Content Warnings: anxiety, panic attacks, medication, social ostracization, emotional abuse, shaming
Dear S******,
The first time I heard my mum cry, I shook in fear. I was covered in sweat. It was as if I was in our kitchen with the stuffy feel, the kitchen with no windows and trapped in heat from cooking.
You might be wondering why I call you S******, but truly I can’t imagine referring to you as a stranger.
I don’t tell strangers my thoughts or my fears or those things that make me straddle between oblivion and hope.
So I call you S****** because I like to imagine that you, while reading this, are someone close to me. Someone who holds my hand or a mirror of me at the least. A comfortable shoulder or someone with whom I’m in the same boat of life.
The day I heard my mother cry, it was her mother who had died. Although I wasn’t too close to my grandmother, the pain in my mother’s voice was a testament to a bond well-shared. A goodbye to something incomparable.
For months and years after, I never wanted to hear that cry again, in fact, I imagined how I would feel if I ever lost my mother.
The solid rock I can always trust. The dependable and loving woman.
For months, I would wake up startled and creep to check if she was in her bed. Sometimes I wake from a nightmare and listen to hear her footsteps.
If she travelled and I couldn’t reach her, I’d feel my heart in my mouth, fighting to keep up with my thoughts of dread.
Recently, I’ve taken to hugging her, my mom and even my dad and other loved ones. I let her cuddle sometimes. I listen to her voice and record us being silly. I try to memorise the scent of her skin, the cadence of her voice and any of her quirks.
Sometimes, I look in the mirror and bemoan the fact that we don’t look similar. Perhaps it would comfort me to see her in me or me in her. I take consolation that I couldn’t bear to see her face in any other person, even mine.
Currently I’m taking solace by taking each day at a time and hoping I find peace in the certainty of death for us all.
Your true friend.
———
Dear S******,
When the whisperings started at the market square and spread to every corner of the village, I knew it was the beginning of the end for S***.
S*** was a young woman with beautiful skin. She always looked sophisticated, like the sun amidst the drab clouds of the village.
The children admired her and the women envied her. No, they hated her. They hated that she made the men in the village, their husbands, sons, brothers and even their fathers turn more than twice to stare at her.
And because they lacked the audacity to confront their men folks, what better scapegoat than their sister of the “weaker sex”?
They hated that she seemed to have all the curves in the right places. The curves, not displaced by gruelling work or multiple child births.
They hated that she didn’t wear the flat shoes woven from tree ropes or the beautiful adire clothes meant for “proper women”.
So when the rumor started that S*** was beginning to lose weight, the women felt vindicated.
“She must have been following those rich, rich men around.”
“She must have spread her laps for yahoo boys.”
“I knew she was a loose woman.”
But Y*** knew the truth, she heard it directly from the sounds formed by S***’s own mouth.
“I was born with HIV, it has only gotten worse, medications are now expensive, the luxuries I’ve indulged myself with are just consolation for this stigma that I’m stuck with.”
Some months later, S*** left the village and was never seen again.
Till date, whenever Y*** passes in front of her former apartment, he wonders what has happened to S***?
