Out of the Cocoon: The Journey to Becoming

OUT OF THE COCOON—THE JOURNEY TO BECOMING

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction

Who am I?

The Threat to Innocence

The Threat to Identity and Security

Growing Pains

EGG: The Seeming Randomness of Being

Version 2.0

Unbearable Silence

The Partiality of Luck

Songbird

The Creator vs Created

Love and its Prison

A Chimera’s Child

A Broken Spirit

LARVA: The Expandable Mold, the Blueprint

Stealth

Assimilation

A Gossip

The Mirror Within

Before We Get Too Old

A Star Can Wish Too

An Invader doesn’t Say Hello

The Love Mark

The Way We Write

The Trail of Truth

The Value of a Second

Alien vs Citizen

The Dying Flower

CHRYSALIS: Growth in Stillness, Protection in Stillness

The Night is Crying

Tomorrow Will Come

The Rain

New Glasses

The Race

Letting it Fly

When Meditation Dumps the Weight

When Bad Dreams Come True

BUTTERFLY: Maturity and Fruitfulness

Awakening a Phoenix

Home

Life in Reverse

When Love was Pure

Blackness and Me

Chasm

A Child Conquers the Beast

To Feel Sad is Human

This is Faux Blackness

Hope is Good for the Soul

When You Shrink Your Circle

Upside Down Truth

THE END

AN INTRODUCTION:

I love who I am today. But this wasn’t always the case.

For one thing, I love that I am in a state of constant change, always striving for my sheer pleasure, self-realization, and growth. I have been on such a quest for as long as I can remember. Though despite my efforts, it has taken me some time (not to mention some painful memories) to realize that I am continually growing and maturing. Even as I feel grounded in my foundation, I am also an aspiration, an unlimited potential. In my efforts to pursue myself, I discovered that my “self” is expandable, adaptable yet grounded—changing but still true to my core nature.

This knowledge of “me” as an expandable self, capable of unlimited growth, unlimited changes, is in line with my understanding of my creator’s intention of me as an unlimited being, a reflection of him. I am not one thing, and my purposes are many. I am not a statue that remains frozen in time, frozen in a purpose. I evolve.

I used to fight my inevitable evolution. I misinterpreted the challenges in my life, the seemingly endless and frequent stop signs, as omens that I was on the wrong path; floundering, purposeless... I saw each scar on my body as evidence of my flaws, instead of proof of my beauty, my growing wisdom, and my earned maturity that has paid the price with experience.

I have learned that my own journey mirrors that of a butterfly’s life cycle. A butterfly, an exquisite flying beauty begins as an egg, a random being. It goes on to develop into a larva, a time characterized by immense growth or change. Then it becomes a chrysalis, which is characterized by a time of apparent stillness or death but is really a period of immense inward change and protection. Finally, the fully matured, radically different-appearing butterfly emerges. It can do amazing things that its predecessors could not: it can fly and make new versions of itself. The average butterfly lives for about two to four weeks. The average human, however, lives for about 73 years—that’s roughly 950 to 1900 lifetimes for a butterfly. Like a butterfly, I will undergo multiple metamorphosis. I will have many opportunities to reinvent myself, to mature, or to grow into a better version of myself.

This book of poetry is a celebration of who I am, of who I am becoming. I hope it challenges you to embrace who you are and to pursue your unique nature. There’s one in 400 billion chances of you. You owe it to yourself to discover and learn about yourself. You owe it to yourself and your creator to explore your full potential.

WHO AM I?

To understand who I am and am becoming, I must understand who I was and have been. To be my mature self, I must understand the necessity of my past self, no matter how much I may be tempted to dislike her or wish she had an alternate experience.

Gold is precious and beautiful. Shiny and eye-catching, you need no prior experience with gold to know it to be valuable. Yet, the past life of raw gold was not pretty. It “suffered” at the hands of a torture device that emanates heat. Gold can never be gold without having suffered the body-breaking heat-based mining process. Maturity is understanding that if one truly values one’s current self and its beauty, then the past was necessary, even if it was horrifically unpleasant or undesired. Those who cannot embrace the past for what it was and is become insecure and prone to self-destruction. They fight the past, and they seek to destroy all who were involved in it. These past-phobic people then wonder why they can find no peace in their present bodies and minds. They wonder why they feel so deflated, so defeated. The answer is simple: you are using yourself as a weapon with which to fight yourself. It is the very definition of self-destruction. You cannot use the good that you became because of the bad you were exposed to then fight the bad that caused you to become good, because doing so would cause you to cease to become good. If “bad you” never existed, then good you would never exist either. Maturity is learning to embrace the past while keeping it at a distance. Acknowledging its necessary presence and using it as your power to self-actualization to whomever you want to be.

In my life, there were two critical events that shaped who I am today. The first was the sexual abuse I experienced as a child in my native country of Nigeria—the destruction of my innocence. I learned rather early in life the threat to steal my body’s control from me, the threat to subject me to a certain slavery where I lose my autonomy. I fought an uphill battle to have full authority over my body, even as I had to display it to the world as part of social interaction. How to express myself physically and still have a “do not touch” sign on it. Do not touch, not because it is fragile, but do not touch because my body is mine, not yours, even if it is constantly in public view.

The second critical turning point was my immigration to the United States, where I experienced identity or cultural abuse—the threat to identity and security. I found myself caught in the tension between who I aspired to be and who society told me I was. I had to learn to value my mind, to ignore and defy expectations; I had to learn that I am an important part of my society, even if it does not see me. The human body has different parts, each with its own function. The body would not live to its full potential, would not function at its best if any part of it is missing or malfunctioning (either from disuse or misuse). I had to have the conviction that I am a necessary part of my society, for its own good. This allowed me to dodge some otherwise emotionally destructive arrows, to get up no matter how many times I fell or failed.

THE THREAT TO INNOCENCE:

Nigerian culture firmly believes that the community raises the child. Just like the phrase “it takes a village,” the community is invested in the education and growth of each child. If a child does something publicly that would reflect poorly on the group, any adult is within their authority as an adult in that community to correct that child and then report the child to their parents. In this culture, where experience and wisdom are held in high esteem, elders are valued. People look forward to aging, to being important. Childhood is, after all, only a phase in your life, but you are an adult for the rest of your life. As a child, I grew up knowing I was going to become important, that my society looked forward to my maturity and my contribution to it. I loved this about my culture. Unfortunately, our community is not without its evil, evil that preys on this good nature.

My parents were well-known and respected, so we commonly had “uncles” or “aunties” come to our home, many of whom I had no certainty were my biological kin — and it didn’t matter; it was normal to refer to strangers as “brothers” or “uncles.” So, when one of these community members does something wrong, the norm is to be forgiving, because we’re one community. As a result, as a pre-teen child, I endured unacceptable touching and fondling of my genitals when I was too young to even have the vocabulary or knowledge to name it, when I was too young to know if it was good or bad, but old enough to know that it just didn’t feel right. It felt wrong enough that I didn’t tell my parents, for fear maybe I was in the wrong somehow or asked for it. The bliss and dagger of ignorance.

You could say I lost my virginity to a finger, the likely very dirty finger of one of my male peers—also a child. I was in the bathroom getting ready to use it when one of my peers rushed into the same bathroom. I’m uncertain if he was intending to use it himself and found me in his space accidentally. Instead of reaching inside his pants to bring out his urinary conduit, he stepped close to me and, without warning, inserted his finger into my vagina and pulled his finger forcefully out. I remembered nothing else. I didn’t, couldn’t, dare to look at him. He somehow vanished like he had never been there. My virginity was lost so casually, so unapologetically, it almost seemed like it was all in my head. That is until the blood trickled down my thigh, when I felt a delayed cinching pain in my genitals that lasted for days…pain that taught me an unknown part of my anatomy. I looked in the mirror to examine this new body part under me, and I saw an unfamiliar small pink flesh with jagged edges sticking out of my vagina. I did not know how to process this occurrence. It was jarring. It left me speechless. It left me thoughtless, so I abandoned it. I shoved it into the part of my brain for forgetting things that are unforgettable and traumatic. Does it count as a traumatic occurrence if it didn’t mean to be? It does not. This experience was one of the many that I would have in the subsequent years—experiences that challenged me to stop and cease to exist, just long enough for the pain to pass me without scathing me. The pain left a scar that I could not explain.

Speaking of cease to exist. I would take the jarring experience of ripping flesh over the quiet stillness of pretending to be absent. Yet, these latter experiences were frequent enough. In the middle of the night, me, the girl famous for being a living log when asleep, wakes up suddenly to a warmth (a mere warmth) on my genitals. It is always dark, and I open my eyes in the darkness to feel a body over me. I suffocate my breath. I hold perfectly still, to pretend like I’m still sleeping, to deny the existence of this trauma. Hot, tubular flesh rubbing against my genitals, though no entrance into the corridor of my girlhood. Not that that makes the experience better. I endure it until the body finding satisfaction vanishes. In the early occurrences, I was confused and didn’t know who to tell or if I should tell. As time passed and I became more knowledgeable and wiser, I knew this was wrong, and he stopped, almost as suddenly as my realization occurred. Isn’t it ironic? His persistence in this emotionally defiling act persisted because I claimed ignorance, because I continued to shut my eyes, to deny the existence of what my body and mind knew was evil. I should have yelled. I should have screamed. I should have kicked him where it hurt. I should have marched up to my parents and spilled my guts about this wolf in sheep’s clothing. But I didn’t. How could I?

Our minds come with different mindsets. It is of no use to wish for this or that. What is important is to understand your mind, know what kind of mindset it has, and then work to improve it to be what you want and need it to be. I used to wish I was of the childhood mind to scream and attack, that I had an environment that taught me that a wolf may put on sheep’s clothing, so beware. I didn’t. So, what now? Am I to be damaged in my mind forever, reliving a past I am powerless to change, wishing for thoughts and actions I did not know were at my disposal? No. I am more than my past. I have become wiser about dangers and the duplicitous nature of man. I have become a forgiver of my perpetrators. I did not want to forgive at first. In fact, I let hatred fill my heart. I justified my hatred because of their ugliness and vileness in destroying my innocence. I did not quickly see that by my hatred; I became them…I became ugly, and I destroyed my remaining innocence…the purity of my soul.

As anyone who has been hurt by someone’s despicable action would tell you, you want to tell your story. You want to be heard. You want to avoid another person’s hurt by another reckless and debasing person. But abuse is not pretty. No one wants to hear about it. No one wants to be conscious of the existence of the varieties of evil that are locked away in each of us, for fear that knowledge might unlock its chains. It is easier to write than to speak. But how does one write about abuse in a way that is digestible? In a way that does not prevent someone from reaching for their expresso or munching on their free donut, but still afterwards create a spark, an indignation in the heart that makes everyone consciously lose their appetite?

As a teenager, I was plagued with angry and hateful thoughts that I could not control, thoughts that initially submitted to my wishes and hurts but were now overpowering me, rendering me absent, yet again. Anger had been my weapon of choice in laying my fury on my might or could-have-been perpetrators. It was effective in repelling those who needed meek and mild girls at their disposure, even without their consent. But my anger had no restraint, it did not know foe from friend. I insulated myself well, but it was a lonely life, a vigilant life that I did not want. Realizing how my own defenses and my protection were backfiring, I knew there had to be another way.

It was at this stage that I entered a chrysalis cycle. I looked the same and even acted the same initially, but my thoughts were vastly different. I was undergoing a mental metamorphosis, a profound inward change. In this chrysalis cycle (because I’ve undergone many), I was being transformed by the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christian principles gave me a new way of thinking, a new way of defining myself and of understanding and interacting with the people around me. It was in this cycle that I learned the radical idea that I, too, have been evil to someone, somewhere. That my actions, unbeknownst to me, have hurt someone. As I came to see my evil and vile potential, I sought to be free from it, to be different. I learned I cannot fight hate with hate. I cannot seek justice for murder by committing murder. I cannot denounce the actions of my enemies yet have the attitude of my enemies. The greatest duplicity of all is to think one is unlike one’s enemy.

Under the right circumstances, one can be like the enemy. Of course, I would never be so vile and so selfish as to abuse a child. I would never have such base desires, I say. But it’s okay if I hate all men, if I find them repulsive and inflict them with aggression, because it satisfies my desire (for revenge, for justice) ….

When I emerged out of that cocoon, I emerged a butterfly, wholly different in my mind from the egg and larva I had been. But those stages were necessary for my current, beautiful form. I realized that I became the forgiving person I am now because I was repeatedly wronged. Because of my negative childhood experience, I am raising my kids in an environment that is communal, but one that also teaches them about wolves who masquerade as sheep, so they can become screamers and yellers, so they can advocate for themselves and preserve their innocence. I teach them to understand that anything that needs to be done in darkness bears the tattoos of the devil himself. And if all else fails, I have technological eyes all over my house for those evil that reveal themselves only in the dark when sleep has won. The evil knows and my kids know there are eyes everywhere. These eyes bring me peace. I don’t have to wonder who to trust, who is the wolf. I can enjoy my party.

My sexual abuse was the impetus to becoming a more loving and forgiving self. I cannot fight vile with vile, as I once did, because it didn’t work, and I became someone of whom I was not proud. I see too many wronged and abused young women perishing in their personal life because of the hatred with which they have coated their hearts. They have lost themselves in the pain and indignity of their abuse. Their innocence was fractured by these perpetrators, but in their attempt to pursuing justice (which is right and fair) for the wrong done to them, they welcomed hatred, bitterness, and unforgiveness into their own hearts, fracturing their own hearts and minds in the process. These young women no longer know peace, joy, or love. I will consider this book a success if just one person out there, through my story, understands that there is another way. I do not condone what happened to me and I will seek justice for them as I see fit, but I will restrict my abuse to where it belongs, my past, and I will not let it defile me. I will no longer let it alter who I am supposed to be. Rather, I will use my abuse as a steppingstone to my best self, my most accomplished self, as defined by me. My abuse history is part of his story. My story is completely of my creation. I reclaim my title of boss of my life. What other sensible way is there? I mean, truly, what other rational way is there?

THE THREAT TO IDENTITY AND SECURITY:

In Nigeria as well as other developing countries, education is the ticket to our dreams. It is the charm to break the curse of generational poverty; the key to a successful life. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, you must have money to get an education and walk the road of opportunity. So, it is understandable that my dad sacrificed all that he had to help us come to America so that we could pursue and attain our educational goals and immerse ourselves in the land of opportunity.

What we didn’t know was that even in America, there is elitism. Although it is easier to get an education in America and seize opportunity, it still comes at a cost, including the cost of living a life of debt. In America, everyone is in debt, from credit cards for daily living, to student loans for education, mortgages, and business loans. It takes a psychological toll to know that you are always (except for the wealthy) worth less than zero, that you must keep working, keep running on the wheel to maintain the status quo. This is a hard concept for our Nigerian mind…we see what looks like a great lifestyle, the degrees, the nice homes, the nice things and fancy clothes, but it is a hard shift to accept a life of debt, which is a foreign concept to a typical Nigerian, where daily living requires that you pay for everything upfront. American life takes a psychological toll because of the scarcity of rest (compared to other countries), the constant churning that never takes a break. We have vacations we don’t use. We accumulate unused vacation time as trophies of our dedication to a life of work—trophies of success.

As a 16-year-old in America, I was living the dream of my Nigerian peers. I was in the land of opportunities, where dreams come true. I did not know that I would trade my confidence, my pride in myself as a young, capable black woman, to one of insecurity and inferiority. I had a difficult time understanding the implicit and sometimes explicit messages I got that because I was a black girl, that somehow made me a less serious, less capable, and less intelligent student. The ingrained belief that I could be anything I aspired to be soon included the caveat, “with some exceptions.” It became common knowledge among my peers that certain positions, certain statuses, were simply out of reach. It killed my spirit to know that my growth had limits; that I was somehow less than simply because I was in this body. It created an anxiety to perform, to prove that I’m different from the generalizations. I realized that even in America, I was not free; I had to pretend to be absent, again.

Every black student I observed who was not academically minded became proof of what was said about my kind, my race. It was an unfair assessment, to be sure, but unavoidable. Even in a class of geniuses, there will always be those among them who don’t perform as well as the other prodigies. This does not, however, invalidate them as geniuses. Yet, the surrounding pressure made me feel that even one substandard student was evidence of our inferiority, deficiency, and low worth. Then, as if to seal the deal, as a relatively new immigrant in Bronx, NYC, I saw on TV the killing of a 23-year-old unarmed African (Guinean) person, Amadou Diallo, by 19 bullets from the 41 gunshots of four white police. These officers were later acquitted of all charges. Amadou’s last words to his mom, just days before he was killed, had been, “Mom, I’m going to college.” No life is worth raiding 41 bullets at, not even of the worst criminal, let alone a youth, one who spoke multiple languages and dreamt of making his own way in life.

The murder of this young African who, just like me, had left his home country in West Africa to advance himself further harmed my understanding of my place in society. I didn’t understand the depth of that damage until many years later, but I was already suffering from their effects starting then. My nervousness around police officers stemmed from that experience as a teen. My vigilance when I find myself a minority, which I invariably was, stemmed from those early years as an immigrant teenager from a vast continent people commonly referred to as a country. I, however, stayed focused on my goal to get an education despite the jests about my accent or about clothes on my African body, or the discouragement of having my high school English teacher in the USA correct (and mark wrong) my spelling of English words that I had learned since my elementary years. “Spelt” is not a word, it is not “colour,” but color. I had to abandon my use of “booths” for trunks. I learned that if I wanted to be in America, I must shed who I used to be. If I wanted to be American, I had to embrace a new me, and then I can become an American…maybe…well, you know, because there are some things that I may not be able to change…and well, America values certain things, but at least I’ll always be able to claim American. My mantra became “I’m going to make it after all.” I am going to make it. I will make it. I will learn. I will change.

Fast forward to medical school, just when I relished the knowledge that I was pursuing the highest level of education possible, that I had earned the right to be looked at as a capable person, I was yanked lower by a leash I thought had been cut. I was in the first of my two clinical years of medical school when a new “attending physician” (aka an experienced medical doctor who teaches medical trainees how to practice medicine) asked us a question. I said the correct answer (and I knew it was the correct answer), but the teacher said, “No, that’s not correct.” My classmates fell silent and some (those who also thought it was the correct answer) were confused. One classmate, however, looked at me and then repeated the answer that I gave that had been proclaimed incorrect. My teacher, this time, however, said, with excitement, “Yes, that is correct.” This male classmate looked at me again and then looked away. My teacher was white, as were all my classmates in this rotation. I used to get so frustrated that my new teacher assumed (for no basis other than my race or my gender) that my answer was likely to be incorrect, and so did not hear my answer. It was bias working at its most profound level to cause hearing loss or auditory hallucination.

I used to cherish the minor victory that my “correct” classmate knew my answer was correct. I cherished it until I realized he understood my teacher’s frame of mind, and he used it to his advantage to appear better than me. For multiple experiences that were founded in racism or sexism, I went on to stay silent, swallowing my pain quietly like my future depended on it—show no pain, do not appear sensitive! It was that quiet stillness of pretending to be absent again, reminiscent of my childhood experiences. This time, I was quiet because I didn’t want to voice my dissent for fear of appearing defiant, aggressive, accusatory, or, even worse, a know-it-all. It was a kind of dying in my soul. I have since learned that as much as my teacher and that classmate were part of the problem, I was also part of the problem, because I made the problem invisible. Again, I did not point out the problem, the racism or sexism. I let them believe it did not exist, like they were doing nothing wrong and instead made myself smaller. As I matured and took charge of my role in my society, of the purposes and the hidden benefits of my negative experiences (e.g., an opportunity to improve my society by addressing its faults), I interpreted these experiences in a different light. These experiences, when they occurred again, were less damaging to me—I understood now that these experiences were not a reflection of my faults but of the brokenness of my society. Sometimes society is a child that needs constant correction. I do it an injustice, in fact I stifle its growth if I stay silent simply out of fear of its temper tantrums or threats. Sometimes, it is tiresome to correct a child’s behavior for what feels like the hundredth time. But what is the alternative if I want a better society, a better experience for future generations?

GROWING PAINS:

My understanding of my growth cycles has allowed me to play a more active role in who I am and am becoming. It has allowed me to be more patient (not my strongest suite naturally) and less prone to anger because I can identify what stage I’m in and so I know what to expect and what I need to do to move past this phase in the cycle to get to maturity. I have needed to mature in my career, in my relationships, in my parenting, in my sisterhood, in my marriage, and I am going to need to go through intermittent periods of maturing, because just like I am changing, the people around me are changing too, and I need to adapt or adjust to their changes, whether these are good changes but especially if they are unfavorable changes to me.

As you read the poems that follow, I challenge you to use them as templates or steppingstones to understand yourself better and, by so doing, become a better version of yourself. To do that, you must love yourself as you are now, scars and all. There’s no way around it. You also cannot love others without first loving yourself and appreciating what makes you YOU. When you love yourself, you know who you are, what your boundaries and triggers are, as well as your weaknesses and strengths. Armed with this knowledge, you can interact in a healthy and effective way with another, no matter what other’s intentions towards you. This makes it such that the behavior of that person never defines you but allows further clarity about who you are not and who they are. We cannot change our past, but we can create our present and thus shape our future. But what great power we already have, if only we can focus on nurturing the power we possess instead of wasting our energies on the ones we don’t have!

Emerge out of your cocoon, therefore. Do not despise the egg or larva that you came from but honor it with gratitude for who you are now and soar as a butterfly.

PS. There are 41 poems below, to signify the 41 bullets that killed Armadou Diallo. I never knew him, never met him, but his life, tragically cut short as it was, still had an influence on me, still helped to shape me, and I have never forgotten his name, as terrible with human names as I can be. I honor his innocence, his inner drive, his independence, his dream, and his hope. As a fellow African immigrant, our dreams have the same foundation. He may not have lived to see his dream be fully fulfilled, but it lives, it thrives, and it bears good fruit. Hurray to his life. Hurray to a life that dreamt unashamedly.

The poems comprise 41 poems, each dedicated to a bullet that targeted Armadou, which could have hit me or anyone resembling us. I grouped the poems in the stages of a butterfly’s metamorphosis. While all stages are necessary, I have fewest poems in the egg and chrysalis stage to signify that we have the least activity in these stages. There are 12 poems in the butterfly section because the number 12 represents balance, completion, and harmony.

THE EGG: THE SEEMING RANDOMNESS OF BEING

The basic essence of my being including my race, gender, skills, temperaments, shape, style, and talents—these essences deliver me into different experiences that are now my past and present.

VERSION 2.0

Version 2.0, new and improved.

Not better than or equal to.

You call her woman.

Somehow the efficiency of her creator

in not needing so much raw material,

was proof of her second-rate status,

of her continual dependence on man.

Never mind that this woman

has complete form, lacking no part,

that her beauty brings men

and nations to their knees,

that her mind, its capacity

to nurture, inspire or

contemplate multiple variables simultaneously

is unparalleled,

a mystery to man. But alas

maybe it’s much simpler,

perhaps the relationship between versions

is big brother and little sister.

Then where is the protection,

the responsibility of their elder?

Where is the focus on advancing

the young, sacrificially,

almost to a fault?

Perhaps instead it’s like the big brother fuming,

sharing attention and recognition.

And so, throws tantrums,

like thunder raging in the sky,

provoking parents to buy

a watchful eye that alerts to mischief

from big brother’s sister.

Version 2.0.

Why were you created?