I feel a heavy weight crushing my soul, a violent hand yanking at my spirit, a hot fire moving all over my body. How can one person be attacked in this way? How can a single person carry so many burdens? Why can’t I just press delete and end everything? And when I say everything, I mean every damn thing.
My mother is shouting at me, reminding me once again of how useless I am—how irresponsible, how detached, how heartless, how unfathomable. It’s not a new thing; I’ve been hearing that since I became a teenager, since the chapter of being a child was closed. There had been thousands of sermons about being responsible, useful, and hustling to make money. I guess it must be the same way that African young girls start to receive uncountable sermons from their African mothers about being a woman of virtue and avoiding boys once they start seeing their monthly flow because the touch of a boy could get them pregnant, so this is not my first time of hearing these things from my mother. She always does that; she always reminds me. “Go out there and see how other people are hustling! If one thing is not working for you, then find another thing to do. Find something else that will be fetching you money constantly. You don’t have to keep doing that particular thing if it’s not fetching you money. Meet more people and ask more questions, that’s how to do it, that’s how to get better.”
My soul is always in pain. My spirit is always wounded, and my countenance is not often bright. Many nights I would struggle to sleep. I would roll from one side of my bed to the other and cry my eyes out and throw hundreds of questions towards God in heaven until I finally fell asleep. I try as much as I can to be normal, but I can’t. I am always thinking of the other things to do, because whenever she says other things, she’s not specific about what the other things were.
I am the first child, the first son, and my parents expect me to be a perfect example, a flawless child. They expect me never to make any mistakes. Whenever I did something wrong, my parents would say, “What do you want your younger ones to learn from you?” They place so much emphasis on you being good for your younger ones instead of emphasising you being good for yourself first before extending the goodness to other people, not just for your siblings alone. They expect me to make money as soon as possible. They expect me to carry their burdens, to bring money anytime I am asked, but it is not yet possible. My financial capacity is still lacklustre. I have not yet carried my own personal burdens, not to mention picking up someone else’s. Sometimes we are given burdens that are heavier than us. The Almighty Jesus could not even carry his own burden—the cross—they had to command someone else to help Him.
My business has not yet picked up the way it should, but I believe it would. I believe in process. I believe in the Igbo proverb that says ụkwa ruo oge ya ọ daa—the breadfruit falls down on its own when the time is ripe.
Ukwa is breadfruit in English. In Igbo culture, ụkwa falls down on its own, just like ụdara. They are not to be plucked. They are not to be hacked down the way people can hack down mangoes or oranges or cut down bananas. Ukwa falls down with a heavy thud because it is a big pod containing several tiny brownish seeds inside, which would be later used as food, and no one knows the time it would fall. It is taboo in Igbo culture to pluck the ụkwa, or hack it down. It falls down on its own when the time is ripe, then the owner can pick it up and start processing it for food. I believe so much in this wisdom illustrated with ụkwa by our ancestors—ụkwa ruo oge ya ọ daa—everything will happen when the time is right. I believe that one day I will get rich financially, but I don’t know if my parents are aware of the deep meanings in this proverb. I’ve not even heard them use the proverb before, but they know about it. They have to know about it. They’ve been here before me.
My parents are thoroughly vexed and more prone to throwing tantrums at any little misdoing of mine. Now, nobody sees me as a full human being just because I cannot yet carry their burdens. And I would be glad to carry the burdens if I have the financial means to do so since it is what they expect of me. And not just them; it’s the norm in Igbo land. The firstborns are expected to pave the way for others, to provide for the others, and to cater to the needs of their younger ones, but what happens when the firstborn is not yet fit to do so? “You’ve grown up to the age of helping. You are no longer a kid. Even though you no longer feed in this house, you have to make sure you bring something into this house. Make sure you do it every week. It is your responsibility,’ my mother often says.
Everyday they bring in stories of people my age who are making it, who are showering their parents with money, who are carrying the burdens of their parents, drying the tears from the eyes of their parents, fulfilling God’s will for their lives, but here I am doing nothing for them. Sometimes I would try to explain that things would get better with time, that the breadfruit would fall when the time became ripe; other times I would just keep quiet, gathering the pieces of my heart together. Every time, I am gathering the pieces of my heart scattered everywhere, scattered with bilious words. Every time, I am thinking, trying to make sense of my life, seeking the meaning of life. Why did we come here just to jump from one pain to another?
We are in the age of social media, where people want to warp the joy of others by displaying their wealth and achievements and successes through pictures, write-ups, videos, and speeches. I am not saying it is bad to do that, to let other people share in the joy of one’s new achievements, but people of today have other plans in their minds. They seek to make you feel little, inconsequential. This is a time of showoffs, fakeness, and unhealthy competitions. My parents are on Facebook, so they often see posts of teenage celebrities doing wonderful things for their families. Recently, a Nigerian child actress built a house for her parents, and my mother couldn’t stop talking about it. “Oh! She’s a blessed child. Nwa Chukwu goziri agozi. See how young she is, and she’s already doing exploits, drying the tears from her mother’s eyes. Oh, God has remembered the woman. This God who remembered Jabez, Hannah, and Sarah will also remember me one day.”
I died a hundred times during the Mother’s Day celebration that was held a month ago. My mother kept retelling the story of how a young boy who was much younger than me showered his mother with gifts and money. “That small boy of yesterday. That is how real sons should be. If your parents did not make it, then you yourself should go out there and make it. Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe.”
My mother did not stop telling the story, even when my sister told her that the boy was a Yahoo boy, a 419ner. Everybody knows he’s into Yahoo, my sister said, but my mother did not even dart an eye towards her. She just continued with what she was saying, praising the boy, and the worst was that I did not even attend the Mother’s Day celebration because I wouldn’t afford to spray any money and I didn’t have the emotional energy to sit through a church service where people had come fully prepared to compete with each other. If I had money with me, I would have simply given it to her instead of going to her church. She knew I wouldn’t come because I often avoid services of feasts and celebrations (they are always too noisy for me), but I could translate my presence to money. I could give her the money I should have sprayed. Sometimes I wonder if she secretly thinks I should get money in fraudulent ways, by any means possible. And yes, today’s generation does not care about how or where you make the money. Just make the money and give them. Period. Spray the money in parties. Donate it for church buildings. Buy bags of rice for the whole community. Nobody cares where the money has come from. If there are people who would care, those people are too few because we are in a time of financial pursuits that has no plans to maintain integrity.
I usually keep quiet in the midst of all these, but my quietness is full of pain, full of sorrows, full of questions, full of heartaches.
These days, I am a dead person walking about. No life is left in me. The atmosphere in my father’s house sucks every life out of me. Sometimes I struggle to breathe properly. I don’t know if I am taking it too personal, but many nights I think of the least hurtful way to end my life, to end it all, to erase myself out of this horrible place, to evaporate into the air, and I can see my mother saying, “Did we ask him to kill himself? Did we? We only asked him to hustle more.”
There is no joy here. There is no love here. If you don’t have money then you are not a living thing, so it’s best not to bother people with my existence. I am tired. I just want to leave. I would pray this as a prayer on many nights, imploring God to come take my life, but still, I would wake up in the morning, my eyes wide and much alive, and sometimes forgetting that I had cried bitterly in the night.
Nobody is interested to know how your business is faring. Nobody is interested to know about the process of starting and then growing, and sustaining a business. Nobody cares. All they want is that you should bring money.
You are still struggling to keep your business alive, but nobody cares to know. Sometimes you don’t have money in your account and you are overcome by a deep fear about how to feed, but nobody is interested. Because you are the firstborn, you are supposed to make it by all means. You are supposed to make money, and when you make that money, you bring it into the house so that everyone will eat. You are supposed to feed everyone, and you still find this funny sometimes because feeding oneself in Nigeria under this regime is not a joke, not to talk of feeding a whole family with whatever income you get, an income that has no stability yet.
My cousin brother, who is also a firstborn, is facing the same challenge, always exchanging bitter words with his parents (which I only do on rare occasions when there’s no more space in my soul to store up false accusations), keeping a strong face, and trying to survive in the midst of all these. He is the only son, and it is much harder for him. Many days he wouldn’t come back home just to breathe fresh air. He would sleep in a friend’s house and switch off his phone, and nobody even bothers to call him. They know he will still come back. But why does it have to be this way? You suddenly become the enemy when you refuse to become the sacrificial lamb that would be slain so that others could live. If you allow yourself to be slain, how sure are you that you will rise on the third day, when you are not Jesus the Christ? Why does it always have to be the firstborns?
The burden is too much. The expectations are too much, just for coming out first before others? The mouth-lashing is too much. This is too unbearable. This is a constant attack, a war waged against my spirit, soul, and body. Even Jesus-the-flesh who was sent here as a firstborn to die for the salvation of the other sons of God on earth, could not stand it. “If it is possible, Lord, let this cup pass me by,’ he said, but His Father had plans—after they must have killed Him, His Father would resurrect Him from the dead after three days.
For how long will you continue to know this pain? This death? For how long can one endure this?
