1. I drink alcohol. I used to be a light drinker only drinking once a month before 2014 when I began to drink heavily. All the while I was in University I remember only having drank a full bottle of wine by myself alone just once. Frank, my then boyfriend would have never guessed I could hold my liquor as he never knew me to drink.
2. I am heterosexual with a heavy false accusation of being lesbian. Even though I am heterosexual I spend a lot of time absorbed in thoughts and projects and crafts that I do not consider sex a top priority. It’s also an ingrained behavior having attended boarding school where the thought of pre-marital sex was hushed and advised against. This is not to say I have not indulged.
3. I experienced childhood trauma inside the secondary school institution I had attended as I did have my fair share of childhood misdemeanor which was very badly handled and I ended up heavily physically abused ( I was made to stand in the middle of a circle of five teachers who rained me blows from their canes at the same time for about 20-30 minutes at 12-1 pm (midnight) of a particular day. I remember the lumps on my skull from the beating, I remember the pain on my shoulder blade where I had thought it had broken, I remember a lot of aches I don’t wish to remember. I remember being woken up by one of the prefects and taken to the venue and I remember being asked to confess before the physical abuse ensured, then after the abuse when I confessed, I was taken to the Morning general assembly and caned again for it. I was asked to dig around a huge tree stump and uproot it which I did, my hair was chopped off horribly and all of these was at the last moments of writing my Senior WAEC. Now, after I finished my WAEC and NECO I was tossed out of the school premises, practically and literally chased with a cane to the exit by a matron known as Mama Pache, and never allowed to take my bags with me out of the school. I remember I stood there with no money to transport me home and it was Lebechi Ezeh who gave me some money and I traveled all the way from Awo-Omamma in Imo State to Lagos State alone and I wasn’t even close to 18 years of age at the time. All of this happened in Logos International Secondary School. LOGISS. Awo-Omamma, Imo State.
When I got home my mother had heard the story from my sister Amaka and she didn’t ever ask to hear my side of it and she proceeded to stigmatize me further and ostracise me from her/my family. One of the first things my mother did was that she refused to give me Lebechi’s money and Lebechi’s friend kept coming again and again and again and again for the money and my mother let the humiliation drag on for months until my self-esteem was in the dumps and the friendship with Lebechi which hung by a thread finally broke off. When she finally gave me the money I had lost everything.
Till date she has never asked me what happened, but she had punished me every single day and reminded me every single moment of what I did in secondary school. Perhaps, one day I will share a full account of the ostracisation I had endured in my family.
I am glad to say that despite the circumstances at that time I made my WAEC and NECO papers
What was the offence I committed? I took something that wasn’t mine and didn’t return it. It was the first time I did that in that secondary school.
I write because I have healed from it all. I share my story because I want people to know that there is discipline and there is abuse and they are not one and the same thing.
I have lived through both and I know which is which. I was abused in LOGISS.
