyed that. I don't like eating out. I'm deeply suspicious of home-cooked food. I don't like group events. And, because I get up at 4.30am each morning to write, I don't like evening socials.

Despite the campaign of persuasion, I didn't relent and I didn't attend.

At least, I thought, that was the end of it.

Two months later, a member of staff left the team.

There was a leaving party. Out of hours. Unpaid. Potluck.

I said No again.

I said No, again, at least seven times. Probably more.

My colleagues who longed to say No would all individually speak to me about how they wish they too could say No.

It’s easy, I’d say, if you don’t want to do it, decline the invite. It is an invite, not an ultimatum.

As if tempting fate, three months later, I had to face yet another social work event in my ‘Year of No’.

This time, I decided to apply the logic of dog maths to it.

Dog maths?

I used to work in design for over 20 years. In a brief stint as a workroom manager, I got to train a certified dog trainer how to sew.

She didn’t really want to sew. She evidently couldn’t sew. And after three days of trying to teach her the basics, I didn’t really want to pursue it any further.

Unfortunately for me, she did.

She asked me to give her three more days, which she would give up for free, to keep trying to learn the basic stitches. (For reference, most people who have any aptitude for sewing can grasp the basic stitches after a solid day of paid training.)

By the end of the sixth day, she had plasters on every finger, was in need of a blood transfusion and was stitching her herringbone backwards. Which means forward, because you stitch herringbone backward. I think. I was quite confused myself by then.

On the last day of her trial I asked her why she was so convinced she could get there.

She told me about dog maths. Apparently, every dog needs to learn a new rule a certain number of times. The number varies from dog to dog.

Some dogs need to hear a rule twice and they'd get it.

Some dogs would need to hear it 37 times before they got it.

And some dogs would take hundreds of repetitions to get it.

The number of times a dog would need to hear a new rule before it was learned didn't change. If it took a dog hundreds of repetitions to learn sit, it would take the same number of repetitions to learn stay. But every dog was capable of learning new rules. As a trainer, you just had to figure out their number and be patient.

From this woman I learned the concept that we all have our learning number, as do the people around us.

On the third event of declining a work social, I applied dog maths.

This time, I braced myself to say No seven times.

I planned for it. I went about it cheerfully. I refused to give explanations. I said No in a variety of encouraging and grateful ways. I accepted that this was the number of times I would need to explain my choice every time I said No.

I refused to let myself feel bad for my continued non-attendance. Or be irritated by the necessity of repetition.

And this time, something shifted.

Another member of staff declined in the WhatsApp group with a lengthy explanation.

Afterwards, they told me that my own cheerful lack of explanation had been the thing that had given them confidence. After all, if I could say No for obviously no reason, she had plenty of good reasons to decline.

Wow, thanks, I said.

And more, it became accepted that I was a ‘non-attender’. I would be invited, with zero expectation that I would show up.

Not long after, my year of practice was up.

I happily continued on my way through life reconvinced that I was the person who could and would say No.

I never even really looked too deeply at why I had felt the need to practice so zealously.

I had re-established the evidence, that was enough.

But under this believed identity that I have convincingly carried along with me, is a far more damaging assumed identity. One that has a very specific power to step out of the wings and suck me into an entirely different character.

Three years later, as I found myself staring at a BMW Z3, mute with incapacity to say the No that was screaming through every fibre of my being, I had to face that my belief in my ability to say No was not corroborated by its application in my personal relationships.

An identity disparity that was inbuilt into me by the very person I first said No to.

My father.

I said No to my father throughout most of my life. I know that if he said it was a good idea, I didn’t do it. If he said it was a bad idea, I did it.

No matter what I did, I was always assured of the fact that I was a failure. And, as a failure, I was unlovable. This is the weird maths of being the daughter of a philandering, alcoholic, misogynist.

As a child I didn’t understand misogyny, or infidelity, or alcohol.

I just understood that my older brother was loved. And I wasn’t.

And that I was the child who said No.

And that, eventually, I would be able to make my father love me.

Spoiler alert: he died first.

The invisible equation I carried.

As an adult, it has taken me a long time to understand how my childhood set me up to know that I cannot say No in my personal relationships, because if I do, I shall not be loved.

This has seen me get into relationships that were self-destructive, until reaching a point of self-survival and extricating myself. To spend many years single, before resuming the cycle again.

Recently, that disparity was made painfully car-shaped.

This was a car that made me feel like rotatable arm candy. Where it gave the other person pleasure, it made me wretched. Worse, it was a car with history for them and their ex. Worser, it was a car with history for me and my ex. Worserer, it was an event where I would be turning up to my friends’ party in the seat of rotatable arm candy. The disparity would be exposed.

But, I thought, as my body tensed with clear information, if you say No, it will cause a rupture.

It took me 24 hours to work through the reasons behind this resistance. Reasons that are social, personal, relational, historical. All good reasons.

Unpicking my need to find the ‘right’ reason to decline the invite to use this car exposed my incapacity to embody the person I believe I am in the most critical of my relationships.

It explains why people who know me often sound confused when they hear some of my relationship history.

24 hours to realise that arguing with myself was my assumed identities speaking. Those qualities of character that I had absorbed from such a young age. My mother’s silent compliance. My father’s overweening sense of authority. Even my elder brother’s constant criticism of my rebellious ‘difficult’ nature.

The reality of my relationship dynamics were set at an age before I was able to write the story myself.

Even though I could show up as a strong-willed, confident individual in my career, in my platonic relationships, when it came to the nearest of my dearest, I was inept at boundaries.

Yes, the conversation where I say No would be unpleasant. Yes, I would experience the anxiety of being unloved again. Yes, it might cause a rupture.

But every single romantic relationship I have had has ruptured.

Ultimately, the assumed identities from my childhood clash with the deep belief in who I am. I had enough evidence to know that the rupture wasn’t avoided, just delayed. I had repeated the lesson enough to finally see it.

These disparities often play out in our lives beyond our awareness for many years. Partly because they are not just familial, but societal. Even as we may feel part of a generation with new boundaries, ethics or opportunities, we are still carrying the identities of our parents, and our peers’ parents. We are asked to assume certain roles, no matter who we are or what our place in society. This is not limited to women.

My father’s alcoholism and philandering were an identity he assumed from those around him.

The people I entered relationships with carried their own hidden costumes.

Socially, we are aware of and accord with behavioural assumptions of what we do, how we think, how we bond.

Assumed identities are written into our behavioural dynamics in invisible ink.

It took me a long night of staring at the ceiling and procrastinating through the following day before I picked up the phone.

24 hours and 52 years and enough ruptured relationships for the maths to add up to a point where I could say, ‘Ummm, thanks, but no,’ to the person closest to me.

In saying No, I finally embraced the reality that I am not the person who can just say No. There are aspects of myself that are unwitting. They may not impact all aspects of my life, but they do impact me.

I could spend a year practicing how to say No in low investment stakes, and a lifetime being unable to stand up for myself in high-value relationships.

The presence of one did not remove the presence of the other.

These identities are co-existing.

I cannot shift what I cannot see.

Where next?

The Rewrite Philosophy

This essay explores Belief 2: We assume identities written before we could write our own.

You might also be interested in Belief 3: We protect identities we’ve invested in. Where I explore why visibility isn’t enough on its own to help us redirect.

From the Rewrite Bookshelf

The book I’d hand you immediately after finishing this essay is Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple.

This wildly unexpected book explores the lengths a woman will go to when she suddenly realises how the identities she’s assumed have conspired against her.

Rewrite Today

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