Happy Sunday everyone! We are happy to share the last past of the “Bottles up” story by Ayomickey Paseda. We hope you have enjoyed the ride, we have also enjoyed it too. She will be back with more intriguing stories but for now, please comment and don’t forget to share.
How could she? On my wedding day! This is not my sister I don’t know who this is!”. I awake to find myself in my bed with a sharp pain in my head forcing me to lie back into position. I can hear semilore screaming at the top of her voice. She is talking to my parents and they are trying to calm her down. I feel really horribly to have caused a scene and if I could take it back, I would. I scramble to stand on my feet but they don’t feel like mine, so I fall heavily to the ground like humpty dumpty, letting out a loud yelp and causing attention. I hate this. My little family runs up to my room to help me and even though they are in fact helping, I can see the impatience written across their faces in bold and underlined font. Semilore, being the most impatient scolds me almost immediately, somewhat sounding like a bark, “Okiki, you need serious help”. “But I’m getting help” I reply in my head, knowing that they have run out of patience and sarcasm was only going to cause more harm. “You need to see a therapist sweetheart” my dad said almost immediately, agreeing with her. “We can’t deal with your drinking anymore…what happened to you in the states?” My mum cut in almost immediately, rolling her eyes. “What is therapy? When all the ministers in Nigeria have not finished… you will see Deacon Edwin for counseling”
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Therapy didn’t happen to have been a bad idea, only that it was with a man of God instead and I couldn’t drink anything other than virgin 5alive that has had someone’s nose in it and water straight from the dispenser sometimes when the certain supervisor felt I looked pale and hadn’t drank enough water. I went in to see the minister who happened to have been a close family friend at this charity organization he had founded for troubled kids at least three times a week, even though my parents wanted me to go more often and for longer sessions just so God could personally minister to my spirit and wash me white as snow, purging me from dead works. He later on handed me over to a much younger volunteer whom he felt I’d be able to relate more with, since I’m so stiff. The office has this therapeutic brown and white color code that kind of calms me and the office is always cold regardless of how hot the sun might have been on that day. Counseling is really nice until he starts asking questions like “You seem happier today. Great. What’s up?” “How do you feel today?” “Anything on your mind you’d like to talk about?” we then pray after every session, not asking for anything other than courage from God. The most recent question was “what would you rather drink, coffee or tea?” as he made his way for the kitchenette, realizing the irony in this, we both roared in laughter. For me, that was the big icebreaker because I’d rather talk about a thousand other things than what’s up or however I was feeling at that moment. He brought me a cup of chocolate tea which was even funnier because we were both wondering why one would buy a tea bag labeled ‘chocolate tea’ when in fact; one could have actual chocolate tea. Our little counseling session turned into a meeting amongst old friends and we happened to have talked about every other thing apart from how I was feeling. Jedidiah, the younger volunteer happened to be in his late twenties, just a few years older than I was and just finished with his masters in psychotherapy and was helping his dad, the minister with running the organization. Things started to go downhill when I stopped seeing him as a mere therapist that wanted to ‘cure’ me of my depression by asking me to talk about my depression which in fact is the most painful side effect of not being heavily drunk all the time and praying for me. I started noticing little things about him like the scar at the left side of his head which he happened to have acquired when he was a much younger trouble maker. I started noticing beautiful things like the way his eyes glistened when he talked about cars and other things he was passionate about. Slowly at first, strong affiliations began to grow amid us, igniting an uncomfortable fire until it transpired to certain chemistry and we were doomed. The counseling sessions left the cold brown and white office and conveyed into beach trips and dinners at the country club, long phone calls and more personal visits to one another’s homes. Something else ticked off in me, I began to feel less and more at the same time. The feeling was overwhelming, somewhat like alcohol, but different in a very good way. At the same time, the feeling was scary, asserting to ecstasy. It left a new habit in me and I began to pray whenever I was scared. I didn’t feel like drinking anymore, at least not to drown my feelings. I liked the new feelings, the maelstrom in my head whenever my phone rang and the peace I felt whenever I read the bible.
Everything was going well until I decided to open up to him.
It was a Saturday and we were lying together on his couch, side by side with his arms wrapped around me, imitating two sardines stuck in a can while watching the Saturday morning show on galaxy channel. I turned around without thinking, looking him straight in the eye because I needed him to know something, fully aware that if I didn’t say it then, I may never say it again. I knew that letting someone else know about what I was thinking, was going to be the final healing I needed and I needed him to know about the monsters in my head always eating at me. “I was raped”. I caught him totally off-guard and I could sense the immediate goose bumps on him and the hair on his hands were standing. He took a minute to absorb this new information, his eyes perplexed and then he hugged me, “oh, Okiki”. That’s all he said but it felt like he had just ordered the soldiers in my tear ducts to make it rain and I shuddered in pain, letting feelings pour out of me and on to his shirt. The feelings that I had managed to conceal for close to four years- the feelings that I had so desperately tried to drown. The therapy session I had dreaded and managed to escape from started but not in that shallow and cold way between people who are not inclined to one another in any way, having no form of relationship. This was between two codependent friends and lovers if what may and so I felt at ease.
I told Jedi everything about the rape and about my daughter. It happened to be in the first year of my master’s program in America. I was off campus and living with a friend of mine and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend loved to throw parties every weekend and he always asked to throw it at our place. At first, I was only offended because he never paid rent or bought any groceries and instead spent all his money on buying party junk food and drugs. I spoke to my friend about it and she kind of eased me in, convincing me that she was going to break up with him sooner or later and that I should just tolerate him. He was the perfect example of a bum and I always wondered why she was with him. I really thought that was the worst possible case scenario; having a roommate with a lousy asshole boyfriend, but fate told me I was wrong. He raped me on a rainy day in the middle of April. My roommate, Sheryl, a biracial south African had gone out for a class and she didn’t come back until it was too late. It started to rain that evening and I ran out from my room in my floral nightdress to the balcony to remove our shoes that had been ruined from the rain some days before. “Sheryl, I can’t believe you haven’t brought in our shoes since all these days” I scream at her. No responses, then I remember she had left the apartment a few hours ago. I want to believe that that was the moment he realized that we were the only ones in the apartment and his mind started to roam. I got back to my room, forgetting to lock the door behind me as usual and he followed me in. “would you care for a sandwich?” he had asked with a smile on his face almost mimicking good intentions. I sat at my chair and pressed the space bar on my laptop to continue with the movie I was watching, “no thank you Idris, I just had the spaghetti from last night”, I said barely looking up from my laptop. He came into the room and sat on my bed boldly, I turned to look at him almost immediately, shocked at his audacity but bidding myself to calm down and at least be friendly. In a cockish smile, he said, “what are you really up to?” In a twinkle of an eye, before I could give a response, he grabbed my hand and pulled me from my chair, yanking me to the floor. I make to say “what the fuck Idris?” but my brain immediately tells me what the fuck is going on when he pins my hands to the ground and hovers over me. At this point, I switch to survival mode and try hardest to fight him off, screaming and crying but he is too strong and my best is too weak. He had his way with me for a minute that felt like a thousand years, I could see my whole life flashing before my eyes and then exploding in a ball of flames, just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. It was over for me and I didn’t want to breathe anymore. He got up immediately he was done and said “I’m sorry, please don’t tell Sheryl” and walked out of my room like he hadn’t just killed me. What can a corpse say when she has no words. Sheryl came back to the apartment a few hours later with all the excitement and energy absorbed from the world. She had bumped into her role model who happened to be a professor at the university and in fact the reason why she had chosen to come to this university in the first place and managed to secure a dinner date with him. She had just had the best, most marvelous day of her life. “Oh shoes! I’m so sorry okiki, did you manage to bring in our shoes before the rain hit them again?” remembering one of her numerous big mistakes just as she had finished telling her wonderful story. I looked at her, without trying to hide my disgust and went over to the freezer, filled my ‘oh happy day’ mug with vodka and walked back to my room.
I moved out of that apartment two days later and started living on campus. I tried hard to forget everything and just move on. For the first three weeks, my biggest problem was bumping into Sheryl at school because seeing her made me remember everything from that night. Then I started taking a flask around with me, to shut out the voices in my head. I got into trouble with the authorities at school a couple of times for illicit behavior, never minding, just because I didn’t care anymore. I got sick later on, went to the hospital and found out I was pregnant. In as much as that was the hardest news that had hit me in months, I felt absolutely nothing. I was already 7 weeks into the pregnancy. In stoical, I deferred my admission for a year at the university and told my family back at Nigeria that I was signing up for an exchange program in Tokyo and would be back a year after my supposed return to Nigeria. Being pregnant with a product of rape, I changed locations to a cheaper area and got a job at a mini-mart until the latter trimester of the pregnancy when i met with a social worker and spoke to her about giving up my baby. I put to bed sometime in January and gave my baby out to a couple I had only met once and burnt all bridges, trying to forget about the whole incident. Time flew past, but the memories lingered on.
I didn’t realize how long I had been talking for until he yawned, although not in a way that seemed as though he were bored; I checked the time only to see that it was 5 o’clock in the evening. This time I was on the floor with my legs folded in and he was on the sofa facing me and giving me his full attention. “I should go, it’s getting late” I said, taking a sip of water he had brought for me in a cup during the discussion, standing from my seated position and stretching. “You need to see her”, he finally said after long hours of listening. He hesitates almost immediately but without relent, he stands up, meeting my eyes with his,. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to” he continues in a stutter. “But Okiki I know the thought of what she looks like has been driving you crazy and how things would have been if you didn’t…”
“If I didn’t what?” I scream in, interrupting him. “What do you know about how I feel…? I just finally open up to you and you’re making assertions so quickly about what has been driving me crazy” I say with tears in my eyes without realizing that I’m vibrating, angry that he had just hit the nail right on the spot but too proud to admit that he had just read my mind so easily. Too amused to acknowledge that he isn’t just a dragonfly that hovers round this pond, he is a bird that pecks at it. I guess this should be one of the perks of dating your therapist. He rests his hands simultaneously on my shoulders, looking at me with knowing eyes “you should go look for her”.
