My friend says I wear my heart, my mind, my thoughts, all that I am, on my body. My friend says it does not always shine in my eyes, but the skin of my flesh belies my essence. She can tell when I am hurt, angry, happy, or delirious, all from the droop of my shoulders. It is not even a challenge because she is fluent in me. She tells me that I am hungry, before the sound of my belly announces it, tells me that she learned from asking me questions about my own self. 

I cannot wait for the questions with this ache. I cannot wait for you to know me, to learn the flimsiness of my cover. It is hard to translate this state, but I will put it plainly: I do not know how to turn the other cheek. I do not know how to repeat a suffering or revisit a pain. I am made of putty, every thing that has ever touched me has left a mark, some I can decorate, and others that are too wide, too stinging, to turn into beautiful things. I never stay long enough for a thing to slap me twice, and if ever it manages to evade the barriers to do it again, I experience repulsion, of it, of myself, from it. 

I am being repelled again.

Once upon a time I was religious, and I learned that the bible wanted me to be one to turn the other cheek. Instead, I turn my back.

What does that tell you? Do you want to know? Would you ask? Were you doing more than listening with your ears? 

I love him,  even with who he is. I do not know if this is entirely biological, but I love him. Maybe it’s the familiarity, or the fact that he has known me the second longest. Whatever it is, it is the same reason he can cut me down. I remember what he said to me on the 17th of March 2023 at 9:54am, and do you know, it does not make me cry anymore, and the sting is gone, but sometimes I am upset in March and I check the date to see if it’s the 17th. I forgive him for what his anger made him say, what his frustration at my curiosity led to. Still, I feel it in my skin when he says something with the same thread running through it. I feel the sting, and repulsion. Disgust. My mouth turns downwards and I pull away for fear of striking back, because wonder of all wonders! Disgust in my hands is worse than anger, worse than a quick explosion; it is more deliberate, more cutting. 

Anything that makes me feel small is unwelcome. Anyone. I am many things but I am not small. I am disgusted by it. Call it pride, call it brevity, call it anything you like. I do not care. I am not small. That is important to me. I know that, and I do not shy away from my hugeness, my expansiveness. I contain multitudes; in fact, I am multitudes. 

When you cut me, I bleed. I bleed and bleed and it swells and if ever there is any blood that has a spirit and takes a form, that occupies the room it is spilled in, it is mine. You can almost taste it in the air, and you can hear it whisper, ‘I  was cut there.’

And I was cut there. And there. And there. Many places. 

I don’t think they knew me that well. I didn’t need them to share themself in the exact same ways I did, be that with me, with other people. I have never needed any of that. I was unsure of what it was that I wanted, and insanity of all insanities, it did not dawn to me until right here right now at 4:16PM under this leaky shed that I just wanted them to be honest.

I know that it is analytical and strange of me, but I wanted to know what they were like without a template to show up as, a mold to fill, with no model to perform as. I wanted raw. I wanted them to tell the truth of their being, wanted to reveal myself at the same time as them, skip the performance. I am easy to impress, I didn't want them to waste too much time trying; I wasn’t going to work at being any more impressive than I am. I know my salt. I know what I am made of.

Then again, I knew from the first time they got a taste of my mouth, how they sank their dentition into the flesh of my lips, that silence would suffocate them somehow. From the first kiss, I knew it. Call me a psychic, a cynic, a soothsayer, tell me I am plucking meaning from somewhere it is absent. I assure you that it is none of those things. It was evident. Silence would pressure them more than pressure would. Ease would stress them more than labour did. 

I don’t know if the audience mattered to them more than the performance itself did, if they would have stopped if I stopped looking, or if it would have just made them work harder to get me to keep looking. I think it would have been the latter. What does that say? Of me? Of them? Of me that I think that of them? 

Is it right that I chose to grieve the fondness that I owned for them instead of remaining there? Was I well, choosing grief over connection at 14? 16? Continuing the biannual choice of a sharp sorrow over unsatisfactory presence? Was the presence that lacking?

Yes, it was. It was painful and piercing and suffocating, constricting. Sorrow is temporary, more so than the impact of all that tightness would ever be. 

Isolation. 

My mother called me the other day on her way back from church to ask when we could go on a date. Last week, as she drove me to work, she said she wanted us to bond, and we had an argument over prayer as our bonding activity. I asked why we couldn't just paint each other’s toe nails or something. Make a meal together. Watch a movie. She asked for 10 minutes. To pray. I shrugged. Either way we chose to bond, one of us would have been at a disadvantage, uninterested in what the other wanted to do. Might as well be me. 

I know why she asked, it is because she thinks I will leave, untie the bond, get lost. Of all her children, I am the most asocial, the least tethered. Not only am I asocial, I am also the most uninterested in the performance of affection, because I rarely ever do anything I don’t want to do; I tell it to her, my love. I feed her, I make her life easier, I listen to her woes and experience anger on her behalf, joy, pride, kiss her forehead and hold her sons. However, when all the children are home, I do not come down to open the gate, or stay up till she is home. I am used to the late nights, and someone else can do it now—that was my entire childhood and I want to take a break now, every chance I get. I try to watch her soaps with her, but she falls asleep, and I don’t know the beginning, and cannot complete them anyway; I don’t watch anything in school, so I leave. 

There is a running joke she tells, about me being selfish with myself. 

I laugh, but only so I am not left out when everyone agrees. It is true. I don’t give myself to just anyone, not even if we are tied by blood.  

I wake in my room, go about my day, and return to my room. It is the space; the walls are green and I feel free with the huge windows and the unobstructed path, but it is also really not. It is the presence. It is the quiet, the freedom to exist as I am and the absence of demand. Controlled stimulation, audience, presence. Nobody I do not invite can come in, the door is locked, but by me. I hold the key. I am safe from intrusion. You can blame this on all my childhood violations, criticism, ostracism, the early weight of responsibility, whatever. 

I will go on that date with her. I will stand beside her and offer the praises I know from a far away time to a god I do not believe in. I will sit in the living room, even if it’s just 5 more minutes than I already do. She just lost her mother. My mother just lost her mother and these are her straws to grasp at. There is, of course, also her worry that I will kill myself soon and she will grieve two of her mothers in one lifetime. I don’t like how much truth is in that worry. I can be a straw to grasp right now, I can take it.  

Last week my mother  heard me doing my affirmations in the kitchen. I was talking to myself about how I could never be convinced that my essence is ugly or unlovable or unholdable. I started crying, because well, that kinda happens when you lose your self and then your grandmother and your puppy die two days after each other and home is a touchy place and you listen to Noah Kahan. When you mix all of those things together, you will cry, of course. You are made of the same flesh and blood as everyone else. 

She thought a relationship ended. And her tiny frame pulled my significantly larger one into a hug. I sobbed more. She could not think of anything to comfort me with, but she prayed. It was nice. Knowing that my distress was palpable enough for her to call the one thing she trusts in above herself. She says I don’t tell her anything, mostly because it’s evident that I don’t need her. Or anyone, really. I don’t like the desperation of need when it emanates from me, but it is welcome from others. I am always so sorry that I need anything. Maybe it’s not that I don’t need, but that I work so hard not to. 

She still makes commentary about how I will find better. A better husband or whatever. I nod and say Amen because it comforts her to think she is helping me, reassuring me. I let her think she is a straw I am grasping on to. I love her, she can have anything she wants from me, as long as it is not my life, or my joy. 

My mother is not wrong. The selfish with myself thing. I think about it now, as I think about my friends. Love. Myself. 

I am quite prone to isolation. Honestly. I am scared of the outside world. I am scared of contact. I am scared of noise. I am scared I will receive too much stimuli. I am scared of everything but not in the way that means I will shrink. I am scared that it will push me to shriek. I can’t scream, so I shriek. I am scared that to surmount the stimuli I will grow bigger, like I have seen myself do when my mother yells at me, when she is critical in a way that feels like it is to cut me down. I am scared I will over-correct. 

I don’t like too-tight grips, unless they come in hugs. I don’t like too tight bites, even. Pinches. I need to not feel trapped, or like I cannot move. Everything that touches me has to be gentle, but firm. I mean everything. Down to love. To words. To feelings about me. To physical contact. Everything. Do not touch me if you are incapable. There is a desperation in tightness that I don’t like when it has to do with me. 

Romantically, I do not like suffocation aimed at me. Save your time, it will never take root in me. We are incompatible. Bring gentle. Curious. Solid and firm and consistent will always have me. Always. It is want, in the stead of need. 

Everytime I hear that I am needed for prolonged periods, I fear. And listen, it’s not for stuff like basic help. Not for stuff like emergencies that happen in bursts, quick flashes that fizzle into nothing. Always needing me is scary. Because it will fizzle out, and now you never learned to enjoy my presence without a crisis. You don’t know how to engage with me. I cannot be like a blood transfusion or a nebuliser, forgotten until you need me again, to the point where every time you look at me & are not in crisis,  all you can see is a reminder of the past void. Keep it from me. I want to be like vitamins. Regular. Routine. I always want to be an addition. Fill the void as it exists another way. Please. You are whole. I need you to know that. I cannot fix you. I have no will to. My offering is love, through my essence and all that belongs to it; not myself. My essence gives you love but of itself it is not a possession. You can have what it offers you, unless it is itself. If you loved me, you would stop me from losing my container for your pleasure. I would stop you. I would tell you to keep your self. If it ever looks like I am giving you everything, please send me back to myself. I would send you back, because I love you. 

Does it make me a bad lover? I don’t know. 

Obsession is scary, to me. The ‘I cannot breathe without you cannot live without you’  beat. Not enough hope. Too much desperation, not enough realism. You can breathe without me. You should. You should manage a life that does not have me in it; we are not conjoined. I am and you are. You should hope that we are spared the anguish of separation. That we are spared the pain of a life without each other. 

I know many spirits that can take an obsession. I am not one. Too much responsibility and I begin to slouch and waste. 

My mother is desperate for a tethering right now, and it will fizzle, but I will give it to her still, at least until she has the security of her footing again. What was that thing I said? A quick flash. 

You cannot blame me for giving it to her. She is my mother. She will remember she is whole again soon, that I am, too, because this is our song and dance. Till then we wait, we’ll see if she still knows how to interact with me when propelled by want over need. 

Sometimes I worry that for all of my expression I am illegible and I mean nothing. I worry that I am a document spiral bound in the wrong order, done just right so that when you think you know where it is headed, it regresses and shifts, morphs to teach you another thing. I worry that I will always be a mystery even when I speak, even when I am completely bared like this. I worry that holding myself the way I do, as tightly to my chest as I do will mean that I will veto everyone out of access until I myself am unworthy. I worry that the closest anyone will ever feel to me is when I am a straw to grasp on, and I worry that I will hate that I cannot be recognised as a place for joys. 

Right beside the worry is anger. I am just so angry. I am so angry and foolish and in need of soothing. I ache. I am sore. 

Imade is empty. Please remember that. She is spiraling, and her skin does not feel like her own. The matter in her head is pilling, so the past is coming before the present, twisting, turning, rolling over. She is remembering. Remembrance is a ritual, a last–ditch effort to fill her back up. 

It was last week. Or maybe the week before. Or perhaps, even the week before that. You get the point. It is not today, not right now. Merely a time in the near periphery. Near enough, but far enough to be distant. 

Whatever it was, whenever, it was the first time she realized with all certainty that she did not have a home in anyone but herself. She could feel it so physically—her rage. Her teeth were chattering, and the synapses of her brain firing. She is back there again, in the musty old lounge chair. Her hands are gesturing wildly, and she feels that ache in the area under her breasts. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
“You’re too sensitive. It was just a joke—”
“Fuck that, please. I don’t like it. I don’t think it is a funny joke, and you should never make it again.”

That should be the end of it, but then Imade hears her speak. “You’re dragging it out. Drop it. What's this stupid beef that you guys have?”

Snapping back to the present, Imade shakes her head. Once, then again. She can remember the shuddering,  and how she felt that it was unfair that her realization had chosen that time to taint her taste buds. That moment? Well, that was when she realized that there was isolation in her anger. No one else was in it with her. She did not make sense to anyone. She was ‘irrational’ and ‘difficult’/ ‘weird.’ It would make no sense to anyone else, this rage. 

She would rather make sense to everyone than live alone in this anger. So Imade shuddered, and she pretended. Oh, all was okay. All was fine. We were fine; the system was whole. We were smiling today, hiding, masking, pretending. 

Until we unravel, that is. 

We are fine. Imade is fine. 

Suddenly, Imade is in Mrs. Eze’s classroom, learning what Adornation is. The word is beautiful, but something is wrong with the cadence of Mrs. Eze’s voice. It sounds a lot like ‘adoration.’ Imade knows what adoration means, and when the woman asks who knows what the word means, her hand shoots up to ask, to be sure. “Ma, could you pronounce it?”

The woman’s voice calls out ‘adoration.’ And now, Imade is sure. 

“Adoration means respect, worship.” one more thing, “and it doesn’t have an ‘N’ in the spelling.”

There, she had said it. Imade is what? Six? But she knows. It is wrong, and she has a brain sparking just then, needing the satisfaction of the wiped, misplaced alphabet or a lesson. Correction. 

“That’s good! But the word is spelled correctly. It is adornation. Does anyone else want to try?”

Imade inhales sharply, wondering why the dictionary she had read the night before — the A section in particular — had lied to her. She had gotten to the ADUs, for adultery. 

To make a fuss or be quiet? Compliant or curious? Why were they mutually exclusive?

Imade waits. After the class, she glides out of her chair to meet the teacher to ask why the word is not in the dictionary and if it is sisters with the word ‘Adornment.’ She remembers adornment. 

She can taste shame from how the woman says she is an ‘I—Too—Know.’  The pronunciation and the inflection of her voice carry condescension. In it, Imade can hear that curiosity is bad. 

It will take years for her to unlearn the shame of curiosity, of sharing and gathering knowledge. 

But then again, Imade has never forgotten anything, has she?

Ibukunoluwanifunilalalaifilaalasi. What age was she? Imade thinks it was 19 years old. Or 17. She was stuck at 17 for a long time. More likely, it was 13 years old, though. Imade has found a way to do it. She has just learned how to express dislike. ‘‘I don’t like this,’’ she says, but do you know, nobody likes a complainer.

A fight will happen. Well, not really. Imade just expresses a dislike. Passionately, for once. This dislike matters. This dislike hurts. It isn’t really an argument. That would require speech from both sides. 

Ibukun merely nods her understanding.

Imade is there again an hour later. Imade says hello in the painfully blue hallways, and she—who—shall—not—be—named keeps walking, a new half beside her, a new pair formed. 

Imade realizes in a flash, with a cruel suddenness,  that she is replaceable if she is not exactly what is needed. The new person has her physique, a tinkering laugh just like hers. A cookie—cutter replacement best friend. She learns two things. One, she is replaceable. Second, there is a lot of pain in community. 

Okay, that is dishonest. 

She learns that she has no community, and might not ever have one. She is a straggler, and comfort is a foreign thing. A new thing. A confusing thing. She doesn't like new things in any capacity. 

Unlearning is easier for her than learning. She unlearns the expression of dislike. 

She will never forget how it felt to her, in that moment.

A migraine hits just then, and she is snapped back to the present. Her entire frame zings, and Imade moves from the floor she is scattered on, pulling her legs to her chest for comfort before punching the air with each arm. The satisfying crack! of her bones propels her to get up. The mild pain faintly reminds her of where she is before fading out. 

She needs to cook. She does not like food, but she has to cook. Starving to death by accident would devastate her mother. 

Mother. Mummy. 

She adores mummy with everything she has. 

Her eyes conk out for a second. She cannot see. The pain in her head is in her eyes. She can feel her heartbeat in the sockets of her eyes, and she knows it is not normal. But she also knows that it is constantly happening these days. 

She simply crouches to the floor and shuts her eyes, more for familiarity than anything. She is temporarily blind, so who cares if they are left open?

She wishes to beg God. It is hard. Everything is. Every breath, the loneliness and isolation she has taken on — a perfect shield from being misunderstood — the world is noisy, so her eyes water, and she cannot seem to say things in a way that makes sense to anyone but her. Imagine being articulate at advocacy yet losing vocabulary the instant it is for yourself.  

Pathetic. 

She remembers that she was 4 years old with more spirit. 

She snaps back to 4 years old, at work with her father because her mother was busy.

“Don’t touch,” she had said, slapping a hand away. She had been curious then, too. She had tracked the man's movement across the factory. Asked her father what room he went into. He came out without wet hands; dirty, dirty, dirty. It was a toilet. And now he wanted to lift her. “Don’t touch!” she had said, and promptly slapped his hand away so hard, her father had to remove her.

Something touches her skin, and she looks up. There is nothing but blackness. Perhaps her brain catches up before the rest of her. If it was rain, she would be outside, and all of her body would feel it. She loves the smell of petrichor, and she would simply know. 

She is crying. Her father, Baba Imade. He used to carry her. He used to be soothing. He was safe. She missed the foolishness of 4 years old. Being carried.

 Imade. What is wrong with you? How did you manage to lose his love? Where did it go? 

She has her father, but she misses daddy. 

She was gifted. Not anymore though. She used to be great. She was wonderful, one upon a time. Before. Not too long ago, before 20. Her eyes shoot open, and she makes her way to the kitchen. She keeps Ibuprofen in there, along with the leftovers she plans on heating for breakfast. 

The diagnosis unraveled her. One more for her christmas basket. Bipolar, ADHD, Autistic. Pretending was doing her harm, according to what they said.  She had never returned, for fear of that pity in their eyes, but she had listened. Learned that pretending was called masking, and the fix? Unmasking. 

She had tried. Had unmasking done her any good? No, not really. At least before, people pretended to love her. Imade missed pretenses. If only someone could pretend to hold her again. She would simply melt.

She is in pain. Mentally? Physically? Which kind? Both. They are now the same. She can pretend to have what it takes to distinguish them, but she was never any good at telling. Maybe that is why, and it isnt the ‘tism. Imade has never been good at analyzing for long periods of time, unlike literally everyone else. Things were what they were. Things are what they are. Or are they? Everything seems to have multiple meanings now, many different states of truth. There are seven truths, sometimes even more, and  she can never seem to pick the right one. Her head hurts. A lot. She never did get up to eat.

 It is painful, this being. Alive—ing feels  a lot like dying, sometimes. 

Dying. 

Imade does not scar well, but she can still see one of the three vertical lines she drew on her wrist. She was not trying to die, or at least, that is what she tells everyone. But when you are trying to excise a rot and its home is in your veins, on your wrists, strategically vertical and not horizontal, then maybe, maybe you are trying to die. 

It will take another decade to pry the truth out of her. But we deviate. 

Imade thinks living is a lot like dying because she doesn't want to do either. They both require work that is physically painful for her to deliver. If she fails at any, she will lose another bit of her pride. 

Too much trying. 

Once, Imade was 14, and she was 6, she will be 22, but she hopes she is not 43. It is her brain, the errant little thing. It is too chaotic. It is too different, too lazy, too indifferent, too affected. It likes to mock her, to disobey. It will not let her live, or die, or breathe. It will not allow her inhale, it will not shut up. It is telling her everything that can go wrong and it is telling her loudly.

She treats it like a remote control with a faulty battery, slapping the base of her palm against it, over and over and over again. It will not work, it will not forget, it will not remember, and she is well and truly tired.

When will she be better? Will she be better? Does it get better than this, ever?

The lights are back on. By which we mean that Imade can see again, by which we mean the migraines are receding, planning their next attack. Imade knows this, so she gets up, like there is a fire under her. Food. She is methodical about sustenance, none of that ‘love is one of the main ingredients’ schtick. And she stands for the two minutes it takes the noodles to cook. She swallows the gel coated painkillers and makes her way back into the room, where the unfurling had begun. 

Imade sees her journal, the bright blue gift from a man she no longer speaks to, a man she barely knew in the first place. She will cross her legs under her frame and begin to pour. Just see.

So she writes, the noodles forgotten by the third forkful. 

It is not even noon yet. But she says:

Dear Journal,

Today was a hard day. I want to remove my brain. It doesn't work. I wish you were a person, so I could say this to you in person. I want to remove my brain and give it a nice, long wash. Sometimes I wonder if that is why I cut off my hair. 

I had an argument with them again. I did what I always do. I tried to be patient. I allowed my body language speak for me, but they don't like that. They never do. I exploded. I just couldn't anymore. Now they are avoiding me, and I'm afraid to reach out. I'm sorry. I know I said I would try this time. But I can't stand it. I don't like how they make me feel, and I'm not sure I like them, but I am desperate for company. Desperate to not be lonely, desperate to feel heard and loved and understood. 

I want to be somebody's best friend. I saw someone's tweets about their best friend, and I can feel myself getting even more jealous. I want a best friend. I want to be the first person that is called for good news and bad news and I want someone to choose me in a room full of people.

I'm so lonely oh my god. I— 

Imade was revealing too much. She is resting now.