Enitan

My name is Enitan and rightly named so. My whole life is a storybook filled with so many memories. My earliest memory was in my mother’s womb, I was eight months, I remember hearing voices of conflicts outside the wall, I remember at those times, I’ll kick the walls in anger because I wanted my peace. 

For starters, I never wanted to do this earth journey; I was enjoying my time with Eledumare and the elders until it was my turn. I begged the elders to plead my case with Eledumare but they all refused. So they sent a once upon a time happy child to this corrupt and evil-infested world and I became an angry child.

Why I was sent to a poor man’s house of all the places on this earth is one thing I’ll never understand. When I asked Him, he said my purpose was to bring happiness. He didn’t even have to send me to planet earth you know, because there are other planets where the citizens are happy, everybody lives in peace, no one is too stupid to be deliberate in destroying their planet, but no, it’s this yeye place I was sent to. The place where the man beats the woman because he thinks he’s the strongest, (if only he knew), the planet where they jail adults for their choice of lovers just because they can, sigh, a lot of things is wrong with the earth planet, but that’s not my story.

I didn’t smile until I was two years old, because truthfully there was nothing to smile at. A passing dog made me smile and on some days I think he was sent by Eledumare to comfort me. 

My father hated me with so much passion, and I shared his feelings too, anytime he came near me. The man was a sworn woman beater; he started beating his sister to his girlfriends and then graduated to beating his wife. I screamed whenever he was near me and this made the neighbours suspecting of him. And then they all started avoiding him, and he soon had no drinking partners in the compound, this led to more beatings, by the way.

Even though I was born with a deformity, I was blessed with a photogenic memory. Weirdly, I remember every smell, (I still remember the smell of my first poo, and it wasn’t pleasant). Every expression, everything said to me, (it made it hard to forgive people), every sound, every tone (whenever my father is beating his wife, I can tell through her cry’s the tenacity of the beatings). 

So you see life was difficult for me, if I wasn’t busy fending off the advances of foolish men, I’m fighting for the right to play in peace in the compound and I have a lot of scars to show for it. I had to learn how to fight for myself, when baba Biola, my father’s drinking mate, tried to slip his fingers into me in the presence of my drunk father, I remember the taste of his blood where I bit him. He avoided me ever since. But I wonder about his four girls, each one of them walking with a limp on various days of the week, (I've never seen any of them smile too). 

If you live long enough on this planet, and yet day after day, you still find the courage to smile, I salute you. I’m nine years old, and I’ve found no reason to smile. 

I’m Enitan, and my life is a story, and my memories are my story. However I’m tired of being burdened by them, so today on my ninth birthday, I’m taking myself back to Eledumare. I’m tired of this planet, hopefully, in my next life he sends me to a better place because this world messed me up, I a once upon a time happy child.

Life taught me a major lesson; don’t let your memories become toxic and make you a bitter person. Your memories should be a happy place, filled with pages of bright stories. Erase the sad stories as often as you can, so you don’t become an old person in your youth.

Till we meet again, create happy memories.

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