Power.

The forbidden fruit.

Empower. | Verb.

- to give official authority or legal power to

- to promote the self-actualization or influence of

Synonyms: Enable, authorize, allow.

Antonyms: Prevent, disqualify, hinder.

Power. | Noun.

- possession of control, authority, or influence over others

- a physical might, mental or moral efficacy, political control or influence

Synonyms: Control, dominion, sway.

Antonyms: Powerlessness, impotence, weakness.

Source: Merriam-Webster

Have you ever wanted to kick some serious ass?

I have.

Running around the street in front of my house as a kid, swinging around a plastic lightsaber like I could defeat the whole empire myself felt very good. But there was always a small twinge of disappointment when I’d end by reaching my hand out at… anything. A door. A lamp post. A fire hydrant. Focusing with all my might. But I could not get any of those objects to move using my nonexistent Force powers. I was not a Jedi Knight. I was not a fearsome warrior. I was what is often seen as the exact opposite: a young girl.

Where I lacked in my ability to kick ass, I made up for in other areas of life. One of my earliest memories is the pure delight I felt coming home to showcase how I had learned how to spell my first five letter word to my grandfather: W-A-T-E-R. Like many young people, I delighted in my expansion of knowledge because with knowledge came more control over my own life. The ability to read, write, problem solve, and figure out the world around me with greater independence year by year.

“Knowledge is power,” I said often, motivating myself in front of heavy textbooks I didn’t feel that inclined to shove my nose into. Honing my focus would open all the doors there were to open in life, allowing me to live up to whatever my full potential turned out to be. I may not be a Jedi Knight, but I didn’t have to be. And while I did get into a scrape or two with others in my childhood, the parting words of my parents to me when going off to college was that I really can’t threaten to kill anyone anymore (even boys who were pestering me) because I’m eighteen now and could get arrested for it.

To covet power is a moral failing. A moral failing makes you a villain. Simplified, that’s what all the grand tales of destiny and adventure say, the flipside being that obtaining power is bad unless some divine ruling chooses you to bring peace to the realm, balance to the Force, or life back to where there was once only desolation. Those chosen are always portrayed as morally superior and thus unlikely to abuse that power, which makes it okay. In real life, however, this moral superiority does not exist.

My uncle chooses to take the time after Christmas dinner to show off his new pistol in the living room. I can hear the commotion from the kitchen where I’m still clearing dishes and putting leftovers away with my sister. Curious, I go over to look at it. His eyes go wide and he makes a small show out of keeping the weapon away from me because he says to the whole room that I am quite evidently crazy. Everyone laughs.

“I would’ve learned how to shoot a long time ago if some people had let me,” I say, looking over at my father referring to our long summers spent out in bumblefuck where all the men and my currently incarcerated cousin would go out shooting while I was left, once again with my sister, helping our grandmother prepare any number of meals or making sure the laundry got done… by hand.

It often feels like the grand stories of men focus on the classic, biblical, good versus evil. In it, the hero must thwart the efforts of the villain to gain power, resulting in the formerly established or longed-for status quo reigning at the end of the day. The stories we’d read in school, however, were most often historical fiction about women and girls. They featured a desire to escape anything from marriage to inhumane factory conditions to their isolated village where their whole lives were seemingly predetermined by the nature of their birth.

These women weren’t out to save the world. At best, and far more realistically, they were out to save themselves. They wanted power over their own lives. At the end of their road was not a massive celebration in their honor. It was peaceful solitude. In a way, they were all anti-destiny. In wanting power over their own lives, they were causing a tremor in the foundation of their world, incinerating a thread in the tapestry of the overarching and beyond-the-focus-of-this-story status quo. And that’s all well and good but a small part of me would always seethe when we’d get to a part of the story where what the girl really needed was to spread a guy’s brains all over the floor and my blood would turn hot until she would instead use clever words or her agile nature to outsmart him instead.

“Violence is not the answer,” I would repeat to myself and say jokingly to my friends as English class would come to a close and again when the boys who would leer at us from across the street would catch my attention on the wrong day. “Violence is not the answer.”

Right…?

Every couple of years or so, I get into a conversation where my father chooses to remind me how easily he could kill me. He talks about how any man could easily kill me if the mood hit them so I should watch what I say about male violence and women’s liberation. You know, to not set any of them off which would inevitably happen if they felt disrespected in some way. He also points out how the good men in my life deserve accolades for not choosing to harm me. For casting their lightsabers aside and not giving in to the dark side. For having power, but choosing not to use it.

Just like that, they are heroes.

As a college freshman, I thought about the concept of liberation… never. I was there to get a degree and start my career.

My first discussions about liberation and empowerment nonetheless took place in college. Each and every one of those conversations framed liberation for women as something sexual. I must liberate myself by consuming or producing my own pornography. I must be empowered by sleeping with strangers or getting a “sugar daddy.” Still a teenager, I was coming into my own. Any perceived lack of confidence on my part was attributed somehow to a lack of sexual success. I should want to bring men to their knees with my sexiness. That would be my power.

“Leia’s slave bikini did not give her power,” I would explain to many women who would not understand the reference. “Having the strength to use her own chains to murder her captor did.”

“Sometimes I really think you do want to kill all the men,” my friend said to me one night.

“No,” I said, “I would just sleep better knowing I had the ability to if it came to that. If we had the power but simply chose not to use it, would the status quo not be entirely different?”

The only time my father ever put his hands on me was when he was annoyed by how long it was taking for one of my teeth to fall out, combined with the fact that I was too afraid of the pain I’d feel taking it out myself. So he picked me up from the kitchen table, threw me onto the couch, grabbed my jaw, and yanked it out. Perhaps the ends justified the means, as all at once, there was nothing left for me to fuss over. But that is the first time I was struck with the feeling of powerlessness, like every cell in my body was burning. Thankfully, I have only had to feel that way a handful of times since, even if each of those instances felt like something unpleasant injected into my bloodstream that had every intention to take root and stay. My flashpoints to anger, while rare, grew more intense as a result, and I would talk myself down, thinking that this is not a reasonable response. This is an immoral response. Violence is not the answer.

“You are smart, capable, and kind,” my grandmother said to me towards the end of her life. “But your soul is restless and wandering. Peace only comes by accepting Jesus.”

I smiled and said all the reassurances you’re supposed to give to your grandmother, a small part of me thinking how many family members would be happy if I spiritually lobotomized myself to realistically achieve such a state as a true believer. Nail myself to destiny and feel nothing but peace. But that was never going to happen. And sometimes, due to the nature of my upbringing, I occasionally have a crisis where I contemplate if I can truly be counted as a good person or not.

But in the end, if I look at things objectively, my feelings appear to be a logical response to my environment. I think it is okay and completely understandable for me to be angry. It is understandable not to want to be or feel powerless. And I appreciate all the work that was done long before I was born for me to have all that I do today. I’m far from a damsel. I just wish that sometimes, in those scary moments, I had the raw power over the people standing in my way. To make people do what I wanted them to do. Is this not a normal and entirely human response? If it weren’t, I doubt there would be so many stories about it.

I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-seven. Circumstances made it so I could survive just fine without a car. I’d probably spent whole days' worth of life waiting for buses, trains, or cabs. I was a city girl through and through. And even if I wasn’t in a city, I’d steel myself to walk forty minutes on the side of country roads to my destination rain or shine. But those country roads looked different behind the wheel as I drove myself down south for grad school, pulling over at any rest stop I felt like to stretch and get a snack.

Despite being a roadie already for so many years, despite sitting as a passenger all across the country and back again several times, there was a newfound appeal to the open road under my own hands. With my trusty Subaru, I could get in and go anywhere the right amount of gas could take me on no one’s schedule but my own. It wasn’t a type of freedom I was used to, deciding I was going to a place so unfamiliar to continue my studies and just… go. And ever since, the number of side gigs I could pick up that were just a few hours' drive away I could say yes to without hesitation, without sifting through Megabus or Greyhound schedules or even hotel room prices. I could simply grab my duffle bag and go.

Learning to drive and putting my name down for a vehicle transformed my life in a way I was not used to. It instantly and tangibly increased my control over my life. It made opportunities accessible to me that previously were not. It was empowering.

The realization made me laugh to myself as I had soured so much on the word during my college years that I mentally shut down at any mention of it ever since. Maybe out here riding solo on the interstate was symbolic of the solitude at the end of all those stories.

I still believe that in day to day life, violence is not the answer, and it is wrong to covet power over others. But I’m not ruling out the possibility that there may come a day when the only option is to blow up the Death Star. Because I do not want to live my life asleep. And I know deep down that all those women and girls who found their peaceful solitude on the last page of their novel would nonetheless go to sleep each night knowing that the fate they escaped could catch up to them at any turn.

Then what?

Well. I assume they’d have no choice but to kick some ass, whether they were chosen by god or not. But, realistically, how? And my inner frustration returns. I would want the enemy to regret coming after me every remaining day of their lives. I would want to put them down so thoroughly not just to win the battle at hand but to prevent all future battles from occurring.

They say that the axe forgets but the tree remembers. And I don’t feel guilty at all saying I’d rather be the axe.