FGM: dreams and visions

 I found out I was circumcised. 

The memory crept up on me! 

I liked sex but I was not sure I was getting all I should from it. 

So I investigated how to get more. 

I did it sparingly so I wanted an earthshaking experience each time. 

So, I searched for all the ways I could improve my participation in it. 

I read up on kama sutra. 

Learnt how to hang from unspeakable places and contort my body into unbelievable shapes to ensure maximal penile penetration and increase the chance of stimulation of my erogenous areas or the elusive G spot. 

I wanted the leg shaking aftermath of copulation. 

It continued to elude me. 

And the more it did, the more frantic I became in its pursuit. 

I cleaned myself meticulously and approached every sexual encounter like a treasure hunt with this thing I wanted as the prize. 

I positioned myself properly as described in romance novels I read and moaned appropriately at all the right points in response to touch to let my partner know we were both in for a profound experience. 

The end result was mostly the same. 

The man describing an exagerrated experience and me smiling and fibbing to not disappoint even though I knew it had not been THAT great. 

It didn't stop my partner from declaring this the best experience since they were born & if the frequency of wanting more was anything to go by, they didn't lie. 

I soon tired of delivering great performances but feeling left out and wanting so much more. 

This drove me to investigate further; I would search images of female genitalia which then led to the different ways the genitalia was different before virginity was lost. 

Yes! It was.

Someone had described differences in hymens after an article about a woman who complained her husband could not penetrate her hymen and most searches I did usually tended to be image searches so I happened upon the different ways female genitalia presented. 

Then there was the article about FGM and the different types also in pictures. 

Looking at those pictures triggered a memory! 

I must have been maybe 12 or 13, home on holidays from the boarding secondary school I attended and may or may not have taken ill but it was not a sickness as such but premenstrual sickness. 

My periods had started maybe a year and a half ago but it may have been my reaction to finding blood on my pant, it stopped after 3days and did not return till a year or so later

 By this time, almost every girl in my form had started their period so when it returned, I did not act as shocked or upset as the 1st time so as not to chase it away again. 

But it decided to punish me for my insolence and came with backache, nausea and excruciating tummy ache which was what I was experiencing again. 

But my Mum was sick of my being sickly all the time. 

As she had threatened, several times when I was much younger and more sickly, she dragged me by the hand and told me she was taking me to a medicine man to help her remove the ogbanje I had in me. 

I stole her thunder by refusing to respond as I used to. 

Followed her sheepishly, like a sheep to the slaughter who had accepted her fate, I was placed in the car and driven to a medicine man. 

So, true true this woman meant what she said? 

I have very little recollection of what happened there, I only remember a small sharp pain and the man sticking something inside me and Mum hustling me into the car to return home before my Dad got there and my mum threatening me with fire and brimstone if I breathed a word of all that went down to my Dad. 

I got home & made a beeline for a room I shared with my sister and laid on my bed. 

Feeling very sorry for myself, I laid down and wept tears of frustration. 

My sister who normally kept clear of me asked what was wrong and when I told her, she reported casually that she also had been taken there and that I should suck it up cos the bleeding would probably outlast the pain. 

I wailed even more but it did not help my situation. 

I bled for 3more days, but I was unsure if it was from my menstruation or the Baba's ministration. 

'I am circumcised'...this was my first time of saying the words out loud and it sounded strange and contrived. 

In my mind, that electronic sound that heralded my success at the games I played on my phone followed and I closed my eyes at the headache I knew would follow. 

Circumcised ba wo?! 

How?! 

I had no way of explaining it to anyone when I myself only just realised. 

If my mother were alive, we would have talked about it but she has passed several years before now and we had never had this discussion. 

I had contributed my 2kobo to discussions about FGM but had never felt I had been a partaker. 

I wanted to scream and hot tears gathered in my eyes threatening to spill and I made to laugh to make it seem like I was joking but this revelation weighed heavily on my heart and I was as relieved as shocked at sharing. 

My ladies looked at me like I was making one of the highfalutin jokes I was fond of making and the men around looked everywhere but at me. 

I understood. 

I know how I'd felt the 1st time this came to me. 

I had denied and almost physically pushed the thought away while trying to seal whatever crevice the memory came loose from. 

I rejected it and refused to remember but it made sense. 

It made absolute sense of my reticence where sex was concerned and how ill-matched my ability and enjoyment of it was. 

I could not repress the memory of the lover's fingers trying to stimulate me, touching what he felt was my clitoris and asking if he was doing the right thing. 

My reluctance to speak when making love always elicited oo l'enu from him. 

Loosely translated to, have you no mouth? (with which to respond to my query) but I felt that was not the time to say to him, sorry, a medicine man that my Mum took me to when I was 12 yanked it off. 

So I squirmed faux enjoyment and pulled his head to my nipple. 

Something that never failed to shut him up. 

He latched on and sucked like a starving child. 

I did what I could and he grunted his satisfaction quickly. 

Turning, I grabbed my bed rails to keep from falling. 

Dreams are sometimes made up of repressed ideas that we carry in our bodies. 

This particular dream is so vivid and I am no longer sure what is real and what is not.