The Things I’m Good At

I am good at things. Plural. Multiple things. I am listing them here because for thirteen years someone made me forget and I am done forgetting.

I can build a website from scratch. Design it. Code it. Make it beautiful and functional and fast. I taught myself that at nineteen in a bedroom with a secondhand laptop and nobody telling me I could.

I can write. Clearly. Honestly. In a voice that lands. I know this because you’re reading it and you’re still here and that means the words are doing their job.

I can cook. Properly. Not just fish fingers. Actual food. From actual ingredients. At midnight if necessary. In a Thermomix that does what I tell it. Four portions of bolognese. Three containers of soup. Muffins for the morning. While the world sleeps.

I can raise children. Two of them. Alone. And they are happy. Genuinely, measurably, observably happy. They eat. They talk. They laugh at the table. They ask questions. They feel safe. I did that.

I can manage money. Not because I have a lot. Because I have very little and I make it work. Every month. Down to the penny. With a spreadsheet and a prayer and the particular financial creativity of a woman who has been poor enough to know exactly how long a loaf of bread lasts.

I can survive. Clearly. Because I have. Everything. The childhood. The abuse. The musician. The marriage. The system. The smear campaign. The waiting list. The Tesco cereal aisle. All of it. Survived.

I can get back up. This is my best skill. Better than the coding. Better than the writing. The getting back up. The standing in the rubble of whatever just collapsed and saying right then. What’s next.

He didn’t take these things from me. He buried them. Under years of comments and control and the slow, steady erosion of a woman’s belief in herself.

But they were always there. Under the rubble. Waiting.

And now I’m digging them out. One by one. Holding them up to the light. Saying: this is mine. This was always mine. You didn’t destroy it. You just made me forget where I put it.

I remember now.