Dear Chimere,

When I confessed my feelings to you, and then asked you to be my woman, you'd asked me if there were any secrets I was hiding from you. Although you'd said that joculary, I was hit by a tsunami of guilt, and with a fake smile, I had replied that you would have to find those out yourself.

Yes, we have been best friends for over five years now. And although I have told you things about me; although I have opened up myself to you; although I have shown you my flaws, there are still some parts of me you do not know, parts of me you would not imagine would belong to me even in your worst nightmares. I now want to open up these catacombs of dirty secrets to you. I hope you can stand the stench.

When I was young, my mother had wanted me to be a Catholic priest. It was, for her, a way to give back to God her first fruit. So early enough, I knew that I was meant for the seminary, and all my actions were geared towards my getting into one of the best seminary schools around. I studied the Bible with the same fervor with which I ate, knew my Catechism by heart and could recite everything that was said at Mass before I was ten—in Latin.

But Fate had other things in store for me. My life turned around two days after my eleventh birthday. I discovered sex. Funny, right?

That day, I had gone to watch movies at a neighbour's house. My father had financial problems, so the power company disconnected our house from the general power supply. There were three other children that had also come to watch movies with me. I can still remember the movie we watched, a Nigerian movie by the title Market Seller. It was an interesting movie, but halfway through the movie, I slept off.

I woke up to find the daughter of the occupants of the house on top of me, kissing and licking me all over. I was bemused and made to stand up, but she held me back, whispering words that were beautiful yet indecipherable. Now, thirteen years later, I cannot recall the details of that evening, but the effects of it had stayed with me.

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https://www.thezenpens.com/2020/01/27/my-personal-demons/