Ibilola’s Bits and Bobs

STICKS AND STONES

Some of us are pacifists by nature.  We dislike quarrels and cannot abide fights or malice. although not for want of trying. Growing up, my extroverted sister often trampled all over my sensitive heart.

One day at the age of thirteen, as a punishment for hurting me one time too many, I decided to ‘cut her off’.

Every morning, I would come out of my room and run into her in the hallway, kitchen or at breakfast table, or anytime she would make some excuse to come into my room, my heart would skip a beat.  That would happen every single time I saw her. After a couple of days, I decided to hide out in my room just so I would not have to  see her but it did not work. Every time I heard her voice, my heart would skip a beat again.  Having discovered my inherent aversion towards malice and keeping scores, it turned out to be more of a punishment for me. Unable to keep it up, I ‘magnanimously’ forgave her and had to face the fact that I could not hold a grudge. Still cannot.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words could never hurt me”. I don’t know who coined that little poem but they apparently did not have someone like me in mind.  Words cut deep into my heart. I could never say what I did not mean and I would often mull over the words that were spoken to me in my very literary home for days. It seemed that my Father and I were perhaps the only ones who were somewhat literally challenged. My Mum was not shy to say what she meant and led by my rabble-rousing sister, my siblings were very expressive also. In fact, witty comebacks were the order of the day at work or at play in my home and although I could always get the joke, I usually got lost pondering the genuine applicability of the retort to the situation, especially if it was a little mean or derisive, so I could never get round to a come-back on the quick like my siblings could. In fact, I remember a couple of friends who came to my home just to get involved in our word-offs.  I was deeply curious and asked a lot of questions, which no one ever had the time to answer (no  one that is, except my Dad).  My elder brother gave me the nick-name “Why Dad, Why?” after a cartoon character in one of the weekly comics that were delivered by the Paper-man to my home.  My reticence presented a problem in the world of me because I was very sensitive and often felt misunderstood as a child and teenager.  I also had a weird involuntary selective amnesia towards things that distressed me. So I would never remember what my sister said or did to upset me, while she would recount the events to our Mother, showing herself in the best possible light. In a desperate attempt to convey my feelings verbally, I would often muddle the sequence of events up. I was toast in the face of my sister’s superior oration and account of wrongs done. Consequently I got blamed for ‘not acting grown up’, chastised to ‘be the bigger person’, scolded to ‘let her have the last say’, as if she did not have more than enough to say all the time!

Consequently, I retreated into my shell and spent more time in my room planning how to run away or daydreaming about a long-lost twin with whom  I would one day be re-united. One day, I decided to write about my feelings.  Something clicked! In the sanctuary of my room, I discovered I had a super-power: I could write up a storm.  Writing was my catharsis, my sanity. When I wrote, I was unhindered. I was brilliant. For every witty retort I failed to muster when I was having a word-off with my sister, I could write down a dozen when I got into the secure space of my heart and writing. I could never find the words to speak in an argument because no matter what they  said to me, I could never bear to see the hurt on the face of the person to whom I meant to speak the mean words that I tried t o push past my lips. Being introverted, I spent a lot of time exploring and dissecting my feelings and I found that the more introspective I became, the more I wrote. I often thought about the world I lived in, often cried about my Country. In an attempt to make sense of the world around me, I started to philosophize in poetry. I would write dozens of letters to members of my family who had hurt me. The letters would not be sent, but I felt better writing about the things that hurt me and my sense of isolation slowly faded away in my magical literary world.