Part I. (content warning: physical abuse…
By: Ayebainemi Abieyuwa Ese
Tags: Transgender, Nonbinary, Queer, Family Estrangement, Black

My Parent’s Relationship to Each Other, Myself + My Siblings

Archive images of my mother and father in Nigeria circa late 1970s/ early 1980s

Both first born children of their vast families, my parents have a shared understanding of what it’s like to be forced against their will to be providers for the rest of their siblings and parents. My mother’s ancestral line stems from the Ijo/Ejo people of Rivers State and my father’s lineage is from the Esan people of Edo State, Benin. Although I’m not in very close relationship with my parents, I feel an overwhelming amount of love for them and the beautiful heritage I come from. I’m grateful to have been given life by these extraordinary individuals who have survived against all odds.

My parents never really liked to talk to us about the beginnings of their relationship to each other, but I do remember a little bit of information they dropped when my siblings and I desperately begged for some context. They met in Nigeria around the 1970s when the Naira was much stronger than it was now and jobs were somewhat readily available. My mother got engaged to my father around the time she was working as a diplomatic translator in Madrid and my father was working in America and travelling within various countries. They got married in the late 1970s / early 1980s with a traditional and ‘white’ wedding ceremony to boot! Life was good back in those days, but their transition to settling down in the big city of London only proved how much of a strain capitalism and the pressures of building a nuclear family structure put on them.

My father was the first to estrange himself from my narcissistic mother when I was 3 years old and I remember not really comprehending why it was deemed a bad thing. After all I was still so young, and I had not yet formed the understanding of why a ‘happy nuclear family’ would look good in the eyes of this capitalist society we live in. I have early memories of him still visiting us every Saturday to go grocery shopping and spending time with him in his flat in Canning Town; watching the news, Nollywood films or the British sitcom ‘Allo! ‘Allo!’ Those times really relieved me from the stress of having to be around my emotionally volatile mother and I enjoyed exploring the music of my Nigerian ancestors he would play such as; William Onyeabor, Ofege, Sonny Oti and Nelly Uchendu as my twin sister, little brother and I sat in his car and drove down to Costco or Asda.

As much as I loved spending time with my father he, like many other Nigerian fathers, unfortunately had the tendency of physically abusing us to enforce ‘discipline’ when we ‘weren’t behaving’. As much as this is abusive behaviour, I do know now that his violent behaviour was mainly caused by his high stress levels of having to work late night shifts as a chauffeur in the unforgiving streets of London in order to financially provide for us. I distinctively remember how much my father changed as we grew older and he was able to stop working nights. He was relieved of stress and he transformed in to a much calmer person as we were able to support ourselves and he began to work in the field of security. I’ve always understood how much his separation from my mother gave him so much freedom and release, as much as it hurt my mother.

I remember my mother as a self-described matriarch, staunch Christian and firm believer in the power of the blood of jesus. She had a knack for teaching us the ways to use English grammar correctly and priming us to be the perfect altar servers she always wanted us to be. She is a perfect example of the irreversible damage colonialism has inflicted upon the people of Nigeria born in the late 1950s. Having lived with my mother for 18 years, I have very little memories of how she was in relationship to me, mostly because of the deep trauma I experienced by her being our primary caregiver. Most of what I remember is that she was a prolific gaslighter, had high expectations of us and thought of us as an extension of herself. She is a classic narcissistic Nigerian mother.

My mother’s parenting style and personality is perpetually shaped by my father’s estrangement from her and it caused many years of her belittling his efforts to parent and provide for us. Her grandiose narcissistic behaviour, physical abuse, emotional neglect and sheer inability to love us caused me a lot of pain which I am still working through. It caused all of my siblings a lot of pain which they hadn’t the resources to work through and as a result, we ended up projecting our hurt on to each other in a multitude of ways. My father could never seem to do anything right in our mother’s eyes and she berated him mercilessly. Loud arguments would ensue between them and my siblings and I were too traumatised to even look out for and offer comfort to one another. I later discovered through remembering these arguments just how narcissistic and insecure my mother was, and why my father couldn’t stand being around her.