Last Weekend I Realized I Don’t Know Who I Am Or The Person Inhabiting My Body

“What is your biggest fear?”
That was the first question Mutiat Olagoke, the facilitator and creator of Muslimah Speaks, asked me as soon as I greeted the attendees of the program. Muslimah Speaks was started last year by my best friend’s sister, her own way of teaching communication skills to Muslim women — her way of helping them succeed in a society that heavily stereotypes them.
Earlier on, I was unsure about attending the event, it was a Sunday, I had a choice between ‘assisting’ at a photoshoot or forcing myself to finish the first season of The Defenders, I guess I made a life-changing choice that morning.
In the half-empty room, I stammered and blurted out how speaking publicly made me sweaty and nervous. I didn’t tell the truth because I actually didn’t know that truth. Going on into the program, I realized, one of my biggest fears in life was seeing myself through people’s eyes.
Living with this fear was why I showed up in mom jeans, a sweater, my favourite Fenty Puma sneakers and my carefully made- up face. I wanted to look different, to stand out and compensate for the areas I thought I lacked in — so people would focus on that instead. I love fashion VERY much, I love looking good but I painfully discovered how my sense of style overshadowed my poor self-confidence.
During an exercise, all participants were asked to describe 3 amazing qualities they had and this took me nothing less than 15 minutes — I almost cried because I knew I wasn’t a complete trash bag — but having to think really hard about this showed I didn’t know who I was. I finally wrote some of the things people have said about me and got on with it, feeling a bit better about myself. I felt a lot confident about what I wrote until Mutiat began to read her own sheet, I immediately started feeling inadequate once again.
But immediately I started reading my sheet, I slowly believed in myself and the things I wrote down even though the eyes in the room made me really uncomfortable. At the end of the programme, I realised I was living for other people, that when I spoke to strangers, I looked to their eyes for validation, when I supposedly wrote for myself, I sent to people for validation and almost everything I did was based off fear of people.
One hot evening in 2003, Senior Rita, in her red, tight, Oduduwa House wear marched into our stuffy night prep class with her friends, I remember her saying she wanted to ‘play’ with us JS 1 girls because everywhere was boring. This was my first time away from home and the first time my esteem probably got sucker punched. She yelled at us, a class full of 10–11 year olds, “If you know you’re a fine girl, stand up” and I did with almost half of the class.
Rita even picked a school daughter from the crowd before catching my eye and asking me what the hell I was doing standing up. I was mumbling and she and her friends burst into laughter, I can remember her jokes about how wretched and ugly I looked. Naturally, as a result of many other unfortunate events, I battled depression and suicidal thoughts for a long time mainly because I was convinced something was wrong with me.
Growing up, the standard of being a good and normal child in my Nigerian parent’s eye was not engaging in the usual social vices and definitely NOT having sex until marriage. Like many other young Nigerians, talking to parents about depression and self esteem issues with the aim of seeking mental help is not up for debate. Taking kids to classes in actual self-development which do not involve Pastors/Imams talking about premarital sex and cultism is also really rare.
By the end of that evening, I realised I still need a therapist even if thoughts of killing myself have stopped for about a year now. I also realised that I need to stop asking the question, “What do you think” more often. I realised I couldn’t stand one of the people that inspired me SO MUCH and it was okay. All the reasons I failed at some things flashed right in front of me — I failed not because I wasn’t good enough to win but because I believed I didn’t deserve and couldn’t even win. I openly acknowledged my self-confidence problem to strangers that Sunday without any shame and I realized, in the words of one of my faves, Fird, “The reason why people don’t rate me is because I don’t rate myself.”
