365 days and 3 decades

The first criticism I remember receiving as a child, was that I talked too much. It was all over my report cards from school, reported fastidiously by every teacher, alongside my impeccable grades:

“She’s very intelligent, but she talks too much.”

It was cute when I was a kindergartener, it even earned me a spot as the MC at my school’s end of year party. Just me and a microphone, amusing everyone with my rehearsed script. I remember loving the applause, loving being liked by a crowd, resenting their silence when it came, auditioning harder each time for the applause. Adults were my only friends and I needed them to like me.

The thing is, being brilliant and ahead of my peers endeared me to the adults, but made me persona non grata with my classmates. I remember being shunned for being a know-it-all in kindergarten and shunned even harder as I moved through classes in elementary school, despite trying with all my might to be liked. I quickly learned not to give the answer to questions in class unless specifically asked, focusing instead on fitting in by pretending not to know it. No one else did, right? So I shouldn’t know it. If I did, I’d be the ITK again and I didn’t want that, I wanted friends. Yet, by the end of each school year I was alone again, deeply disliked and not understanding why. Looking back on it as an adult, I can't imagine how annoying it must've been to spend all day gabbing away with someone who didn't seem to be paying attention, yet effortlessly nabbed 1st position at the end of the term. I had a teacher pointedly say it to someone I was chatting away with in Primary 3:

"Oluchi, you’re busy talking away with her now, tomorrow she'll come 1st and you'll fail."

I immediately lost that friend and all the other ones I’d made in that class. By the time I got to primary 5, I was a loner, disliked by even the teachers. It was no longer cute, talking too much was no longer endearing like it was in my old school, it was disruptive now, endless. A constant stream of words that came once someone showed interest in me - it didn’t matter where or when. Except, it was often in class, and usually an attempt to verbally process what I was learning, but to my teachers, it was a distraction. Learning wasn't an interactive process, you kept quiet, you took notes and when asked, repeated the information in a test. I should've known, they said as the cane fell, but how could I have known? No one ever answered my questions when they came. I was 8 years old when I graduated from Primary 5. An inquisitive, straight A student and overall bothersome nuisance to everyone, including the headmaster. A very infamous, recalcitrant, little whirlwind of dissatisfied whys and frustrated tears.

 

By the time I got to boarding school at 9 years old, I’d stopped talking. I learned to observe quietly, tentatively make friends and fit in where accepted, to avoid being disliked by doing as they did. I still had no idea why I was disliked, but I knew whatever "it" was, had to stop and it generally started once I opened my mouth. I would find out that being quiet was worse than talking too much, especially at that age, especially in an all-girls boarding school. A preteen is vocal, loud about her crushes to her friends, gossipy and quippy, in the adorable, self-assured yet questioning way most preteens are. I, by contrast, was eerily quiet in groups, didn’t ask questions and didn’t volunteer information, I didn’t intrude, I didn’t take up space, and I staunchly refused to gossip. I was 9 and had learned through repetition that the only acceptable version of me was the silent version. Except, eventually, inevitably, my silence would either be noticed and rejected or worse, my silence would be so well done, I’d be forgotten about and invariably, excluded. 

At some point, I learned to hide, deliberately. I hid obsessively, behind couches for silence, in wardrobes for darkness and silence, in TV programs with imaginary friends, in trees for solitude, in the people who let me, but mostly, I hid in books. I would read the assigned literature before we even had to read it. Always several books ahead in class, effortlessly passing exams but only in Literature and English and every other subject that required words and writing. I struggled in Mathematics, because I hated my Maths teachers. They never seemed to know how they arrived at their answers, and simply regurgitated them. When I tried a new way to do something and failed in Maths class, I was never told why, just instructed to do what the teacher did. I resented that, I resented being told to do things because “I said so”, so I struggled along, angrily. Frustrated at having to teach myself things I didn’t know, I began to fall behind in classes. I skipped whenever I didn’t feel like going, and would spend the day sleeping, readying myself for the judgement of my classmates that never came. I‘d gone from 1st position to 2nd, to 5th and finally settled in at a guaranteed 11th place in JS3. Quite frankly, I think they were happy to see me knocked down a few pegs, I was finally human, like everyone else, not some unbelievable genius who was too young to be there, yet somehow passed without ever taking notes.

In SS1, I was moved from boarding school to another school, a coed school. I was 12 years old. The cycle of attempting to make friends repeated and I landed for the last time in quiet solitude, somewhere in SS2. Firm in my belief that no one liked me, I started to fail, in the deliberate, careless way that one fails when they’ve given up. I missed classes, tests, midterms and assignments and saw the first Cs, Ds and Fs I'd ever seen in my academic career. I'd regularly turn in tests and quizzes with just my name on it, but read textbooks front to back for midterms and exams and pass. The result was that I'd coast in at the end of every term, marginally above water because I was determined never to repeat a grade, to my credit, I never did. I remember my Chemistry teacher shaking her head at me once, saying:

"You know these things, every time you try, you pass, if only you'd just come to class."

I responded by quitting Chemistry. And Physics. And all the science subjects I loved. I refused to be pulled back into a love of learning, knowing things had done me no favours and I wanted to be liked dammit! I wanted friends and I learned early that being the smart one did not make you friends.

 

I would go on like this for decades to come, never quite fitting in anywhere, never understanding why, but giving it a good try every time I found myself in a new environment. My tricks and masks would work for a period but I would invariably fail, each time. People have the uncanny ability to tell when you’re not being yourself and I hadn’t been myself since I was 3 years old, so the facades crumbled quicker and quicker as time passed. I was exhausted from trying and each time the newest mask I had conjured shattered, I crashed, hard. The pent up rage from having to exist in a world I didn’t understand despite asking all the questions would come roaring out, and I’d rage at the world for being so fucking unkind to me despite all my platitudes. Pissed as a honey badger that I had gone to all these lengths, I’d done all that was demanded - took up less space, talked less, been quiet, changed who I was, been less smart, manufactured and maintained interest in things I couldn't possibly care less about, toed the line and then some, while everyone else remained unapologetically who they were. And yet, somehow, I remained the outsider? Fuck off.

Somewhere in that righteous rage, I honed my personal style. I used fashion like a determined rebel - I was a punk, a goth, a rebellious loner listening to heavy metal - all trite to the Western eye, but daring for the stage of the life where everyone wanted to be the FMC in She’s All That. Daring for a girl raised in the Catholic church. Daring in the judgemental neighbourhood I lived in, where all the children were supposed to be exemplary extensions of their parents, with personalities carefully curated for the public eye. Daring in the unrelenting, scorching Nigerian sun to wear all black, to wear platforms and knee high boots. I was hot in every outfit, but determined and defiant. I would not wear what anyone else wore, this was my thing and no one could have it. My clothes became the one domain where I reigned supreme, where no one’s opinion was ever taken into consideration. This in turn allowed me to discover and rediscover what I liked and didn’t like, endlessly, without the added pressure of caring what anyone else would think of it. My interesting outfits became my identity, my reclamation of personal agency. No one was allowed to tell me what to wear, I wore what I wanted, every single time. My style was dictated by, and answered only to a council of one.

I have maintained that authoritarian reign over my personal style, but I can’t quite remember when I threw away the mask. I also don’t remember when I stopped hating myself for not fitting in. I do know that as time passed, I slowly let go and tried less and less to be liked, until one day, I defiantly faced the world as is and became the friend I so desperately wanted, to myself. Gently nudging when I found myself digging in, asking myself what was wrong and what would make it better, then going out and doing said thing for myself. Oftentimes, it was buying a new pair of shoes, so I could become someone new with an outfit I had planned in my head. 

Eventually, I realized that what I was doing and had been doing all these years was processing the trauma of rejection, the only way I knew how, so I simply let it happen. I let myself feel all the feelings I put away, while I reckoned with the truth: I needed to like me first. I'd let the sting of decades of rejection convince me that I was unlikeable, when nothing could be further from the truth. I also returned to my first love - an obsessive accumulation of all the knowledge, all the time. I became okay with being an alleged know-it-all, content in the knowledge that a full brain is leagues better than an empty one.  

Also, there were people who did like me as is! But as humans often do, I took those people for granted because I was too busy pursuing the affections of the people who withheld it. The infamous delusion of an unhealed mind is the core belief that the seemingly unattainable is more valuable than the abundantly available. Luckily, we are not there anymore. Nowadays, I insist that the world love me in my full form, completely as I am, safe in the knowledge that whether or not the world comes around, I will remain loved by me. I have always loved me, even when I hated me.

Noe Knows is officially a year old this month, and I couldn’t be prouder of how far I’ve come. This website is a very public love letter to myself, an ongoing amalgamation of all the knowledge I have acquired on this journey home to myself. Cheers to a year of this love story, and here’s to another year of great things.

Remember:

"You are enough, as is. Come home to yourself and give yourself the things that you seek outside. Above all, be gentle with yourself and others. Rigid, unkind and cruel people are often internally sad people who need anchors in a world that is constantly evolving, give them grace but do not let anyone harden you. Stay soft, you owe it to the child in you."

 

Feel free to share this with someone you think would enjoy the read (no, I will not make it shorter). A bientot!