The story I’m about to share today is not fictional but a true-life account from an individual. It’s titled “My Tears”. For the purpose of privacy, the name(s) (if any) used in the story do not represent actual individuals. Also, some of the content of the tale may be quite graphic and disturbing.

Due to the length, I will not be able to publish the entire post today but will do so over the coming weeks. Talk to you all soon.

My Tears

“From the moment their marriage began it was over”.

My name is Joy Oseni and these are my tears.

I was born on the 15th of June into a family of five. My dad, mum and three siblings. I never understood what went wrong but as soon as I was weaned, my journey in this life became one tearful experience. 

So many times, I would raise my voice in sadness to the heavens, sadness because what I was feeling was deep down in my being. I never asked to be born so to trod a life of continual rejection from my entire family simply because I was the weaker vessel  left deep wounds of lasting pain that no one but God could see.

I guess the one thing I did right was to accept the lord Jesus into my life at a tender age. Who knows? probably if  I hadn’t my story may have been a different episode of being snatched off by the chords of death. My pain you see stemmed from the fact that I was born with an ailment – Sickle Cell Disease which required my entire family’s time and attention. 

I can’t recall for certain, the first time I had my crises but as I grew older and became more aware of who I was, I noticed that the more crisis I had the more rejection that was metered on me by all my family. 

It’s not as if the bond between both parents was strong because as I stated at the beginning, from the moment they got married it was over. Rather both parties had been able to find a common ground to stay together and that was for the sake of their children. I’m not here to detail the accounts of growing up with Sickle cell Disease because I know that majority of you reading this story know what obtains, rather I’m here to detail the account of the pain I felt of being viewed as an outcast by my siblings and my parents. 

The only time I felt a deep sense of love was during a crisis. Immediately my crises would be over, the hate and criticisms towards me would run so deep that I grew up with low self-esteem – the notion that there was nothing good about me.

My siblings were three and had a strong bond between themselves . So strong that they shared basically everything together. Anyone of them could go to the other’s closest to loan a top or a dress to wear. Being all girls one would think that this same relationship would extend to me but it wasn’t the case. 

I was envied for the time that was poured on me by my parents whenever I sick. 

Excluding me from sharing things with them was the only way they could get back at me for draining my mum and dad of the energy to mete out as much love on them that they felt they lacked. You know how parents can shower a sick child sometimes with attention and gifts be it in form of food or toys. This probably was their anger. 

I recall on several occasions when they yelled out their frustrations to my parents, “why is it always Joy? every time its Joy”. 

You see the dysfunctional home I was born into stemming from the broken relationship between my parents had opened the doors for the enemy to sow the seed of discord and hate between siblings. 

My siblings loved themselves and shared secrets that I was never privy to. They laughed at me when bad things happened to me and shunned my side of the story when arguments occurred between me and any of them. It got to the point that I was accused by my mum of being the reason why my immediate elder did not pass her school certificate exams. This accusation wrought such a deep blow on me that I kept asking God as a child if I was a witch that had the ability to turn the hands of time. 

Whenever I would be sick and on admission, my siblings always acted as if they cared about me. Many times when I recovered, I would return from the hospital to find my dirty underwear waiting for me to come home and launder. You know that for a sickle cell patient, many times the color of their urine becomes a lot darker when in a crisis. Many times because the underwear had been left for weeks without soaking, the stains never came off no matter how much I tried. 

I never had the courage to take it up with any of them because as I grew older, my immediate elder and younger sister became a force that I was unable to reckon with. They were both much taller and stronger, such that on one particular occasion, in the heat of an argument my immediate elder sister landed hot slaps on my face that shut me up for good. 

(to be continued).