As My Mother’s Least Favourite Child, Overcompensation Is In My Blood
Can you be contrarian and hold boundary lines when you seek acceptance?
I owe the father of my daughters a son.
According to my best friend — the one I have had for over twenty years, the one who is American, the America we here in Africa think is the beacon of gender equality,- yes that America, and yes — that my best friend.
Would you have preferred to have birthed a boy this time? She asked me in the same breath after learning the gender of my second child.
But I do not hate my best friend. Matter of fact, she gave words to the very fear that I carried in my heart ever since my daughters’ father heard it was a girl and exclaimed —
Another girl? My father’s name has ended!
I comforted him by reminding him that he had options. Yes, I comforted him.
Growing up, I was…different. If my nose wasn’t stuck in some book, my head wrapped up in some dream so I rarely was present in my environment. I did my own things and damned everyone else. Quite selfish, I must say.
My poor mother, the moment I became a teenager, it was like she did not know how to interact with me. With my sisters, they would spend hours talking and laughing, with me, we struggled to find anything to talk about. If I disagreed with my siblings, I very often found that she took their side.
Soon, I realized that one did not have to be a bad person or do bad things in a family of saints to be considered the black sheep. You may just be the black sheep because you questioned the collective wisdom or because you did not agree with the conventional way of talking, breathing or even wearing clothes.
As an example, as an African child, we have our Ankara clothing materials. Some parents will take one type of material, and make it for all their children including the same style. My mother was one of those parents.
As a 7-year-old, it was cute to wear the same uniform with my three other sisters (the youngest being one), but as a sixteen-year-old-, I refused to wear it. No matter how long my mother talked to me about wearing it even if it was just once, or to make my sisters happy, I did not budge.
I also did not budge when she insisted that as a Christian, I wear skirts and gowns in the university over trousers. We also clashed a lot when I dated someone who had a blasé attitude towards God.
I think my mother finds me stubborn or that I do what I do because she thinks that I am cunning and just want to get under her skin. I think she just chose the easy way out by aligning with those whom she loves more and no matter how much I try to bend or break to belong, I just could never fit within my family.
I still do not…
As an undergraduate, I again found myself on the other end of collective wisdom and conventional ways of living.
Why will boys not cook food or wash their own clothes? I would ask professors when they make blanket statements like boys will be boys and girls belong in the kitchen.
You should have seen their bewilderment when a piece I wrote calling for the normalization of abortion, got circulated—
You cannot be serious! Are you not a child of God…are you not a woman?
And when I answered Girls, to the question: if you were to have only one child, what gender would you prefer, my classmates — especially the women, nearly tripped over themselves, in their hurry to tell me to swallow my words because:
You just might make it come true for you.
That’s just Okwy. That is how she is…She is a feminist…She is a womanist…or maybe she’s just talking…
They will say.
Sometimes I felt like I was being cunning. Like I was being a contrarian just for the sake of it. Like maybe I truly was trying to get under people’s skin, just like I was with my mother.
Truthfully,
In our home, my mother made boys and girls cook and wash their own clothes. I am certain that if either of my brothers ever said boys do not cook, there was no doubt that my mother would make them cook for so many days, they would beg for mercy. So hearing in school, that because their genitalia was swinging meant that in some other families and society — that this excluded them from the kitchen and laundry rooms, was baffling to me.
I grew up around a Polytechnic where my parents worked and I cannot tell you the number of times we heard of newborn babies disposed in the trash. I went to an all-girls secondary school and learned of coat-hanger abortions. To me, legalizing abortion just made sense. If it is against your religious beliefs,… maybe pray for the sinners?
And as a woman, I have the experience of being a woman, why would I take the option to raise a boy if raising a girl was the only other option? Motherhood has no manual but I cannot be so clueless as a girl mother. To my schoolmates:
Your husband will bring in another woman if you cannot give him a baby boy.
But…but…that wasn’t the question. That was outside the scope of the question.
It did not matter. I needed to fall in with the collective wisdom and conventional way of living theoretically as well as practically.
I feel it will be exhausting living a life that I do not believe in. I feel it will be exhausting standing with the general opinion just because I am afraid to say that I feel different. But, I am never physically, mentally, or emotionally exhausted from speaking my mind.
I have been exhausted however because I often try to maintain peace with everyone even while they go beyond the matter and into personal attacks.
So I overcompensate with words and actions.
On the heels of my country declaring fourteen years imprisonment for homosexual relationships, I publicly supported gay relationships.
I was called names and it sparked post after post of people talking about how people just talk carelessly and if your father was gay, would you have been born?
Again, I wasn’t supporting gay folks to piss anyone else off. My perspective was, how dare these corrupt, immoral, and ungodly politicians try to tell anyone how to live? I also posted my support because in my mind it is so straightforward:
It is not my business what two consenting people do in the privacy of their bedroom.
And if my staunchly religious mother can ask:
Why would we ask men to lie to themselves? Will you want that type of man for a husband?
Why can’t everyone else ask some variation of that question? Why are we choosing to lie to ourselves that gay people do not exist in Africa and all manner of gay is an imported Western construct?
I did not want to fight and I believe I deleted my posts because I didn’t know any gay person in my immediate environment so why ruffle the feathers of those who liked me? And for what? To be contrarian…again?
So to my mother, I have learned to overcompensate — you want this? Here. You want that? There you go. Even though I get to hear how this other sibling does more and that other one does so better.
To my daughters’ father, I assured him that many other women full of sons in their quiver exist. To those who call me a feminist, I learned to say, maybe just human. To extroverts who dislike my introversion, I learned to be talkative even while my head is spinning. And to everyone else spewing bullshit, I learned to smile and nod.
Until I started to lose my soul. It became too much work trying to please and maintain friendships with people who cannot entertain dissenting views.
To the people who with this gotcha attitude, ask me, so what will you do if your child becomes a lesbian tomorrow, huh? Huh?
I have learned to answer truthfully, I. Do. Not. Care. I mean, wouldn’t it be creepy that I would pay that much attention to my consent-aged daughter’s bedroom activities?
You don’t care about having grandchildren… your legacy… !
Folks, this is the 21st century. While we need the sperm to make the baby, we do not need the whole man.
And if I need a child for my legacy then I am a shit writer.
So you do not think trans people aren’t just confused humans headed for hell?
Answer: How does their life affect you — personally?
But, feminists are ruining the world. Mothers aren’t home to take care of the children. What of the next generation?! Who is raising the next generation? Pity the next generation!
Haha. So women are important but not gender equality important?
And that attitude towards that topic and other controversial topics has put me on the offense with people I used to try to maintain peace with. I think I have become okay with the fact that in my environment, I do not belong so I have stopped trying to force myself into these spaces. Life is too short, I already lost a bit of time trying to overcompensate for just being.
No, I did not change. I only stopped tolerating bullshit where commonsense is at stake also no, I am not suddenly sensitive, I have only stopped explaining myself. I am not now arrogant, I have only learned to live without seeking your validation.
But I still overcompensate — with my mother. For the many years she has been loving, caring, prayerful, and supportive. Years I went to her to learn more about something. Years I called her to cry over something and she talked me up or talked me down the ledge.
And I have stopped fighting to show her that in the family, I feel least loved by her.
It is my burden and truth that all overcompensating burdens the soul but you know what? Sometimes, and with some folks and in some circumstances, you just have to make peace with it.
Thank you for reading.
