I had this sickness that felt more spiritual than physical. It attacked only at dawn when I was asleep. My body would suddenly freeze and wouldn’t be able to turn left or right. I felt a separation between my body and myself and saw myself struggling to repossess my body. It was a tough battle when it came.

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My sister shared a bed with me. She would tell me how my body vibrated calmly like a machine was operating within me. She said my body would go hot and suddenly turn cold when I came back to life. And before I would escape, I would make a loud shout that pierced through the silence of the night, waking everyone up to ask what was going on.

Hospitals didn’t help. They didn’t understand what I was going through. They said it was a seizure. I told them it was more than that. “It felt like death until I repossessed my body,” I told them.

At first, it happened once a month or so until it became frequent, at least twice a week. Everyone knew me as the girl who fought demons at night and made noise while at battle. I dreaded going to school when it happened. I didn’t want to step out the morning after because all eyes would be on me and tongues would wag.

Out of frustration, my dad took me to his hometown to meet a fetish priest; a tall and lanky-looking man who smelled like a forest in the morning. He bathed herbs and ate herbs. He said my issue was spiritual and if it continued, one day I wouldn’t be able to repossess my body again and I would be dead. I stayed there for three days. On the third day, my mom stormed the village in anger, entered the man’s compound, and carried me away. My dad wasn’t around.

It turned into a big fight between them. My mom preached the sovereignty of God and asked why my dad would carry me to a shrine, saying, “The devil won’t solve a problem he himself has created. Except God.” My dad, a quiet and calm man, didn’t want to fight back. She left me in the hands of my mom and we all traveled back home. That same night, I experienced the worst seizure of my life. It lasted longer than ever. My sister told me they thought I wouldn’t make it.

I woke up in the hospital, surrounded by my bewildered family. I felt so bad taking my family through that lot. My dad looked like a ghost, my mom, a defeated warrior. I cried when I saw them. When we got home from the hospital, my mom packed a few of my things and said, “Let’s go to the house of God.”

We ended up at a church camp in the middle of a village. The man of God, who everyone called ‘Father,’ attended to us. My mom narrated my problems. The man of God watched me as my mom told my story. He said, “Now that you’re here, death is far from you. Healing will come in seven days. When you leave here, you’ll never experience it again.”

He spoke with this assurance in his voice, like my problem was so small before him. He led us into a room I was going to stay in for the week and asked my mom to go back home and visit when she could. In the evening, we had service. He held my neck and blew air into my eyes while shouting, “Release her! I command you to leave.” I fell to the floor.

My mom visited in the morning and brought me food, talked for a while, and left. All day, this man of God prowled around my room. He asked me to meet him in church and I did. He asked a lot of questions—my age, if I’d sinned against anyone, how my sickness started, and asked if I was a virgin. I answered all his questions but none interested him more than the virgin part. “So you mean you’ve never known a man all your life?” he asked. I said yes.

I was twenty. Boys ran away from me because they believed I had demons. After evening service that day, the man of God held me in the church for a while. He told me, “Angels will visit you this dawn. Turn off your light and cover your eyes with cloth. If you see them, you may die. They will speak in familiar voices. Don’t fight against your grace. Just surrender for your healing.”

I did as I was told, but the voice I heard didn’t sound angelic. It sounded like that of the man of God, telling me not to resist or fight because he was going to drive the demons out. I lay stiff as I felt his hand on my thighs, later on my breasts, while whispering, “Leave this temple, this is not your place.”

He lay on top of me and once I felt his tongue on my skin, I knew where it was going. I fought back but I was already overpowered. “Don’t fight. Don’t look. You’ll die,” he whispered.

He succeeded and afterward sneaked out of the room. That was my third night at the camp. I cried like a baby. It was so painful and demeaning. In the morning, I didn’t step out for service. I stayed inside until my mom came around. I told her I wanted to leave because my soul wasn’t at ease. I’d already packed everything. She asked what happened, but I couldn’t say anything.

The man walked in and asked my mom to leave us. He threatened me with death. He said whatever happened to me was the ways of God and I had no right to whisper about it. I still maintained I wanted to leave. I left with my mom that very day.

On our way home, I told her what happened. She said I was lying. When we got home, I took off my panty to let her assess me, but she said she couldn’t find anything and instead warned me not to say anything about it to my dad.

The seizures never stopped. If anything, they got worse. My dad returned from his hometown and brought me some leaves. He asked me to fold one and put it under my tongue before I slept each night. I did that for seventy-seven days and I never experienced the seizures again. But what I went through at the hands of that man of God never left my memory. The pain, the scent of his breath, the coldness of his touch still remain fresh in my mind.

I don’t go to church. The last time a pastor put his hands on me in church, I swatted his hands off me and asked why he thought I needed his hands on me. He called it the devil at work, but I never went back again.

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I know there are good pastors, but however good they are, I don’t want to experience them. I’m yet to shake off that trauma, the touch of that horrible man, and the fact that my mom, who carried me there, didn’t believe me.

Maybe someday, I’ll heal and go back to church again, but now, God is personal to me. He’s in my room so He hears my prayers. He shares my pillow so He hears my deepest thoughts. He’s not in any church but the church of my heart.

#MyChildhoodTrauma

—Adwoa Vera

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