001- Quiet and Loud Lessons
Some things don’t have to be shouted to leave a mark. Childhood taught me silence can carry weight, and not every hurt gets to rest.
There’s a trend on Twitter (X) asking people to share any lore about themselves.
At first, it felt funny. People posting the small things they never forgot, like villains made from spilled Ribena or broken cartoons. But the more I read, the more I realized how time shapes us, even when we think we already know ourselves. And sometimes, what we call small memories are the very moments that taught us how to move through the world.
I didn’t realise how many I carried until I thought back. Some are blurry. Others come back clearly, like light slipping through a curtain. One of them starts with a swing.
I was maybe in Primary 2 or 3. A Nigerian school setting. The swing had lost its seat, but we still made it work, gripping the rim, swinging feet, and feeling the wind anyway. On this particular day, break time had ended. I had just washed my hands and for some reason still felt the urge to take one more swing.
Unfortunately, I fell and landed hard on my hand. A quiet pain.
I remember picking myself up and dusting the dirt off my uniform quickly so it wouldn’t leave any sign that I had fallen but the pain in my wrist was sharp. Deep. But I didn’t complain.
When I got home, I told my mum. Actually she found out first when she pulled me into a hug and felt my swollen wrist. In her words, “Nene, you’ve sprained your left wrist right?” That began my little nightmare.
From that night on, my mum would massage my wrist and wrap it gently in a bandage. I could feel the difference between going to school and coming back because I was only allowed to wear the bandage at home. Every morning, I went to school like nothing had happened. No bandage meant no visible pain. No room for questions or sympathy.
That’s one version of my lore.
Tiny things but not so tiny things that carve you as you grow. What I was really learning was, the world might not always know how to protect and care for what it doesn’t know about, especially if it’s not seen, told, or discovered. And that silence is often mistaken for strength.
So I adapted, like many of us did.
I learned to keep and dress pain in normal clothes.
To make room for disappointment without making noise.
I see it clearer now. All memories aren’t just scraps. They’re roots. They’re how we’ve learned softness, and how we first felt it threatened. They’re how we began learning what it means to hold something dear, even when the world doesn’t.
This is the beauty of reflection. You remember the swing, the fall and the quiet.
-By Nnenna
Nene's Corner 