My story – Isaacola AA

MY STORY

I will not play the blame game by apportioning all the blame to someone else and paint a picture of my sainthood with glorified halo on my head, nah, mine is more like the blackish Damon with fangs baring to expose sulfurous and poisonous hydra-headed tongue ready to infuse its enormous poison willingly on whosoever comes close.

My conception was incestuous, a relationship between my mother and grandfather who doubles as my father, some twenty years ago. My grandmother died while having my mother and my Demon-Saint father fathered and mothered my mother. He was there for my mother all through her growing up days.

Mother turned out to be a real beauty like my grandmother (saw that from her photograph hung on the sitting room wall). It took all the persuasive power within me at eighteen to extract the information about my father from her. She once told me my dad travelled out after impregnating her in just after secondary school education.

After much persuasion however, she changed the story that my dad died somewhere when I was just two and that she has no picture whatsoever of my late dad.

I had to threaten her one night that I will kill her and then kill myself. I really meant it that day because I was really out to commit matricide if the need arose. The frustration was already getting to the peak with the numerous taunting from my classmates in school and the fact that her explanation about my father was inconsistent and unconvincing.

My angelic mother broke down. Amidst sobs and hiccups, she opened the can of worms to me that I was born out of incest and that my fatherly grandfather is also my biological father. I went blank!

My world came crashing that night with the inglorious revelation. I cried myself to stupor and slept off crying with caked tears in dried river bed on my face. I felt repulsive to every endearment from my father cum grandfather, so the geriatric fool so loved his only child that he had to make a daughter and wife out of her.

I lost all respect for him and all men in general. I became embittered and battered, an emotional wreck with no love for the opposite sex, an overnight recluse I became. The drastic transformation was so visible that my father had to call me to ask what the matter was. I answered him all was well with a fake smile plastered on my face while my innermost being was managing to conceal the bitterness inside of me. I felt like breaking his cranium and rendering him paralyzed with a well aimed kick to his thoracic vertebra but I walked on instead, devising a way to avoid all contact with the pariah of a man and if need be to kill him with my bare hands. It actually took me two full years before I could muster the courage to…

My mum noticed the change in me too but there was nothing she did to pacify me that worked. I built an impenetrable wall of defense around myself. The only emotions I felt were bitterness and deep-rooted anger. I was a walking corpse and I knew it. The bitterness and un-forgiveness toward the man I will forever loathe pushed me to the brink of insanity. I had everything money could and would buy courtesy of my wealthy father and brainy mother whose singular purpose in life was raising me in the fear and nurture of God’s word. She made sure I had all my needs met, I was never in need of anything. She became married to me and her business at the same time.

One night, after two whole years after the inglorious revelation, I tiptoed to my father’s room in the middle of the night with sole intention of putting him to eternal rest with the aid of his well stuffed pillow. “Good riddance to bad rubbish”, I mused, fully intent on putting an end to his miserable life so I can at least have a semblance of peace in my life. I got in as silent as possible and to my chagrin the old man was seated in a corner with tears running down his cheeks fully awake and awaiting my anticipated visit.

He whispered in a husky voice I found difficult to associate with my bold and always in charge father and grandfather. “Sit down”, he said in a broken voice. I momentarily forgot my mission and obeyed him. Then he began.

“Do you judge me on my past? I won’t blame you daughter. I did a better job of blaming myself and even went as far as contemplating suicide. I was wrong in raping your mother nineteen years ago. After my wife’s death, that was and still remains my greatest mistake in life. I know it may sound like the ranting of a geriatric fool but the truth is I did everything to pacify your mother to forgive me and move on in life but she refused to re-marry and embrace a life of celibacy. I left her to her decision but there is no single day that I don’t live in the regret that is eating up my stomach lining. Kill me now if you find it difficult to forgive me and I won’t hold anything against you”. He finished his small talk and looked straight into my eyes

All fight left me and I knew I had no option than to forgive him because my un-forgiveness was doing a better job of wrecking my life than his. I left without saying a word and crawled back into my bed. Sleep came back after a long time but when it did, I slept freely devoid of heart rending ache that I have been saddled with since discovering the bitter truth about my paternity.

Oh sweet me, I now recognized that I needed to forgive others, not for their sake but for my own sake and peace of mind.
Hmmmmm…the sad thing is that my father died in his sleep that night. My only regret was that I didn’t say to him in clear terms that I forgave him.
Now judge me if you can…

Isaacola AA
@newnaija