Grace.

Oh oh oh

Just for your Grace

Oh oh oh

Just for your Grace

Oh oh oh

Just for your Grace

I’ll be lost but for your grace

-Tasha cobbs.

This is the story of how that song began to have a meaning to me. My name is Grace, funny isn’t it? I grew up in the most wonderful place a child could dream up and I had a free flow of friends that I must say adored me. I never saw my parents fight, argue or as much as raise their voice against each other, but of course the world would not be complete without some uncles that wants to touch you in forbidden places, male play mates that wants to act out the last night movies with you and a mom that wants to make sure you ended up a complete package for your future husband.

It all started very early for me, my childhood is a joy, some things I could remember so vividly but my mind sees some moments out like flashes of non-understandable images, like pieces of a broken picture frame, and I remember some sounds like someone trying to piece together the pieces of a broken china. My little mind found ways around erasing those events and I’m glad I can’t see them anymore, but it hurts that they are still somewhere, waiting for a smell, a sound or a voice to trigger them.

My young mind adjusted to lust so fast. I started masturbating as early as 11 years old. I just figured it out myself, no one taught me, it wasn’t a movie scene, it just came and I loved the high it gave me. That feeling of fulfilment that makes you seek for more fulfilment. I never knew the name of what I had become addicted to until my JSS3 Inter. science teacher taught us sex education. It was too late to stop. I knew it was bad, but I couldn’t just leave it, it never crossed my mind that that was what was called an addiction.

Teenage hood wasn’t easy for me either, I was a late bloomer. I was thin and as flat as a board, I began to live in my own head, ask myself out and act out amazing conversations with my made up boyfriends; while my friends had real boyfriends, I just passed the letters across. I would never have guessed that my physical beauty was just lurking around the corner, but it did come out when I changed schools because my family moved to another town.

Now, this beauty I talk about was not like the transformation of Cinderella, it was just subtle changes, and there is really nothing pink lips can’t get you! For me I know they got me into a lot of trouble.

Today before I started writing this, I read through my old journal, and I was able to get into my teenage brain again. Remembering these details on my own was a bit tricky, I’ve trained my memory to pick and choose. But I found out I had my first kiss at the back of a car- by back I mean, behind a parked car opposite the guy’s house late at night while he saw me back home. He was my first boyfriend.

 I remember that he pursued me for a while, and I gave in. Isn’t this all I ever wanted, to be loved and to love back. The first kiss became the first touch, and then it became the first of everything but that ultimate sex- that I knew was wrong.

A friend of mine later told me how this kiss-touch guy had been pressuring her for a relationship also, and the smart girl I was fast becoming, I broke up with him and that same night, in a music concert, I picked up the new boyfriend. This one was really different, he was all that.

Oh he kissed me just right and knew the right place to touch, it was so heaven on earth, I hope that is not as blasphemous as it looks. I wanted to be the right girl for the Mr shiny star. I did everything to be his go to girl, I tried my best to keep up appearance, he was the best in all sports in my school. It felt like a jackpot! But it didn’t work out for too long either.

Let me pause the story telling and say a few things. Not to score sympathy but to let you know that I wasn’t just the loose girl of the school. I was really just the girl that wanted to boost her really empty self esteem. I got it from guys falling over each other for me. And soon I just became the girl that thought all I needed was a guy to call goodnight. From the moment I had my first boyfriend, when I was 14, I never stopped to think, or paused to take a breath. I just kept on counting, till I lost count.

The next thing that shook me deep was an almost rape incident I had with my school father. He was a guy I really trusted. My school was having sports practice and on days like that, we got to move in and out of the school. I got a call from this guy to come and see him in another guys house that was close to my school, I went because I felt other students were there and maybe we were all just going to have some fun and go back to school later. Little did I know that I was walking into an ambush. As I got in to the house, I was ushered in by the guy whose house it was and I started asking for where everyone was and he told me to just follow him and I did! Foolish wasn’t that just foolish?

The school father was in a room and I walked right into it and watched the door shut on me. Then he began to struggle to get my clothes off and I just started kicking and screaming and begging and weeping all at the same time. It didn’t help much. How I got free from him that day can only be traced to my mom’s prayers. That’s all that made sense.

I didn’t learn from that however and the next guy, if I skip a few others would be a friend’s elder brother. This one introduced me to the night life and I blew wayward into another large print. I started making it back home around 12 am and this eventually made my grandmother pack off our house. Crying every other night was not too good for her health I suppose.

So until now I had become a pro at dating guys for 3 weeks, doing all that could be done with them and then breaking up just to hop onto the next train of interesting.

See, my story is not so spectacular. Just a picture of what happens when the girl child suffers from emotional issues that truthfully had no roots. It was a problem without cause, fixing it was as impossible as the meaning of the word.

The little twist was when the real meaning of what I was doing began to come to me. When I began to write letters to myself explaining in details how I was a hopeless sinner who had no cure or remedy. This was after my first sex, and my second and my third and my fourth all while I still was within the range of 15-16 years.

One night I had come to the end of the guilt game. I played around the house and made everyone laugh. In the midnight, I took out some sachets of different drugs and popped a mixture of 10 in my hands, whipped out a bottle of top gum, said my last prayers and took it all at once. I was so sad I woke up the following day.

This didn’t stop me from getting into more relationships. But the climax for me was when I finished secondary school and moved to another town to write an exam. I stayed with family friends for a year. This family tried to restrict my movement but it didn’t help much. I was the good girl they thought I should be while they could see me. When they could not however, I was always in this guys house. He was the pimp. Always introducing me to one friend or the other. I dated two out of these friends. The first one I ranaway from because he was a cultist, attended Lautech and kept asking for sex which I kept refusing. Lautech is very popular for their streak of ritual killings. When I left him, I met Mr.sun, moon, and stars. With this guy, I felt so safe. I was so sure he was all I had been looking forward to all my life. He was the perfect for me. Until after we had sex the first time, and then the second and it just became normal. When I broke up with him eventually, I discovered I was pregnant.

I moved back home 3 months pregnant, called a friend to get the contact of an illegal abortion clinic, travelled with a friend- now this is worth the mention. That friend was my long distance boyfriend. The guy I was really serious with. The guy I hoped to spend the rest of my life with. I informed him about my pregnancy and impending abortion, and he volunteered to see me off to the place.

I left our house around 9oclok that Saturday morning pregnant and I came back around 4oclock in the evening not pregnant. I threw the foetus that I had carried all the way from the town over our house fence and that afternoon, I slept and woke up without feeling the least of discomfort. It was like heaven smiled on me.

I got to the end of my road that cold July night and made decisions to clean up my act. I couldn’t of course but I started to try. Until I totally handed everything to Christ and stopped to try so hard, I was not able to conquer the spirit of lust I battled with from the early ages of my life.

But really it was grace that found me, and it was love that lifted me. Some others didn’t live to tell their stories, others are still writing their story. But I’m free, I’m whole. Yes I still need a little panel beating here and there, but I’m not where I used to be. I’m far really far from where I started from.