Hey lovelies!!! what's up with you people? I told you all it's revelation time for me right? Yea... I did a post yesterday which I titled WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR LEG?. It's basically about the questions I get all the time from people wanting to know what went wrong with my leg. Of course the leg doesn't look like every other persons leg? lol...... I got a lot of inboxes on my Facebook page. Some people didn't understand the post at all!!! who would blame they? they have not been following this blog.
So today's post is about my mom's response. every mother with a "problem child" will tell you this is the stage where they dread the most. The stage where their child starts asking questions about whatever the problem is. That day, I remember my mom grabbing me firmly by the hand, leading me into our living room and positioning me on her lap. I can't even begin to describe the look on my mother's face that day because it was a combination of different emotions.
After looking at each other for a while, she said Ify who told you that something is wrong with your leg? Me: mummy see my left leg is bigger than my right leg.... my friends at school showed me the difference today. They said they will not play with me again because I cannot play "oga and gene sisi". mummy they even said I cannot run. Mummy I won't go to that school again.... Looking up at my mum and seeing a tear drop from her eyes, I stopped and asked mummy are you crying? Realizing herself she she put me down quickly and said no Ify I am not crying..... Let's wait for your dad to return we will tell you about your leg together okay.
She took a few steps towards our bedroom and paused...... she walked back up to me, positioned herself to my level, grabbed me by the shoulder and said look at me Ify...... "No matter what anyone says about your leg, never you let it stop you from doing the things you love to do". If those your friends don't want to play with you, make new friends are you hearing me? Me: yes mummy.......
Reminiscencing on that conversation later on in my life I learned two things:
- Don't stop doing the things you love to do because of what people said or didn't say about your situation.
- You have the power to change things around you. the things that makes you uncomfortable.
When daddy got back from work, we didn't go over the issue again. Thinking about it today as an adult, my parents made a mistake of not discussing it with me together that day. These kind of questions never go away it will always resurface at some point in your childs life. I know it is a difficult topic to talk over with your child however, it will do that child a lot of good if she knew something about the condition..... no matter how small....
A name would have done it for me but my I carried on with life knowing that something is wrong with my leg but not knowing exactly what it is. I left me confused and angry..... very angry as the questions and bullying kept coming at me. Guess what? four years later, I confronted my parents again with the same question and yes we talked but not to my satisfaction. Yes at twelve, in JSS2 my parents just like every other Nigerian parent thought I was too young to understand everything. This time, I was given a name they said I had polio when I was a baby. We shall talk about that discussion in another post.
Sharon xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment