diasporic located self/pain and family

You know that feeling of when  it hurts so much you feel like you are always crying, in your heart, with your body everything is dripping tears…thats how i fell today, thats how i been feeling all week. I guess that’s why it’s called sorrow. I guess that’s why it’s called heartbreak.  I guess that is why it’s called growing pains….

Growing pains because i’ve decided to continue to live my life for me, to dream up how  i want to be living, where i want to be living, who i envision myself with, what i envision myself doing and to actively struggle, work for and fight for it…i feel threatened that people will attempt to take away my dreams for my family, for myself…more and more i think of my brothers and sisters and the vast difference in quality of life that we’ve had and how i represent so much of what the western world is to them(i should say western imperialism at the expense of others while asserying thier superiority as if it is “right”, all the while claiming justice, freedom and equality )…and their ‘progress’. My family sacrificing and deterring their dreams just so i can be here and have continued to now for years and will continue to.

Yes, its complicated with my family from the times when all i did was caretake, from the time when that was all i was constructed as the evil/oddly demanding must caretake and therefore be taken care off..its a weird arrangement where folks in my family felt/feel guilt and other emotions that compelled them to either justify the ways that i was not normalized or centred in the family to centre me in other ways..especially in relation to abuse/rape/trauma…sometimes my brain cant handle everything all together and i think ignore that for now….

And yet, it sit at the back of my mind, i any case, all that aside where it is true that i was not a powerful position in my family in the past, that has shifted radically, i have the most earning potential, the one with western arrogance and entitlement that feels i can change my world around me and shape my world around me as i see fit, the one with non practical/strategic dreams when my mother in her late forties is still thinking in terms of what is practical/strategic for the family and not in what would satisfy her personal desires and needs…apparently she wanted to be a writer and has volumes of journals bound up just waiting for someone to read…or do anything with. her story locked down on paper, my mother. The rest of the family, most of the family i have watched attempt to navigate this push and pull, i mean extended family and most of them have eventually settled on taking of care of their own nuclear family. And i cant blame them, that is why i can/could have gone through the times i was eating at the foodbank, living in shelters, walking with my Achilles in the snow to school and work after just so i could take care of my lonesome without falling back on an abusive exploitative situation where i was extremely vulnerable: i mean without entering partnerships/friendships etc where i was extremely vulnerable to abuse due to physical, mental, poverty condition…

In the last 7 years only one of my aunts has given me even $1, i ‘ve had noone and absolutely no one in my family to even think or consider asking for support. It continues to break my heart. And so i don’t want my family to say that, i continue to support my brothers and sisters when i can, even if its fifty dollars here and there just so that they know, that they have the security that comes from knowing that when if they should need $50 quick, i will be there…. that brings a smile to my face.

So i;ve been planning/scheming, all  of it has been keeping me up at night, knowing that i need to position myself for the betterment of my family, for the betterment of myself, that the ways that i sacrificed..it is two way…my darling sisters have lived without me for the past ten years in the sameways that i have had to live to live without them, its been a two way street and i think of it and ask myself WHY? Because we are African? Why all this suffering everywhere, all over the place?I know i’m not the only one suffering and that makes it worse..noone to say oh let me lean on you because you are really enjoyin…no everyone has their cross to carry.

I guess I have resentment because when i was leaving 9ja, the teenager that i was,, i thought i was coming to bE with my extender family they would provide and care for me as this was my initial experience staying with one of my uncles but after that initial experience, this was no longer the case….

Perhaps that is the only left over hurdle from immigrating unexpectedly without really knowing what i was in for..but then again how much could i know, i was a teenager. How much do i know now STILL..very little as this reality scares the hell out of me, i will have very many learning curves, steep ones at that before i can be well adjusted, perhaps that is what well adjustedness is about? In anycase i plan.

I am tentatively, anxiously making all these gutt wrenching plans about my livelihood, my lovelife, my spiritual life, my physical person, my character, my skill set..everything is being carefully crafted…knowing just how much there is at stake, or at least i’ve convinced myself that there is indeed so much at stake..what am I saying, there is so very much at stake….MY Life!!

dear diary #4

Its 3pm, i strolled into work @ 12 pm …another fucking benefit of living with a disability (Ok so i’m very bitter about all my ablebodied so called friends and every other fucking bitch ass disabled or not that even thinks that the fucking argument of taking advantage of “fucking accommodations makes ANY sort of remote sense..WHY ? go read a fucking book: check under the normalizing, dominating, oppressive, position of the ‘’healthy/fit/normal body and the ridiculous unearned privilege and entitlement ” thats the most i can do for your ass….)

Point is, i’m feeling drained, stressing about money, stressing about the people/lack of healthy/supportive relationships in my life, stressing about how i’m supposed to live my life as i’m surrounded by albeit unwitting agents of domination??????

I think most importantly i’m heartbroken…people are assholes, JERKs, unfeeling self centred, egotistically beings thats how we think we neeed to survive. I’m just so distrusting and fearful of everyone around me right now….EVERYONE…i might be losing my mind.

Can someone be ableist and love me? I cannot let myself that someone who cannot admit that they are ableist is NOT ableist…the first step towards not being ableist is to admit that you are…

To watch ppl be like you need counselling/help/support: WHAT the fuck is that shit about? Its slimy nasty to me its like a fucked up way of silencing/pathologizing that allows people to refuse to deal/engage with you…demanding individual western individual health/ways of being – talk to your counsellor not to me…

I’m trying to work….take my mind of this shit, what am i expected to do?

In friendship/lovership: you gotta develop your standards for how you want to treated… i’m sure i’m recreating the wheel, i need to find my ‘magickal’ friends/hope that those i already have with embrace the magic of our relationship…either way i need to find supportive folks/peer s around this shit…

more yeast

Interesting yeasty stuff..thoughts notes

BIRTHCONTROL: Apparently birth control weakens your immune system and something about the hormones and upsetting the balance of your poonani/pussy/vagina (from hereonin to be used interchangeably for the purposes of this blog) pH can produce thrush, also known as a proliferation of naturally occurring bacteria in the poon leading to a yeast invasion of said genital areas..question u fit get yeast for gnash?

Another thing, men can transmit yeast infections, since it really doesn’t affect them that much like HPV- Human papilloma virus, trust me you want to get that regular pap test (except for the telling moles/growths on the phallus..ignore to a perilous adventure with HPV ladies)… so any play including dry/wet humping which i especially enjoy means chances are increased..DAMN that is too bad.

For me, i think multiple partners/rapid changes in sexual rhythm is a big issue. I don’t think physically my pussy like dick, like the juices, latex, lube all that shit is too much for my pampered pussy..i use strictly pH neutral lotions and body washes to ensure that she always most comfortable. She spoiled.

So today i shove a clove of garlic up my poon, i;ve drank about 1.42L of cranberry cocktail couldn’t get my hands on the no sugar added stuff but i’ll make myself a smoothie when i get home. I’m sitting all day in my chair at my desk, in my little corner of the office and the garlic works, as in there’s a little itch, slight burning but there isn’t the additional moisture of pharmaceutical capsule (none of those getting a shout out on this hurr blog). In any case, no extra gunk, i like the herby/garlicy smell of my poon..its fragrant and i like pungent and intense in a light nice way…

I will try and track down the apple cider vinegar when i get home and do a douche of that apparently it works wonders and i like feeling my poon, alive and reacting, and reminding me its there..its nice. Now that i don’t bleed as much we don’t get intimate just chilling time anymore unless its sexual or hygiene related..but now almost every couple of hours my fingers are up in my poon. I think i’ll change the clove at the end of the day. I never realized how much i missed being connected to my poon.

DRY MOUTH, don’t let no body go down on you if they have dry mouth for REAL..apparently it causes an abundance of bacteria/thrush in their mouth easily transferrable to wherever they apply themselves orally. You feel me?  

Alright so from my quick google search here are the home remedy recommendations that i intend to explore to rid myself of this yeast:

Plain Yougurt: full of naturally occurring bacteria, without the artiifical sweeteners, sugar- to breed more bacteria for my poon

Apple cider vinegar: awesome for temporary soothing, MAKE SURE TO DILUTE..that shit will burn your pussy lips off

Garlic – just pretend Dracula has promised to visit your ass..shove it up your poon, you wont pussy ingest it (copyright detox), eat it if you can etc

Oil of Oregano – just cos that shit will kill everything and get you some naturally occurring fatty acids: SALMON here i come.

I’m gonna spend some time centreing me and my poon, we might do some fun activities, i’m gonna have to report back on that.

thats it for now…

Oh and i love my new job..no fucking joke

Oh another note: For the record: even though i used ‘fucked up’ language to talk about a yeast ‘invasion/infection/transmission’…i am fully present and aware of the fuckery rooted in ableism + repression of womens sexuality, fear of death/scientific western constructions of death/survival and of course ‘progress’…i don’t even want to start all this to stay the mutherfuckers/bitches who attempt to insinuate/remind me/perpetuate ANY kind of above mentioned narratives in my life..ma fire o…plus i really gotta remember that for myself. Not to mention the stigma associated with disease..

It might be fun to fuck but that might hurt a lil too much for my masochistic self..RIGHT…lol

Dont really expect anyone to get my self jokes

i cry

Today I feel sad. I feel sad because I feel mostly alone, I do not feel abandoned by people in my life by the people who I know love me I just feel like I’m all alone. This time though it feels really really sad. I feel sad that I do not have my family there to share the minutia of my life. I feel sad that when the going gets tough I don’t really have a shoulder to lean on, no comfort, no support besides coffee/dinners that last for 6hours at the most not no sustained forever dependent on almost guilted into doing shit for you kind of comfort. The sad part is that I have family, I have people who love me and can and are willing to offer me that kind of presence but I’m just not with them anymore…we are not together anymore….we do not live together anymore…and my family is dispersed over various continents.   I mourn that loss. The mourning and sense of loss I feel is overwhelming.   For the past week I haven’t really done anything, I’ve barely left my home..twice only, buth times to events that I’d precommitted myself to. I’ve left my bed for the following reasons: to cook/dish food that I bring back to my bed, to feed my darling cat, to charge the phone and to let a guest who came to visit into my home. Today I made it out to the library.   It’s sad that everyone is so busy living their own lives. I don’t know what to do, I’m horribly codependent and almost for the first time in my life, I have no clear path dedicated and seth in motion for me. I have no distractions, I stopped drinking so much, no more getting high even and I’m watching my diet by that I mean the ways that I emotionally eat, right now I only eat when I’m hungry and I don’t deny myself anything.   It feels like my brain is fuzzy, cloudy, that I can perceive and understand things ultra clear in my head and see peoples motives and power manuervers and intentions so brightly clearly and with suich certainty that its startling and yet I don’t know what to do with that information, like I don’t act as if I see what’s going on..all it makes me is SAD. Not angry maybe a little resentful but sad ok maybe angry mucho angry too.   I feel like I can’t focus and concentrate on anything, I’m not functional. I haven’t even cleaned my home, I can’t bring up the gumption to do things that used to give me great satisfaction  like my clean apartment and yet I feel like I’m having these great revelations about myself, about my life, the way that people perceive me and engage with me.   I’m worried that I’m fucking EVERYTHING up, like this is somekind of crucial set your life up year and I’m not doing something that I’m supposed to be doing.   I don’t expect myself to be chirper and happy go lucky all the time, should I be surprised that I feel this way? Today out with some I guess work colleagues I almost broke into tears from the fucked up ways that people were competing, pissing contest on sufferinf fucked people of colour fighting over fucking trickled down carrots shit…depressed me right down to my soul. I just wanted to start balling. I need to move to a place of power with this shit and figure what IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII want to do about MYYYYYYYYYYYY world, how IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII want my universe and my world to be like, I cant keep crying everytime something shitty happens, I really hope I get past this soon enough.   I want love, I want to feel loved, appreciated cared for supportive, healthy,, non codependent, guilt tripping, I’ll be there to do your laundry when you’re sick or come over and eat ice cream with you while you cry love. I want friends that say what is one their minds, that offer and generously and respectfully within boundaries give this love, I wahnt to give this love to myself, I want to forgive myself for all the choices I’ve made in mylife instead of colluding with people’s fucked up shit to punish me shit, I don’t need an abusive relationship to kick the shit out of me so that I constantly feel like shit. I want to give myself permission to succeed to get good grades, to utilize the skills and tools that I have to use resources that will move me to where I want to go. I want to have the grace to stop fearing how powerfull I can be, to stop fearing what I can “get away” with, to indulge myself, to make mistakes, to play with myself, to not be so self conscious, to be myselof no matter the company I keep for myself not cos its cool,  or cos I’m better but because I want to. I want to love myself more than anybody could ever love me only so that maybe one day I won’t need someone to love me so much…   I can’t wait till I get there. Untill then I write my essays see if I can make it through this school year and cry when I need to.

worries/anxieties…theoretical musings of a “fronting” postmodernizing de-colonializing kind..still

More and more and more these days i really worry. I worry that i’m on the right path, i worry that i am one of those who don’t know what the fuck resistance looks like but will gleefully participate in armchair activism and theory without walking that talk. I worry that my live is fully invested in systems of domination and oppression. I worry that i have completely bought into systems of domination and oppression.

I worry so much that i am completely invested, shamelessly and apologetically in privilege status acquiring knowledge production and ways of making sense and meaning of the WORLD that I KNOW can feel in my gut in ways that send me to the fucking bathroom with the run…speaking of nervous condition of all sorts maybe daramgemba was on to something..besides the ableist pathologizing, i mean.

I want this degree so bad, i want my masters and phd not neccessarily cos i think i’m so good that i will change the world but i enjoy 1, its the only think i think i can do well and i want the social status and prestige but what about the adoption of ways by which whiteness has maintained its “expertise”, dominion and maintain its supremacy eh..how do i reconcile the two?

theories Mbembe and Irele (in praise of alienation) on alienation even hooks (postmodern blackness) on the creative forces of liminality help not much here, because i think it is the only forward because want the privilege and access that they have gotten used to …cop out alert bottom.

As an aside i feel like bitch slapping all the so called black diasporic feminist who COMPLETELY ignore the fine fine work that RECENT african feminist female scholars are doing on the the black body as subject as african as nation….SERIOUSLY, go pick up a fucking book and realize….

I think the key is to continue to examine Mbembe’s (african modes of self writting)notion of what it means to continue to engage in negotiation simply for power to be utilized for domination (which i fit very well ) with the master..not a study of whiteness and constructions of the authentic black person BUT really the feeling, and intracacies and nuanced instances of servitutude.

Because in spite of my my ambition for the accrument of what can only be borrowed power , the degrees, i feel like a SERVANT, i feel like one in servitude…talk about nervous conditions, talk about living in bondage someone needs to do a postcolonial/post modernization theoretical analysis of classical nigerian nollywood movies and the ways that they address the irrational logic of the postcolonial state and was of conceptualizing the african subject..now that would be a fun paper not this shit i’m churning out like i CARE…bS…neways but i will forever understand living in bondage differently…word

my own hell

i have about 30 mins to get dressed and step out of this house and start the day..this happened to me on sat and Sunday and now today and for most of last week: I escaped it by setting up specific appointments with people so I’d have to make it and even then they were m,ostly in the evening.

I cant fucking leave my house and I don’t know who/how/to ask for help and while I’m here I’m too fixated ion the fact that I’m here nout outside that I cant at least clean it, organize, do laundry, I feel like my life is unraveling anhd I all I want to do is be settled/still enough to leave this house NOW to go write my essay…

 

I don’t know what to do, icant tell anyone I’m embarrassed..i fucking don’t know what to do…

its called being assertive not selfish: notes on living with truama + relationships…

1: identified pattern: saying I don’t want to do something and doing it anyways..communicates weakness and allows people to take advantage, communicates that they can get it from me anyways, if I don’t care enough about how I feel not to do it why should they? I’ve got to learn to totally put myself first not them and its called being assertive not selfish

Yesteday’s counseling session was good for me. I got my ass kicked by my counselor and it felt good that and the fact that I took advil followed by four shots will make anyone feel good I imagine J (yes I’m fully ware of my escapism) Anyways, we talked about what it means that I have a pattern of abusive relationships and follow them one after the other, that I end up somehow communicating that it is ok for me not to get my needs met and therefore permit the abuse to happen. where and how I learnt this behaviour is written all over my childhood. As a woman living with a disability I was raised to put EVERYONE and everything else before myself, I was to ALWAYS come last if I was to be a good woman, if people were going to forget that I had a disability and perhaps look kindly at me and let me in the rant and all of my childhood abusers forced me to put their needs first. Even when I got raped I’ll never forget my mother telling me that I need to basically NEVer tell anyone if I was going to succeed in life and by that she really meant get married which I did and fucked up (by her standards anyways) so 1 for me, 1 for mom.

As an aside I really like jack..emotionally he actually takes care of me, I don’t feel like I have to struggle and fight for my needs to be met sexually and emotionally just financially na im be the prob. In fact he encourages to state my needs and tries to anticipate and meet them. With all my other lovers I feel like it’s a constant battle where people just want to take from you and will take as much as they can whether you are willing or unwilling. This makes me so fucking sad and angry at the same time because then it means they are being dishonest and don’t really give a rat’s ass…they have no real integrity. It also means that they are lieing if they say they care for m or at least what caring is to them is not what it is to me.

I was thinking about all of this because of red and my ex husband and his complete disregard for me and my needs, even the sexual/basest of needs. It looks like the same pattern is about to rear its ugly head in relation to red, I’m starting to get that feeling that I’m not good enough.unworthy and its such an alarm in my head: but it is immediately followed by double talk on my part, self doubt and hyper critical ness..(I’m like, no I know she is not him but we did have a relationship that was fucked in its own way but that I tried really hard to save from descending into the very abyss of hell, and it is the same me that she is dealing with post ex husband…) in reality I’m not used to putting myself in the centre of my own relationships with people and when I do then I feel totally and completely ill at ease..literally.

Red says that she wants to have intimacy cuddle, kisses, touches, caresses, no fucking, I told her from the beginning and have consistently let her know that I want to be more than friends but I can live with being friends..i want her in my life. I’m not sure about all that intimacy that goes no where. But she goes back and forth and in that process according to my counselor I’ve communicated to her by cuddling with her anyways and leaving the door so wide open (by making it abundantly clear that I want a relationship with her no matter the cost, I’ve pretty much said this to her- actual words) that I’ll do it anyways even though that’s not what I want making it harder for me to get me needs met when she can get all of her needs met. And at the same time get to FREAK out that we are having a not quite lovership type of relationship. I’m not freaked out at all, I’m like that’s the end game…I don’t know what her end game is. All I want is to have her (and she is presently a stand in for most of the relationships, future and presnt )in my life under the best and most long term conditions.

So it’s looking like it will be hard, hard to set up boundaries, hard to actually refuse to do the things that I say and know that I do not want to do, I feel fearful, that if I do not do these things or act the way that people want me to act then I’ll lose them. Isn’t that the way life is? I mean that’s basically what I learnt from the collective, that’s what I’ve learnt from most people in my life but LORD knows I’m working hard and trying to get to a place where I can be who I am and fully welcome and invite people into my life trusting that they will appreciate me for who I am, that regardless of what they do or are willing/unwilling to do I will have my boundaries solid and firm.

That’s what my fear, really is about that if I don’t do what people want or say then I wont have them in my life, it makes it hard for me to even acknowledge my needs/ wants and by the time that I do its too late. I wish I could have helped out EVEN more and did this with my ex-husband that’s someone else that I did love so much that now I’m not even willing to let him hurt me anymore, I want to protect some of the good times that we had, the warm fuzzy moments that get eroded by every nasty thing that he does, the same with red, I’m fighting to hold on to the moments where I feel I actually experienced what it means to be/ feel loved and to share that with someone. That’s all love really is, isn’t it?

na manage…

Today has been a better day…definitely better than yesterday not because the terrible agnst, despair is not there…i got through yesterday by calling a crisis line for assaulted women and found myself unwilling and slightly unable to put my words into feelings. I don’t have anyone in my life right now that i could remotely blame for doing anything harmful to me besides my parents and family but even them are a whole continent away.

I blubbered and moaned and wept through the concersation. I told her that yes i had been assualted in my past, that yes i know that the feelings will never dissappear, I told her that i was not triggered so that i could not function. I know what i feel like when i’m triggered. I’m not a mess..I am clear, focused inside myself, tight, i am sort of braced up ready for the blow and most importantly constantly always calculatting my escape. I know hoe to deal with that. I told her that the problem was that there was nothing. NOthing wrong. Money but even then i just got a job and i’m not going to losemy housing or anything crucial anytime soon besides maybe the latest tous purse which i don’t have and never really afforded.. you know?

The problem is that there is nothing. I am supposed to be happy right now, finally i am ALONE, i’m doing exactly what i’ve always wanted to do, study get good grades, do research speak academia to my little computer screen and cat, i could go out meet as many people as i want to and i do it freely sometimes, my apartment is great, even my body is doing better, i’m exercising on the gazelle going for walks, my knees and joints dont hurt as much as they usually do in this weather, i have regular frequent sex when i want it and how i want it, i cook nigerian food and know where to go to buy it….no problems

Instead i feel absolutely fucking miserable. I started at the bottle ofpainkillers yesterday and bottle of vodka and i thought well what would happen if i took them both. I thought about my siblings, my grandmother who has been waiting to see me for 10 years now, my new sister lawyer, my much more pain i’d bring into my family. I felt ungrateful for even considering such a thought. I thought about my fuck buddy who i just saw the night before…my cat and i felt even more like shit thats when i called the crisis line.

She said it was completely normal for women who had been running/suffered immense abuse and still had to perform/function in this world to not know how to be…without all that. I understand, intellectually i do…i know that this is how i got myself into the most noxious relationships that i have been in one after the other but as she spoke all i wanted to know was how will i make it through today, tommorow and why the fuck does it hurt so much. How can i make it stop so that i write my paper and do all the other things that i should be doing right now…

She said to stop telling myself to feel guilty, to just get through the nigt and to cope to do what i had to do, listen to music whatever. So i got off the phone with her poured myself a double shot of vodka, cooked rice and stew with vegetable just like my mom used used to make and fried plaintain with bean, and just relaxed. Then i tidied up my files/papers that had been giving me an annurism EVERYTIME i looked at them, late bill payments after i worked so hard to fix my credit..FUCK NO, disorder NO, mess NO so i actually tidied did some writting in fact wrote a poem that might be crap but nonetheless it felt good and all the while listening to every single fela/femi kuti track i had and i called it a day. I didn’t get to bed till like 2pm but i wasn’t anxious when i went to bed, i was relieved and tired.

This morning i got up late but got up, said my prayers, dressed and ACTUALLY went to class not only that i worked on my paper a little bit and after class i went to the library common area ate my homemade lunch and struck a conversation with 2, i repeat two other fleshy, life sized black women we exchanged numbers and complained of feeling so alone on campus and talked about our different programs. I was relaxed through it all, i felt good. I was interacting easily with humaniods saying what was on my mind and them no finding me crass, crude or outlandish in fact making thier own points that seemed to align with what i was saying. There i was and looking very cute and femme too.. Did i mention that i also managed to catch up on all my readings for that class…so now i’m not behind might get ahead by next week which is where i like to be

I’m home now to eat dinner maybe work on my paper and other things no pressure, i think thats they key for me right now..no pressure.

Tommorow i have a counsellors appt early morning and a lunch date with one of the women on friday, we’re exchanging nigerian movies and even better she is an “older” 1st year student so shes closer to my age which is how i like it. I’m trying to stay completely and totally age appropriate.

Now i’m going to do my dishes, pick my clothes for tommorrow, pack my lunch too and them see where the rest of the night takes me..no pressure

depressed

It has been a very very difficult couple of weeks and that is an understatement. I think it is safe to say that my depression cycle is back with full force, the cold wind and gray skies and my skyrocketing bebt from my emotional shopaholic behavior (which contextualized is really just me refusing to deny myself some medium quality shit not expensive and designer but at least this seasons wardrobe, appropriate shoes and outer gear for the weather…), my deepening social isolation escalated by my absence and radical shift from always there and reliable friend that cooks meals and drinks on an evening after work to not even answering ppls calls in the same week, to not doing anywork, i’m overwhelmed with anxiety and fear and i’m trying to figure ou why i cannot, simply CANNOT snap out of it. I dont want to go on anti-deppressants but i need to function. I need to write papers, the stories, poems, everything needs to be written down…a blog entry is most i can manage.  And of course it doesnt help that noone who i would call family has bothered to check in

I feel like my life is falling apart before me and somehow i am relegated to the sidelines, none of the usual strategies are working…it really doesnt fucking help that i’m broke and cant seem to see a way out in sight AT ALL besides ashawo even that is hard for a stumpy like me.

dili and chi (recount..contd )

I am not sure when this happened so i’m not sure about the age but i think i’m about 5-6-7 years old.

My time markers are: this was the year that my grandmother moved to agboju market and we started spending a lot of time there. I especially spent a lo of time there refusing to go home and even going to school from there. There were some perks…my parents were constantly fighting or should i say my father was busy beating my mom so she too was sometimes at grandma’s “resting” and its not like i spent a lot of down time with her, and her shop was close ny on ojo road so under the prext of wanting to learn how to sew sometimes the driver would drop me there….that came in my early teens as more frequent behaviour before they closed/sold the shop.

Anyways in my bid to avoid okafor i started to spend a lot of time there, at my grandma’s i was allowed to HELP out in the kitchen, go to the market, fetch water..all these things distracted me they were a welcome escape. i would spend days in her t – shirts which she called blouses and she would bathe me at night and cover me with talc powder and dusting power. I was so happy there, i started to tell my mom that i wanted to move to agboju….

Then mama started going to the market and running errands and left me more and more with okwi. Okwi and i were co conspirators, he wasn’t much older than me and he’d encourage me to ask mama for milk, sugar, money for suya anything most things that she wouldn’t on if it was just him and her. He was her brothers son and his sister would be coming soon from the village. We played with makeup, he dressed me up and would wear makeup, my aunts heels and we would both me “madams” one day he got caught and they beat the living daylights out of him. I was not sympathetic by then i started to feel sike at the memory of him.

Anyways one day he invites me to his room, i never go into his room he shared the same room with my aunties, that room was huge with two queen beds in it and they were away at the university so he had thier wardrobe at his full disposal. Untill then i stayed in mama’s room and did not venture near that room cos my aunts had warned me to stay away.

So i went with him, he said he had storybooks for me to read and i stayed there and read them and then he showed me papa ajasco and hints magazine and read them to me, he kissed me and touched me on my nipples, sucked them and asked me to play with his penis..well he put my hand on it. it was soft, softer than okafors and browner and smaller. I started to cry, he begged me to stop crying.

This memory is so fucking fuzzy that i hate to remember. Anyway one day he was in my uncles room right by the parlour, i think i was sleeping or something. I noticed how quiet it was..that weekend my brother and sisters were there with us…cos one of our uncles came back from abroad. I heard voiced from his room i thought there were hiding eating all the candy, biscuit that my uncle brought back and did not want to give me any so i started banging and knocking on the door.

Okwi came out of the room with nothing on he was covered in powder and my sister/brother were in the room with chioma they were all naked, lying under the sheets and giggling? I was mortified. I knew what was happening so i asked them to get out of the room immediately, my brother, my sister. They said that they were only playing but i beat them, slapped them hard and told them that if i EVER found them playing that kind of play they would be sorry.

***more significantly, i have a displaced memory of feeling, sucking and tasting along with the overwhelming scent of talc powder okwi’s small penis**** i can’t seem to place it.

Okwudili was easy to forgive, i think one day he asked me for forgiveness….after that day i never talked to him, hung out or anything. I avoided him like the plague…i was cleaning my fathers bathroom when he came upstairs to say hello he was in secondary school by this time. So was i but he was a senior and very tall and handsome. His voice got shaky and tears welled in his eyes and he said he was sorry. I didn’t ask for what, i didn’t ask why. I was happy that he’d apologized, i had respect for him, though the disgust didn’t really go anywhere and that was it.

We lived around each other but were never close again.

****it is important to note that my brother went on to continue to “play” i suspect with my sister, myself with my sister, my cousins and brothers at diffrent points in my life. If not for anyone else’s sake i MUST remain anonymous. This stuff, thee stuff that i cannot blame on anyone, the things that i remember doing like a zombie indeed, the things that i felt compelled to do when okwi, okafor and everyone else is what haunts me because up untill i became a teenager…i perpetuated the cycle. Even as i wished that they would stopped what they did to me i did not think/it did not occur to me that what i was doing was WRONG, would create hurt, would do the same to them

Psychology has explained away this phenomenom with relativity, the attempt to normalize ones psyche, life and what one has lived through by passing on the pain. The theory of domination/power/ is simply a way of achieving balance by stealing power from another person and therefore becoming the dominator. I dont know how to forgive my teenage self or my young self for the things that i continued to do to other people, to other children even as i had managed to stop the abuse in my life.

Worse i have found little or no resources for talking about this, people have threatened me, lost all respect for me, attempted to call me a monster, attempted to blackmail me for things that they themselves had done, once they have found this out about me but the reality is that this is me. If i am to fry for it one day then i shall fry. I am doing all this now, saying all this now because i have to find a way to free myself. I am in “bondage.”  I remain bound by the pacts of secrecy that existed/exists among all of us. I want to live my life, i need to give myself permission to live and mean it.

AND it must stop. IT MUST STOP. IT MUST STOP. this bullshit that has been going on in my family, that has touched us, someone must talk about it, i will not live in fear that one day i will touch my kids or that i will be blind while someone else does or that someone else will because i am too busy hiding anything to do with sex from my children, it must stop. Starting with me.

I think that is why the whole way, current and very popular method of conceptualizinf “healing” and survivors must be reconceptualized…because the present explanation of coping/learnt behaviors does not address the fear that i am trying desperately to debunk: that since i was touched, licked, kissed and tasted and consumed by the tainting damaging hand of EVIL, torture and abuse then i must have changed become deformed, ugly and equally monstrous..that i learnt this is no consolation AT ALL because i am now and will forever remain condemned as monstrous…+disability and theoretically the vision/story is not much of a leap..doesnt take people long to make the connection, this i can see in my life. It has manifested itself before me…like a monstrous shadow that i cannot hide/run away bury my head in the sand as much as i wish…it is thier preconcieved notions of me, they give it breath, it is created before my very eyes and it takes on a life of its own….

What to do with the monster/ghost: either we vanquish it for all eternity or we simply live with it…normalizing it, acknowledging as she is transformed and we are transformed recognizing shared connections/similarities till we cant help but start to see ourselves as ugly, familiar, monstrous as the monster/ghost….not sure that made any sense..not that anyone is reading REALLY!