Unsolicited Opinions

It's become increasingly hard to practice your art the way you want to in this world of ours, much less in a country like Nigeria where everyone wants to control what the other person is doing. If you're not doing it the way your neighbor wants you to, then you're doing it wrong. If you're not doing it the way the vast majority wants you to do it, then you're most definitely on the wrong path. It's heartbreaking and terribly frustrating. Once you're an artist or a celebrity of some sort, everybody expects you to live your life a certain way, the way they would live theirs which is practically impossible because we're all different and we can't all do the same thing.

I decided to talk about this because the amount of backlash I've received over the past few weeks has been alarming. I recently started a poetry series I intend to compile and publish soon titled, "Dear May (Letters from June)", where I write a poem everyday for the month of June and I've talked about a couple of controversial topics such as sex and being proud of the fact that I'm a woman who loves being there for her man and wants to comfort him in anyway she can. I post each of the poems everyday on my WhatsApp status because if I don't, I may not complete it and posting it everyday makes me feel as though I'm under a sort of deadline.

It was going well at first until I started getting all these comments about how I talk about sex too much or how I'm only able to write about these things because my brain has somehow been taken over by the thought of sex. At first, I simply ignored the comments, but then they increased and it's really disconcerting that people just expect me to write about only what makes them comfortable.

Not all of these comments were as nice as I'm presenting them now, but I tried to ignore or respond as politely as was humanly possible. I just wish people would be a bit more considerate of the other person's mental health before giving their unsolicited advice and opinions.

Before I started writing seriously in 2017, I used to feel out of place, like I didn't fit in or like I had nothing that made me stand out. Then I started writing out my thoughts and I found out that I was more able to cope with my emotions when I could write them out on paper or type them out. These days, I like to write about the things that matter to me and I know that it's the same thing with a lot of other writers. It's more than just a means of escapism, it's a way of communicating our thoughts, feelings and emotions and it's really frustrating when people try to take even that from you.

I understand that people fear what they do not understand but you could simply ignore it, why must you try to control another person's words or actions or means of expression?

I'll honestly never understand it and I really don't even want to. I think people should be left alone to express themselves in the ways they want to, you can't control everybody and we can't all like or love the same things. I most definitely will not stop writing about the things that matter to me if that's the only way I can stay sane in a world gone mad and I am working on ignoring people who try to judge or control it. So many other artists deal with these kinds of things and I'm starting to understand how celebrities must feel and why many of them lash out or lose their minds, it's enough to make anybody go crazy but oh well, we live in a society where anything that's not normal is potentially dangerous and nobody really cares about the others' emotional and mental well-being.

It's frustrating but it's fine, the negative comments only mean that I may be on the right track. I'd never want to be a person whose actions please everybody, especially in a society like ours where many people are so small minded and myopic, where nobody wants to talk about controversial topics or say what's what's really on their mind. To please everyone would be to lose myself, to lose my individuality and uniqueness. The fact that I'm ruffling a few feathers must mean I'm doing something right and I must say, I quite like it.

Besides, art is expression, not everybody understands it and while you may not necessarily like it, you can't control it.

So have a nice week.

Be kind.

©May