Your Life Sucks!

It was one of those eazeh magical moments. The fam was goofing off after supper. I fought for my ear’s freedom as mum tried pinching it. I definitely get my brutality in banter from her. In between the jovial mood, she looks me in the eye and grimly says,

“You are a coward, do you know that?”

I feel attacked. Vulnerable. Angry. Scared. I’m not even sure if I found words to respond with. She continues on her warpath.

“No, adil! (No, really!),” she starts upon sensing my indignation. “You are so scared of small small things. There was this one time as a child you were scared of… kan de nas wole sunu (if it was people or something)... ita zato ma ahider akulu fruit salad taki! (you couldn’t even eat your fruit salad!).

When the vending lady saw this, she said, ‘Oooh! Kwa hivyo hutaki kukula chakula yangu? Nitakuchukua na niende nyumbani na wewe!’ You became too scared you couldn’t even eat anything at all!”

Laughs erupt across the living room. I felt embarrassed, but also relieved. Mum has a habit of casually going for one’s jugular at random moments. It’s probably a family thing. The people I’m closest to in my family are also the ones who would roast me indiscriminately. Mercilessly, too.

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I’ve always hated clubs. At least, I thought I did. Coming from a conservative Christian family, I was always told it was a bad place. Therefore, anyone who went to night clubs, drank or smoked was bad. I became the stereotypical judgemental Christian. I’m still pruning some of the judgemental reflexes to date.

For 12 years, I grew up in a 2-story apartment complex with six units. As fate would have it, almost all of the houses would have pastors, bishops or strong Christians as the head. For the sake of the protection of the children, it was taboo to leave the gate, unless you had been sent to the shop or were going to school or church. This may be where my social anxiety developed. The outside world was forbidden because it was bad or dangerous. A fear of the world outside the apartment compound crept in.

My social anxiety was extreme. Going to the shop was nerve-wracking. Going to the nearby Dagoretti Market was like an episode of Fear Factor. Going to a different area or neighbourhood made me schizophrenic to a degree. Inside the compound, though, I was safe. There were a lot of friends to play with. Each household had at least one boy, so I never ran out of friends to play with. Until I did.

Teenage came in. We went to boarding school. Some moved. Others became rather distant because… teenage, I guess? Everything changed. Everyone had to move eventually. The landlord’s daughter took over operations and more than doubled the rent. There was no room for negotiation. And she was rude. And vicious. It was unpleasant. We were kicked out. I wasn’t there for it. I was in boarding school at the time. Already nervous, scared and overprotected, high school was unpleasant for the most part. There was little follow-up from my parents after getting drilled with the usual phrases: bangi ni mbaya, focus on your studies, always put God first, ain’t no way we gon’ let you be gay etc. None of it made my extreme social anxiety less bearable. More so because my parents had split up. And neither of them was around that often, having to work to provide for our upkeep from all the way in Sudan (now South Sudan).

I wish I could regale you with tales of youthful exuberance and recklessness from my teenage years. Save for the occasional humorous classroom moments and bits of banter with others, they are nonexistent. My high school years are a depressive blur. Something I have no interest in re-visiting for whatever reason. Only a tiny fraction of it was bearable.

Going back home one day, I found that mum and my older sister had already moved. New house, new neighbourhood, new life. My anxiety didn’t like that one bit. Aside from school, I had no friends at home. I was just… there. With mum constantly berating me for not going to church, or for not having crammed the Holy Rosary or Divine Mercy chaplet. It was hard for me to wholly adopt the religion that once made my mum spit on me and call me the devil because I had defiantly declared that “I’m not going to church today”.

Outside still felt forbidden. Sure, I was a teenager now with a little bit more freedom but… where was I going? With whom? And why? The mild schizophrenia would get loud anytime I stepped outside. It would take years to overcome this. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but what I did was exposure therapy. With time, while attending creative events, the awkwardness became more bearable. After a while, it didn’t bother me anymore. I would just be myself.

Still, no clubs for me. They were ‘bad’. I stayed away from smokers and drinkers. Avoided them like the plague. If I was an introvert before or if I became one during my teenage years is still unclear. Either way, I learned to enjoy solitude. (Did I even have a choice?) Expressing this is what added rage and hate to the disdain I already had for clubs.

“Your life sucks,” Samantha said to me after I had expressed how much I enjoyed being at home, alone, drawing and shii. Such a direct attack. It cut deep. Very deep. Especially because I had a gargantuan teenage crush on her. But I never said or did anything. It was part of the rules that had been drilled into me as a child by my dad.

“If anyone ever insults you, don’t react. Don’t insult them back. Simply say ‘God bless you’ and move away from them.”

Samantha had then proceeded to declare how life was about having many friends, partying, clubs n shii. I seethed silently. I never said ‘God bless you’ either.

The Shaolin monks in movies appealed to me ever since I was a child. They were serene, yet lethal. I found it amusing, but also sensed a depth to it. When sharing what our dream goals in life were (in campus), I casually mentioned how I would love to spend time in a Shaolin monastery. Peace, calm, quiet and serene. Such beauty.

“No, that sucks,” Jemimah cut in. She then proceeds to declare about how it was better to desire money, wealth, cars… vanity, basically. Did she need to shoot down my desires, though? Again, silently, I seethed.

Another time, when she asked what I did for fun, I replied with drawing, chilling at home, watching anime, painting etc. The usual introverted artist activities. Nearly a decade later, I would hear that fatal statement again:

“Your life sucks” she declared.

She then proceeded to give the same lecture that Samantha did. Dutifully, I boiled in silence. No ‘God bless you’ for her either.

Let’s do the math. First, we have over a decade of extreme social anxiety. Then, add in the avoidance fuelled by my Christian upbringing. Don’t forget the passivity, limiting my expression of heavy emotions. Then a lil’ bit of Samantha and Jemimah, feeding the anger that boiled for close to 12 years. All of these come to the surface when I think of being inside a club.

There’s a high chance I might meet another Samantha or Jemimah in a club. And that scares me. Because I know that I wouldn’t be able to control my anger should I lose it. Someone would definitely get hurt. That makes me highly stressed and anxious. This, on top of the social anxiety I already have. How in the hell am I supposed to enjoy being in a club?

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The silence was loud. Out of nowhere, I snapped, exploding in a moment of uncalled for rage. Jan, Rae and Vee weren’t sure what to do or say. The conversation had been jovial a few moments before as they relived the thrill of having friends that you could get blackout drunk with. I had then angrily declared how I would eff up anyone who would try to force feed me liquor. That was when the silence settled in.

“What the fuck was that?” I wondered. I was startled as well. I honestly had no idea where it came from either. And down the rabbit hole I went till I unearthed this pit of rage. A few months later, this blog post is the result.

This is long overdue, but I’ll say it anyway. Samantha, Jemimah…

FUCK YOU!

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Epilogue

I get it now. After listening to music that was louder and more aggressive than my loud thoughts and emotions at the time (and seeing clips of people hopping to it at concerts), I kind of get the appeal of clubs now. To an extent. It was a frustrating realisation, though. I was more than ready to become a villain towards the club scene. But now I realise I just needed to get my face molten. Hard bass dubstep style.

The social anxiety is still alive and thriving, unfortunately. Apparently, it has different flavours when outside and inside the house. I dread to tell Samantha or Jemimah how I couldn’t sleep at all because I had an anxiety attack that was triggered by hosting friends who had come to visit an injured 6-Week Maiden. The anxiety attack ended the following day at like 7pm. It was constantly in the background, threatening to drive me insane and making it difficult to breathe.

No matter. After lots of observation, reading and multiple conversations with people in different decades of life, I am convinced that my twenties are for rewiring, recalibrating and refining myself. To put it in more trendy terms; to heal from childhood trauma. I would advise refraining from the latter term, though. It is a recent saddening trend of capitalism that I have noticed: the commodifying of the natural human experience. RESIST!

Yip Man encouraged young Bruce [Lee] to train hard and then to forget about himself and instead follow his opponent’s movements.

Be Water, My Friend (The True Teachings of Bruce Lee), by Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter)

It’s relieving knowing what the root cause(s) of a problem is. Also, shout out to Wamah for giving me the motivation to get back into writing after nearly a year long hiatus. For context, she is the third tiny hooman in my collection of tiny hoomans who give me extreme cuteness aggression. I’ve known her for less than a month, but you would swear we were childhood friends if you see how much I bully her.

Anyway, here’s another quote I feel is relevant to end this blog:

“Never assert yourself against nature,” he (Yip Man) told him (Bruce Lee). “Never be in frontal opposition to any problem, but control it by swinging with it.”

Be Water, My Friend (The True Teachings of Bruce Lee), by Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter)

Oh, yeah. I am a martial artist. A Wing Tsun Fist style practitioner. (Just in case you were wondering about the spontaneous quotes).