I got a message yesterday that mother went to this popular ”family drama” radio station in Ibadan to report that I’ve stopped taking her calls or that of any other family members.
In six years, she called me ONCE after a year or so. The last time I saw her was late 2019 which means it’s going to be six years àbí?
First year, second year, third year, fourth year, fifth year, this person never gave a fk about me. I was totally on my own. But somehow in the sixth year that I managed to travel out, she suddenly “cares” for me àbí? You see this problem of equating travelling out to automatic success ehn!? Laugh with me 😂
You know when Asake’s father was on the social media dragging him, my best friend and I gisted and laughed at it that kai, at least I would never go through that; that my mother isn’t at least that shameless.
So I was in shock for about an hour after reading this message because why tf would you go to a radio station to report a child like THAT? What is the goal and aim? To back me into a corner? To manipulate me? To sọ mí sáàrín and put me in the middle as usual like the whole family used to do for her because how do you think that kind of platform would judge the matter? They even said she cried or something. What sort of a person is this, really? When she could pick her phone and just say sorry?
“Dasola my baby, I’m sorry don’t be mad at me, please come home. Where are you? Are you okay? Are you eating? How are you surviving? Come, let’s talk. Why are you angry? Why are you so mad at me? I’m sorry, I didn’t know better. All those times I hit you and said many bad words to you, I just didn’t know any better. You didn’t deserve any of that.”
I’m her child fgs. You could get your child to stop being mad at you if you really want to! But she’d rather go to a radio station to report me.
BECAUSE she is still insisting she hadn’t done anything wrong; that she’s in the right and she would never apologize. And it’s not just her that has met her match, the family institution as a whole has met its match in me walahi.
You see ehn, it’s not just about my mother. It’s the entire world that raised her, and the kind of world she thought she could feed me into too. It’s the institution of family that acts like love but operates like a small, domesticated version of Nigeria.
Just like Nigeria, most families have their own military-style punishments, moral codes, and fear-based obedience. What she just did, by dragging me to a radio station instead of picking up her phone like a normal human being, is not just some isolated madness. Yes, she dey craze, but it’s not just her. This society is crazy. We are crazy and only those who realize this craziness to be wrong can start the process of healing, not those who realize and start boasting around with I DEY CRAZE as if that craziness is right.
This craziness is the product of a system that teaches parents to own their children and demand worship, instead of mutual accountability.
If you’re already a parent and you’re reading this, please read this to learn so you don’t end up like mother.
Until date, my only crime to her is my refusal to be broken like she was, my refusal to become her.
I’ve gone through so much in this person’s hands that it’s only logical and in my best interest to stay away from her. I’m not even just making a case for myself here. If she wants to make a case, she will claim that she has gone through a lot in my hands too, as if I’m the parent. Let’s assume without conceding that she is right, is it not logical that she should stay away from me for her own sake too? But the family institution insists that I’m her property FOREVER and I can never check out no matter what she does to me. I can never complain or ask for accountability or any apology.
The greatest fight for autonomy is against the family institution.
NOBODY owns me, not even my mother that gave birth to me!
This woman has committed so much crimes against me but she’s solidly protected by the family institution.
She beat me countless times. She almost stripped me naked once. She beat me both indoors and outdoors. She made me work so much I literally started having chest pains from fetching too much water and lifting heavy loads on her chicken farm. I STILL have chest pains until today and it’s one of the things I have to get checked out here in France. I once begged her to please let me rest, she screamed at me and I tearfully resumed working.
She said I was so useless to her that she wouldn’t mind not being buried by me. That the people in the area would bury her when she dies. In Yoruba land as I believe it is in other cultures, it is a prayer for parents to be buried by their children. She said I was that useless.
Meanwhile, walking away from home and never looking back is the greatest evidence of how useless she was. I just had to think and see that I literally was and I am not gaining anything children should gain from parents from her. No money, no protection, no love, no care. Just someone to crush my self-esteem and make me feel like I was nothing. After counting my costs like this, the decision was so easy to make, and that goes to prove who was actually very useless. She has constantly let me know I was nothing and nobody to her, both directly and indirectly.
One time she was dating a soldier I think? She started threatening me with soldiers any chance she got. She said she would tell them to beat me until I stopped breathing. She would ask them to confirm if I’d stopped breathing. If I still was, they should resume beating me. She has constantly and intentionally put everybody else in her life above me, especially the men in her life.
She beat me. And it wasn’t just her hands. It was the entire ideology that she has the right to beat me that was moving through her body. Every slap was backed by an institution called FAMILY IS FAMILY.
They call it discipline, but what it really was, was fear training.
Reich called it character armour.
That hard shell people build around themselves so they don’t have to feel what was done to them. So they can keep repeating what was done to them. She became exactly what the family institution needed her to be. A willing enforcer of pain. Not even her own pain — the pain passed down from her mother, and her grandmother, and hers before that.
She had me at a young age and that was an abomination to the family institution and its discipline, and rather than allow the institution to banish her into a life of freedom in the wilderness of life, she chose to volunteer to become an enforcer for the institution, and that was what she used me for instead of being a loving parent to their child.
She beat me one time I took Felvin for days. And really I could have defended myself and handle her. Mélòò lara ẹ. BUT the family institution protected her. I was the one that would be cursed. The one that would get ostracized, the one that would be blamed and told that she’s indisciplined, a bastard that beat her mother.
If given the chance, I would beat her all over again. Because I did it once and I don’t regret it. It did NOT stop her at all, she still continued to beat me for years. I had to threaten her that I’d unalive her until she left me alone. She beat me till I was 21/22, until I left home.
She hated me the more I grew up, especially when I started becoming an adolescent. That’s when you know who is a loving parent and who is a mindless dictator. When you are becoming your own person, wanting to go out, to talk to people, to feel things. Wanting to love. Wanting to breathe. Wanting space. That’s when they panic. That’s when they say you’re wayward, you’re spoilt, you’re proud.
It’s not pride. It’s becoming. And they hate it. Because if you become yourself, you’re no longer theirs. If you laugh too freely, love too loudly, live too fully, it threatens everything they were forced to kill inside themselves.
I was not a horrible person at all. A part of my brain has tried searching for the meaning of everything I experienced. They’re so much I recently remembered something that I told my best friend, and we were both shocked that in almost seven years we’ve known each other, I still haven’t finished narrating everything she did to me. Apparently my brain has been trying to protect me and has been erasing some of the memories.
I couldn’t have gone through all those things just for the fun of it.
WHY?
And I couldn’t find anything.
I would eat any food I was given with gratitude. And on days I didn’t find anything to eat, I was content. I was a diligent child. I brought home straight As. I didn’t follow boys. I would go to church with her four times a week, sometimes throughout the week during special programs in RCCG. I was a worker. I was very respectful. It’s not like I dropped from heaven and nobody knew me and can’t corroborate all these. Heck, women named their kids after me! I’m not trying to defend myself when I say these things, but for years I’ve been trying to ask myself why I deserved that.
I couldn’t have faked being a good person all these while. Thinking about it, all the people that have become my chosen family, I met them on Facebook. They have been in my corner. I couldn’t have survived all alone all these while, people were kind to me. Even total strangers I’ve never met.
A horrible person couldn’t have successfully managed different projects and brought people together many times for a cause.
A horrible person couldn’t have travelled out to France without spending a dime. People I still don’t know even chipped in and sent 1k towards my trip!
I couldn’t have faked it and fooled everyone. I’m not perfect but I never deserved being beaten all the time. I didn’t deserve being told I was not worthy of love and I was stupid and I could never be somebody. I did not deserve that from a parent.
My best friend that I’ve known for years; when I first met him, I would bug him many times on why he loved me. Like I was genuinely perplexed. Why would anybody love me? I mean my mother hates me so why do YOU love me? He helped me regain my confidence little by little; that I deserved love and kindness.
But I still struggle with my self-esteem and pé bóyá sometimes, I’m truly a bad person and I just don’t know how to fix it.
A friend that I visited in Italy recently; I said kai she’d see through me and just hate me walahi. I asked my best friend;
“Hey, do you think she will like me?”
I would later relax and tell her this and she was pained for me that I would think of myself like that. She said I was a very kind person with a good soul and anybody would want me in their life.
It takes me years before I would completely relax around anybody, I have severe trust issues.
Anybody that showed me love were met with suspicion. But people who were unkind to me, I accepted that easily, it was normal.
It affected the kind of men I chose to date too. I was literally not loved at home. The kind of hopeless men I dated while I was still in contact with this family reflected that.
My family did love me in their own ways tho, but my mother would insist I didn’t deserve to be loved and that they were spoiling me and ruining my life.
‘Why would she finish beating me and I would run to them and they too would accept me and tend to my wounds?’
Or ‘why would she be starving me and my aunt would send me money to eat at school?’
And so I was helpless and stripped of any help I could find. That’s classic abuser’s behavior, they isolate you so they can deal with you very well.
Woman yíì rò pé oun mẹjó ro. Wo, before she ro one mọ́ mi lẹ́sẹ̀ èmi gan á ro fifteen. I’m already writing a book about the family institution, she has not seen anything. I will write about her all my life, because that’s the only way I can make the pain go away.
I did nothing wrong to this woman. Yet she beat me every chance she got, she destroyed my self-esteem every chance she got. She nearly ruined me every chance she got. Not only is she insisting she did the right thing, she’s fighting for the right to continue doing all these to me AND that I must take them all. I must be in that prison with her. Whatever is broken inside her, she’s refusing to fix it. Instead, she keeps taking it out on me and insisting I must serve the penance.
Penance for what exactly?
She said she’d rather die than apologize.
Have I told her all my pains? Countless times. She either immediately had memory problems or dismissed me. AND continued to be a shitty person that she is.
And it’s not about her anymore, it’s about the family institution, its ideas and tenets, backing her up and giving her all these guts. I could have arrested her or dealt with her however I deem fit, but she’s “family.” If it was any other person that did all these to me, everybody would say “oh what an abusive horrible person, run away Dasola!”
But in this case, it’s about “family.”
Sometimes human beings can be very stupid sha.
The police won’t even attend to the case, because it is family, but if a random person did everything she did to me, we will crowdfund to get the abuser in jail. If I go to the family unit or domestic issues department of a police station with evidence of everything she did, they will tell me FAMILY IS FAMILY, “honour your parents,” “don’t break the home.”
This is just a repackaged version of the nationalism that we condemn Trump and those tribal bandits in Nigeria for.
First you’re taught to love your mother (parents) no matter how much she hurts you. Then you’re taught to love your country, tribe, or race, no matter how much it exploits you.
There is no difference between those who kill innocent people for their “motherland” and those who scream “BUT SHE’S YOUR MOTHER” to an innocent abused child.
What they really mean is ‘surrender’.
Surrender your rage. Surrender your memories. Surrender your self.
Because if you don’t, you’re “disrespectful.” You’re a traitor. You’re not a good child. You’re not a good citizen. And we wonder why a lot of people lose themselves (beyond grief) when they lose their mothers.
In 2019, after a series of physical and mental abuse I don’t necessarily need to recall all of them right now (because they’re just so numerous) but which most people know about, I went to her house and her 1k (Naira) went missing. Of course it was MY fault.
That was the last straw; I just couldn’t take it anymore and this was due to the fact that I realized I was not such a horrible person as she’s been making me believe and I had the capability of finding other people that were not irritated just by the sight of me.
Bro, this woman hates my ass. Does she even know she doesn’t like me? She once said my sponge smelled and it irritated her and I should go soak it in hot water! Of course it was the soakaway behind her bathroom’s window that smelled as she later found out. HOW could a bathing sponge even smell let alone that much? Omg 😭
Imagine how HARD I’ve worked on my self-esteem to even be able to walk on the streets without lowering my head in shame. Imagine how HARD I’ve worked on myself to overcome her voice in my head to be this person I’ve become, this person she now seeks out once again to destroy?
How would you have it end? That one of us unalives the other? Or that we stay away and we each live independently of each other and we’re at least both alive? Not one dead and the other in prison?
She does NOT like me. She doesn’t have the capability to like me. She does not have the capability to truly like anyone beyond eye service. And that’s because she cannot even like herself to begin with. I don’t care what’s going on in her head or anything so I’m not going to be analyzing why she doesn’t like me anymore but it’s obvious she does NOT.
What then is this obsession with “family family family” when someone hates me this much? And only remembers me now that I’m in France? That part is funny. The probability of this person running to a radio station and crying that she wants to talk to me would be low if I was a very poor person, or I was sick or I wound up dead or in prison or struggling with five children with five baby daddies. That would “justify” everything she did to me and she would go “you see?”
I must not make any mistake or act out or anything. I was always walking on eggshells around her and other family members because she took every little chance to justify treating me like an animal. I swear to gawd you can’t treat a dog here in France the way she treated me. I can swear on anything that that’s a fact. And she’s fucking unapologetic about it! I fit tear am slap if I lay my eyes on her again walahi.
In that 2019, it was the end of the year and in December, I texted her I wouldn’t be coming home that it hurt really bad she thought I stole her money and that she’s a narcissist and she should fix herself. It was a WhatsApp message; it ticked blue and she never replied.
Then more than a year later, she called crying and said “Dasola” and cut the call. Of course that was both disturbing and manipulative. I went to WhatsApp again to text her that she was being manipulative, and that she had to apologize and change, and I NEVER heard from her again and honest to gawd, it’s been bliss. I sincerely wish she would continue to be oblivious of me and I seriously can and will pay her if she wants, to stay tf away from me. Yes, I would pay her off, if possible. If I have the money sha.
She called me once in six years and we never got in touch again.But she’s now going to a radio station as I’ve not been picking her calls lmao. If there’s a God, if there’s a God ma’am, I hope the wrath of that God descends upon you. Except you have done right by me.
It was in 2018 that she beat the crap out of me after her neighbour’s daughter stole my phone. The phone meant a lot to me and nobody would buy me another one. All of my school materials were on it and I had exams in two weeks. So of course I lost my mind when the girl would not return my phone. She herself couldn’t have taken that, but she needed me to remain a perfect child who shut up when she asked her to. Like I was a robot without feelings, whose buttons she could switch off and on.
I screamed at the girl and this woman beat me like I was the thief. I had just lost my phone and she beat me on top. At a point, I didn’t even know which was harder, the physical or emotional pains. Ọmọ, nobody has ever beaten me like that. She even broke her own record. Why would I get beaten like that by anyone else when I was a very responsible person? When I minded my own business most times?
She beat me with her hands and she wasn’t satisfied, she went inside for a thick orogun. It’s used to turn èbà and àmàlà. She hit me with it until the stick broke. Everyone in the area came to save me from her, she beat them too even attempted to bite one of the women. A woman held me while she beat me up to stop me from beating her back. My gawd, she beatttt me!
And AFTER that, did I STILL try to mend whatever it was at this point that we had between us? Friendship? Mother-daughter relationship? I didn’t know but I was told to sha be the better and bigger person. I was the child ffs. It was her duty to love me, protect me, provide for me. She failed at everything and other people I didn’t even know have done much better than her. But I held on. I talked to her. I tried to be her friend.
She has never for once said “I love you” to me. I sort of subconsciously liked her as a little child (before I even knew she was my mom) so I used to hug her. She has never hugged me. As an adult, I was the one initiating the hugs too.
All my usefulness to her was as a mule working on her poultry farm and heavily helping with her pastry business. She would eagerly ask me to come around during school holidays not because she missed me or anything, it was to come and work without any rest. I couldn’t even talk to my friends anymore once I was with her. She would ask me why I was picking calls when I was supposed to be working. I don’t hate this woman, I don’t care about her enough anymore to hate her but she should stay tf away from me.
It’s true that the social media trends are never what they seem. It’s true that there are many spectacles without substance, it’s true that we only see the good and beautiful sides showcased to us by celebs but even my mother couldn’t be bothered to pretend to like me in any way. We would go out together and I would sit beside her and she would irritatingly tell me to disappear and go find other places to sit. Must I always sit with her? And I would also scurry away like a rat.
This particular phenomenon traumatized the crap out of me pé mi ò sheé rí mọ́yàn. Look I’m sorry I can’t translate everything it’s just that the meaning and gravity will be lost in translation. I would literally be grateful that a guy wanted to be seen with me in public. My self-esteem was in the gutter.
Priscilla’s wedding was in all of our faces this past week and I never really knew her until then. I saw all the videos she made with her mother and ngl, while it was fleeting, a part of me went “welp, I wish I had THAT but I’ll never have that.” See the videos and fun she seems to be having with her mother. I consoled myself with someone never having everything. This thing isn’t black and white.
Of course sometimes I wanted my mother. Sometimes I would be overwhelmed and I’d want to call my mother and ask her to be a mother to me. I cried once in her presence because the choir mistress asked me to stand up at church during choir practice and insulted me for more than an hour and she asked me to shut it down. Why was I crying like an idiot? Lol, is she the same person I’d run to when I’m scared or sad?
Sometimes I wish she’s a normal person and not this demon I’m forced to deal with for the rest of my life because why tf would she go to a radio station and tell them I don’t talk to her? Only a manipulative demon does that. In an alternate universe, we could have been twins or best friends or soulmates. We look so alike my goodness. But she is this broken terrible person that I was genuinely scared of. I don’t like fear and so I do not tolerate it so it dissolves into anger quickly and I become this person I don’t recognize too to defend myself. I don’t want that kind of person that triggers that crazy personality of mine to be around me.
After the beating incident, she decided to punish me by washing her hands off me totally. Not that she had been that useful in my life all along but at least she gave me enough money to at least eat poorly for two weeks out of a month.
The whole family invited her for Christmas to beg her.
Ha, you know she doesn’t even have a father.
The same father this woman said disappeared and has NO clue on how to find him. Somebody that wanted to take responsibility and marry her and do right by her and loved me so much and would feed me and play with me and all that! He just upped and disappeared and no o, you don’t even have a picture! His sister that you knew also just disappeared abi. I wasn’t even mad at her, I just wanted my mother to like me for just a little bit. If that’s too much, she could at least stop hitting me and respect me and stop using horrible words on me.
Anyway, they said to her, this geh doesn’t have anyone else o you have to please help her na. She said for where? My grandma literally knelt down to beg her.
Even one of my uncles who normally wasn’t empathetic pitied me that day and begged her and said ha, this girl is about to be 21 o. Is it because she’s a good girl and hasn’t gotten pregnant? Her mates are already mothers, please stop beating her. My mother herself had me at 20.
I begged her and knelt even when it was difficult for me to kneel as my body ached all over from the beatings she gave me.
She was pissed at all of them that hey gawd o, you people are now asking me and Dasola to be in the same space to discuss? Like I was some animal not worthy of being in her presence fa. She said it’s because I had boyfriends na, that’s why I was disrespectful to her. My aunt said ha, if at 21 she doesn’t have bf no be wahala be dat? At the end of the day, all of the family would blame me for her to “keep the peace.”
They reached out to me truly for some time once in a blue moon, no assurance of safety or cessation on my mother’s parts. These people treated their own kids nicely (which I’m grateful for that they’re at least doing better to their own kids) but I’m very annoyed that not only are they not actively stopping my mother, they’re making it seem like I’m overreacting and I should just tolerate her. They know how to take care of their own babies but I am the one that should get used to being beaten. They just needed me to come back to continue all that mess. So of course I stopped picking their calls too.
I’d have called my family dysfunctional but there’s nothing dysfunctional about any family, it’s the exact way that institution is designed to function for capitalist society. It has to produce obedient, broken citizens for the repressive state and keep the cycle going. This isn’t just some tragic story. This is how fascism gets born. Not on the street, but in the home.
That place where you’re told to bow your head and obey, even if it kills you. The family is the first police. The first prison. The first war zone. I know this because I grew up in it. And I’m still crawling out of the wreckage.
The world calls it “family values.” But what they really mean is BREAK THE CHILD EARLY, SO THEY DON’T RISE UP LATER.
And this is a battle I’m willing to fight to the letter. I am a very diligent and consistent person and so the family institution will feel it that someone is calling for its head. It must be reformed or broken entirely kàa tun shà. I will make a compilation of true life stories of children like myself who has it worst with the family institution.
I will write my own personal book on my story. Hell, I will even make a movie on these ills that we tolerate, and get it aired an all family TV so it can be all in our faces. Tó bá n múu jẹ láti ọjọ́ yìí, ó ti kan àgbákò lọ́dọ mi, màá báa fàá!
Did this woman listen to anybody? No!
My aunt came back again in January before I left for school and followed me to go beg her again. It was on that day that she said a proverb; kìí burú burú kí baba ní ó di ọwọ́ ọmọ òun lọ́run. It means she’d rather die than apologize.
Of course I grovelled and begged, nothing o. We went back to our village like that and my aunt gave me some rice and garri and a piece of yam with #1500.
Go and manage until she calms down.
Of course the food finished. I was hungry for days, I called my mother and she banged the call.
I called on a Sunday as she liked going to church pé bóyá she’d be in a good mood and the Lord would have ministered to her. For where? She was already accusing my aunt of taking my side too much. Small tn she’d say she was trying to take her child from her as my aunt didn’t have a child back then, I don’t know about now. So she too didn’t want to overdo it.
However, I reached out to my aunt because I fell sick. I didn’t even have food let alone money for medication and she sent me something little too, 1k I think. It finished in no time and I decided I was just going to eat my last noodles meal and die.
I remember sitting in front of SUB on OAU campus and crying; painful tears fa. It’s the same proximal area we have our bookspace project now, hey hey I’m a bad bitch.
But that time, hunger wan kpai me I cried like a baby. Not from hunger, it was an emotional one.
Why would I go through that, I felt like it was an injustice. I didn’t even ask to be born, tf. And it was around then I met this very rebellious young man too who has become my best friend ever since. He made sure I never went hungry ever again no matter. If I’d not eaten, best believe he’s not eaten too and is busy looking for means to provide for me. He is my family.
When everybody else were brought to the airport by their family when I was coming to France, my family also came with me and it was him. My brother who saved me, fed me, built my confidence, held me on days when I would just cry and cry until I got tired and slept off, soothed me when I was suicidal and loved me back into healing. When I watched the last series in The Lion King and they sang about “my brother”, I smiled because I have a brother too. But the family institution says no matter what, my mother should matter most even more than this person because of “blood.”
Ees like somebody’s blood want to flow. 🌚
I am her child. If she really wanted to reach me or talk to me, she would know how to do that.
When someone visited me in France and asked me about her, and I only indulged him because I liked and respected him, I told him that if I had a child I hadn’t seen in years, it didn’t matter whether I had done anything wrong or not, I would just say sorry! It’s my child fgs, my heart is too soft for that. I can’t afford my only child being that mad at me. I’d be worried sick and keep reaching out even if she doesn’t want to talk to me. But this person called me ONCE and is crying to a radio station I don’t pick her calls, tf.
There was a time an apology, sincere or not, could have fixed everything. In fact, if I’m assured she would stop, she could keep the apology. But she genuinely doesn’t see anything wrong, she’s that fucked up. And not seeing anything wrong means she’ll continue to hurt me, not physically anymore because she knows I wouldn’t hesitate to beat the crap out of her now.
But there are many other ways, even more painful ways, you can hurt people without lifting a finger and she would do that to me. The window of apology has closed. Forever really. I don’t mind paying her off or something just to get her to forget about me. She never gave me much or was nice to me so if we’re weighing that, she wouldn’t even be getting much “for her troubles.” I mean people pay surrogates, I’ll pay her to back off.
That’s how much I’ve given up on her. I have, a long time ago. I have closure.
This same woman who said why would the family ask us to be in the same space is now going to total strangers and crying. Because now the love she didn’t have for me all these while suddenly came and blossomed in her heart as I don have small change. Iffa tear you slap dia.
Change wey never even reach only me to spend. I only eat and try to work towards my dream of changing society, and fiam money don finish. Buying new clothes is often reserved for special occasions. But since I don take picture for front of Effiel Tower like this, kasala don burst! But I’m not sure this person is coming back for money, or just for money. She is too proud for that.
It’s more like she wants to come back to continue the attempts at breaking me. Because she broke and just couldn’t live with herself if I didn’t break too.
I read these kinds of things in the news, deadbeat parents suddenly “loving” their kids when the kids seem to be successful. I can’t believe it’s happening to me. Let her “love” me from afar o Lmao 😂
And if she had another child, she wouldn’t be crying I don’t talk to her.
And I repeat, you know this whole idea of “family family” ehn? A ti wọ sòkòtò kan náà. I will deal with it. It’s not a cult. It is a cult actually but I’m refusing to be a member anymore! I am out and I am free! My mother can’t be back in my life and I will have this level of freedom and happiness anymore, I don’t want that so I’m keeping the door firmly shut in her face. It can’t work. I have disowned her completely. I am ready to go to court to make that disowning legal. I can’t show her a kindness I can show to a random stranger.
I understand how very important family is to the oppressive system. It’s literally the backbone of every form of oppression and it is with that understanding that I’m coming to the fight. This is not about my mother anymore. She’s a very small part in the big whole. I’m seeing that whole and I’m so going to fight it with everything I’ve got.
The rage I carry now is not a random fleeting rage. It’s the rage of a child who finally realized she deserved to be safe.
It’s the rage of knowing I could’ve been someone else if I haven’t had to fight tooth and nail to believe I was worthy of love. I don’t need to lay hands on her. This truth alone is violence enough to that system. I speak, and it will shake at its root. Gone are the days when I’d fight ‘bad’ people with my bare hands. This is the day that will recommence my fight against bad systems and institutions with my truth.
Family kee you dia! 👋
Dasola Tewogbade (Sisí Afrika) writes from Paris and can be reached here.
