Radio silence as good therapy

The Value of Relationships

The past two years, with all their trials, have offered a profound lesson in the importance of relationships; those that endure and those that falter. Relationships exist along a spectrum, from those that nurture our innermost selves to those that deplete us.

Against this backdrop, I have begun to treasure those rare connections where vulnerability is met with empathy, and where the bond transcends circumstance or convenience.

At the other end of the spectrum are exploitative and self-serving relationships, built purely on transaction. They thrive when needs are met but diminish rapidly when expectations go unmet, leaving little room for understanding or compassion.

No showing they care

Sadly, I find few examples of truly healthy family relationships. Expressions of care are often superficial, their evidence weak or absent. That realisation has prompted a deliberate withdrawal, a choice to preserve space for safety, clarity, and renewal.

As September unfolded, following months of chaos and emotional upheaval, I decided to impose complete radio silence on all communication from Nigeria. Messages remained unread, calls unanswered, and I extricated myself from group chats.

While part of me was unsettled by the choice, another part found unexpected peace in it. After thirty-five years away, much of what happens there no longer requires my attention. Most interactions involve people I have never met and could hardly recognise in passing.

Distance became both shield and salve. It allowed me to detach from the drama, rumours, and constant reinterpretations of events that once held power over my emotions. Too often, such narratives are presented as truth yet serve only to unsettle, casting doubt on where fiction ends and reality begins.

Nurture the profitable

This uncertainty highlights the fragile nature of some relationships, as they exhibit little evidence of trust or goodwill, with corrosive elements overshadowing any kind of beneficial aspects.

By carrying this silence into October, I found calm. The reward was a steady quiet, being neither perturbed nor disturbed. It allowed me to engage, when necessary, on my own terms, or more often, to refrain from engaging altogether.

We should constantly review the quality and viability of our relationships, regardless of what has hitherto made them significant, for they might have fallen into disrepair and become unprofitable.

If I sustain this until year's end, keeping close those who truly matter whilst maintaining distance from those absent in my darker hours, I believe I will emerge stronger and healthier. That, at least, is my conviction.

Thought Picnic: In the omerta of abuse

No perfect narrative exists

There are taboo topics that society, community, or situation makes too difficult to talk about for many reasons from not having a frame of reference in which to conceptualise and understand to the need to avoid engagement so that the horror of that reality does not inflict on our comfort.

In the matters of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, or bullying, some of which I have addressed in my almost 20 years of blogging, finding the form of words to discuss with the hope that it does not upset is one for which there is neither art, skill, nor perfection to convey silent suffering and the associated issues.

Why they suffer in silence

I would guess that is the reason that obvious and apparent victims do not share their experiences and mostly never report anything because of shame or embarrassment, worse still the default audience sits in judgement with the view that there is much more that could have been done to prevent things happening to oneself.

Yet, reporting any abuse is not as easy as making a customer complaint or reporting a theft, the violation of the person is visceral, it starts with the body, as the mind considers what has happened, and the spirit is grieved in the realisation of that truth. Maybe, the bruised body can be healed, and the conflicted mind can with time find peace, to reach into the spirit to enliven it is a whole different matter. A person must find their way just as they have to work with the dreams and imaginations that play in their heads.

Wrestling back some agency

That these taboos need to see the light of day through expression, sharing, and talking about it so that perpetrators realise that they do not hold any power over the people they violate or are emboldened to act with impunity is necessary. However, navigating the present to gain the support, sympathy and empathy needed to grow would never be an easy task.

The child abused who on mentioning it is shut down because the adults who should protect them cannot deal with it, the person who has suffered domestic abuse takes the blame for instigation rather than the abuser getting excoriated, sexual assault is seen as opportunistic and victimless that partners of victims are more hurt than the one molested, being on the receiving end of bullying considered an act and state of weakness when one is expected to fight back and put a stop to it.

Help, don’t worsen it

The long hard mile that others would never walk in the shoes of the wearer is deemed the easiest feat of endeavour. People in pain from living through it are doubly hurt by others taking on the same pain for what they never lived. It is a strange world, you begin to believe that the cruellest thing to allow to happen to yourself is to suffer pain, to be a victim, to be caught in circumstances you should have controlled but you failed to.

Whilst silence cannot be the answer, we have to find it somewhere in our human nature to consider, to appreciate, to understand, to commiserate, to empathise, to feel, and to know, that others will have experiences beyond our comprehension, if we cannot help them, we should not make it worse. Sadly, this all is part of the story of our humanity, much as we would love better stories. I do not have the answers, we should be careful of taking offence in the hurt of another.

Once again, “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” [Romans 14:22b] The journey of self-healing is lonely, scary, unsure, and not guaranteed. You take each day as vulnerable and human with the hope that there is better ahead.

In the shadow of Table Mountain

Anyone out there?

In the shelter of the Table Mountain, there is a stillness and eerie silence that greets my ears, the cacophony hours ago, at street level, some two floors below has given way to snatches of sounds travelling distances unknown, probably of someone singing to themselves.

The insomnia phase I am in has been brought on by the slumber that caught me away on the couch soon after a sumptuous Christmas dinner. The many nights of unsleep caught up in an afternoon, an evening and a night of sometimes absented wakefulness that only my tracker can plot into any perceptible coherence.

Looking out of my window, it is only a quarter past one, and at the junction are two public safety personnel in their green and yellow uniforms, that it matters is strange because a major police station is hardly 6 blocks down, where another of the personnel appears to be walking up the street.

Someone out there

You might even hear a baby cry or a car drive past, we are supposed to be under a curfew, whoever it is must be on some essential or emergency activity. It is quite peaceful on occasion to just switch off even primary and local sources of sound and listen, though it would be nigh on impossible for me to sleep without the radio on.

Someone then punctures the quietude with the hoot of the car horn, you can only wonder why if the roads are free amongst the many other reasons I should not exercise myself about. I look out again, I am in both a modern city with all streetlights working and a place of inequalities, a man without the comforts I enjoy sits on the pavement pondering a homeless world.

#IDAHOBIT 2020: Breaking the silence

A first attack

For the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia #IDAHOBIT celebrated every May the 17^th, I was between thoughts about what to write. [Wikipedia]

In my many encounters with homophobia, I remember two specific events in the early 1990s, I had met this lovely guy at Bang! disco and we decided to go back to my place. We got the bus from the London West End and alighted at a bus stop some 300 metres from my apartment around 2:00 AM.

As we walked back to my place, two men called after us, we ignored them, then they began to shout and hurl abuse at us, we knew we were in danger and so took flight, but they were already upon us, tackled us and relieved us of our possessions. We came to no harm and soon after getting home we called the police who visited but offered no support, it was 1991. Shaken we were, we lived, and beyond that had a 4-month relationship before we broke up.

A fearful existence

A few years after, I was having a walk in Finsbury Park, it is was quiet and calm, two guys approached me; I saw the glint of a knife blade as he motioned towards me. ‘Give me your wallet,’ he said, ‘And we’ll let you go.’ There was no hesitation, I emptied my pockets, and they left over a bridge into a labyrinth of alleyways. By the time, I found a beefcake to tell of my ordeal, they had long gone.

These were times when a lot of what was called ‘Queer bashing’ happened around London, I was fortunate not to suffer any injuries in my encounters, times I have had to run for dear life because a group of men with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm set out to find gays and beat them up, even kill them.

My local librarian, who resourcefully and progressively stocked our library with LGBTQ+ literature, Christopher Dunn, lost his life at the hands of a serial killer who targeted gays. Hardly two weeks before, on holiday with my partner in a Brighton Bed & Breakfast, he was a fellow guest. On noticing him one evening, we wondered about why anyone would wear such tight Lycra shorts, we were just being sententious.

Breaking the silence

The theme for IDAHOBIT 2020 is Breaking The Silence; I would have preferred to talk more about other LGBTQ+ people in places, circumstances, and environments unlike mine today, where I have the freedom to express myself, a long way from the experiences of the 1990s. I can visit South Africa to rendezvous with my partner Brian, and not be ashamed to demand that we have a double bed rather than twin beds or separate rooms.

This is the first time I have written about my queer-bashing experience, yet, I must appreciate how long we have travelled from those times, acknowledging there is still more to do here and abroad.

For the past 5 IDAHOBIT anniversaries, I have donned the colour of the day, purple, and today, I went for a walk before taking a celebratory picture at Whitworth Park. [May17]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Akin Akintayo (@instaforakin) on May 17, 2019 at 1:10am PDT

From old IDAHOBIT Days

I commend this day to all, for the freedom to live, to express, to celebrate, to our allies, to the voices that are yet to be heard, the lives that are hidden from fulfilment, to the victims, to the powerless, to those who think they are alone, and to the souls sadly departed. We will rise.

IDAHOBIT 2020 at Whitworth Park today

Blog - #IDAHOT2017: The beliefs that harm us

Blog - #IDAHOT 2018: Of allies and acceptance

Thought Picnic: Living a storied life

For the quiet around

Even without hearing a sound, there can be a lot of noise, deafening and debilitating noise, banging on your eardrums from the inside of your head.

They say the battle is mostly won in the mind, but how do you acquire the silence and quietude to concentrate on resolving the issues that give you much discomfiture?

I find my comfort in many things, the times when the turmoil proves too upsetting, I would probably just go to sleep. It keeps the thoughts from getting overwhelmed with imponderables and the implausible, hours later in wakefulness, the mind has settled into some resolution and purpose, it is a strange journey to acceptance that I have travelled many times before.

Not for a thing

Worry is an illness that can infect all organs of the body and make you terribly ill. The residue of religion left in me is the insight into how worry can change nothing. If nothing can be changed for the situation, you’re in, why bother expending energy in ruminating over the wastelands about you?

This is where other aspects of the residue come to play, for many stories from the Book have the narrative of coming to pass, rarely ever coming to stay. Nothing stagnates to the point of having no movement of time. Time rarely stands still, things might seem long in passing, but never immovably stopped that all the laws of nature are upturned. This too shall pass, and it will pass into the realm of stories told in the future as if it mattered not at all.

Talk to thy self

Beyond that, I speak to myself, loudly in my Anglicised name, I tell myself, it would come out right, I expect things to turn, I prepare for the future ahead that I cannot see, but know that life creates stories that you are given to help others see beyond their walls, their clouds, their chains, their gates, their inadequacies and anything that makes you think any less of who you can be.

I have a vision of the possible, the possible that walks through the impossible, usually not as miracles, but as the gift of fortune and fortitude with a mind set to rise and be lifted above the fray. Then, because I found it when I was in the Pentecostal movement, I still speak in tongues, it might be gibberish, incantations, prayers or commands that turn nature on its head like the parting of the seas, that is my teaspoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down in a most delightful way.

I can find my peace in storms that rage so violently that the hearts of some men fail, I have stood in the whirlwinds that swirl the dross and dust off me to leave me feeling refreshed and ready for the next challenge. There is a life to live, live it well, for from the very first day, it was a struggle to thrive and a blessing, it remains each day, what I am thankful for, a life so ordinary, yet made extraordinary by the stories I have been given to tell.

Opinion: Tackling the Culture of Blacks Handling Disease

The taboos we must break

I found myself nodding in agreement to literally every line I read in this article published in The Body magazine – The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource – titled Breaking Through: HIV and African Americans.

If we removed HIV and replaced it with cancer, diabetes, hypertension, or misfortune, we would have subconsciously listed a sliding scale in terms in growing confidence to talk about how certain issues affect us.

Someone dying of the complications of HIV might only be able to accept that they are dying of cancer, the visible signs and sometimes along with diabetes means, we never attempt to ask more probing questions.

Our false stories

As I read the article, the writer informed that he had lost three relations, presumably African American to AIDS; two women, including his aunt and a man who insisted he was a heroin user when it was quite possible he was gay.

We have never been able to approach the reality of our diseases for the so many factors raised in that article. It is not just an African American thing; it is particularly African and probably broadly affects all non-Western cultures.

When I write blogs like this, I am wont to excerpting generous portions of the source material to make my points. However, I have decided we need to get the courage to begin to face the many issues that plague our communities as we suffer in silence, perpetuate the stigma and look at disease as the otherness that will never approach our steads.

We shock to numbness

We cannot deny that HIV/AIDS and cancer cuts a swathe through our communities like a wild forest fire that we treat as if it is insignificant, as our silence becomes a coping mechanism of convenience.

This means we fail to access health options and healthcare early enough for radical and timely intervention until it becomes an emergency exceeding effective medical treatment leaving us with just one option of palliative end-of-life care.

The story then becomes one of hospital visits, close family in shock at the apparently sudden deterioration in health of their relation as life slowly ebbs away no one the wiser about the truth until a nurse pulls one of the most affected relatives aside to say exactly what the diagnosis was. AIDS? Cancer? Usually not enemies scheming in the backyard, held at bay with Psalm 35.

There and then, the world collapses around every loved one and the questions start to flood the mind with prefixed inquisitive phrases of how long, how bad, how did, what can, how much – we have experienced this many times and yet we willingly hop on the vicious cycle of the culture of blacks handling disease badly.

The signs we ignore

We ignore the warning signs in the cause of the worry about the loss of our livelihood and the economic distress that accompanies a disease. Then visit our temples hoping and wishing for miracles with mountain-moving faith that had moves nothing more than the air that comes out of our mouths in fervent prayer, because we are in the mortal grip of fear; we rapidly approach an avoidable expiry date.

We listen to stories and conspiracies, we search for Shamanist cures in grottos that have defied the onslaught of civilisation and logic, imbibing awful concoctions too rotten for a recipe list and yet the temporary relief presages a catastrophic relapse before it is passed off in an obituary as a brief illness or a sudden death.

No fairy tale

These are the facts, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the “Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick” died of Karposi’s sarcoma, and it is a form of skin cancer usually brought on by AIDS.

His brother, a prominent AIDS activist and former minister of Health could only talk about AIDS affecting his family after the man had died. Nelson Mandela’s son also died of AIDS, but we only learnt of that after the fact.

As a cancer survivor, I know how much I have revealed about my condition and the secrets that I still keep for the fears, the shame, the stigma and many other attendant issues that dog our cultural outlook to disease.

Yet, as the article states, and this I will excerpt, “Magic Johnson has not been cured by some medicine being kept from us.”

Ignoring our possibility

We can expect better medical outcomes if we talk, if we act or react immediately and seek professional advice when things are changing in our bodies that we cannot account for in our daily routine.

Karposi’s sarcoma as a result of HIV/AIDS complications was already treatable in the 1990s, and anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs manage HIV to the extent that people living with HIV can live very productive lives.

We cannot ignore our way round reality, nor can we bargain away disease with the false comfort of vows and the sudden laying on of hands; we need to accept first by understanding what we have* and that will inform the kinds of interventions that medicine or therapy can help us with, in a timely fashion.

[*This includes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, depression, mental illness, misfortune – tag anything you want to the list.]

Medicine is not evil and churches are not hospitals, but the beginning of dealing with the problem that plagues our community with the poison of silence is to read an article in a HIV/AIDS magazine about respected black women in the family dying of AIDS in today's America.

Finally, go for that test, it is about your life and keeping it.

Click on the link and read - The Body - Breaking Through: HIV and African Americans

Thought Picnic: In life, we will always differ

Of secrets deep inside

Following on the issue of acceptance and understanding of my parents and relations concerning things that affect and define me, I realise there is much we probably will never get to talk about.

Many decisions and allowances have become the story I have never fully told, yet, I have friends urging and compelling me to reveal more facets of my makeup.

Finding a new direction

Beyond that, there are elements of activism that I am not too conversant with, but I have experience of because of whom I am and what I have.

To some, these issues are lifestyle choices, but to those who live within that framework, if we could really make those choices we would have made completely different ones.

There is no reason to go against the grain to prove a point deliberately, we are not obstinate and stubborn people geared to offend, upset and embarrass anyone, we are just human.

We suffer in silence

However, elements of our humanity are still difficult to understand and accept; some of it comes with fear, with shame, with stigma, with discrimination and sometimes violence unwarranted.

Besides this, some of us bear in ourselves a death sentence, organisms seeking to sap away our life force and yet we refuse to give in – we are survivors, telling a tale mostly to ourselves that we will see another day, another year and more beyond that.

Both different and the same

We just want to get on with our lives and not have to face the unremitting scrutiny of people who want to define our lives by what they consider the norms to which we cannot adhere.

When we do sit down to talk about some difficult and hard truths, we might be different but no less than anyone else engaged in the pursuit of love, happiness, peace, joy and a life worthy of remembrance and positive impact in our communities.

Thought Picnic: Talking down and listening up

For ancestral angst

The amazing power of silence came to play in an ambush this afternoon. Whilst he has been a stalwart of moral support in these trying times there are times I consider certain views inconsiderate.

I am grateful that in the rather dire times he took it upon himself to call regularly to find out how I was and hope that I recover fully in health, wealth and means speedily.

There was great comfort from those words and desires, one could only accept them in appreciation but it also opened the door to conflict – I must get a woman, I must get married, I need a carer, they are a necessary evil, you need to have children.

Really, I just want to get well, none of those other wishes appear anywhere in any list of priorities I currently have or project to have in the foreseeable future.

In paternal roar

So when I got back to work, it was not a complete slam dunk of the past, it was the beginning of a journey but it appears I was already expected to have completed that journey to means and ability.

Indeed, I wish I had completed that journey but I am happy to be in the right direction so I was so surprised at the ambush this afternoon when I was basically accused of being inconsiderate, not calling, not concerned and not communicative.

A call does not come cheap and though I would like to count the pounds, I have been counting the pennies – I was not going to go on the defensive and I refused to allow anger to rise for the offensive – I do speak my mind if occasion does really warrant it.

Offspring expressions

Using English for communication allows me to convey my views much strongly and forcefully than I could ever do in any other language and I use that to its full effect but this time, I allowed the torrent of recrimination and kept quiet, silent and devoid of determined contemplation.

Hello! I heard him say afterwards, it was not interminable silence but long enough to mean, when you have gotten it off your chest we can continue the conversation – without my addressing those matters – fair enough, he had a grievance, it was not something I had the immediate means to address – the conversation continued, respectfully, reverently, purposefully and wonderfully.

As it ended, I said to myself what I usually do say on the phone – but today was the day for the unsaid – I love you, sir.

A backside spread over six seats

Must get on first

Being a commuter, one is sometimes amused by the attitudes one encounters when it comes to public transport.

The first thing that hits you especially if you are English is the fact that the Dutch do not queue, probably, some sort of divine crowd control ensures that everyone gets on without a fuss.

The level of individuality to the exclusion of others is amazing in the fact that people hardly ever take notice of others when they walk up and bunch up at the entry points to vehicles and carriages.

Any space between a commuter and the entrance can so easily be taken up by someone who almost aggressive saunters by and inserts themselves in that gap.

This then creates another little problem; when a train arrives, it would seemingly be sensible to allow passengers to disembark before trying to get on.

However, because of the bunching up at the entry points, passengers literally have to fight their way off the train and the waiting crowd is struggling to gain the advantage of getting on first.

Walking with a cane then provides an easy way of getting off through the inadvertent but sudden collision of people with the cane; space does materialize for one to disembark with ones dignity intact. Bliss!

Chivalry in Dutch is indifference

Having gotten on any means of transport, it is interesting to see how 2-seater arrangements are fully occupied by one person without consideration of others. This happens on the trains, in the buses, on the trams and the metro transport services.

At one time the traffic police used to pull people off the metro who seemed to occupy more than their fair share of the seats; the legality of which one is a bit suspect of.

The most nuisances are either bags or feet on unoccupied spaces which only get offered after an aggressive challenge rather than a friendly entreaty.

Somehow, the occupants have a way of being complete oblivious the fact that the vehicle is filling up or some elderly or incapacitated person, if not heavily pregnant woman might need the seat.

Chivalry is probably not a Dutch word; well really, it seems to be utterly archaic to all languages nowadays.

You will be a mug to give up your seat for a lady; if one of the many of the female sex on the bus dares to look more like a lady than anything else. I apologise, contemporary and trendy fashion does not help many appear like ladies anymore.

So much flesh exposed in an unseemly need to be attractive but without the commensurate work to display the attractive.

In some cases, there is some much blubber exposed; the Michelin man of the Michelin [1] tyre adverts would look like a skinny stick insect.

Occupy for myself only

However, the best example of space abuse is found on the trains. The first class sections of the certain trains have compartments of 6-seats with a door. The rush to get on at that section is to be the first to occupy the compartment.

The first to occupy the compartment immediately closes the door and places as many of their effects on the seats such that it appears full of, well, one person.

In one instance, it was a like an obstacle course in a military camp to get one seat in the compartment because, the bag, computer carrying case, over-coat, jacket and files had taken up every space.

One would just be immediately discouraged from trying to gain entry, but when other places are filled up in the limited 1^st Class common area, then those compartments come into contention regardless of the occupant.

At least, a greeting gets exchanged at entry and nothing more, which is a lot different from International train travel where usually other foreigners are more engaging and chatty.

Speaking up for silence

Some 1^st Class common areas have a finger to the lips sign indicating a Silent area [2] and a red stroke through a mobile phone sign, signifying what it means. No mobile phones, no matter how quietly you want to talk.

Any decent mobile phone has a silent facility with the option to vibrate when called. Rarely, does that get activated. We can live with that.

However, one evening, they all got on and before the train doors closed, 4 people were on their mobile phones.

“Excuse me please, we cannot have all of you on the phone, this is a no mobile zone”, I remonstrated.

Peace!

References