YOUR WAY

You were born this way, but you do not like that you were born this way. You have hated yourself and everything around you. But as you grew, you came to terms with this way. This way is your way. This way has to be the beginning of everything beautiful and colorful.

This way has to be your life.

When you were tender, that was when you started talking a certain way, walking in a way the society tagged feminine. Liking things the society says a boy shouldn’t. But these things didn’t matter – at least not yet, because you were tender and didn’t know anything yet. You just lived and were that beautiful boy everybody admired.

You grew up. 18 years it was. Everything began to change. Your elder sister began to hide her belongings from you. Your mother had hidden her wigs and jewelry from you, because you always wore them and admired yourself in the mirror. So they hid their things. It is not manly, they said. They did not you; it was your way they hated.

This hate came in different shades. The boys in your school who called you names, names you did not like. The girls who abhorred you because they felt threatened by your angelic voice and smooth skin. The home where everybody scoffed at you. The church where you were preached to about how your way is an abominable way. The market where you heard murmurs of “homo” and “onye ntu” every time you walked by.

This society did not see the man who lived near you, the one who wanted to sodomize you when you were 12, but who didn’t go through with it because his wife walked in and he lied that he was just about to send you on an errand. They did not see that senior in your school, the one who forced you to do all manner of things to his organ of mass destruction. They did not see Uncle Innocent, the one looked at you and touched you in ways you did not like.

They only see you, your way. They only see a single story about you, and that single story has cast all other stories about you into a shade – other beautiful stories that make you whole.

You have gone for deliverances – five of them. But this way still persists. You have knelt down to pray, the bible in your right hand, the praying oil in your left. You open your mouth to pray, but then you break down in tears. You do not cry because you cannot pray. You cry because you do not know what to pray for. Ask for deliverance? But you’ve had five of them, with five different pastors. So you just cry, until the tears dry up and you sleep.

Books are now your only comfort. You write to heal and to feel better, as I am writing to be forgiven. You find solace in books. You read about many things. The way people like you have lived, and are still living. You read about a boy who suffered more than you did but didn’t quit. You read about how you being this way is not odd, about how it has always been in the time past and still is. These books have widened your space of knowledge. They have given you hope. So you make a new resolution.

You walk out of that door, the one inside you that you shut against the world. You release yourself from the darkness and loneliness. It is like a new spirit is within you. You step out and look at the sky; it looks unusually beautiful, brilliantly azure. The leaves are greener, the soil richer, the weather kinder, and the birds are singing new melodies. It is the beginning of a new dawn – you can feel it, the beginning of everything colorful. This way you have found, this way you have loved.

Written by Meziem