My father speaks very often about the day I was born. He was not in the room during the actual process and so his telling of this story starts from seeing my mother in the hospital bed, holding me and looking at my dainty fingers.  Her friend, Aunty Nike, praising her for doing a good job and congratulating my father on this new journey of fatherhood. For comedy, he talks about how his friend asks of me, as the girl who made him fall down. According to my father, he asks in that way, because on the news of my arrival, and he ran clumsily, lost his step and then fell on the way to meet my family. He says it every birthday, or every time I have done something worthy of his pride. That’s my father’s telling of the beginning of my story.

My mother does not speak of this as often. What she speaks of often is the day that she mistakenly gave me an overdose of a cough medicine when I was a little over a year old. When she realized what had happened, she ran to the kitchen to make a remedy her own mother had mentioned years ago to handle such situations. Palm oil. According to her, I sat there and drank it looking at her with my big eyes like nothing had happened, while she feared that she had made a colossal mistake as a mother. She tells this story in amusement of how my unbothered glare encouraged her. She tells this story in amusement when she finds me sitting idly, looking unperturbed about whatever may be going on.

My closest friend, Glory, tells the story of our friendship in a different way than I remember. For every question asked of the how we met, she mentions my stern statement of telling her to read her books in our janky classroom in JSS2. Of course, I deny this claim as I have no recollection of it whatsoever, but to her, this statement from me truly pushed her to study. According to her, this was the beginning of our friendship.

***

There are many more stories of my life that reside in the minds of people. Some have only a few, and some are plenteous in their minds. These tales where Dolapo consists of these small moments, and then grandly as this person. To these people, these stories are an intrinsic part of me. The person that I am, not just to them, but to the world, it seems.  I find it amusing to be known in these ways. While amused, it leaves a question in mind; if I have these many tales and parts of myself distributed in the minds of people like this, does it mean that these inaccurate or irrelevant stories are the ones that will continue in my absence? It is this question that reminds me of the imaginary friendship I have with rapper and artiste, Kendrick Lamar.

In his song, ‘Sing About Me / I’m Dying of Thirst’, Lamar tells the story of two different people and his attempts to immortalize them. The song opens with a simple chorus;

When the lights shut off

And it's my turn to settle down

My main concern

Promise that you will sing about me

Promise that you will sing about me

In verse 1, Kendrick voices a young man speaking to him. The young man tells his story of his failed attempts of achieving success, and then his admiration for how Lamar’s life turned out differently from his, despite both of them growing up in violent neighbourhoods. In his telling, he speaks of his struggles and his pursuit for more, for better. And just before the young man dies of gun violence, he pleads with Lamar leaving him this responsibility;

“Just promise me you’ll tell me this story when you make it big.”

In verse 2, Lamar faces a woman who is upset that he had told her sisters’ story on a previous song. She argues that by doing that, Lamar has tainted who her sister was, simply because of the less than ideal things she did to make ends meet. Being a lifestyle track that she herself is on, she warns him not to do the same to her, stating that;

“I’ll probably live longer than you and never fade away

I’ll never fade away, I’ll never fade away, I know my fate”

Regretfully, Lamar responds;

“By any means, wasn’t trying to offend or come between

Her personal life, I was like, “It need to be told””

And so Lamar raises these questions again. Who is permitted to tell a story? To whom is the responsibility of speaking of another person’s life even when it is agreed that the story must be told?

***

I have kept a journal since I was 22. I thought of it as a way to keep me sane in the early years of adulthood. Fresh out of law school and into the world (and workforce), I thought it expedient to document my journey. Keeping them in a central space as a way to chronicle my thoughts and ideas. Although it started purely as a record of events in my life, it suddenly became these collection of letters to my progeny, my daughter. I found it easier to record these events if it appeared I was telling them to someone. It did not depreciate the authenticity of the work. I noticed how easily my fingers would punch the keys on the keyboard when I assumed the position of story teller, instead of simply a recorder. Unknown to me, I had decided that it was more believable to me if I directed the way it would be received and recounted, instead permitting someone else to do it. It was accurate with more precision of dates and persons and time, smells and sights, thoughts and feelings, everything in the now 93-paged Google Doc. In it I would refer to and write to ‘my daughter’, a concept that is still foreign to me now, but had some believability and held my proverbial pen to paper. The revolution will be televised, the story would be told. Only this time, it would be told by me.

 ***

In the final stanza of the song, Lamar talks about his obsession to preserve stories through his writings. The lives of those who have inspired him to not only write but act differently. All these he talks about in the melancholic way that gets you thinking of this conundrum as one that will continue to exist, internally and externally. The question of permission to tell, and ultimately, the how it is being told. But the latter part will depend on memory. The stories/story that gets told is the one that made the most mark on them, and very little to do with me or whichever subject. The question of ‘who’ had always been about the story teller and never the subject. It is why Lamar continued to ponder while thinking of who will tell his own story;

Am I worth it?

Did I put enough work in?

If it were about the subject, it would be ‘why’ they tell your story. It is what the stories that my father, my mother and Glory had held all along. It was in the why they shared the tales, that my story was being truly told.