Breaking Patterns : Evading difficult Situations( Confrontation) and Conversations

When I was younger my mom would always tell me I couldn’t eat my cake and have it. Back then I thought she was just being a Nigerian mom, “I’m sure it really doesn’t work that way in the real world” I thought to myself with a funny face because my mom always talked about the real world. I was wrong and most probably 9 years old, between then and now so much has happened. I have realized that when my mom said the “ real world” it wasn’t a superficial part of her imagination, it was real and I would come to realize that I was in a bubble all my life and one day I’d go to college and my bubble would dissipate. All my life I had a strategy that worked for me, push it away and never have to deal with it again. But you see for every push I made back then; it would require a pull when I got into “the real world”. Growing up the last among three, confrontation was not my best option, my sisters are 4 and 8 years older than me, there was never a fight I won.  Mostly because I was a wimpy kid and not very good with words and expressing myself. I got into secondary school and the game changed, it was more malicious but pushing it away subtly like I used to do before was not working , my bubble was losing its strength , things were penetrating , too much information , things I could not push away , it was too much for me . My beautiful bubble of innocence was gone, I needed a new bubble and I needed it fast.

  As at the time my bubble disappeared I was twelve years old and somewhere in my junior secondary school education, I was weak ,tired , the weight of life had me dusty and muddy, memories of bullies and many other traumatic things that had happened to me that I pushed away were back , so they were there , lying around in my head, leaving me at loss for words, speechless and Numb. And so, Anne decided to die, there was no point living, I had a full proof plan,drink Sniper (poison) and die, end this. It never occurred to me that I could talk to my parents, sisters, friends or even anyone because God forbid it that I’d have a difficult conversation, be vulnerable and look weak. Death was the solution to me. I’m alive so you know that didn’t work out. My housekeeper found the perfect mixture of poison and orange juice under my bed (I wanted to die like a baby girl, BG4L). She promised not to tell, and she didn’t, but I had to promise her I’d never do it again, I did it again but this time in school. I remember people not knowing the half of it, spreading rumors, saying things that never happened. I won’t go into the details, but my parents were called to take me home. I saw my mom tear up “ I realized she was asking me why with her eyes” but God forbid that I’d tell the woman who carried me for months what was wrong , I’d push it away and I kept pushing things away but because I had no bubble they came right back.

So, I built the bubble of anger. This bubble was so effective and yet so consuming. It was so humongous that it started to change me, the quiet soft-spoken girl became loud, aggressive, bold and everything else. That bubble stayed for so long, stayed until I turned 16 and then I proceeded to have the worst mental breakdown of my life. It happened on a Tuesday in my genetics class, I really don’t remember what triggered it but I remember my class mate asking a question about evolution and my favorite teacher ever (absolutely love her , she made genetics worth my time)launched into a lecture on change and the tears started dropping from my eyes , she was talking about evolutionary change of course but somehow it hit a sore spot. I had a panic attack, I’m asthmatic so you know that went 7 times worse than a normal panic attack, I realized that my professor’s lecture on evolution just destroyed my bubble, my sanctuary. They took me to the school clinic , they said I had a panic attack, the Nigerian in me was so scared of losing her pride that she started laughing , “Nigerians don’t get panic attacks that’s some western thingy” I said. The doctor smiled , and they brought a therapist in because apparently I had given them a reason to think I was mental ( I really don’t think this way anymore about therapy but that’s what I made of the situation at the time). The Nigerian in me was extra angry, I refused to speak to her. “How can a Nigerian be having problems like this, heck no” I thought to myself. The dean of my department and the vice chancellor walked in, my grades were dropping, I was an active participant in the 4-star academic program, they weren’t asking me, they were telling me. So, I sat in front of the school therapist convinced I was not going to utter a word. But my pride made me say “I don’t want to be here” and the conversation started. She was good at her job because after a few minutes I started talking. That was almost a year ago, not too long ago. I’ve had to go to therapy every week since that incident and I realized that so much of my pent up anger and frustration could have been washed away by proper communication and problem solving skills, so many things that daunted and taunted me from my childhood I could have solved by just had an honest conversation with my mom or someone else , it should never have gotten that bad.

            Now every day when I wake up, I decide to make sure to deal with everything that happens in that day before the day ends because if it rolls over, my peace of mind vanishes. The truth is I’ve found that ultimately its so hard for me to tell the ones that I love the most that they are fucking pissing me off and need to come correct. It also hard for me to stand my ground when they violate me or disrespect my self-worth. I know it sounds crazy but talking about things that bother you actually help. Now DON’T TALK WHEN YOU ARE BOILING WITH RAGE, BAD IDEA!!!!! It is quite easy most times now to say, hey I love you but you’re fucking messing with me and add a nice smile. I’ve learnt a few things about conversations. One of them is to never go in there with anger. The other is to listen , not hear , don’t listen so you can come up with a nice response , listen so you can understand the other persons perspective and if someone is opening up to you don’t judge. Another thing is, bring your facts straight, if you’re upset about something, you need to know why, what it is and have a way out, be it a confrontation or conversation. Most importantly you need to understand that some difficult conversations might be with a person who is not willing to listen or is probably nonchalant and or ignorant, so you go ahead to respectfully speak your peace and dip.

             Sometimes difficult conversations bring about goodbyes and bring out secrets and lies and pain and anger. So, don’t walk around thinking it’s a piece of cake especially since not speaking your piece can bring so much disruption and pain. it isn’t and honestly as times goes on, you’ll spot your weaknesses and work on them. I just had a conversation yesterday that might be a goodbye forever to someone I love , did I cry , heck yes , was the conversation necessary hell yes , does this person know that I love her , I hope so. This year has been messy honestly, I’ve lost a lot of people in my life for growth to happen and I’m not going to say its been easy or I didn’t make any mistakes but I’m going to tell you a secret no one ever told me about arguments and tricky conversations. Attack the problem and not the person.

Thank you, this has been The Inspo with Anne.