I was in love with a man who felt like home. But what do you do when home no longer feels like it? Where do you run to? Where do you go?
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Abuja, Nigeria
We are a generation of broken people, broken pieces of glass, seeking healing. Oftentimes we find this healing in the arms of a lover, in our child’s voice when she calls us ‘mother’, or in the reassuring words of our best friend. Sadly, some people may never heal completely and will live out their lives in full acceptance that they will never be whole again. While some are lucky to find true love sometime in their life’s journey and piece together their broken pieces, others have learned that they may never find home. So, they will invest that longing for acceptance into work, a business, skill, or a hobby.
I am a 25-year-old Igbo woman, and I was born in one of its rowdiest cities, Aba, in the Nigerian South East. Aba toughens even the meekest of people, in extreme ways. As a child, I learned to wear my tough ‘Aba skin’ like a cloak everywhere I went. They say African parents are terrible at expressing love, so much so that African parents may appear to have no affection for their children. In my home, I cannot remember my father ever saying, ‘I love you’. But I saw love in the times he would make random jokes at me, just after my mom flogged me. I love to think it was his indirect way of saying: ‘You did wrong, my daughter, but I love you still.’
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