How I wish!

I wish I could choose the kind of person I wanted to be but no. It's the other way around. You just grew up discovering yourself, noticing those potentials, gifts and talents. Sometimes, we don't know how powerful or supernatural we are until people start attracting some weird attention. I think in my own case, I will blame my gift for all the suffering I passed through in my childhood. In fact, between the ages 5 and 10, I have lived with 12 different families, "That girl is ogbanje! ( a local term for possessed girl), she must leave", a statement that echoed from my past all because I could see and hear what others couldn't.

"But I didn't create myself..." I told my father who has only been the one by my side. I used to feel he was the only one who understood me on earth, until his passing. He fought so hard to stay alive to take care of me as if he already knew living in this world without him to defend his special ability would be war. I grew up to know only one parent, and that was my father. I heard my mother dropped me for him at the age of 2 because he didn't have money and they were living in abject poverty, which my mother could no longer endure. So, she left us but my father decided to keep me and he struggled so hard to provide for me.

As I was growing, life became more difficult for my father because most people did not like his only daughter. Whenever, there was an argument in the compound and neighbours lied against one another, I would suddenly intervene and state the matter as it was, which most times vindicated the ones that have been wrongly accused. People used to wonder how I was able to know that much even when I wasn't at the scene. In fact, it got to a stage where they started calling me names in the neighborhood. Many would call me "witch" some would call me "Tule-tule" (the one that scatters family), which used to displease my father because he knew I wasn't a bad child, I only had a gift. It got to a stage where no one wanted to look after me, whenever my father was going to farm. They would ask my father to take me along. Maybe because they all had their secrets which they didn't want exposed. My father only had a bicycle and taking me along on a bicycle to farm wasn't anything my father liked and just when he asked me to sit in front of our room in the compound, neighbours would have beaten me to stupor before his arrival.

So, my father started taking me to stay with his relatives in another village. At first, it was with Uncle Jude and his wife. I heard they had been married for a good ten years without children. I was also told they had taken several concoctions and gone for medical consultations with no results. My father told me all these when he was begging that I should be a good child to them. "Judy, be nice to your uncle and his wife when you get to their house o. You know they have been married without children..." My father continued, "It is not everything your eyes see that you must say o". I nodded in agreement till I got to my uncle's place. They welcomed me warmly and I started to live with them. My uncle was so fond of me and his wife also seemed to like me until I called her husband one day, "Papa, why don't you stop wasting your money on medical consultations and concoctions, since your wife is not ready to give..." I hadn't even concluded when the wife bumped in. "Judy! What do you mean I'm not ready?" "Why are you telling my husband to stop spending on me?" Hey! It was trouble in paradise. I never wanted a problem between the couple o, if not that I saw the wife talking to some strange beings that no ordinary eyes could see, while putting her leg on the wall, in her room. So, I went straight to call her husband to the scene but he could only see her on the bed with her leg on the wall but couldn't see nor hear what she was saying to the strange beings that she didn't want a child with her husband. So, my uncle asked me to leave her and we both went outside where I was asking my uncle not to spend any money on her again. She didn't even allow me to tell her husband what I saw and heard her say to the mysterious beings she was talking to in her room, when she rushed out of her sleep to attack me, "Why would you ask my husband to stop medical consultations with me?" She kept ranting, "You must leave my house, you are a witch!". My eyes were filled with tears. I knew I had disappointed my father, I would be sent back to him. I was wondering why I talked in the first place, but it wasn't my fault. I only shared what I saw, I didn't mean to call my aunty a witch.

That was how I was sent back to my father's village. There I found my father on a sickbed fighting for his life. It was as if my arrival complicated my father's state of health. Things became extra difficult for us until I lost my father amidst the hardship. That was how I continued moving from one relative to the other and they kept chasing me away because of my ability to see and hear things mysteriously. I sometimes pray the gift be taken away because it appeared I couldn't manage it and it kept landing me in problems. But I guess God doesn't want to take it away from me and now that I have grown, I know how to manage it better as I now rarely say what I see.

Thanks for reading.

Picture is sourced from metaAi.