BEFORE I TURN 20

BEFORE I TURN 20 (KRYSTAL SPECIAL)

Grace and I had hoped that before my birthday because I turn 20 first, we would have finished our story. However, things happen and we must learn to pick up from where we stopped and move on. She sent me a message some days ago to remind me to do a special and I was delighted to tell her I had one written down already.
    I would love to focus more on something I am passionate about in this special and that is my writing. I wanted to sort of summarize from where we stopped but I am giving a different vibe altogether so kick back with your device and let my story do the talking.
  There was a time in my life I used to be so quick to call myself a writer. Maybe because I felt the title exudes this aura of high intellect and sophistication, but now I know better. I’d rather be called the girl with stories in her head.
   Sometimes when there’s gist or a conversation I am privy to (whether I am the one talking or listening), there’s a story with more chicken stock added to the broth in my head. Sometimes I zone out while still listening and begin to imagine a whole storyline relating to what is being said in my head. I might even start laughing or get pissed from what I am imagining that my demeanor changes and people around become aware that my mind is at other places.
  My mum is the one person whose mode of storytelling takes my imagination to so many places. My mum will tell a story or gist you and forever, even her demonstrations, her care for details and her manner of presentation will minister more to you than when you hear the exact same thing from someone else.
  Very early in life, I discovered that I am a talker. My mum is a talker too but she is this bulb of energy and cheerfulness that enters the room and even the gloomiest person is laughing. My case is slightly different because unlike her, I like to write just as much as I talk and I always like what I write to fell like a close glimpse of exactly what is in my head.
   As at primary 4, I had stories and childish emotions flying around the back of most of my notes. I didn’t take it seriously so I carried on for so long with this habit. Some of the best ideas I have gotten were not planned; I just got them randomly and thank God for the advent of goggle keep now, I quickly type out, write or record them.
  Back to the story, by secondary school, my artistry found its way to music, songwriting to be precise. I felt like my junior school classmates disliked me because I wasn’t “cool” and I had a rather lazy, nonchalant and standoffish attitude towards my studies and certain things. Well, emotions play a powerful role in writing so I would write beautiful songs centered on my supposed hardships. I am so sure you’re laughing at this point.
The songwriting took a new turn when I changed schools and I was now doing high school in a mixed school. My previous school was for only girls, but here I was in a school with both boys and girls and I kid you not, it was an adventure from the first day till I graduated.
I started off with the nickname fraps. Let me digress a bit.
   My brother was a Js1 student, I was in Ss1. It was orientation week well it was termed that but it was really for a couple of days. The tailor that made my day dress (they hadn’t given us uniforms yet so we wore our day dresses for the orientation) - it is God that will fight my battles with that man - made the dress in a manner that the sharp ends of the material which was supposed to be cut out before making the dress, was what he joined together at the back, the zip line part. Now, if you know how dresses are made, you would know that by joining that rough part of the material together at the back of the dress, my underwear if not strong enough or well textured would the dress cling to it and appear outwardly like my dress was stuck in between my buttocks. Oh yes! Some tailors are just mad like that.
   So dearly beloved, coming from a school with only girls in the class, where we would lift up our pinafores or skirts and adjust our shirts and tights, raise up our day dresses to sit so the back of the dress doesn’t get rumpled and all of that, the culture of adjusting my dress each time I stood up was not yet something I had a grasp of so I sat in front with boldness, and for each time I stood up, roaring laughter from where the senior boys sat would follow. It went on and on till this funny girl Success came and dragged the dress out of where she thought it was and the laughter increased. Next thing I knew, people just started calling me fraps.
It didn’t end here.
   I forgot one day that I had male classmates so after school I was about to raise up my skirt to adjust my shirt so I could get my things and head for the dining hall. My classmate Favor screamed and by the time I got the message, the whole class was staring at me like I was on first stage Nollywood madness.
It was such a weird period for me.
  The first time one boy sat near me during prep, I kept one book clinched to my chest and my eyes fixed to the door. Of course I had read many rape stories so I was ready to head out should that be the case but prep ended and the young man who had updated his notes and assignments, went to his hostel, the Crystabel who thought her ss1 classmate would rape her, went to her own hostel without achieving a thing. After that night, I knew that guys were not that bad so I adjusted quickly. If you have been following Grace and I on this journey you would’ve read about so many other escapades and all but I want to go back to the songwriting career.
   Not to blow my own trumpet or anything but I could proudly say “na dem dey rush us” when I newly changed schools. Bruhhhhhh, it was like they made announcement that every guy should try his luck with this girl. It seemed special after the first one or two but really scary and suffocating afterwards. Then pathetic lies and rumors found their way to my ears about who I was dating or who I wasn’t, make out lies and stuff. I was shattered. First term wasn’t over and my reputation was already on the line.
  The songwriter in me set to work. Composing detailed songs about all that was happening and offering the assurance that things were going to be alright. Things got better and I moved on to the lamentations stge.
The feud of the immediates (everyone who went to a Nigerian secondary school would certainly understand) got hotter after Ss2 students were made prefects. That’s a story for another day but it was full fledged war! My mates and I were practically counting down to finish Ss1 and move on to a class with higher prestige. To worsen matters, they felt the need to dish out treatments similar to that which the set ahead had, so we were simply paying the price for goods we never would’ve purchased in a lifetime.
  The town crier in me would sit on her bed, cry aloud and lament about all the harsh treatment then proceed to write songs. It was such a funny period. Everyone would laugh and when the lamentations were beyond that of Jeremiah, punishments would follow.
   While this was going on, a new English teacher came around. The moment I saw her, and then heard her speak, I instantly fell in love with her. Mrs. Grace Chidolue is probably one of the people who saw in me what I didn’t even see in myself. She pushed the whole class into constant writing of essays, articles, stories, which she would grade and post on the notice board for the whole school to see. Doing her assignments gave me joy and soon enough I would do for one classmate or the other.
   When I moved on to Ss2, the new English teacher never mixed the rod and wine. Not like Mrs. Chidolue gave wine but her technique was more of the rod and the staff but as people differ, so do their techniques but Miss Osinachi was the classic Iron lady; rod only, like most teachers around here. You would cut grass, frog jump, crawl and spend hours in the jungle (a terminology in my secondary school used to refer to one large portion of land with the thickest and tallest of grasses that grew back as if it was our school fees that was sponsoring its growth)  for mere failure of coming to class with your dictionary. Notice how I said “Your”, she had to see the dictionary baptized as thoroughly as possible in all the names ascribed to you in this life. I hated her teaching methods and found her mode of correction rather degrading and demeaning but guess what, I still ended up being one of her faves to the glory of God but being a fave came at a price of its own. She too saw what my previous teacher had seen so she doubled her whips on my back and was harder on me than the average class member.
I felt tortured and I was hoping to move on, but the love for writing was already there; it was now something I did with joy so I slowly but steadily adapted.
Mrs. Chidolue called me to the staff room one day to tell me to write an article on the Nigeria of my dreams. She said she personally wanted something of mine published in the yearbook. Mrs. Osinachi on the other hand, had me write out on a clean paper an assignment I did where I wrote about “The Flying Dog”. She said she was marveled because contrary to what the rest of the class was writing about a dog with wings, I wrote about how a dog dashed through the window of a car headed towards an accident, to save the people inside. It was that process of dashing through that made me conclude that the dog indeed flew. I was elated at the kind of esteem these teachers held me in and it boosted my confidence the more.
    Meanwhile in literature class Ss2, my teacher perceived me as rather unworthy of the kind of commendation other teachers gave. The disgust in her face was glaring every time she would hear something nice being said about me. And so it was that by third term, we were doing poems all through. She asked everyone to learn by heart one poem from all the ones for the term apart from Boy on a swing. The rest of the class gave marvelous presentations, but I was bent on changing her narrative about me so I went for the second longest poem for that term “The Souls Errand” by Sir Walter Raleigh and crammed it from top to bottom.
   The music came in here. I wondered for days how I would cram such a bulky work of art and then it hit me. With the right tune and musical inspiration, I would learn the lyrics and fix them in, and then on the presentation day, I would hum the tune in my mind and speak the lyrics aloud.
It worked!!
By the time I was in the last stanza and I hadn’t as much as flinched, she started clapping. The event of that day changed something beyond my literature teacher’s perception about me, it took my confidence to another level and made me realize that there is no task that is impossible for me to do as long as it is positive and it is for the right reasons.
  After all these glorious moments of getting my writing published in the school magazine and all, I met another teacher that called all the others blind for even considering I was half as good as they thought.
It hit me badly for reasons I know not of and I never wrote a single thing till my third year in the university.
   I am sure you are about to wonder why one word of discouragement threw me so off balance; that is what negative words and energy is like. Destroys all the good things and takes you to a place you have to struggle to recover from.
  Writing seemed like a heavy burden and of course my readership was dwindling; hanging on a thin thread because I felt reading the magnificent works of others would only remind me of how terrible I am at this writing thing so I practically stopped reading save school work. Movie watching and music became even stronger hobbies and I was fine with life.
It wasn’t until my Industrial training period that I randomly felt inspired to post about a girl I had been writing her story for days in my head. Her name is Lotanna so I posted up on my Whatsapp status and before I knew it, everyone was asking me who wrote it and where the remaining part of the story is.
Wowwww!!! Ladies and gentlemen that is how Crystal got her groove or in this case, her ink back!
I took Lotanna to Wattpad and this word press blog Booktree and everyone was waiting for updates every day. Before Lotanna, the entire story line of a secondary school girl with one or two of my own experiences had been in my head. My schooling in the east (university education) and the in depth exposure to my Igbo identity couples with new understanding of the Igbo culture is what influenced my writing to a large extent and that’s why virtually all the lead characters in my writings have Igbo names as first names. I wanted my voice to have a clear distinction and for anyone who reads my work to instantly identify the writer with or without seeing my name there.
   Lotanna launched me into the path of recovery and self rediscovery. I started to read more, explore my horizons, expand my knowledge and put more effort into fuelling a passion that had been in coma for a long time.
    Then the big challenge came. I woke one day and didn’t know how to piece my storyline together again. I cried for a while and hoped to move on so I kept trying to write other things.
  I moved on to yet another story of a nosy, confused and lovable girl Ekenedirichukwu. Kenny became a new star and my friends, readers and everyone welcomed her with arms open wide. I fought so hard so what happened to me with Lotanna wouldn’t happen again, but it was slowly creeping in and I eventually dumped the drafts and refused to edit.
Fast forward to October 2019, my laptop got stolen and it dawned on me that I had lost the last four episodes to that story. I lost so many things in the devices stolen and the biggest I was working on that had close to 300 pages unedited was gone.
Shattered, I decided to quit writing for a while and just read.
  By December the same year, Grace came up with the idea of this book and I instantly loved it. I put my time and my energy into it and slowly realized I was creeping out of the shell I had hidden myself in. However, I decided not to rejoice; at least not yet. I wanted to test the waters with before I turn 20 and the love again from readers and everyone was overwhelming.
Watching a lot of movies and reading books from the different genres of literature made me realize that I could put together something small and just put a couple of short stories out there.
Procrastination the thief of time and I hung out a little bit but the mercy of God rescued me from having to tell that tale of woe and gave me the courage to hit the ground running.
   I have dealt with issues because of how quickly I grew up,  like how I had self esteem issues in junior class, serious anxiety in 2019 and a couple of other experiences so I wanted to achieve something in the coming year which is this year, to give myself a pat on the back.
  Reading books, seeing daily on the internet the things happening in the society, seeing the world through the eyes of different women I come across, hearing them share their stories, dreams and come back techniques inspired me to do more. A nation that at this time can’t provide the basic necessities of life for its citizen is enough motivation so I set to work trying to put stories together; then it occurred to me all the works I’ve been submitting for competitions that didn’t win, drafts here and there, smaller stories and hints or lines that could be incorporated into a larger plot were lying around. I started piecing so many things together. The lines in some stories are as old as 2014 when I was in Ss2. I dug up old notes, University jotters and basically combed my archives so I could put Pebbles from Mount Carmel together.
  For more details on the short story collection, it would be better to read it from top to bottom because even the acknowledgement pages hold vitality and I was so expressive with this one.
  This is me; this is where I am as at today. I have fallen out with God so many times during the course of my almost two decades on earth but it’s amazing because we are still here in this no more servants but friends relationship. I graduated from school with his help and despite all the things determined to break me, I overcame and I am doing a lot better these days.
  Life never promises to be all sweets because the sour could come up at anytime but being able to navigate your way through both and come back like you never left is something only a power beyond you (the God factor) and the power within you can achieve (Self will and determination. Also the determination to get help and rise above whatever it is pulling you down).
  Okay, I am beginning to sound too motivational for my liking because I also need motivation, but seriously! Giving up is a terrible choice, putting your dreams on hold is an awfully poor choice, refusing to put yourself on the road to recovery and healing from things you don’t wish to speak about will do you no good, only damage you the more, and yes! Not allowing yourself to run with the vision you can see is a mistake you will never forgive yourself for. 
   May 11th 2020 is really a day which the lord has made and I am so blessed to rejoice and be glad in it.
  Thank you for following me on this journey, Grace is one of the best people to work with and the things God is showing her about this project is beyond me really so we keep writing till she hits the brakes. I am glad judgment and sentiment did not rob me of a great friendship, creative ally and fellowship with a fellow God lover.
  Amazing how two people in two different places in Nigeria could piece up similar life tales that they were judged for and transform it into something comic, inspirational, a guideline and a tell it all to shows that growth, goodness and God can change any life.
Tata my darlings, I love you!