By Flaming Homo
For this brief moment I am anonymous, but still proud to be greater than the sum of my parts. I’m a gay, schizoaffective African man, and a firm believer that Pan-Africanist identity is not a monolith. I now live with intent and the understanding that I should only worry about the things I can control.
Before my diagnosis with schizoaffective disorder at the age of 36, I lived with the fundamental belief that I was a destructive man who held little regard for the generally accepted social order of things. I was, essentially, willing to let myself be labeled an asshole. When you live through a series of personal failures, you tend to allow people to write a few chapters in your narrative.
Back then, I very much lived the cliche of the hedonistic homosexual, just with an introverted twist. I drank and fucked with abandon, and hid my habits like a child who violated the house cookie jar. Most of my Liberian family members had no idea what I was up to, even though they were aware that I was gay. My perpetual vagueness on the matters of my personal life led many of them to suspect that I was up to no good.
Fact, however, is always stranger than fiction. The truth was that I was hooking up with morally ambiguous amateur porn performers who were drugged out of their minds. They were all above thirty, desperate to enjoy the undefined admiration of lust, and lived from one second to the next. As equally damaged as we all were, there was no personal growth being done in the spaces we occupied.
I was between uninspiring jobs and would’ve filled that vacuum with the jism of my multiple partners were it possible. The dopamine rush received from orgasms were the only things remotely similar to joy that I experienced in my thirties. Little did I know, the aimless yearning for pleasure I experienced was symptomatic of chemical imbalance that was unchecked and unexpected.
When I was 36 everything came to a head. Suddenly, I was overcome with paranoia and a fear that I smelled like raw sewage. I let myself go hygienically and walked on the sides of the capital’s main roads for miles on end. My family was horrified to the point that my mother was called from America to intervene.
Upon her arrival I was bombarded with a strange emotional dichotomy of relief and shame. Even within the context of my breakdown, I KNEW that a man of my age shouldn’t need help from his mother. I burned hot with that shame and felt that my life was irredeemable.
Thankfully, that shame served as a precursor to freedom. Within it was found the vulnerability to ask the simple question: “What’s wrong?” My mother’s love of me and belief in me led me back to the truth of who I was. With her help, I remembered the rhythm of my soul and found the courage to face what I wasn’t.
We found a psychiatrist and I started taking the medication that has been my source of freedom for the past decade.
Since then, I have been in control of my narrative. I’ve lived my truth and fought my battles. I’ve had the audacity to love myself in the face of my flaws and challenging moments. I’m accountable, and I’m out and proud to those who matter. I live with the courage to change what I can, and am blessed with the wisdom not to lament over what I can’t.
Now? I am a healthy gay Liberian man living with Schizoaffective Disorder. I love the life that I live, and live the life that I love. I hope sharing these few sentences will help other queer Africans know they’re not alone in their mental health struggles.