The Unwanted Me

I have grown up knowing that I was kinda different from the rest of my family but one thing was certain to me that I was and would always be loved. I may lived in fear that eventually I would have to reveal myself to them and that is a moment every person dreads.
It took me 24 years to at least come to terms with my sexuality, add to that one more year to gather enough courage to put myself to the world. Last November I came out to my cousin and that was one of the most tense moments in my life. Surprisingly I went better than I envisioned with him accepting me for who I am and pledging his life for me.
Today turned out to be the darkest and most trying in my life. I woke up to find a message from my only sister, the message went: " Found out you are gay, I don't want to even talk to you ever. You are an abomination before God and cursed to face all evil in the world. " You can't imagine the shock I was in, why did this have to happen to me? From what I gather someone on facebook ousted me for reasons best known to him.
After the initial shock faded, I wrote this to her - I'll talk to you once I'm able to digest all, it's in your discretion how to react to all. For now I ain't got more to say. Regards. - I then deactivated my facebook account and when offline on my mobile yahoo messenger, I didn't know anything else to do.
Long story short in just one day I have changed from a loving brother cared for and accepted into a hated abomination, shunned and cursed. WHY? You may ask, just for trying to be me - The Unwanted Me.

WHO AM I?

Do we really know who we are and what drives us? I have thought of this question for sometimes now and I can say for sure I’m at a loss about a definite answer.

I was born to a conservative, simple and religious family. Being the born of the family, I was brought up under the shadows of older siblings and was expected to emulate them in their actions. I have lived my life with the pressure of being expected to be like so and so and not to be like so and so. All my achievements and failures were measured in comparison to my siblings and in so doing robbing me of what would have defined me as an individual. I sometimes wish I rebelled and did what I wanted but that wasn’t in the equation at that time. Picture this, from my primary school days, I was under pressure to lead in my class, number one was the only acceptable option in all my exams. The reason being my elder brother was too. For my high school education, I was admitted in a provincial school that though it was good, it wasn’t my choice; my brother was admitted in the same school two years earlier and thus I was expected to follow his footsteps. When I was first caught drunk, I was reprimanded not because drinking was bad, hell everyone in the family did it, and the reasoning behind my woes was that I was too young and my brothers waited until they were 18 years to do it, I was 16 at the time. The list goes on to include my sex life, mode of dressing, friends and almost everything I did.

Now to the issue at hand, what does all this have to do with who I am today? And the answer to this question is everything. With this I mean I was molded to become like my elder siblings and not to be me. My parents did this not with malice or ill motives but because they thought it was the right thing to do and thus I don’t hold it against them. I love them and would do anything to please them and also my sibling. It was the sacrifice that though I knew would affect me later, I willingly took it and with not regret I did all that was expected of me.

Now the independent me has come to terms with the facts that I really don’t know who I am and what I want in life. With this realization I’ve been in the path of rediscovering myself and for the last few months I believe I have made considerable progress concerning many aspects of my life. On a positive note, I have realized that my life could have been worse if I had the kind of freedoms I yearned for, lets be honest, I could be naughty given the chance and if it were not for the “spare the rod, spoil the child” stance that my parents had, there isn’t anything I could not have done. I owe my moral uprightness to my parent and I can’t change anything about that, maybe try to be an even better person. I also learned to be responsible and caring to the plights of other people, this sometimes feels like a big weight on my shoulder in cases where I will give to others especially family all that I got in terms of time, finance and my entire being and leave myself with nothing and all I get from doing all this is a compilation of more responsibilities and high expectations of what I should offer them next. But despite the lack of any positive return for my efforts, it feels nice knowing that I made a different in somebody’s life and whether or not the person acknowledge that is of no importance to me.

I have lived my life trying to please other people so much that I forgot that I had my life to live and me to please. Those who really knew me can attest to this fact and though I try to front a “I don’t care” face with some of my actions, I always find myself bending to the demands of others. I have realized that I got one life to live and thus I should live my life for me, myself and put my needs first before I do those for other people. I should do what pleases and fulfills me and not what pleases the society and that I shouldn’t apologize for it. I’ve also realized that I should not be judged for mistakes done by others and that in my life I will make mistakes, but they are mine to make and learn from them, I am not perfect nor do I try to be. So to all those trying to make perfection out of me, you have your lives to live and I got mine too. Let me be.

The final issue I am going to tackle is about love and acceptance, having grew up not knowing who I really am, I have had this feeling that I have to please everyone for them to acknowledge me leave alone accept me. You have no idea how hard it is to live your life feeling worthless and unacceptable. About love, I always had the love of my family but I always had the fear that should I do something against their expectations, it could be taken away from me. I still do have this feeling sometimes but at least I’ve it under control and incase it comes to be, I believe I can live with it. I’m still skeptical whether the other kind of love exists in the world. Just recently I had somebody who gave me the reason to believe that it exists and after falling hard and putting my entire being to make it work, I got wounded so much that I even lost the will to leave. The pain was worse than physical pain; I became numb and withdrawn to everything in my life. Now I am cautious about putting myself in such situation again and as for love, I really don’t know.

FRIENDS AND ACQUINTANCES

How do I start these? It being my first attempt of me doing serious blogging, I’m at a loss whether or not I can be able to hack it and also maintain it’s relevance till end point. I have had so many issues that I consider important and those I can relate to in terms of where I am currently and where I want to be in the future. Some are personal and tend to focus on who I am as a person, my friends and day to day acquaintances and my social life. These issues tend to say much about me and thus tend to guard them fiercely and will only allow the very few who are chosen. I tend to be a very private person and I only open up to those who I really trust and I have confidence in their discretion and to tell the truth they aren’t many on that list. Some of those I even consider to be my friends have acceptance and prejudicial issues and thus I really can’t open up to them.

What does the above have to do with what I’m trying to pass through this article? Well all I am trying to say is we really need to be able to differentiate between all those we relate with in our day to day undertakings and be able to comfortably handle the in the orders they follow. We have childhood friends who we grew up together, went to school with, who are like brothers to us and will be there to give an account of your life when all is said and done. You feel free to share all you have with them, with them you are the real you because they know where you come from, and all that you did, have seen you in your most revealing moments – hell, you jerked off together when you were little or even went skin deeping in the river.

Then when school, mostly high school and college, another group of friends comes into play, the school buddies who in essence constitute acquaintances of the time you are trying to discover who you really are and what you want in life. This are the fun times, when you go all out and break all guarding walls trying to restrain you and your targets. Buddies will be there in all your bar fights without them blaming you for having started the fights. They will take blows and punches by your side and in doing so cementing something that may last a lifetime. For me I’ve very few of this group left in my life because if by any chance you life priorities differ, you tend to drift apart and at long last what you thought you shared fades into the oblivion.

On the same note there are those you get acquainted due to your faiths and beliefs. These are your fellow church friends who share your beliefs and convictions about life and thus you are drawn together by the same. Also friends brought about by your profession and career fall in this category. These groups of people, in my opinion are more of acquaintances and that the name friend is misused in reference to them because they got nothing more to offer apart from the faith and work issues.

The other group of people I’m going to tackle are the virtual friends. They consist of all those you interact with over the web and even over the phones. In some cases you maybe friends in real life while at other times you may have no idea of who they really are apart from the bits and pieces you’ve seen or heard about them over time. Virtual friends makes up a complex , intricate and intriguing group of people and to really say that one fully understands them is like trying to convince people that Jesus was black, now that’s a challenge I most definitely won’t take on no matter what. From my own personal experience, I’ve had virtual friend from social networks – Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo, Tagged and Google. From what I know, Facebookers are the most active and intriguing group of virtual friends currently with everyone even our conservative parents being taken over by the facebook fever. Facebookers comes in all manner of characters and attributes and from their sheer numbers, one is assured to get the person with the attribute that best suits one’s needs or so it may seem. What one needs to understand is that one shouldn’t believe all that you see in these social networks and people tend to spice up their accounts to make their lives interesting and more appealing to the rest. Yahoo and Google (gmail) tend to be the most conservative of the social networks despite the fact that they have been in operation longer than the rest. Titter is the new kid in the block and has taken virtual friendship to new heights and also has revolutionized how virtual friendship works in that with others, one has to basically make a request to his targeted friend so as to connect but on twitter this is not necessarily the case whereby instead of us connecting, one follows his targeted friend and this can be done to anybody including international acclaimed people. Don’t ask me how tagged work coz I really have no idea which demography of people they target but that is beside the point.

The kind of people one may meet in the social networks varies, you may be lucky to find some good souls, people who you feel connected to even though you have never met them in person. These are the kind you share the same beliefs in life and thus the connection. Then there are those who are there for personal interests and don’t care whether or not you have anything to offer. The ones who one should be wary of consist of those weirdoes whose intentions are to cause trouble. They will pretend to care so that you open up to them but all they are after are details to spoil your name and in the process hurt you.

So I guess it all comes down to knowing who you consider to be your friend and the reasons behind that, and those who are just acquaintances

I'M HURTING

My inexperience may cost me the best,
such a long journey, such a strenuous quest,
all of my life i'd been searching for love,
and you seemed like a blessing, a gift from above,
without meaning to i hurt you.

I pray you'll forgive me, if not all is lost,
why did it all end in ruins? Was it to be all for not?
He's the one thing i wanted, the one thing i need,
and i pushed him away, his efforts i ignored,
but in the end i'm hurting for him.

How i wish i never allowed myself to feel,
never should my heart let him in,
coz the pain of loss cut straight to the bone,
now i'm struggling to get over him, my days so dull, feel more dead than alive,
but i still embrace the pain,
for it belongs to me to feel and through it learn.

ME

I'm the judge, i'm the jury. So let me my decisions make, my actions are mine so do. For it's me who will consequences face, what's good and bad me decide.