Life can be unpredictable, but nothing is more painful than watching it unfold in the most heartbreaking ways. Feeling mysteriously played by fate itself, it always seemed like living in that pattern of “the more you look, the less you see.”
My name is Fortune Uwadike, and I want to share the pains, torture, and fears I faced at the lowest point in my life—perhaps, just perhaps, you may learn a valuable lesson from it.
Born into a family of great warriors, my ancestors were known to battle spirits and dragons alike. Ancestrally, we were called “Uwa egbetela omuru dike,” translated as “The earth has produced a great warrior,” later shortened to Uwadike.
My father married my mother at the early age of nineteen—maybe one of the perks of being the only son among eight girls. I am the fourth child of my parents, out of six, but unfortunately, I was named Ọjọọ Mma. Yes, I am beautiful—standing tall at 6.2 feet, dark and gleaming like midnight rain, with a long oval face that holds both pride and warning. My presence speaks before my voice does—a silent announcement of who I am.
My beauty doesn’t beg for attention. It commands it. Ebony skin shimmering beneath the sun, shoulders straight as though carrying kingdoms in their shadow, eyes deep and stormy, lips full and intentional—shaped to speak destinies yet untold. I move like a memory itself: unforgettable, yet misunderstood.
But beauty is no shield; it is a burden. Beneath the glow lies solitude, for admiration never sees the battles behind the gaze. They adore what they cannot hold, and love what they cannot understand. And every glance, every whispered compliment, hides a quiet warning.
Yes, they notice me. They always notice me.
But tell me—of what use is beauty when it only attracts misfortune? And so, this is my story:
Two hours before I took my first breath, catastrophe struck. My father lost a major construction contract—a colossal three-hundred-million-naira deal. As if that wasn’t enough, one of his warehouses, filled with construction materials, caught a mysterious fire. What was supposed to be a day of celebration became a day of pain.
Meanwhile, my mother was fighting for her life—and mine. Her contractions came like a tornado every thirty minutes. Seven days of unbearable torture before I finally decided to grace the earth with my presence.
From the moment I inhaled my first breath, the world rebelled. Thunder cracked across the sky though it was a dry-season morning. Birds fled their nests in frantic disarray. The midwife swore she saw my eyes open before I had even cried—eyes too aware for a newborn, too ancient.
They wrapped me in white cloth, but it turned charcoal-black before the priest could pray over me. They said it was candle soot. A harmless stain. But coincidences do not repeat themselves.
Three prophets arrived separately, uninvited, trembling as they looked upon me. One whispered, “This child is a path where angels and demons wrestle for territory.” Another cried. The last one refused to speak at all.
My grandmother insisted I be taken to the shrine—for cleansing. My father refused. He was a Christian. But every refusal was a doorway opened to disaster.
People celebrated my birth… yet kept a fearful distance. Even as an infant, no one carried me for too long. They said my gaze made their hearts race—that my presence rearranged the air.
And then there was the birthmark. A dark, crescent-shaped mark on my left shoulder, curving like a shadowy prophecy. The midwife and elders whispered among themselves, eyes wide, hands trembling, as if the mark itself held the weight of a warning no one could speak aloud.
The fire that consumed my father’s warehouse was only the beginning. I was seen as a child of promise—but the earth itself knew me as a child of disruption. And though I did not understand it then, destiny had placed a heavy curse on my beauty.
My name, Ọjọọ Mma—Beauty with calamity stitched into its breath. My mother thought it was worth it; my beauty and the troubles experienced were a sacrifice that showed I was a great child of purpose. But how wrong she could be! I became a child whose catastrophic shenanigans knew no end.
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At the age of two, my mystic powers began to develop. It started with me seeing mysterious beings clothed in black hoods. They communicated with me in a language unknown—one not of this earth—yet I seemed to understand it, reckon with it, and feel its power growing, reaching out for control. It became a struggle, a tussle for dominance—between letting the unknown into the known.
I tried telling my mother, but she waved it off, saying, “When you watch too much Barbie animation and supernatural movies, you start hallucinating.”
At first, I was scared of seeing these hooded beings. But with time, I began accepting them as part of me.
By the time I was four, my powers began to take form. They were no longer just shadows in corners or whispers carried by the wind. Objects shifted when my emotions surged. Lights flickered whenever I cried too long. Mirrors refused to reflect me properly, sometimes delaying my image, sometimes distorting it as if unsure of who—or what—it was meant to show.
The hooded beings returned more often then. Always at the edge of my sight. Always watching. They never touched me, yet their presence pressed against my chest like a weight I could not name. When they spoke, their voices vibrated inside me, not in my ears but in my bones. I understood them without learning their language, as though the knowledge had always lived inside me, waiting.
They called me by a name I had never heard spoken in the physical world; I was called Queen Variana.
I tried again to tell my mother. She grew quiet. She stared at me longer than usual, her eyes searching my face as though looking for something hidden beneath my skin. But fear makes people pretend. And so she laughed it off again, crossing herself and whispering prayers under her breath once she thought I wasn’t listening.
At night, my dreams were not dreams. They were places. I walked barefoot through burning fields without feeling pain. I stood before ancient gates carved with symbols older than language. Sometimes, I saw men who looked like my ancestors—tall, scarred, carrying weapons forged from fire and faith. They never smiled. They only watched, as if waiting for me to remember something I had forgotten.
Each morning, I woke with a heaviness in my chest, like I had returned from a battle no one else could see.
By the time I turned five, the world began reacting to me the same way it had the day I was born. Animals avoided me. Dogs whimpered when I passed. Church candles blew out on their own when I stepped too close. Once, during evening prayers, the electricity went off the moment I touched my father’s Bible. Everyone laughed nervously, blaming NEPA. I said nothing.
But inside me, something stirred. Something old. Something patient.
I began to sense danger before it arrived. I knew when arguments would erupt, when accidents would happen, when loss was approaching like an uninvited guest. I would cry before events unfolded, scream before disasters revealed themselves. They called it stubbornness. They said I was dramatic.
No one called it what it truly was.
By six, I understood something terrifying:
I was not growing into my power. My power was growing into me.
And the hooded beings… they were no longer watching. They were waiting. Waiting for the day I would stop resisting. Waiting for the moment I would finally ask the question that had been burning inside me since birth: Why was I chosen?
And deep down, beneath the fear and confusion, I already knew the answer. The earth had not rejected me by accident. It had recognized me. And it was only the beginning.
