When I read this prompt, Who tells your story? my immediate thought was, “Me. I do.” And I caught my gaze in the mirror and let out a wide smile because it was true, and for the first time in a long while, I believed it.

For a period of time, I thought of myself in terms of narratives provided by other people, statements made by the people who had experienced me, with prejudice and without.

I was the sister to my brothers, and if they were to tell my story, they would decorate me in accolades and take-downs simultaneously. They would paint me with words like “good”, “angry”, “frustrated” and “nice”, remembering me for - perhaps - the times I lost my patience while I raised them like they were borne of my body.

Their recollections would be of the times I yelled at them and had outbursts, or the times I came through for them, removing them from harm's way and putting myself there first. My immediate younger brother tells my story like I am a god, omniscient and omnipresent. All knowing, all abiding. The youngest one documents me as selfless.

I adopted that as my story. For some time.

Next would be my parents, the ones who birthed me into this existence, this plane of life. My mother would describe me as many things, truthfully. My mother would call me a sweet child. An angry woman. A responsible sister. A friend. A good friend. Selfish. Selfless. My mother would call me Àdùké the multi-potential, proudly tell you of my brilliance, yet.

Of all the people in the world, she is the only woman who has seen the laziness she accuses me of. In one breath, her story of me would be the girl who works harder than anyone else she knows, yet, the laziest kid she has ever met. Her telling of my story is that I am an angry child, raging, bubbling over and spilling.

And my father? Well. He has a very interesting perspective of me, last I heard. He would tell my story in a whisper, like it is some forbidden secret that shouldn't even get to see the light of day, like a shame that is passed down in families. At least, in the tellings that have made their way to my ear.

He thinks I am alike to my mother, and is worried about my prospects for marriage. He tells me that I am too angry, too prone to isolation, too this, too that. His telling of my story would involve a lot of detail to emphasize that I am a lot, a tsunami, overpowering.

These are the ones who have had the pleasure of experiencing me in a constant stream over the years. The ones who have seen me in pain, growth, foolishness, selfishness, rage, joy, all of it. They have witnessed my wit and my absurdity, my excitement and disappointment.

Still, their pictures are inaccurate, not as all-encompassing as they would believe. I say this as someone who has heard who I am from my friends, and witnessed the collage of words that have been said to me, sentences that I have committed to memory. “You are so selfless.” “You are so brilliant, so beautiful.” “ You remind me of the sun. You are such a bright light.” The ones I call my friends call me kind and tell me things they think of me, rarely negative, rarer still unkind.

I think to each person’s recollection, there are real truths and honesties. I have been an angry woman. I have been selfish, and selfless. Kind, too. I have been all of these things, and more. Simply because the scope of my being does not end where I am perceived, does not come to a halt where their sight of me ends, does not end when I am not in the line of sight of their gazes.

I think of death often, when I am no longer present. I fantasize about my obituary and the things that will be said of me, and how I will be documented in time, how my story will be told. I want none of that erasure that usually comes with being a woman. I do not want only to be someone’s mother, lover, child, sister, friend. I want to be those too, but I also want to be someone, for my life to speak for itself, my existence to have made enough of an impact, to have its own flow, even outside the influence of all the other perspectives, perceptions. I want to be someone outside of a tandem. So many perceptions are wrong anyway. They do not feel right.

Which is why now, in this plane of life, I’m placing down the things I want to be remembered about me, embracing authenticity, simply spilling as I so wish. I’m at the reins, and I’m telling you; I’m scared of cockroaches, and I giggle when I’m amused. I want to be remembered as curious, and loud. I want the world to read my story and be able to tell that my existence was impossible to miss, and prominent. I do not want to simply be a big sister. When my story is told, I want the world to know that I was impatient with my brothers, sharp, but I loved them more than life itself, and I would hide bodies if they ever needed me to.

In my telling of myself, I need to convey that sure, maybe I was selfless sometimes, but I was also human, and I was selfish, too. I was angry. I want to convey my curiosity, show the world that I wanted to know everything. Every single thing. I want to convey that in my lifetime, I could be obstinate, catastrophically so, and there were days I suffered for it. I want to convey that I read like it was a compulsion, and that one time, I read the terms and conditions of an app I ended up deleting anyway. I want to convey that I was fat. Tall, and I height-checked everyone against myself because one time when I was 6, my father told me nobody controlled tall women, and I was very averse to being controlled, or controlling.

In many tellings of my story, I am recollected merely in association to my people. Simply as an extension of an already existing life. I am all of those things. I am merely a collage of all the lives that have met me, of course. Still, I am telling you: I’m Autistic with ADHD. I am Queer. I am funny. I am well-spoken. I am articulate, sometimes. I am witty. I like to wiggle my hips, and I hate leaving my room. I can take charge, and I like doing so. I feel safest beside water, or under it. I will try harder to become a tree than I will ever try at school. I am very expressive. I will pick up my phone at 3 am, but somehow will miss the calls that come in the evening time. I will educate, and do so as gently as I am able, once there is love involved.

I am assertive. Bossy, too. I am confident, and anxious, and happy, and sad. A walking oxymoron. I have one of the loudest laughs in a room, I am brilliant, with a very complex mind. I am excellent at solving problems. I know a lot. Can do even more.

And I will not, cannot, should not be erased. Minimized, relegated to merely one state of being.

Who tells my story?

Me. Who better to do so? I do a pretty good job, and I think it’s worth listening to, worth remembering.

#WM2024