Can you accommodate what nature allows?

We are the same and different too

What a terrifying existence it must have been to be different, where what some term alternative is your normal. It is not that you cannot function in society; you can with aptitude, intellect, talent, resourcefulness, gifts, and much else. As a human being, you have a lot to contribute to your community and to society. Yet, because of who you are there may be trouble ahead.

The discovery that your attraction to the similar than that the opposite sometimes comes rather early in life. You work hard inside yourself struggling and outside yourself seeking solutions to problems you think you have. Deprivation and ritual, adjustment and reconditioning, maybe an exorcism or conversion therapy might help. Guilt is the default for finding expression to your feelings that you never grow fully into who you are.

The struggle of accepting oneself

Then, there is the fear, the fear of revealing who you truly are, the fear of exposure about what your feelings are, the fear of rejection and ostracism from those of your blood who learn of what you are, and the fear of interventions imposed to radically change you into something you are not. For tradition has interpreted and translated events of antiquity wrongly and from that legal sanction has been created to criminalise your nature, that is a discussion for another time.

This is the encapsulation of sexuality conflict, where your normal is considered abnormal even to the more conservative an abomination. What is an abomination when even in its rarity nature accommodates difference, diversity, divergence, evolution, individuality and apparent abnormality? That is usually a matter of perspective and opinion rather than what some might term unnatural.

Can you accommodate what nature does?

What exists in nature is natural and that should be the end of the discussion. Whether your mind is open to new knowledge and the appreciation of how nature allows rather than abhors is another thing, but you cannot blame nature for how nature decides to express itself in ways misunderstood, radical, and let us allow chimerical. That becomes part of the human experience whether you choose to believe your eyes, your ears, or your existence where that situation presents.

Indeed, we are afraid of what is unfamiliar, we might even label things in ways to differentiate because those things are beyond our frame of reference. Learning new things is part of the progressive human existence. Sometimes, the things we have to accept are probably too close for comfort that you decide to afflict the subject.

Even humanity evolves to a point where understanding nature will afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It is what it is, different characteristics and attractions within human beings does not make them any less human. Most people do not need a cure for who they really are, the acceptance of that piece of wisdom is harmony and peace to our humanity.

On parental interference and sundry matters - II

Incubating a man

As a 55-year-old child and I use child expressly because I still have my parents alive and well, it is a blessing beyond measure, yet, our relationship has a fragility stuck in transition, for as a 55-year-old, if fortitude had allowed, I would be a grandparent besides the other achievements and tribulations that define my life story. I have no regrets.

There are long periods in time that my parents have not been part of any of my decision-making processes, I have made choices and lived by them even with life-threatening consequences that I have survived leaving me in gratitude to the divine and medicine. That is part of the construct of influences that informs my worldview.

Apron strings shredded

As parents, I would think there are times where they do presume, they control and direct what I do, it might come as a surprise to them that they lost that kind of influence when they were unwilling to negotiate way back in my teenage years.

On the part of my father, it was when we were on a break at our village of Ijesha-Ijebu, I wanted to spend a night away with friends in Sagamu, he flatly refused, not only was I embarrassed by it, at that point I swore never to return to our village again, I have not for 36 years, and whilst many may dismiss my fit of imperious petulance, that decision is made.

Umbilical cords destroyed

My mother however who I love so dearly has sometimes conflated her profession with her parenting, she is a retired schoolteacher and principal of many secondary schools. I do remember once when she asked me to do up a shirt button and I snapped back that I am her son not her student. My religious diversions brought much conflict at home in what they thought was taking me away from my studies, considering we came from mixed religious backgrounds and the deepest religious affliations have always differed between my father and my mother.

On returning from my chosen church one Sunday, my mother in a fit of rage deployed the sternest ovarian disapprobation that stuck like the branding of a hot-iron poker, searing me to the core. As I walked out of that encounter, I was probably saved from the more damaging effects of it by inspired words of Scripture that escaped my lips at that point. “For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” [Bible Hub: 1 Peter 2:25]

He’s gone, really

Indeed, I have forgiven my parents, but no, I have not forgotten, the encounters they have long dismissed as trivial are for the recipient literally life-defining. I am their child and their son; however, I will define the parameters within which that operates. The episodes above happened when I was already nominally an adult, and an adult is fundamental not a child regardless of what parental control they seek to exert even at this time.

It might seem that I am protesting much on this matter of apparently unresolved conflicts, I believe there are many for the truth is my parents do not know much about me or even a lot about me from when I left for boarding school at the age of 10. They might have seen some foundational personality traits, and some character-forming predilections, but that is where their understanding ends.

Participate well, police not

Much as I seek not to be confrontational, the fragility I referred to earlier is easily exposed to fractiousness by misplaced commentary or even obduracy on their part. In my usually mild-mannered demeanour, my individuality, and my independence are totally sacrosanct, how I choose to live my life will not be dictated to me by anyone.

The blessing of the ease of communication and social media interaction allows for participation, but I will brook no policing. I blocked my father on Facebook, I did rescind the block but declined a new friend request.

Blog: On parental interference and sundry matters (February 2019)

I will listen to a lot of insight, wisdom, and advice, but I will respectfully make my own decisions. I suppose the other views I have might end up in a series of blogs.

 

From the gift of a cemetery

An end as a new beginning

Inexplicable is the word that came to mind when I heard the story of Ruth Coker Burks on BBC Radio 4 some nights ago during a usual bout of insomnia, and many a tear I did shed. Imagine a girl born into an abusive childhood who lost her father at 5 and whose mother suffered tuberculosis and out of a dispute with between her mother and her uncle inherited a cemetery on the passing of a mother.

You would wonder what a young adult would have to do with a cemetery until she found herself spending the last 13 hours of the life a young man with AIDS calling out for his mother that had rejected him. She found prejudice, bigotry, ostracism, homophobia and much else along the way with no place to bury the young man until it occurred to her that she had a cemetery and the first AIDS victim’s ashes she buried were scattered in the grave of her father.

Restoring faith in humanity

Here was a single mother in her twenties who out curiosity and oodles of human compassion chanced upon a person and before you knew it, she became an AIDS carer directly and indirectly to over 1,000 people and buried over 40 AIDS victims in her family cemetery.

Even quite poignantly, when AIDS was a death sentence and long before there were therapies, those she cared for seemed to have a longer life expectancy until her care that the National Institute for Health sent researchers to investigate. It just came down to giving care and hope, even in a hopeless situation.

The story I heard was of an angel of mercy, full of compassion, and whilst at risk, she put the fullness of her humanity into the end-of-life care of many young men rejected and disowned by their families, giving them dignity in death and whose story has only begun to be told. [Amazon: All the Young Men: How One Woman Risked It All to Care for the Dying]

Giving dignity and hope to strangers

There is no hopeless situation and every gift we receive might well be for a purpose we could never conceive at the point of acquisition. The many who could not find in their humanity to face the suffering of their families and relationships, she stood up to and whilst standing in with love towards all that came to her. Her kindness is a beacon restoring faith in our humanity.

What do you do with a cemetery? You give strangers the honour and the dignity of a decent burial and memorial and put others to shame.

Lo, I sniff the summer

The weather undecidedly moving

Going out for my walk this evening, I left home in my shorts and short-sleeve vest with the prospect of a dry evening of exercise. A few errands earlier meant I only needed 5,000 steps to meet my daily quota.

Within minutes, I had broken a sweat with a heart rate in the aerobic range when 4 kilometres in, raindrops were falling on my head, it did not become a rain shower but it felt like warning enough and having not taken a mask out with me, it was sensible to turn back towards home having already done 10,000 steps.

No sooner had I taken a different route back, the sun came out. Suffice it to say, I did miss the solar eclipse or any sign of it in the morning, not that it would have been that visible here or through the cloud-strewn skies.

Wheeze, sneeze, squeeze

I could tell my summer had begun, I was sniffling with a running nose, sneezing loudly every few steps and sometimes bent over, though thankfully not doubled down with those longish sneezes that could last from about 30 seconds to a minute, congenital, I presume down the maternal line, but rather exaggerated in my case.

By the time I got home, I had walked 9 kilometres, completed over 12,000 steps and was ready for a good blowing of the nose before having a drink. I might just get my antihistamine medication out; Beconase nasal spray is the advent of the summer season.

Like I have said before, one apparent benefit of the chemotherapy I took just over 11 years ago was it shortened my hay fever suffering from a March-September stretch to just within June to August. On the steps front, I need to get out of my funk and do a bit more walking too.

Like pawns in the game of spaghetti red tape

Probably the end of an unplanned break

The fervent wish of a pawn is promotion,
If it has not been sacrificed in the commotion,
That scatters a chessboard in pandemonium,
As the players each seek to win and overcome,
The sudden employment interregnum,
Imposed in bureaucracies rather glum,
Has now apparently brought fruition,
The prospect of renewed utilisation.

Yet, we must not be too urgent and forward,
At the many assurances, some quite awkward,
As the bills are not paid with wishes and promises,
We are pawns tossed around by market forces,
If you are not paid to maintain allegiances,
You are open and considering other advances,
Until the contracts are signed with a seal,
We can confidently agree we have no deal.

Words spoken lightly that land heavily

Words always matter

To mind what I say and choose the words I speak very carefully has always been something I have held close to my heart and in my communication. Words so easy spoken and forgotten by a speaker can be indelible markers on the listener and hearer to whom the speech is directed.

The choice of words, the order of the words making sentences, the delivery of words in emphasis and cadence, how that variance conveys meaning and intent whilst governing comprehension or misunderstanding, is an art in itself, of effective communication.

Words can be seared into memory deeper than they can be reached to be erased. In the unguarded use of words can be the seeding to an avalanche of destruction. Yet, with words, you can lift and elevate, encourage and bolster, bless and praise, turning things around in unimaginable and unexpected ways.

I have the surfeit of words and the economy of words, in what I write and what I say, if I have nothing to contribute, give, or say, then the absence of words in maintaining my silence and my peace is good too. Choose your words in the consideration of how it can affect people or situations and be constantly and totally aware of the effect of what you have said or written.

Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime

Caught in a body of lustful desire

Lasciviousness is a word I first saw in the Bible, and I could only wonder what it meant and why especially in the Pauline epistles, it had consequence on church building and church discipline.

The gospel had been taken to heathen nations with completely liberal and sometimes abusive human relationships along with the absence or lack of moral restraint. People just did what they tended to do until someone came with the message, that was all wrong and not how to behave as Christians.

Until a moral code was introduced through Christianity or some religious instruction, human beings were just themselves to live, strive, maybe thrive and die.

I never had a virginity

That I had to answer a question, ‘Are you so loose?’, left me pondering the many things that I have covered on my blog many times which pertain to the consequences of child sexual abuse and how I have hopefully used my experience to help others who might have had even more debilitating outcomes in life than I have been fortunate to have.

For instance, I was introduced to sex a lot earlier than I should ever have been. There were probably signs in my character and personality that something had happened to me, but only the trained eye might have been able to notice. On that point, this was at the age of 7 and who it was will not be revealed to anyone except if I decide to put it in a book. My first reference in January 2007 covers some of that experience.

Blog - My Sex Post (January 2007)

Then, I wrote a blog about virginity with the conclusion that I never knew I even had one. There are people who later in life got to experience sex for the first time in a place and manner of their choosing. What does a child know about those kinds of choices?

Blog - Thought Picnic: How do you lose your virginity? (August 2011)

And I am one of the lucky ones

I went to watch the film Spotlight in 2016, it was about the investigation of clerical child abuse in America. I was the last to leave the cinema theatre when the film ended, it was not only distressing, but I was also weeping because I knew what those children had gone through. Many victims of child sexual abuse do not even know they are being groomed, programmed, and abused.

The people who exploit children for sexual pleasure are good at winning the confidences of both parent and child that by the time the child has been violated the odds are so stacked against the child that they have no one to run to in time of need as the abuse is perpetuated.

Blog - Shine a Spotlight on child sexual abuse (January 2013)

The impact of indirect action

My father was a strict disciplinarian in every sense of the word, he probably meted out his most violent punishments on his youngest sister. I hate to think of the ways she might have sought revenge against her brother, inadvertently, I was a casualty a few times.

As a child observer of what was happening, my father became unapproachable, even an ogre of sorts, when we began to have our disagreements in my teenage years, we were long past a place of useful reconciliation and confidences. Yet, he had this seething displeasure with me for so long, with the view that I was constantly disrespectful of him as I did not subscribe to the obsequiousness that others had towards him. I am a son; I would scream within myself, but a relationship did not thrive.

“When our parents confused our fear of them with our respect of them, they lost the many times we could have confided in them.”

Blog - Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians (May 2013)

We talked about sex once

Time does not heal the loss of innocence; it simply compounds the experience to the inability to either discriminate or make the right choices about something as intimate and serious as sex. I do wonder how many of my generation ever had a conversation about sex with their parents.

I know I never did and the first time that topic ever came up was when our housemaid fell pregnant. She, under interrogation of my mother, my mother asked her if I was responsible for it.

Well, whilst the houseboys and sometimes gateman had taken sexual favours off me from the age of 8 into my teens, I doubt I gave the house-girls a third look. As I would not have initiated anything.

It was recently that I learnt a whole new truth about that sordid event because all the while, I remember returning home from seeing my mother at the hairdressers with my cousin to see her dishevelled and apparently roughed-up, I asked no questions, but I thought whoever I thought was responsible was apparently not the person who violated her. Anyway…

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ... (May 2013)

I can’t speak evil of my parents

There are two episodes in my childhood that mark out the relationship I have had with my parents and the sad reality that they might only learn some things for the first time out of reading my blog.

I was taken ill and sleeping in my bed when a female family friend of ours came into my room and sat on me. I knew who she was because of what I said to her, “I will tell your husband.”

My mother was in the next room nursing my brother when she called out to me to determine what was going on. I completely drew a blank, it was as if the memory of who assailed me had been erased, eventually out the recesses of my memory, I now remember who she was.

However, this began a number of ritualistic and religious activities apparently contracted to save me from harm, the extension to that is how my mother bought my silence many years later after a visit to some spiritual figure by threatening with that kind of experience again.

Then, my aunt, my father’s youngest sister was chatting to our houseboy one day about paranormal activity in the presence of my utterly impressionable mind. That night we had visitors and I was called to clear the dishes to the kitchen, though the washing area was in the garden in the dark.

When I returned to the kitchen with the dishes, my aunt adjured me to take them to the washing area and as I stepped up to the table and before me, I saw a tall, big red-chested beastly apparition, that I heard later that night and saw again in the presence of my mother, I believed was the devil and screamed in terror. Everyone ran out and I told my tale, well, my dad dismissed it, the burden fell to my mother to deal with and that was one of the things I was threatened with if I revealed where we had been.

Blog - The damage done when parents fail to listen (February 2015)

If anyone touches you: A parent talks

I wonder if there is much to say about the need for parental involvement fully in sexual education. It should not be ignored first in the view that the child is innocent or secondly in the fear that it might corrupt the child.

Just imagine for one if a parent as the child was growing up had said, “If anyone touches you there, run to me and tell me, do not think twice about it, I am here to protect you.” It is speculation, but I think a lot of child sexual abuse might have been nipped in the bud.

Then, who knows?

Blog - Sexual Education and Parental Naivety (August 2019)

I write to help myself and others

I am not looking for anyone to believe me or even pity me for what I have experienced, but what I will not allow to be taken away from me is my own story in my own words. What my blog has done fore me and to help me come to terms with many things is immeasurable.

Fundamentally, I hold nothing against anyone including my parents, but that does not obviate the essential necessity to bring these things into the open so they can be discussed privately, if that opportunity comes up or publicly with others who might find that what I have written resonates with them.

What matters the most is that the old mistakes are not repeated in the generations that come after us. If anything, that it is the most important thing.

Blog - A survivor does not owe you a convincing story (July 2019)

Back to the question

Lasciviousness: unrestrained sexual behaviour, or a habitual inclination to such behaviour; lustfulness: [Dictionary.com]

So, the question was, Are you so loose (sexually, morally, whatever)? How would I know, if I lost my innocence at 7? Sex became utilitarian and I was already sexually active from 8 and it is from sexual activity that I contracted HIV almost 19 years ago, and all the things that emanated from that.

I am thankful for what new love has given me in preserving and preparing myself for intimacy that has value, I cannot escape from my history, but I can refuse it let it define me.

Am I so loose? Go figure!