I killed a man

When I was 3 my mum killed a man. Thirty years later, almost to the day, I did the same thing.

I killed the man inside my head and I ran.

Like most women, I was conditioned to be a good girl. Make people happy. Please people. Make sure they like you. Make them comfortable. Don’t ruffle any feathers. Say yes when you mean no. Make sure they approve. Make sure people can pack you neatly into a box. Work like you aren’t a parent and parent like you don’t work. Be a wife. Cook, clean, carry the mental load. Do it all. And do it with a smile. Don’t you dare sit down, be tired or for a second complain about it because you don’t want to be ungrateful.

It’s fucking exhausting.

And then one day I was so tired that I just couldn’t go on. I’d built an entire life around making sure everyone else was comfortable and happy before I ever considered whether I was.

I looked in the mirror and I didn’t recognise myself. Cortisol was permanently coursing through my body. And you could tell.

I was terrified but I knew I had to kill the man inside my head, just like my mum had. And I had to do it before he killed me.

I don’t remember how old I was when it started. Maybe around 9 or 10. I told my dad I wanted to write books when I was older. He told me he’d be so happy and proud of me if that happened. Not because I’d be living my dream. Because if I made enough money I could buy him a nice car. A bigger house. I could pay for his life.

And that’s when the sense of duty started.

To take care of men. To make them happy.

And he became the man who lived inside my head. Ironically, the same man my mum had killed just a few years earlier.

From there it was all downhill.

Approval. Be chosen. Not just by men. By everyone.

With the exception of my mum and my friends from school (we’re a solid ride or die group of about twenty who will collectively, or individually, lie in the road for each other without question and absolutely no judgement. The kind of friends who will literally and metaphorically bring you back to life. And yes, I realise this is a huge group, we know, we are trauma-bonded!), every relationship and interaction became a performance.

I’d become whatever version of myself I thought the other person wanted.

And that’s a really hard thing to admit to yourself.

Until I chose myself.

I killed the man and ran straight into the arms of my therapist.

Because eventually there comes a point where staying becomes more frightening than leaving.

It was, and still is, really hard.

Because killing the man in your head isn’t just about the voice of the person who lives in there. It’s internalised misogyny from decades of social conditioning. That man feels like home. You know him. Even though he’s destroying you, your nervous system likes him being there because he’s familiar.

So when you kill the man you also kill part of yourself.

It feels unsafe and scary and deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

You hold up mirrors that are your worst nightmare and ask yourself questions you’ve never dared ask before. Like what do I want?

And then you have to answer honestly, not performatively.

To top it all off, you have to remember that you can’t blame the man in your head forever. He might explain how you got here, but he doesn’t decide whether you stay here. At some point you have to take agency over your own life.

I’m very much a work in progress but the first action point my therapist gave me was to stop being less.

Potentially I am now “too much”.

I talk constantly because I have to let out all the thoughts I’d spent years swallowing. Worried about what would happen if I really spoke my mind.

Would they still like me? Would I still be chosen?

Now I have almost no filter.

I don’t hold anything in. And if you know me, you’ll know that’s true.

I was told I was bad at communicating. And maybe I was. I didn’t communicate because I was frightened. Frightened of what would happen if I said what I wanted, did what I wanted or needed something from someone else. Because I’d been conditioned that way.

Would they still like me? Would I still be chosen?

Now I have a different filter. This was the second action point my therapist gave me. One question:

Do I want to do this?

Now I’m doing everything I do because I want to. Because I like it. Not because a man or society expects it of me.

(Obviously I still have to do some things I don’t want to do, like the endless loads of laundry. You get the picture.)

Everything I do, I’m doing because I have chosen to. Consciously. Not on autopilot and not because it is expected of me.

Every meeting. Every call. Every text. Every social event. Every drink. Every outfit.

Picked by me, for me.

Will they choose me has become what am I choosing?

I shared a story recently about overhearing my son, who’s seven, telling someone at football that his best friend is his little sister because she’s an even better version of me.

And in that moment I knew I had one of the most important jobs of my life.

To make sure that the only voices inside my daughter’s head tell her she’s enough exactly as she is.

That she never has to kill a man.

This is one of those articles that you just feel compelled to write and publish and I couldn’t keep the words in. I had to write it and immediately post it — so it’s not my usual Sunday content!

If you’re new here hi, hello, I’m Helena and I write 3 (ish!) times a week about business, AI and building a really rich life in every sense. If that sounds like something you are interested in I’d love for you to stick around.