Monday 17th June, 2019.
13:45pm
“Sis Lulu calling”
“Love Cuz calling”
I’m stealing glances at my phone screen, as I’m enroute Benin City from Port Harcourt.
I know why the calls are coming but I can’t really be bothered. Why should I even be? I should be glad…shouldn’t I?
Aunty A as I’d call her in this piece, is my mum’s younger sister (and so becomes my aunt).
Aunty A lived with us (My mum raised her).
Aunty A is now dead (as of yesterday morning), and I feel “nothing”.
I don’t exactly have memories of her while growing up, but I still vividly feel her beatings, not out of love or for the sake of correction but out of frustration or whatever it was that troubled her, which I have come now come to understand.
And of course, I can never forget my experience at age 12 in the name of Holiday at her place in Abuja.
Aunty A…she was the definition of religious fear, extremism, instability and sheer insecurity.
A definition derived from pure experience with no grudge or hatred at the moment.
Aunty A made me “fast” for the first time in my life; 12yr olds having to fast till 6pm, as if we were pushed to the war front of life to fight imagined spirituality.
Aunty A believed in Divine healing, and so I had to drink anointing oil for almost a month (I was on my long holiday after JSSCE), while I was suffering from acute Malaria and Thypiod.
…this led to me hallucinating due to a hay fever and my pee turning to red blood color.
Aunty A said I was a witch, on one of the nights of my hay fever performances.
I was running a temperature of over 40 degrees, and Aunty A called me a husband snatcher (I was just 12), because the Holy Spirit must have spoken to her husband to use a cold towel (DIY) to regulate my temperature.
It was still Aunty A that brought painful tears to my mother’s eye at the ABC Terminal; an opposite reaction to a holiday of kids at your sister’s house.
At 12, my little mouth swore heavy words “If I ever call you or visit you, call me a Bastard”.
Years passed but Aunty A still found a way inside the four walls of my therapist’s office – she being one of the many piles of trauma that plagued me.
But in psychologically cutting ties with Aunty A, I discovered that she too had her issues.
Issues of growing up in a polygamous home of a wealthy “occult” man.
Of having little or no parental support (not financial)
Issues of not knowing how to express herself, her worries, her anxieties…
Issues of endless blind worship, because who really believes God and still lives in fear?
Of the littlest issues of how a rat must have been sent from the village, or how a cockroach must have been a transformed witch.
Psychologically, while breaking ties with Aunty A,
I discovered that she must have been depressed…I mean, my therapist questioned my anger towards her- Triggered me to question myself, if you just hated me or mistreated me out of hatred for yourself.
If you mistreated me with no intentions, for you didn’t even have a direction or focus or even a definition of what your life might be… (I still wonder sometimes)
Aunty A must have been depressed, she had to be…because what could explain:
Her cutting ties with the whole family, including my Mom (who happens to be the Christ-like one, believing in peace, harmony and unconditional forgiveness).
Issues of childbirth (Aunty A even wore a fake baby bump on her visit to the village for grandma’s burial)
Seeing your own blood (one of my uncle’s) and completely pretending that you do not know him. (Your Younger Brother!)
Well Ok…let me stop! People are not entirely bad, so let me tell you the good sides of her.
Aunty A used to give me nice Digestive biscuits in small wrappers.
Aunty A used to let her husband take us on crazy fast car drifts (I discovered its part of why I love super bikes)
Aunty gave me biscuits that time…
Aunty gave me biscuits that time…
Aunty gave me biscuits
Aunty…
Just like I’m trying hard to say some sweet stuffs about Aunty A, it’s how I have tried hard to “feel” your demise but it isn’t working.
So while breaking my final ties (memories) of Aunty A, I said a little prayer “Oh Lord, please have mercy on her soul” because Aunty A died from an “internal heat”.
An internal heat that her fellow fanatics will call spiritual, while in actuality was a ” Hot Flush”, because she secretly did an IVF without proper clinical advice. (I’m thankful for my Mom and her perspective towards life).
I’m sure Aunty A was “divine healing”, so I prayed for mercy on her behalf. I’m sure Ignorance is not an excuse also, under Divine Laws.
Wednesday 19th June 2019
19:59pm
I strongly believe that we humans are highly misguided, about religion, life and worship.
I’m speechless but extremely relieved.
