The Pedestal I Built to Survive

Sometimes, I just sit and wonder what really is love and why we always end up craving it so bad, like some sort of addiction.

I could have sworn my heart was cut from stone because every other day it just feels cold and solid inside. It’s always as if I’m holding my breath and lunging for air without opening my mouth. Like I’m suffocating and holding out a hand, but it’s just the soul within my body and no one can see it. Do you know how lonely it feels? Feeling like you’re drowning in your own body, but nobody can save you because you’re kind of paralyzed and don’t know how to ask for help.

But on some days—on some days when I feel my brightest and most alive—on those days my heart feels warm and soft. I feel its every thump. I feel it alive, and I am, in that moment, happy to be alive and happy to be in the moment.

Those moments are with little things: my pets (Neo & Jojo), my sisters (Jummy and Yele) when they’re not making me scream into a pillow and pulling my hair out, my mum when she’s not on parental parole with me, my friends when I’m human enough to be social and, dare I say it, “talkative and funny.” Days I feel playful and, for once, normal because I feel very comfortable.

I’m always so guarded up, and I hate it, but I don’t know how to drop it because I have kind of suited up since Primary 1 or so. I don’t know how to unlearn it, and sometimes I’m glad I have it because this world is so vile and makes my skin crawl. Sometimes I just want to get in the face of someone and scream on top of my lungs just to push them to their limit, break them, and watch them fall, pleading for mercy.

For me, it’s not just feeling like an unbreakable soldier; it’s that I’ve, since I was very little, put myself on a pedestal—the pedestal of a goddess. I used to have dreams, you see, hear things, see things, know things before they happen. I just felt very much like a goddess. I felt that power surge through me. I felt nothing human. I felt extraterrestrial.

But I grew older. I found myself doubting myself. I found myself wondering—was it schizophrenia? Am I schizophrenic and not a goddess at all? I found myself dissociating from my alias Sea 4 Emgodz because I wasn’t feeling anymore goddessy.

But what defines me as a goddess is my resilience, my high pain tolerance, my multi-talents, my big dreams, my big heart for pets, my big heart for the ones who are dear to me, that feeling of protection towards those I love, that feeling of “I can take a bullet for you because I love you,” and that does make me a goddess. And that… that means not just anybody can and should have access to me. Why should they? They are not deserving of the oh-so-pure love I have to give.

So yeah, I’m not the friendliest. I’m not the sweetest or mushiest. But I am me as Adeshewa / Sea 4 Emgodz, Esther / Sea the Menace, Ashley / Sea the Siren. My very own holy trinity.

xoxo,

Ashley Adeniran