NEVER MINE TO BEAR. - by Gift Olabode

Dear Uncle Ibrahim, How are you, sir? How is work? Is the land of Ibadan treating you well? How are my cousins too? It has been years since I saw you. Forgive me, but I do not remember what you look like anymore. My soul erased your face from my mind without my permission. All I remember is that you were dark. But I remember your fists. Unfortunately, my mind did not obey me when I tried to erase the secrets they left behind. My aunty, a beautiful Black woman whose face radiates grace and beauty, became a practice field for taekwondo whenever your ego needed calming. Her cries and shouts grew into a melody that travelled through the streets of Sabo every night, and sometimes, even in the evenings. I was only a child.My innocent mind was harassed by things it did not understand. Did you not pity me? Perhaps you could have helped my mind and blinded it from seeing your cruelty. I was your own niece. Maybe that is selfish of me to say. After all, your fists did not seem to recognise your own wife. I was happy when I finally left your house and returned to my parents after they finished their BSc. My parents were the best in the world. I hated myself for years because there was this strange, dark, unpreserved hatred towards my own father. I could not explain it.Maybe he noticed. So he played with me more. He told me stories. He read with me. He took me on outings. He taught me how to pray. He became my best inspiration and my best friend. He was a great teacher. My great teacher.And yet, I hated him. Wasn’t that cruel of me?Sometimes, I would summon my mind and ask it why it carried such an unpleasant picture of my father. Its response was deafening, unsatisfying —silence.I would cry every night for how I think of him in the day. He was my best friend and my enemy at once leaving the young me with a bitter sweet emotion. I would listen to the other children in my class talk about their fathers, and somehow, their stories only made the hatred inside me grow. I was even happy on the days my father left the house for months, believing he was simply going away to give me a better life. I did not understand what was happening inside me. I only knew that something was wrong.Because I had seen how my father treated my mother like an angel. I had seen them do the silliest things together. Fight over meat. Run around the house. Laugh. Tease each other.My mother would even have mood swings whenever her husband was away. There was love in my home.I could see it. I just could not feel it towards my father. Then, after many years, my mind finally told me its secret.It had hidden you behind its bars. You were there all along. In the little girl who watched and did not understand. In the child who went home carrying something she had never been given a name for. I had to forgive you before I could love my father properly.And perhaps that is the part that hurts me most. I did not enjoy my childhood the way I should have, because my mind was too busy surviving something that was never mine to carry. I wish I had known sooner that my father was not the man my frightened mind had made him. I wish I had known that the hatred belonged somewhere else. Uncle Ibrahim, why did you wrap the chain of your pain around my neck? Why did my childhood have to become the place where your anger left its footprints? I forgive you.I hope I see you at my wedding next week?

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