Chuoyo Endega Protus

Black Rose Chuoyo Endega Protus

Through my childhood, the lens through which I viewed the world always offered a bit too much of everything - too much hope and too much despair. When I stepped out of high school and into the universe outside adult supervision, suddenly, I found myself in the face of understanding the weird, flexible, pliant, and yet still defiant nature of life. This story begins from me as a child coming to terms with my parents, learning to love my mother despite her emotional distance and learning to avoid my abusive father. I got lucky and earned a sponsorship to a boarding high school, away from the toxic home environment at least for a few months a year. In high school, it was about coming to terms with myself, my changing body and thoughts. It was about finding myself and learning how my home had shaped my behaviour. But that is a stretch - teenhood was about me losing myself in the hormones, learning of sexuality and sensuality. As an adult, the world flipped. I needed to be ready for it. I wasn't. I found myself dreading each dawn. Was this state of persistent existential anguish what being an adult was all about? If so, I wanted out. But as I came to learn, the right people, at the right time, with the right intentions, always made life more bearable. As an adult, it was about learning the value of friendships. Perhaps, friendship and love mattered a little more than 'making it'. Perhaps.