I’ve struggled to write this as much as I’ve struggled within me in the past few years and very recent months.

To capture the degree of my struggle, I romanced with the idea of fictionalising my experiences so that it’s not too direct and personal. It was my way of wanting to detach. I wrote a piece about it in the third person and felt I could post that as a story, but I couldn’t. I tried writing the same piece in the first person and I’ll take the form of a new character, but it still sounded unauthentic to me and I couldn’t finish writing.

In case you’re wondering what I’m struggling with or why I’m struggling at all, let me give you a back story.

The first time I knew my eyes are going to be the member that would run me into problems was when I turned 13. My rude awakening to being a teenager. I was in JSS 3 and a senior had punished me for a reason I can’t remember. I was responding to a question she’d asked and the next thing I realised was that I’d been silenced with a slap. Reason? She claimed I was rolling my eyes at her. As a defenceless junior student, I couldn’t rebut her claims. Another senior student who knew me quite well had to speak up for me that I wasn’t being rude because that’s how my eyes are.

I’ve had many comments about my eyes ranging from outright insults (you have frog eyes) to genuine pleasant compliments (you have beautiful eyes). Apart from the experience I had at 13, another one that troubled me for a long time was what someone said to me when I was 17. We were in a conversation and the person paused, looked at me, and said I couldn’t seduce her, and that I had to be careful when I’m talking to guys so that my eye gestures are not interpreted as an attempt at seduction.

Do you know what that statement did to me for the next 4 years? I wouldn’t look anybody in the eye when I was talking to them, particularly if the person was a guy. I wouldn’t do anything that would draw attention to my eyes. When I wanted to start my YouTube channel a few years later, I was bothered by how my eye gestures would be interpreted. I had to give myself pep talks on reasons I shouldn’t be bothered by what people might think. Whoever would be seduced by watching me can as well remain seduced, and it wouldn’t be my problem but theirs.

And do you know what I did after that? I started looking people in the eye and won’t avert my gaze when unnecessary. I kept at my new resolve not to look away because I could be misinterpreted, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t struggle with the information my eyes could be passing across that was unintended.

My fears bubbled to the surface sometimes last year when I had a string of bizarre experiences within a short time frame. The one that bothered me the most was when I was having a conversation with a man, and his partner who had been cordial started acting strangely towards me (she gave me a wary stare down). Immediately, a switch flicked in my head and I knew the likely reason for her reaction. It wasn’t the first time I was going to have a similar experience with the gender I’d once been told to be careful around.  

Moment of truth. The reaction from that day plagued me almost every day for well over four months because I was always seeing this person and that wariness edginess was still there. Another thing it did? I became guarded around that gender unless we’ve had repeated unawkward conversations so that I’m not misread. I found myself gradually slipping into my past response of averting my gaze (what I never want to do) as a means of self-protection.

It’s taken me a couple of struggling months to come to terms with the fact that no amount of self-protection would stop humans from making assumptions based on a one-off interaction, and they would always make their conclusions, true or not. People who would have problem with my eyes will always do, and I can’t control their reaction