1.

I like to think of myself as an activist I advocate for myself. I stand up for myself. I campaign for myself.

My life is my first project, I am my own activist, I fight for my own revolution and change, and I resist for my own life. I fight for myself, my life is a protest ground, my life is a continuous protest. Every morning when I wake up, I wake up chanting, singing, and stumping, even in my weakness or strength, depending on how I woke up feeling.

My whole life has been a battle; my duty is to defend myself, my choices, my goals, and my everyday life by resisting and standing up for myself against the rest of the world.

Right now, I think I learned how to stand up for other people by standing up for myself. In a world that demonizes my existence as a black queer woman who doesn’t conform, I have learned to always push and stand up for myself and others.

When my father started abusing my mother emotionally and physically, he would lock the door and she’d sleep outside. He would beat her up. I was a mere teenager. I and my brother would beg him but he wouldn’t budge.

One night he wanted to go after my mother with a sword and I stood in the way, looking at him without blinking, heavily breathing. I refused to move. He looked at me and went back.

That night he locked the door on her again and she slept outside. This went on for a pretty long time until I became an adult and started calling him out, then he turned to me and we became enemies and still are. 

The last time I stood up to him again was two months ago. He no longer beats my mother, but he comes home trying to terrorize everyone. He tried to beat me up this time and his punch tore my lips.

Many years ago, as a teenager, I left my parents’ church. Parents in Nigeria are often power-drunk and like to exert control, and one of the ways they enforce control is by making sure everyone in the family attends the father’s church. If the father doesn’t go to church, it is not a problem as mothers are more lenient.

I left my parents’ church. But I was living with an uncle and his family who would then later force me to attend his church. 

While at my uncle’s, my parents kept calling and threatening to do things to me because they needed me to come over for some spiritual prayers that will be done at the beach and with animals that’d be slaughtered. I vehemently refused. I was called names—a witch, a possessed child, and other things I can’t remember now. But I didn’t budge.

2.

As I grew up, I started questioning social norms, religion, culture, and traditions. I went from asking my grandmother why we couldn’t use wooden hoe handles as firewood to telling my mother that I didn’t want marriage and children.

I went from leaving my parents’ church to leaving religion altogether and becoming  athiest. Choosing to live for myself has never been easy, especially as a girl child in an African household, but I do it regardless. I do it despite that hate because if I don’t, my life would be a waste and I am unable to live through such stifling oppression. 

I went from asking why they sold women to men and why women didn’t pay the groom’s price for men if the bride price tradition is a beautiful thing as they say, to saying that the bride price is slavery and commodification of women and should therefore be abolished.

As a people-pleaser, I had to teach myself to also please myself because I am very deserving of love and pleasure.

I became a feminist because I wanted to stand against the patriarchy as I stood against my father that night. I wanted women to be free, still do. I want women to live fully and freely, without the burden of carrying on patriarchal roles and being marginalized and classified as tools and means to an end for men. I want women to live fully without bearing the shame that the patriarchy pours on women. The shame of having and enjoying sex. The shame and label that they give to women who shake the system, women who defile the laws, women who refuse to live their lives within the box and plans of the patriarchy.

Existing as a woman is hard enough; we should not have to go through another hardship at the hands of the patriarchy.

3. 

As a person with ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder), staying alive means being strong and resistant towards yourself, and this can be very exhausting.

Every day I have to decide to get up from bed, resisting my body’s craving to just lay there and do nothing.  Every day I have to drag myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth and shower because building or having a routine is impossible.

I have to decide to eat, or else I could go the whole day without food, only to remember that I haven’t eaten the whole day when my head starts aching. On the other hand, sometimes I also have to stop myself from eating too much when I’m in a bad mood or just trying to get my dopamine level up.

Living with ADHD in a capitalist world is a constant struggle that never ends, from the struggle to keep a job to the struggle to be time conscious and early, which of course never happens. 

Living in a capitalist world is consuming and extremely stressful. The daily pressure to make money and earn a living makes me wonder why we have to earn our lives, and if we cannot earn our living we die off.  

One thing I have chosen to do as a form of resistance in a world where we are told to work every day and night, where hustle culture and grind culture is seen as hard work, is to take more rest. Even though rest is often unachievable for someone like me who has ADHD because my brain never stops thinking.

I try to meditate, I try to sleep more. I try to take walks in the evenings, choosing to put my body and life first, choosing to be at peace and not let my life become miserable by the grind and struggle to get money and more money.

4. 

As a queer woman who lives in Nigeria, a homophobic country with laws that condemn gay people to 14 years in prison, I have had to resist the fear, stand against the hate, and hold on to the belief that my humanity is more important than their opinions of me.

My extended family thinks I’m gay and so every now and then, they come over to preach to me, urging me  to leave that “thing I entered”. I wonder if heterosexual people also “enter” a thing that makes them heterosexual.

I went from being unsure of my sexuality to hiding it and to now not giving zero fucks. 

I am here on this earth to live my life on my terms and be fulfilled. I seek joy and calm in a world that sucks away our happiness.

I seek to be myself, to live on my terms in a world that indoctrinates us into existing in a box. 

I seek to be authentic in a world where people are struggling to be real, because we all have to project a certain image, one that is approved by the people around us, especially the community we live in and grew up in, and our families.

I seek to be happy. To be silent. To speak out loud. To be patient with my growth. To celebrate my little wins and the big ones. To value people over profit, and to positively contribute to my society in any way I can. I seek to be me, to do me in a world that is always looking to make us anything else but us.

One of my recent favorite quotes is by Albert Camus. He writes,”The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” 

Each time I remember these words, they strengthen my resolve to be absolutely free in a world that enjoys putting us in cages and punishes us when we try or dare to come out of them.

About the Author:

Chidera Ochuagu is a writer and feminist activist. She shares her thoughts on social justice, feminism and the personal through her work. Her weekly writings, published on her Medium page, are not only insightful, they resonate with her readers, making her a relatable and inspiring figure. She is currently pursuing a degree at the National Open University of Nigeria.

*Feature image by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash