Fighting Futility
When Your Book Becomes Your Therapist
Greetings and Blessings to all you wonderful human folks, and hope you’re all being kind and loving to yourselves. I mention the specific words, ‘kind and loving’, because it has taken me almost a lifetime to discover self-love. Even now, there are bad days when I struggle to accept myself as I am and treat myself with the love and kindness that my soul deserves.
On the 27th of September, 1994, my world as I knew it then came crashing down when I became a victim of a vile acid attack. Prior to that fateful day, I had been the proud and dizzy owner of an impressive cleavage, my sole claim to beauty in my pathetic and superficial mind. In those days, our rice-brained teenage minds viewed wolf-whistles and catcalling from guys as validation of our attractiveness and not as the sexual harassment we now know them to be. Perceptions were still the same even into my early thirties and I recall I used to do my best imitation of the immortal Barbara Windsor in her Carry On madcaps, chest rudely stuck out, neckline dipped right down to there, tottering on impossible stilettos and waving manically at the enthusiastic whistlers and their bawdry hoots.
The acid attack destroyed all that vainglory and stole my self-esteem, self-validation, and every other self-whatever we need to make us feel worthy, relevant and validated. Overnight, my cleavage, my breasts and upper arms became a mass of ugly keloid scarring. My face was an unsightly mess, and I questioned if I would ever regain my sight. Thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, I recovered both my sight and my face, albeit there were still slight scars here and there, but nothing I couldn’t live it.
My body was a different matter. My days of dipped necklines, spaghetti straps and swimming suits were long-gone, together with my equilibrium. Making love in the daytime or with the lights on became a lost paradise. I feared I might never again enjoy a normal, healthy relationship with a lover, although, thankfully, I went on to marry and divorce my second husband. Within weeks of the attack, I became a congenital lalocheziac, cursing and swearing with a lively creativity that had my loved ones either cringing or cracking up, depending on their moods and the setting. I was driven by a fiery rage that found a natural home with all the other rages brewing inside me from a traumatised childhood and equally turbulent adulthood. Now, it gleefully found an outlet in uncontrollable swearing. I wished my attacker the kind of death my vengeful women in my new book, FUTILITY, wished on their enemies. If a trickster spirit had offered me the powerful weapon of supernatural vengeance on the a**hole that ruined my stupendous cleavage, I would have grabbed it without a second thought, just as my two evil women did in FUTILITY.
In time, I learnt to control my rage and gradually weened myself off the incessant need to cover up my body like a nun. I stopped hiding away from the world and began to socialise again, although big crowds are still a challenge. Unfortunately, I still swear and curse, even at a harmless dandelion bud. But now, I do so in the safety of my house, the privacy of my car, and amongst my loved ones who understand my rude affliction. The anxiety syndrome birthed from my childhood during the Biafran-Nigerian civil war years and other traumatic events in my life is still an inconvenient, constant companion. The relentless attacks of the night shadow-entity that whispers its insidious message into my head about the futility of my efforts, my dreams and my very existence, is a battle I know I’ll be fighting till the end of my days.
But guess what? I am Invictus, just like many of us who battle daily brutal challenges and somehow get to live to fight another day. As I always tell my naked reflection in the mirror every day after a shower, I am Teflon; unbreakable! I look at those scars and own them. They are a part of me, but they don’t define who I am, just like all the other bad stuff that happened in the past. The keloids and I are now good friends most days, and even on the odd summer day when I resent not being brave enough to wear a certain kind of fashion, the rage simmers briefly and then, puff! It’s gone, just as quickly as it came! All is well again! These days, even the innocent questions of children when they see my scarred skin have stopped being a cause of embarrassment, and my young child grew up calling the scars Mama’s Map. She knew they were there to find her wherever she was, so that she could never get lost. I can honestly say that my body scars and I have made peace with each other, and the body dysmorphia that had been my burden for ages is now a thing of the past, together with a great deal of my old rage.
Or so I thought. Enter FUTILITY!!!
I started writing my book, FUTILITY, after a random conversation with my sister, Lilian. She said the word, futility, and instantly, I knew that it had to be the title of my next book. At the time, I had no idea what I was going to write about, but I trusted my characters to reveal themselves and their stories to me as they’ve always done with all my other works. I wasn’t disappointed. When they finally arrived, the two demonic female antagonists, Chia and Claire, proved to be everything I never expected in my wildest imaginings.
During my creative writing degree programme, we’d been taught to write about compassionate characters that our readers could get emotionally invested in. I had always tried to follow that conventional path. But these two women who crawled into the pages of FUTILITY were not ready to toe the line. Somewhere in the writing, without even realising it, I started to channel the suppressed rage lurking inside me. It normally takes me approximately a year to write a novel, but I wrote FUTILITY in just three months of frenzied and manic writing; such was the force of the avalanche of emotions that drove the narrative. The swearing and anger were relentless, and the writing was cathartic and draining. There was an acid scene in the book that I struggled with, but my character wasn’t the type to spray graffiti on an enemy when she had a deadlier paint to use. So, I let it stay; I gave the middle finger to my fears and wrote the vile scene. By the time I read my editor’s draft, I realised that both my terrible lalochezia and the desperate humour I’d employed over the years to tackle the acid trauma had somehow seeped into the pages of the story. FUTILITY is the result. It made me realise my foolish complacency about several unresolved issues in my life and the need to be even more watchful, more forgiving, more nurturing and more accepting of me and all my baggage, good and bad. I beam you all the same self-love and self-acceptance as I’ve found in my semi-old age.
I see FUTILITY as Marmite. You either love it or hate it. I love it and dedicated it to me. A lot of my wonderful peers also loved it. See some of their kind words below. I almost dedicated it to all victims of body-dysmorphia and body-scarring, but in the end, I decided to love myself more than everyone else. So, I gave myself a kind gift and dedicated the book to me, myself, and I. Each time I open the pages and read the dedication, I feel validated, loved, worthy and joyful.
FUTILITY is out today, published by Titan Books. I will be in London, UK, celebrating the day at the Super-Relaxed Fantasy Club, giving a talk about the book and sharing laughs and endless glasses of pineapple juice. No cocktails this time; doctor’s order :( So, please join me in celebrating this latest achievement! Grab yourself a copy of FUTILITY and join me in this unhinged, horrific and wild journey.
Thanks a million; and hugs!
Ps,
Alas, I’m not the best at self-promotion and struggle with social media. So, I’d be really grateful if you generous folks give FUTILITY a shoutout on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, TikTok, Threads and your other social media platforms! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
Buy FUTILITY below
1. AMAZON UK: https://bit.ly/4q90dky
2. AMAZON US: https://bit.ly/4h4D7HO
3. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE: https://bit.ly/3IKHmvD
4. BARNES & NOBLE: https://bit.ly/3IX4KGk
5. FORBIDDEN PLANET: https://forbiddenplanet.com/448400-futility/
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