I am teaching myself how to take up space. How to not apologise constantly for the way I live and breathe. How an apology isn’t something I am supposed to say before I speak in a conversation. How I’m so sorry, isn’t something I have to say before I just allow myself the basic right of speaking about anything. I am teaching myself that I am allowed to exist on this planet without thinking of myself as a burden. How to not apologise for things that are out of my control. How to understand when people are trying to manipulate me into thinking the worst of myself and most of all how to stop thinking the very worst of myself as I deserve better than that from myself. I am teaching myself that humans can exist without assuming the very worst about themselves and how the people around them perceive them. How to not apologise when someone bumps into me and I immidiately assume it is my fault. How to not apologise when I ask a question because I think others will think I am stupid. How to love myself for these flawed bits of me no one has ever wanted to love before. I am teaching myself that all the lies my abusers told me about myself were so very wrong. How I am allowed to make mistakes. How as long as I apologise and amend things, anything is fixable if I still have love in my heart for the other person. How not everything that has ever gone wrong in every relationship is my fault. I am finally learning how to take up space as a human being. It’s taken a long, long road to get here. And I still have a very long way to go before I am done understanding that it is my job to take up space, that I am not just an afterthought or a secondary character in this gift of life I have been given. That who I am is not an apology, that who I am is not wrong.
— Nikita Gill
