The Question Marks Book Spa Otatade Okojie

I was thinking about life and all the people we’ve lost through Covid through all the other challenges and obstacles life puts out there, life can be so unpredictable. Yet we are still here, and with the life we have we must fight for the visions we started with. Growing up I was always very different to others around me, I had a unique perspective. At many times in my life I was judged, treated cruelly for being intelligent there were some who believed that as a young black woman who wasn’t abundant with coin, I should know my place. At one point in my life I was bullied so badly and treated so abhorrently, I just went mute I stopped speaking. The trauma was too much for me, I remember it and I feel it at times even when things appear to be going so smoothly. I remembered how the jealous tongues of others in the community I grew up in was used to cripple me, I remember being treated without mercy for having a disability, when I first started out in business in my community I was laughed at, became the joke of the community, was called the N word. These same people would stand out in the streets parroting community , community. I was a young black girl, without my father present, with jealous elders in the neighborhood tearing me down. It was fine when I was just seen as this ghetto Stereotype who wouldn’t accomplish much but when people started to see and people started to hear I wasn’t invisible anymore. I was called every name under the sun, a Nigga,a slut,a whore, for years, there were kids who I used to walk past like normal suddenly treating me like I was the worst person in the world because of the things their parents were saying behind closed doors. And I heard many of those things. I was nicknamed the ugly one in the family, because I was a dark skinned woman, at one point there was some sort of village movement in my neighborhood to bully me into submitting and giving the people who had destroyed my confidence and many years of my life, introductions to connections. I never received justice for it. I write this now because I remember who I was once upon a time, before I began to question so many things about people so many things about self. I remembered how I used to smile and laugh, and dance just for no reason, and I miss that girl. For those people who are different, who somehow we always stand out no matter how much we try and blend in, no matter how old we get we always have to put the armour on because we have to prepare for the idiots who are scared of our voice. I just want to tell you that’s it’s alright. It’s alright to be different, you have to forgive yourself for not being like everybody else, no one has the right to punish you for it. I lived for many years of my life in Beckton and never got justice for the bullying, the harassment, most of it I couldn’t even prove. When In a fit of rage I confronted one of the bullies who was trying to destroy my name, clever little fox he managed to calmly convince others that it was my own challenges, and no I hadn’t experienced a consistent tornado of abuse from him for many years. Words like Nigga that destroy your soul, comments that have you weeping in private. Yet my point is in this time where people are loosing their lives and being challenged by things we cannot see, please please hold unto those blessed happy moments and celebrate the self that you are. And if you are,a little different, a little unique, my sister always says to me that despite all the pain my voice will be the loudest. Your triumph will be your uniqueness. If your young and your black please never let anyone crucify you with the N word, those of us who are not ignorant know the origins of that word. It was used to destroy people’s spirits for being different, and now people joke with it for comic relief claiming wordplay,even with those outside of their race. No for many years that word was used to crucify and destroy, it’s used to make sure you feel less than. We are not less than. And wether your black white green or translucent let’s give time and space to what’s different, god added variety on Earth for a reason…I hear it’s the spice of life.