Une Femme Libre

"After Fall" by Ayo Olamide Disclaimer: This retelling of Beauty and the Beast is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Ewa grabbed the scissors from her dressing table, her fingers trembling as she hacked away at her thick black hair. The strands tumbled onto the floor, pooling at her bare feet. She wanted to shed more than just her hair. She wanted out of this prison, this gilded cage that had now become her ‘home.’ Two years of torment had turned the walls into shackles, the air into something she could barely breathe. With a sigh, she let the scissors clatter to the floor. How did my perfectly planned life unravel into this nightmare? The question gnawed at her as she reached for the pill bottle and washed down two tablets of Panadol with a gulp of cold water, hoping—praying—that this would dull the ache, if only for a while.  She missed her father a lot, and with...

Dear survivor , I am writing this letter to you to tell you all the things I should have told you earlier on but didn't have the right words for until now. I am writing to you because in some ways I am a survivor and I know how unsettling this tag of 'survivor' can sometimes be. I also write to you because I know that surviving something that shook the core of your existence even before you knew who you were is a very rocky process, yet does not—and should not, justify invalidating another person's abuse, pain and experiences, because you had it 'worse.' Dear survivor, I want you to imagine this scenario. Imagine you and I embark on a car journey from Lagos to Ibadan. During the course of the journey, our car hypothetically collides with a truck all of a sudden. In the span of a few seconds we think, 'This is it. This is the end.' But a few hours later, we open our eyes and find that alas, we are still in the land of the living after managing to survive ...

Disclaimer: The content of this post is not medical advice and is written from the viewpoint of the writer and solely influenced by her personal experiences.  It's safe to say that one very important treasure in my life at the moment is my support system (i.e. friends and family). Even though they might not always understand my outbursts, pain, or actions like I want them to, they  always come through for me. As much as I know that they are always there for me, it can sometimes get a bit difficult to explain what I'm feeling or going through at some certain points in my life. I don't always find the right words to express why I always need to use the restroom, or why I'm always so exhausted, or why I don't always look them in the eye when I talk to them. Nevertheless, I know that they love me for who I am and much relief comes from the fact that they embrace a lot of my qualities and make me channel my anxious energy for good.  Speaking of anxious energy, it's k...