SEMICOLON

“I killed a plant once because I gave it too much water. Lord, I worry that love is violence.” ― José Olivarez, Citizen Illegal

Where I come from, experience is the best teacher. My mother would not tell you that fire burns, she lets you feel the flames in your palm, that way you learn not to move close to things that hurt. But while this might be an effective way to train a child on survival, it did expose me to different ways on how to maim a body.

My mother is what every African woman should be— daring & intriguing. She likes to exert her authority on people and things but she sometimes forgets that a child can be allowed to lose everything but himself. So, as she consistently molded me into her shadow, I began to lose myself until I found a way to get back at her.

The first time I let a blade run through my skin, my mother screamed her lungs out. It was the first time I saw her eyes clouded in anxiety as she rushed me to the hospital. Her face— a crumpled map, lines of worry etched deep like rivers carved into stone—  overflowing with tears. That day, I realized that to spite her, I needed to make my body into a home of scars.

To rebel in an African home is to become a black sheep. And being a black sheep comes with its stings. Like name-calling, like going on imposed hunger strikes, like having your back decorated with whips because the bible says; “spare the rod and spoil the child”— an African mum’s justification for child abuse.

“Akanni, I am your mother and I want nothing but the best for you. I can’t see a ditch and ask you to go inside,” she told me one afternoon as she tried to convince me why I should join the science class.

It is true that I’m brilliant, that I’m the best student in my class but when will an African parent realize that like the Science department, Art class is for brilliant students, too? The stereotype about the Art department being for average and not-so-good students has gone on for so long and my mother was one of the pioneers.

An African mother would give you options, would try to convince you to make a choice but you know, that behind the plethora of options you have to choose what she wants. My mother loved her child so much that the love became violent. She beats you for failing a Chemistry exam and employs a private tutor afterward. One minute, she’s scolding you for leaving your meal untouched and the next, she’s singing your panegyric to the high heavens.

To love a person is to give them the luxury of free will but my African mother sees love in a different light. She views love from the microscope of power— the ability to compel obedience. She wants what she wants because she believes it’s the best for you even if you think otherwise. It is why I had to spend years writing WAEC and failing Chemistry and Biology over and over again.

Twice, I tried to put a full stop to my existence. Firstly because I was tired of failing my science subjects and secondly because I wanted to see my mother writhe in pain. She always said my pain is her pain and my joy is hers as well.

What better way to confirm than gulping the content of an insecticide? Being a science student exposed me to a lot of chemicals and it didn’t take long before I began to experiment with my body. Like how long a human can last before his intestines begin to rupture.

After several attempts to end my own life, I became a regular at the hospital. I got recommended to a therapist who began to see me as a patient he needed to be patient with if he wanted to put me out of my misery.

For the first two months, I didn’t answer any of his questions. Rather, I kept exploring ways to become a ghost. In the second week of the third month, his words began to strike me. Maybe his stories were cooked or factual but it resonated with me that I started to feel alive again.

“Let’s have a man-to-man discussion. Do you think your mum hates you?”, he asked during one of the afternoon sessions.

With my mum downstairs in the waiting room, words rolled out of my mouth uncontrollably, like a witch caught in broad daylight while trying to transform from a bird into her original state.

“I can’t say she hates me but she doesn’t love me either. Or how can you love someone and not want them to chase the career that they love, that they cherish? I am not living my life but my mum’s. I’m tired of living in her world, I want to start living in mine… I want to become a writer and not some doctor rotting away in the four walls of a hospital.”

The conversation with the therapist changed the trajectory of my existence. That night, my mother told me how she lost her husband to the cold hands of death. How my father got martyred for choosing to fight for a cause he believed in, through his pen. And how she has been trying so hard to get over his murder, disguised as an accident. How she doesn’t want to lose me in the same manner. She reluctantly allowed me to jump ship and 2 years later, I got admitted to study English and Literary studies at the University of Lagos.

After what seemed like an eternity, I’m in my final year at the University and it’s been a long time since I self-harmed. I stare at the lagoon front and the third mainland bridge across it, and take a huge sigh of relief.

“Semicolon! Semicolon!” a friend keeps shouting at the top of his voice till my mind jolts back to reality.

“You no hear as I dey call you since? Them don approve that your project topic on mental health struggles in Seffi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come,” he says, trying to catch his breath.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, bro. Really!”

“By the way, you haven’t told me how you came about this weird nickname of yours,” he quizzed.

“A semicolon is used when an author could have chosen to end a sentence but you chose not to. The author is me, and the sentence is my life,” I replied, a grin etching a home on my face.

He pauses, trying to grasp the weight of the words but I turn away from him, leaving him to unbox the mystery of the metaphors. Again, I stare at the lagoon, this time deeply, as a line in Toby Abiodun’s poem gathers momentum in my mind; “…how much pain must be forced into your skin before your body begins to revolt…”

After all this time, it works…perhaps the sentence was never mine alone to write, but ours to rewrite together.