CHAPTER TWO “CONVINCED”

©️ Opeyemi Akintunde
As inspired by the DEEP ONE

As for me, my name is Beauty!

But wait… Hold up! Before your imagination begins to run wild, please calm down.
Don’t let the name deceive you.

I still wonder who deceived my parents and advised them to name me Beauty. Because What???
What???
I was a far cry from it.

If anything, I was the opposite of the definition of beauty.

I was the definition of black like charcoal, with protruding squirrel teeth, and bulgy eyeballs.
My face looked like three different committees worked independently and never held a coordination meeting. Seriously!

Thanks to my parents, who….unlike Imade’s parents…were not futuristic in any way.
They married out of love.

Love?

How do you marry out of love without thinking of the future of your offspring?
My father with the bulgy eyes, my mother with the squirrel teeth…
Put those features inside one love blender and the result was me.

Who honestly dug this pit for me?

You can imagine my childhood.

I longed for attention.
I longed for boys to whisper about me, write my name in love notes, or fight over me the way they did with girls like Imade.
Imade who wasn’t even emotionally available!

But no.
What I got were nicknames like:

Squirrel.
Blacky.
Ojuyobo (Fallen eyes).

Secondary school didn’t help.

Back then, we were full of “ships.”
There was Imade and Teju … the classic “Money marrying Money” kind of ship that everyone supported, even though Imade herself tried to wreck the ship before it even sailed!
You could tell she wanted more, but honestly, you could see their wedding in 3D even in JSS3.

Then we had Joy and Ridwan … Pastor’s daughter and Imam’s son.
Spiritually incompatible on paper, but emotionally inseparable in reality.
Even that ship sailed with full engine in school.

Me?

The only time I was ever “shipped” with anyone was when naughty boys wanted to humiliate another boy.

The taunting line was always the same:

“You will marry Beauty!”

And immediately, the boy would react like hot oil had touched his skin.

“God forbid!”
“Over my dead body!”
“Abeg don’t try nonsense!”

Every rejection was like a fresh slap to my ego.
Girls who have boys swarming around them like bees do not know what God has done for them!
Girls whose parents looked in the mirror before choosing each other do not understand what privilege they carry!
If only my parents had married handsome and beautiful partners, maybe the result would have been less dramatic.

But I survived… somehow.
We all grew up and parted ways, but the imprint of those years never left me.

One day, I made up my mind.
I was going to be loved … at all cost.

If nature didn’t give me beauty, money would give me acceptance.
If God didn’t give me charm, service would give me belonging.
If boys didn’t desire me naturally, I would create a way for them to desire me artificially.

So I started forcing myself into the lives of boys whose faces clearly showed they couldn’t stand my sight.
I paid for their fake attention… with money… with acts of service… and yes, with intimacy.

Anything to feel chosen.
Anything to feel wanted, even for a second.

I wasn’t looking for love anymore… I was looking for relief from loneliness.

Because sometimes, the desire to be loved becomes louder than the truth you know. I knew intimacy was wrong at my age, but I wanted to be loved!.

And that was how my journey began… in a direction that would later collide with Imade’s story…
but not yet.

To be continued…
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✍️ DEEP THOUGHTS NOVELS
Inspired by the TRUTH REVEALER
Written by Opeyemi Akintunde
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