They Called it Mental Illness

Catholic school couldn’t beat the spirit out of me with Mass or a Bible. It tried. But the gifts were already there before the plaid skirt, before the rosary, before they told me my dreams & visions were demons.

I was a kid seeing what they said wasn’t there. I’d wake up crying, screaming, “She’s here again!” A woman standing over my bed by the trash can. Every night. Purple dress. Tall. Still. Watching. My mama got tired. Church Folks said I had an overactive imagination. Said I was a cry baby. Scary cat. Liar.

But my grandma — she got quiet. Said, “Baby… I think that may be my mother.”

She knew. Old folks always know.

Now I know better too. That wasn’t just Great-Grandma. That was Oya. Wind in a purple dress. Guardian of the cemetery gates, mother of change, storm that doesn’t ask permission. Or maybe it was Yemowó — the feminine road of Obatala, my own father in heaven, come to check on his child because the world was trying to make me forget myself.

But back then? They called it mental illness. That’s what they do when a Black child sees. When she dreams what hasn’t happened yet. When she tells you who died before the phone rings. When she knows the rain is coming and the air hasn’t even shifted. “You need help,” they say. “You’re making it up.” “Stop telling those stories.”

So I learned to shut up. To hide. To swallow visions like bitter herbs. I became an expert at dimming. Because being called crazy hurts more than being haunted.

I’m Omo Omi. Child of the waters. Of course I dreamed of water. Oceans that breathed. Rivers that spoke my name. Floods that cleaned houses I’d never been in. And snakes — always snakes. Big ones. Moving through the water like they owned it. I’d wake up sweating, heart pounding, and run to tell somebody. “That’s the devil,” they’d say. “Rebuke it.” Then the older I got my friends would say: Oh that means an enemy is close.

They never told me snakes are wisdom. That water is memory. That YEMOja and Osun and Olokun were trying to baptize me in truth while the church was still sprinkling my head and calling it holy.

They never told me Omo Obatala dream in white, in cloth, in calm. That we see because we’re born with the veil thin. That “mental illness” is what the world calls a child who remembers before she’s allowed to.

So yeah, I carried the gifts. Still do. I see. I dream. I feel a room before I walk in it. I know when death is sitting at the table. I know when birth is coming down the road. I know when Oya is sweeping through somebody’s life and they think it’s just bad luck. It’s not luck. It’s initiation.

Catholic school taught me to confess. IFA taught me to confirm. That lady in purple wasn’t a nightmare. She was an announcement. Those snakes weren’t demons. They were my lineage, moving. That water wasn’t drowning me. It was claiming me.

They called me a liar. The Orisa called me daughter.

They said I was scared. The ancestors said I was seeing.

They said I was broken. Obatala said I was his.

So no — it was never mental illness. It was memory. It was inheritance. It was Mobile water and Yoruba blood refusing to be silenced by a system that only canonizes white visions.

I don’t hide anymore. The gifts are not a curse. They’re a compass. And now that I know who walks with me, I sleep fine. Sometimes she still stands over me in purple. But I don’t scream.

I say, Iyanla. I see you. What are we doing today?

See I came here Obatala’s child. I came here Yemoja’s daughter.

Before the trauma, before the silence, before the world told me to shrink — I was already both. Cool head, deep water. White cloth, blue tide. I know this because when I look at pictures of me before 5 years old, I see it. Big eyes, calm. I didn’t talk much but I watched everything. I lined my toys up neat. Couldn’t stand dirt on my hands. Hated fighting, hated noise. If somebody cried, I cried too. That was Obatala — peaceful, pure, patient, born with the ori of an old soul.

And I was Yemoja too. Mama before I had language. I mothered my dolls, my cousins, grass hoppers in jars. Loved baths. Lived for the summer to get wet by the water hose. If you put me near any water — pool, puddle, Mobile Bay — I was gone. Laughing. Whole. I’d sit in the tub until the water got cold and my fingers looked like ancestors. That’s Yemoja — nurturing, vast, emotional wisdom in a little body. The one who holds everybody.

I was both. Born balanced. Born whole. Born known. 

Then life started happening to me.

Trauma doesn’t ask your age. It just moves in. By 6, the house got louder. By 8, the touches weren’t right. By 10, I learned to disappear while still in the room. By 13, Catholic school was telling me I was sin, and home was teaching me silence was safety.

That’s how you lose contact with your Authentic self. It’s not one big moment. It’s a thousand small cuts. You stop talking because nobody listens. You stop feeling because feeling gets you hurt. You stop dreaming because they call it lying. You stop being Obatala’s calm because calm gets you called slow. You stop being Yemoja’s depth because depth gets you called too sensitive, too much, too emotional, too grown and to damn Dramatic.

So I packed them up. Put my father in a box. Put my mother in a jar. Became who I had to be to survive: hard, mean, watchful, pleasing. I performed sanity so they wouldn’t lock me up for the visions. I performed holiness so they wouldn’t see the water rising in me.

I was alive. But I wasn’t me.

Then 2016 came.

My NDE. Near Death Experience — but really, it was a Near Life Experience. Because for the first time since I was 5, I remembered.

I won’t give you all the details. Some things are for the altar, not the blog. But I’ll say this: I left my body and at The Crossroads I heard Esu Ogbara. 

When they pulled me back, I was gasping, but it wasn’t air I was hungry for. It was myself.

That’s when the healing started. That’s when the searching started. Not for a new God. For the old me. The 4-year-old with the clean hands and the wet hair. The one who knew before she was taught to doubt. I started asking questions Catholic school would’ve expelled me for. I started dreaming again and writing it down instead of apologizing. I stopped calling the purple lady a hallucination and started calling her Iyanla.

Trauma exiled me from my Ori. Death walked me back.

Obatala didn’t leave when I was screaming at 8. He just stepped back while I fought. Yemoja didn’t abandon me when I was numb at 15. She became the undercurrent, waiting. They were always there. I was the one who got stolen.

So this journey back?

It ain’t cute. It’s not aesthetic. It’s tearing off masks I glued to my own face. It’s crying for the little girl who thought she was crazy. It’s apologizing to my Ori for the years I called her a liar. It’s letting Obatala wash the blood off my hands and letting Yemoja teach me how to mother myself.

I was born Obatala and Yemoja’s child. Trauma made me an orphan. My NDE made me an heir again.

And now? Now I’m collecting myself. Piece by piece. Cowrie by cowrie.

I don’t want to be who I became to survive. I want to be who I was before the world happened. And she’s still here. In the water. In the white. In me. Latonya Patterson

Iya IfaRinsola Ogbenigun 

To Be Continued…….