The Friendships of A Nigerian Woman Who Stutters
An enticing and compelling piece on growth, boundaries, and self-acceptance.
My earliest memories of friendships are of me and the six other kids I grew up with in my neighborhood. If these memories were lined like books on a shelf or queued like a crowd at the ATM, the first one would be of my friends and I running through the untarred road of our street. Some afternoons after coming back from primary school, we would fling our sandals and socks in unknown crevices of the house, do the same with school uniforms, and run out in just panties or singlets (depending on what we wore underneath our uniforms to school that day), and began our Olympics. I always finished last except the times I ran alongside my younger sister who was slower than I was in sprinting. One time, one of us fell while running and her entire body was bruised and she could barely walk, yet the next afternoon she was there on the street with us getting ready to run. On other afternoons, instead of running, we would roll black tires of Okada that we got from god-knows-where (I can't remember) down the same street. I finished within the first three when it came to rolling tires; I was fast with them!
The second memory would be of fetching water in the community well. My friends and I would carry buckets and run to the well, beside which a small stream ran. At the edges of the stream, there were several holes that crabs lived in and sometimes, the crabs would come out and we would pick them. Other times, we would dip our hands into the holes to pull out the crabs. We did it fearlessly till we witnessed an older boy from the next street whom we were familiar with but didn't play with dip one of his hands into the hole and he pulled it out frantically, in a motion and with a yell, in that instance. Blood trickled from a small but deep cut on his hand; the crab he was trying to capture defended itself and cut him with its scissors. Since then, we became careful and approached the crabs with fear. Sometimes, we would wear rubber gloves to pick them. God, they were delicious. My mom would roast them on charcoal fire and other times, boil them till they turn brown. There was nothing more pleasant than crunching the legs and scissors of a crab.
The third memory would be playing Ice and Water or Police and Thief with my friends. We used the house of two of us who were brothers. I was always caught. I turned into Ice the most and police arrested me several times when I roleplayed as the thief.
The fourth memory would be when we would pour sugar on top of an evaporated peak milk tin, add kerosene to it, and light it on fire. In a second, it would harden, then we would proceed to lick it. We called it Ekana Abacha (Abacha’s nail)—I don't remember where the name came from but I know everyone picked it up.
Like that, the memories line up: walking to school and walking back home in groups, uprooting Cocoyam on other people's farms to roast (we didn't understand the word ‘stealing’ then), looking for snails in uncompleted fences after rain fell, playing in the moonlight, playing football, the time a lizard scratched my face, plucking cashews, fights, playing JACKPOT with my partner who didn't see all the signs I made till I was called a suspect, acting mummy and daddy and wasting my mom's makeup to look like my role, going to the river to catch fish and wash clothes every Sunday, and on and on. Till the last day everyone came out to play but neither of us knew it would be the last.
I have these wonderful moments and imprints of childhood friendship. Even though at that time, we didn't particularly refer to each other as friends, we were friends. I was recently telling my mom that one thing I am grateful for is I grew up in a neighborhood where all the kids could play together. We were not caged, we would leave the house in the morning, on weekends, and come back in the evening dirty from head to toe from exploring the uncompleted buildings in the neighborhood.
Then I grew up.
In 2016, I was fresh out of secondary school and expecting to gain admission into the university. I did and I had an immediate issue with accommodation: I had paid the hostel fees thinking I would be given a space in the school hostel, but it turned out I was required to take the receipt to student affairs to book a space for myself. I had no idea. So I was relaxed at home thinking I had an accomodation when my friend, who I attended secondary school with and also gained admission into university with, called me to tell me space had finished in the hostel and where was I. I looked for tears in my eyes and I couldn't find it when I realized my mistake.
Later, I got private accommodation outside of the school campus. It was a nice and comfortable hostel. I remember it was referred to as the best dormitory in the entire student area. I got a room there and I had a roommate who was nice enough. Then, I left the room to squat with friends in the school hostel that I had missed the opportunity to live in.
And there began my journey of adult friendships.
I took to squatting in the school hostel with friends, leaving my comfortable hostel behind. In my defense, I wasn't altogether familiar with the people at my private hostel and I couldn't imagine being their friend, including my roommate. However, to be honest, the defense is weak because one of the points of going to the University is the endless exploration of relationships. I could have attempted to be friendship with the people in my hostel, I didn't. I rather chose to stick myself with my friend in the school hostel and her friends.
As a person who stutters, there is a quiet expectation from people that I shouldn't be loud, after all, stuttering should a disability and a source of misery. The problem with their expectations, however, was my father had raised me to be loud and opinionated. He bought books for me since I was a little girl and he would eagerly ask me what learned from each book, how I perceived each book, and who my favorite characters were. This upbringing made me a person who enjoyed talking about her experiences and her feelings, and a person who assumed everyone, like her father, was interested in the things she had to say about the books she had read.
I have a clear memory of how shocked I was the first time I was called a talkative in a boarding house during my secondary school education. I was speaking in the way I talked to my father at home and this person called me a talkative, then told to keep shut. I had never been told I talked too much, neither had I been told to keep shut while talking. That experience is one of my first instances of shame.
So I began to choose my safe spaces by how they react to my stutter and my frequent need to have something to say. It became an issue when the first friends (whom I regarded as safe spaces) I made in university (at the school hostel) told me that I knew too much and I made them feel dumb whenever I talked. It is also important that I mention one major reason they became safe spaces for me is that I could stutter in their presence without feeling like I had a disability and was a disturbance.
I was torn. I was addicted to the safe spaces I found with them, in fact, I was codependent on them (my father was shocked when I told him I was preparing for my matriculation not in the hostel he and my mother paid for but in a school hostel with friends I had been squatting with, he told me I would be disrespected, but I didn't listen to him because I was young, naive, and foolish). So I chose to shrink myself for them. I became conscious of the things I said and how I said them, I didn't want to make my friends feel dumb. I could stutter without shame in their presence and I thought it was good enough.
I shrank myself and I shrank myself and I shrank myself. The accusations moved from making them feel dumb to me becoming too proud. At that time, I didn't know about boundaries and what self-worth meant in the larger sense, but I developed them after I met a new friend. She didn't feel dumb when I told her things I had read about (she would even encourage me to tell her more) and I could stutter freely in her presence. This new friendship transformed me in ways I wasn't even aware of.
For those I shrank for, developing personal boundaries that didn't cater to their needs became a problem and they informed me. They said I was proud. They said I was a bad friend because I stopped meeting their needs. As they talked, I shrank again and again. Before I knew it, I was back to square one. I was attached to them because, at the time when I thought I would be cast out for being a stutterer, they let me in. So I couldn't get past that act, I kept feeling like I was indebted to them.
Let me tell you how I met the new friend that made me stable.
We were classmates and at the beginning, we were simply that. I knew she was in my class and she knew my face and my name as well. Then one day at 200 level, we were all waiting outside class for a lecturer that didn't seem like he would come, and I was hungry. There was a place not far from the class that I could get food from but I didn't want to go alone. So, I turned to the nearest person beside me and asked if she could, please, follow me. I was surprised she said yes and I was happy too. We went to eat and we became semi-friends. The lecturer later showed up and after the class, we met and we talked, talked, and talked I talked her to death. Afterward, we became friends. I didn't have to shrink myself with her and I could stutter freely with her.
Throughout my undergraduate university years, I was at both ends. On one side, I was a stable person who didn't need to shrink herself and was free to stutter. On the other side, I was shrinking myself because I kept thinking I owed it to these people to shrink for them. After all, they were the first to accept me.
Even radical feminism, which came like a Messiah into my life and freed me from toxicity and internalized misogyny and all of the baggage, didn't quite free me from that particular baggage of debt. I had to excruciatingly do so by myself (with the strength from feminism and meeting wonderful women who are great friends to me).
Currently, I am 23 years and I look forward to becoming 24 by June 16th of this year, 2024. I used to be nervous about getting older. I was constantly sad on my birthdays and didn't look forward to the new year I was privileged to have been given. My theory, in explanation of how I was then, is I didn't understand the concept of growth. I didn't know what growth meant. I had shrunk myself so much that the thought of coming out for the sun subconsciously saddened me. I didn't understand that to be a person, a whole person, is to shed old skin and give space for new ones.
It is to understand and accept that I don't owe anyone anything for simply seeing me as a person. It is to understand that my first mistake was I assumed I had to be taken in, I had to be accepted, I had to be seen by another and validated by another before I could do so to myself. It is to understand that while sometimes good enough is good enough, however, when it comes to matters of self and development and care and growth and self-acceptance, good enough is not good enough, it has to meet the required standard of excellence.
I am grown now and I am still growing. I am excited to be 24 because I am looking forward to how grown I will be, looking forward to the person I will become. I have friends I can be vulnerable with (when I was heartbroken, I had A to call and cry with). I have friends I can be undoubtedly happy with. I have friends who would always see me ultimately from a good point. I have friends who don’t mock my love for K-pop and Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa. I love them all, my friends.
I also know how to leave friendships now. Yes, they were nice to me and made me feel good but I don't have to be indebted to that. I was as nice to them too, I see my good hands in their life too. When I detect that I have to try extra hard to be your friend without help from your side, I leave. I delete numbers and I move on. We were good together and you will always be a bright spot in my past. I value my emotions now and I pay extra attention to how I feel. No, you are not allowed to treat me in insulting ways.
I won't pretend like I'm not flawed and my flaws haven't forced an end to some of my past friendships. I regret my actions and I wish I could have done better and I have apologized. I know to not repeat such actions in the future.
It is said that friendship is the best ship and I wholeheartedly agree.
This is nicee to read through. As someone who didn't really have close friends growing up, I am now battling and trying to understand what friendships mean to me as a person. Thank you for this.
This is beautiful. I get the sense that you're very self aware