…How will someone who claims to be up there in heaven speak to us here on earth? That was it. How can He speak to me? This same guy who has had a crush on a quarter of the girls in my set? Or a guy who is an addicted masturbator? Oh, you are surprised? A pastor’s son jerking off the life out of his mind? Well, yeah. Here is my story. A couple of years ago, I was binge watching videos on YouTube when I came across a video that aroused me sexually. Yeah, it was the first time I had ever experienced such as a teenager. Elated about the fact that my body actually responded to the stimulation set off by the video which is something I had always yearned to experience, I decided to forge ahead. I went ahead and watched different similar videos and then, on the bed I was, right there where Jesus was looking at me from above, I felt a slightly warm liquid escape my manhood. Oh the joy! I was finally a man! Little did I know that I had opened the door to depression and frustration which till now, has kept me in bondage.
Well, I left school immediately after classes were over, as I got home, I entered into my duvet, closed my eyes and began wondering when all of these will be over. I thought about the stories my mom had told me; how it took two days for me to come into this world. “You were one big lump of a child,” she had said. She always added the fact that I was very dark as a child anytime she repeated that story.
I thought about how hard it was for me to accept my body the way it was or still is. Yeah, I’m still very dark. I also thought of how much I had been made a laughing stock for being ‘so black’ particularly in my sophomore year in high school, how I had gotten the nickname ‘Duduyemi’ or ‘Dudulabi.’ I remembered how I had mistakenly told my friend about my first crush who later went ahead to tell the girl that I liked her and wanted to date her. I remembered how she had approached me on the main street of our school with all her friends. “Is it true that you said you want to date me?” she had asked. I was lost. For a split second, I tried to push myself out of the perplexity that gripped me all of a sudden. When it seemed like I was taking forever to give a response to her question, I eventually was pushed out from my little slumber by the wave of pain that struck my face twice. I still had not found a solution to my confusion till I drifted away from the girl’s face to a spot, only to see my friend watching from a distance and giggling for what seemed to be like forever. Then and there did it dawn on me that I had confided in a snitch. It took another couple of slaps from the girl to wake me totally from my state of sudden misery. “Are you in any way hard of hearing?” she spat. “I’m so sorry Pauline; I just said it as a joke to my friend. It will never repeat itself,” I had managed to utter. “It better not. And please, try using a bleaching cream or something, you look like you were given birth to by the darkest of apes,” she replied and walked away with her ‘army of knights’. I was thrown immediately into a state of excruciating distress. The left side of my face felt sore. May jaws felt like they’d just been used in crushing hard metal. I cried that day like a child that had just lost his parents.
So that was how I got those nicknames. At a time, I got angry at every single person that called me any of those names but after the whole three hundred and thirty-five of us in our set started calling me ‘Duduyemi or Dudulabi,’ I had to learn to cope with it. I couldn’t possibly hold grudges against the whole of my set now, or can you? Turning to my left side, I put out the lampshade on my bedside and drifted off into sleep. That night, in my dream, there was this man that came to sit beside me while I was in class. The countenance of His face shone bright like the headlamps of a Canadian car. I asked Him how that was so and He said it was so because He is the bright and morning star. He held my hand and said, “Come Dele, let me set you free from yourself. Let me set you apart into pieces and remold you.” As I opened my mouth to utter a reply, I heard a thud and at the same time, felt a sharp pain on my buttocks. I woke up and met myself on the floor. I had rolled from the bed to the floor. Gazing at my table clock, the time read past six in the morning. It was a Saturday. And it was time for devotion. My dad talked about we casting our cares upon Jesus and I, who has never for once been interested in morning devotions began to have this strange affinity for the whole devotion. I usually preferred pressing my phone to listening to any of the short sermons. There was a day I was hooked up to a pornographic site during devotion and when my dad asked what I was doing, I told him I was searching for the NLT version of our memory verse online. This morning was a different one for me as my dad explained what Jesus said in Matthew 11:28 which says:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” He further explained that this same Jesus has a name that is far above every other name using Philippians 2:10 which says: “That at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of GOD the Father.” The statement the man in my dream made kept popping up in my subconscious from time to time; “Come Dele, let me set you free from yourself. Let me set you apart into pieces and remold you.” How can one be set free from oneself? I just couldn’t understand. I was back in my room and something triggered me to pick up my Bible and read it. It was very dusty as I hadn’t touched it since forever. As I was about dusting my Bible to read, my phone beeped. It was a message from Bayo, a friend from the humanities department at school. “Pauline said a ‘Yes’ to Richard, call me ASAP>>>,” it read. To be continued…
YOU ARE READING
RESTORATION
SpiritualConviction, Salvation, Liberation. A teenage boy shares his experiences in high school alongside his personal fears and secret battles. One day, He meets a man in his dream who promises him a better future.
