The abused Nigerian Introvert

As a young 17-year-old teenager, I had been sent off to see a doctor as the result of the pains I was having due to appendicitis. This was not just any doctor, this was a long-time family friend who my parents must have erroneously thought was safe to send a young female teenager to go see.

That is what I term careless parenting.

My father died and never got to know about what I experienced that day in his friend’s office. This was a man who had known me since I was a child. I know this because even in my four-year-old birthday celebration, prominent amongst the children in my birthday photo (which I still have today), was his son who we used to play together as kids.

Do I blame my parents for being careless? Yes I do, completely.

I would never exonerate them, (especially my mother) for any form of sexual abuse I have had to endure over the years. If there was a mother/daughter relationship between us, it would have been easy for me to open up and tell her about the very first abuse instead of internalizing it and maybe that would have ensured that subsequent ones didn’t happen.

My ability to internalize things has made it possible for me to hide pain deep down inside of me, which means I could be suffering and still outwardly look as if nothing is going on. That is the one thing that even in my adult life I have not been able to change about me, which I know only intense therapy can help. I think the major reason I have sharpened this particular skill, is the fact that the few times I had tried to express my pain as a young child and teenager, nobody took it serious. One time when I dared to speak up about the molestation by a family member, it was a major disaster. Instead of receiving love, what I got was more woes and that was when I knew that it was better to keep quiet. Get abused, keep quiet about it and protect your mental health, because you will not get justice, especially not in a society like Nigeria where the first protectors of the abuser are usually the family members themselves.

As I stepped into the doctor’s office, he told me to strip. I repeated the same thing I had done the previous time I went to see him, (at that time accompanied by an aunt) and he looked at me and said “take off everything”.

Even as a young girl that time, I immediately knew there was a problem.

During the previous visit all I had to do was unzip my trouser, and he checked the right sight of my tummy. It was a strange thing for him to ask me to take off all my clothes. I thought I had probably not heard him well, so I took off my trousers and he insisted I take off my top. At this point I was in panic mode, but my ability to hide my true emotions set in. I took off the top.

As his hands seductively caressed my right breast and then left breast and then moved down to my vagina area to caress the hairs around my vagina, I knew I was abused that day. 

The only good thing that came out of that experience, is that he stopped. I will never be able to explain the hatred that enveloped me when I looked at his face. He had a stupid smirk on his face. My heart was burning with anger. All I wanted to do was to leave. I have heard about victims of abuse who snap and just go on a rampage, sometimes even killing their abuser. With the feeling I had that day, I understand how easy it is to snap. Except one has experienced abuse, the pain, anger and betrayal one feels, can never be appropriately put into words. 

I remember getting home that day completely shaken, but I didn’t say a word to anybody. It is a good thing that at that time in my life, the word suicide wasn’t prominent because I know with my underdeveloped mental strength at that time, the way I felt that day, I would have gone into my room and hung myself if I had known that option existed.

I had an older female relative who was at home that day and saw me when I arrived. She was a little more introverted than I was and unknown to me, she had observed my demeanor when I arrived home. I only got to know this years later, when for the first time in my life I shared that experience with her. She looked at me and said, “when you got back that day, I knew something was terribly wrong, but I just didn’t know how to ask you.”

The worst part is to carry such pain, anger, hatred and suffering and not be able to say it out. I just didn’t know how I was going to tell my dad that I didn’t want that doctor to touch my body ever again. That inability to speak out about my pain aggravated the degree of my trauma. The sheer fact that the hospital was the least place, I would have expected to experience such breach of trust was already traumatizing enough but for it to have been done by someone who my parents trusted, and I must have also trusted, it was unbearable to understand.

He was like an uncle to me. as a matter of fact, his son and I were both introverted kids who used to have playtime together.

I wish I was bold enough to speak up, but being able to speak up in a country where the victim is vilified and blamed for being abused is not a path I ever want to follow. A lot of women get blamed for getting abused because it is often argued that they are the ones who put themselves in a compromising position that leads to the abuse. Shockingly, I have had more women express this school of thought than even the men.

If we are to follow that school of thought, does it mean that going to the hospital to get checked for a medical condition is a compromising position? What about being molested in your own home, is that a compromising position?

Being an introvert and a serial victim of abuse, what I have done over the years is to internalize the pain and move on. Another thing I have done is to become a recluse and only go to places when it is necessary. For years, I developed a phobia for hospitals and opted for self-medication. I can’t deny there are other contributing factors that have necessitated this, but top of that list is that experience I had when I was seventeen years old.

(Excerpts from my soon to be released book)