Thought Picnic: Therapy into the recesses of a turbulent past

Reading me from my words

Another day of therapy yesterday centred on my writing, well my blogs, and the way the views I share are reflective of the kind of person I am, what I feel and what drives me.

Even I have found that my blog almost works like a journal, in some cases; it is a diary of thoughts, events and ideas expressed in different guises of the personal, the vicarious or the abstract.

Whilst what I write could be read as stories, much of what is written derives from experience and observation, yet I have to check myself and consider, I am not really that interesting.

A range of conflicting emotions

However, since we last met, I had written about resentment, vulnerability, bereavement, justice, participation and reconciliation.

Much as I was concerned that some answers to her questions appeared like rambling tangential responses, she assured me of the relevance of my words whilst saying she will moderate as she finds necessary if I was in danger of digressing from the topic at hand.

Beyond the veil to the past

Yet, we touched on my childhood, the home-house dichotomy of comfort and trepidation, the demonstrations of love, expressed in discipline rather than affection by my parents and the attendant growing-up problems that found no expression towards confidant or friends.

Then it occurred to me that those who really could have taken the place of confidant were those who became symbolic of the terrors and horrors of abuse and misuse; there was no one to turn to expect to oneself, within that, I was caught in the battles of comparison and criticism.

Many a Nigerian child knows that the survival within the family setting is a function of achievement and conformity driven by fearful comparison to others and the excoriating criticism of who you are. You adjusted and adapted to limit those barometers of parental engagement along with the physical abuse and brutalisation that passed for discipline.

And beyond experience?

That was the custom and culture, we being products of these having either learnt enough to stop the vicious cycle or having been subsumed, thereby, ending up perpetrating the same unto those after us.

Then, when someone shared the tribute to my uncle with a tweet written thus: - Akin Akintayo: A great man, we’ve lost, I found myself reading of my inadvertent demise or a reference to it.

Omg. I just thought Akin Akintayo died! May he live 50 more years.
— Temie Giwa (@temite) November 12, 2013

To which I had to respond, that the rumours of my passing are grossly exaggerated. I am alive and well with probably another 50 years to live. I am loved.

We meet again for therapy in three weeks to talk more about what I write and how that reflects my mood, my angst, my hopes and the story that is becoming the tale of my life.