Chapter 9 Celebrity Bubble and The Ring I Accepted with Tears

In 2019, one of my followers on Instagram decided to troll me. Of all the problems in this world, his was that I had repeated the same slippers too many times in the photos I shared on that social media platform. I was unconscious of the repetition, but he had the time and presence of mind to track the different occasions I had won the same slippers and taken photos with them. I probably had worn them on more outings than he thought because I surely did not take a photograph anytime I wore those slippers.

And if I took photographs each time, I definitely could not post all of them on Instagram. So my "offence" was obviously graver than he thought. My response to him sent news websites and entertainment blogs into a frenzy. It even featured in entertainment news on radio and television. "Most of the 'flyyyy' life you see celebs putting out there isn't real," I told him. "Peeps got to keep up! Yea, it's kind of part of the job, but it's too much work for me. I'm being myself here. For those living on Jupiter, I'm sorry. Down here on earth where I live, I can wear my Hermes slippers a million times!" Even before I responded to the troll, some had taken the battle personally. A Nigerian lady particularly took on the fight and put the cyberbully where he belonged. Of course, there would always be those who latch onto the silliest attacks and make you feel less of yourself, but I had long gone past the stage where I could be put down by such comments. I didn't feel I owed anybody an explanation for repeating my wardrobe. I would have cared and brooded over that comment a few years earlier. I wouldn't have had the courage to repeat the same outfit many times and certainly would have felt too embarrassed to defend it. At the time this attacker went low against me, however, I had outgrown the curse of celebrity lifestyle and was on my way to maturity. It came at a time when my convictions mattered more to me than courting the fleeting buzz of public approval. It was a time I cared little about meeting the public's expectation of a celebrity, a name I started hearing of myself when I shot into the movie industry. There is no consensus on who earns the right to be called a celebrity. Some people think one must command a certain amount of following and be celebrated for an outstanding skill, mostly in entertainment or sport, to be called a celebrity. Others think being famous in your community cannot make you a celebrity. To them, you must attain some national and, in some instances, international recognition to be called a celebrity. There are those who are called celebrities, and there are those who call themselves celebrities. It appears, however, that the people out there are the custodians who confer that hallowed, sometimes, hollow title, which some are prepared to kill for. It is the public and individuals who determine who their celebrity is. An international pop star will mean nothing to someone in a community that has never heard about the pop star. That person may, however, idolize a community singer and see him or her as a celebrity. The meaning of celebrity used to be clearer until the advent of social media. It used to denote and connote the same thing. It was associated with fame. It was associated with popularity, being known and celebrated for something positive. To some, it came as an acquired status. They worked and excelled in one craft or the other and earned the right to be described as such. To others, being a celebrity was an ascribed status, one that was thrust upon them by virtue of their birth or lineage. In whatever way one acquired one's celebrity status, there were some parameters with which celebrities were measured, even if those parametres were not strictly defined. These days, however, it's much easier to be a celebrity. You don't have to do much. A thriving social media account and a decent amount of following-amassed through any means possible-bestows a celebrity status on the account holder and gives him or her access to the red carpet. I am not envious or worried about the invasion, delusion and desecration of the celebrity space. The universe is big enough to contain everyone. However, I still habour the fear of sounding presumptuous in calling myself a celebrity, long after I started to be described as such by the media, my followers and people in my social circles. I am careful not to live another day in the celebrity bubble because it is the opium that can cloud one's sense of reasoning and plant a visible tower of crowd-pleasing mindset. Living in that bubble places public opinion above common sense and pragmatism. It is more about faking, and I believe life is easier when one is real. Being a celebrity comes with a burden. Those who are unable to manage it are ruled and eventually ruined by it. The expectation of a celebrity is aptly described in these lines in Michael Jackson's Will You Be There? track: Everyone's taking control of me Seems that the world's got a role for me I'm so confused... If you are a celebrity, everyone would want to take control of you and prescribe a role for you. You are likely to be confused. You may not know exactly what you want because those casting you in the roles of their non-existent fantasy movies may have no clue either. It is showbiz, the business of showing and make-believe. It is the business of keeping appearances-physical appearance and emotional appearance. A celebrity's physical appearance requires that you sometimes live beyond your means and invest in enterprises that yield no returns. It means borrowing to change your car every year or striving to wear designer clothes that drain your earnings and drown you in debt if your earnings don't match the appearance you're expected to keep. If you cannot pull the breaks, you may engage in fraudulent deals or open your legs to those who have the money to fund your vanity. These are realities in the industry I found myself in. This side of the celebrity world is not often captured by the same cameras that paint the rosy pictures of glamour and glitz. In terms of emotional appearance, the celebrity is expected to show positivity and be cheerful and happy. You're to let the world believe you're on cloud nine even when you're at the lowest ebb of gloom. Your tears are your fears, for they show a weakness that mustn't be associated with you. Clothing and make-up can cover physical blemishes, but they cannot make up for the gaping deficit between one's true emotional state and the appearance they must put up in public. Many celebrities, therefore, resort to drugs to manage their emotional imbalances. For many, that is the only way to stay afloat in the turbulent waters of showbiz. It is an inescapable trap that keeps you enslaved to the dictates of public opinion and makes you cringe at the words of people who have no business having certain expectations of you. There was a time in my career that I lived for the cameras. Growing up, I didn't prepare for the trappings of fame or public life. I had no clue that someone else would celebrate me when my own father disowned me, and my mother and siblings were obviously not proud of my poor academic performance. So, I couldn't have anticipated stardom and prepared for it. My luck, however, was that my background anchored me and kept me on the shores of sanity when there was the temptation to go haywire. I had a point to prove to my family. I had to show that I wasn't useless after all. I needed to prove that I was somebody. It was the reason I took investment seriously when I started earning money. Before I even thought of buying my first house, I had helped to renovate my mother's house in Dansoman. We replaced the louvres with sliding windows because times were changing. We tiled the floors, changed the ceiling and painted the house. When it was done, I chose my late grandmother's room. It was in this room that I used to hold her long breasts, the breasts I nicknamed "bombo" when I was a child. The fact that she had died did not scare me. Some fear living in the rooms of a deceased person. My bed was where hers had been, and I thought I would live there for a long time. I had borne about 70% of the cost of the renovation and felt profoundly proud that I was a major contributor to the family. My mother was proud of me, but, as is usual of her, she wouldn't say much about it. However, instead of telling, she showed it later. It showed in the decision she wanted to take. She wanted to will that house to me, perhaps, because of the role I had played in the makeover of the old version of it. That decision didn't sit well with me. I didn't think I needed it. And even if I did, that wouldn't be fair to my two siblings. I would be happy to rent it out and share the proceeds with them instead of taking it all alone. I had no problem living in my mother's house even at a time I was a household name, but others did. A female friend I met in the movie industry was not tired of reminding me that I needed to rent my own apartment and move from my mother's house. Her words had an effect on me, but I didn't act on them. I knew where I lived was just a phase of life, but I had to move at my own pace. When the time was ripe, I did not rent as she had suggested. I moved into my own house. When I was moving to my second house, the same lady who had pestered me to rent a place wanted me to rent out my first house to her. I cannot pretend that I haven't been affected by the pressures of the celebrity lifestyle. There was a time I bought bags I didn't need. I had to show off. My first car was a necessity and I didn't mind the make or model. All I needed was something to help move my hustle. My second and third were more than that. I was conscious of the choices I was making and the need to keep my place in the industry. What car which celebrity drove was as important as which role one played in a movie. There were times I wore clothes to impress. What others thought of me preceded everything else in my decision on what hairpiece to invest in. My Damascus moment, however, came before I turned 30, so I can say I burst my celebrity bubble less than a decade into my career. It happened when I was turning 29. It suddenly dawned on me that I would soon be 30, and that I would begin my journey into old age sooner than I had imagined. At 29, I wasn't the happiest of ladies you could find. On the outside, things were moving on well, but they didn't translate into internal joy and peace of mind. For instance, I was dating a man I didn't love, a man who was making marriage plans while I was planning how to opt out without hurting him too much. On my 29th birthday, he took me to Venice, the city of love and romance. I knew he was going to pop the question, and it scared the hell out of me. The night before my birthday, I called my mother and wept uncontrollably on the phone. I could smell the proposal the following night after dinner, and I wasn't prepared for it. The response I was about to give would come from my mouth but had no place in my heart. My mother was confused. The man checked all the boxes of a decent and modern-day gentleman, the kind of man every sane woman would gravitate toward when she thinks of settling down. He appeared to be at the stage of his life where he needed to settle down. He had a blistering career. He owned a beach house in London. But love works differently. It doesn't care about society's standards. It has its own standards. The standards of love may fail the test of logic, but that's love. It works in its own way. Some say love is a decision and not a feeling, but how you feel about someone sometimes determines the decision you make about them. Either way, there is some element of feeling that cannot be completely dismissed. Besides, the demands of marriage far exceed the expectations of love. Marriage is deeper than love. Even if I had giant butterflies fluttering inside me, I knew a time would come in the marriage when they would cease to exist. It is what remains when love dies that should guide one's decision to marry a particular person. In my case, I didn't see the strong presence of either ingredient-the ingredients of the head and that of the heart. I had hoped that I would warm my way into the relationship as time went on, but the more we travelled, the more I felt I didn't belong in that journey. And as the opportunity to opt out as harmlessly as possible became more and more elusive, he was complicating things by going ahead to propose marriage to me. On that fateful night, we had a romantic dinner after a boat ride earlier in the day. When I opened the dessert bowl after the dinner, some vapour-like cloud hovered briefly over the plate before clearing to expose the ring. He proposed to me with his mother's ring. That's how seriously he took it. It meant so much to him and nothing to me. My preoccupation was how to not ruin his night. "Will you marry me?" he asked. I nodded. A witness to that romantic proposal in Venice might include in his or her narrative that the bride-to-be was too overwhelmed with emotions to speak, so she nodded. Of course, as a woman whose claim to fame was acting, adding colour to the scene came to me as second nature. It had to look good for the cameras and to the eyes that might have been envying me, instead of pitying him. After the proposal and my birthday, we flew back to London, and when I was still weighing my options, he made things easier. His attitude provided a parachute for me to jump out and land safely before the plane of our relationship got into complicated altitudes. This man always wanted us to eat out, and whenever he was going to work, he preferred that I held on to the irresistible demands of my hunger pangs until he returned. I remember he once left two fingers of banana as what I should eat so that we go out after about 3 p.m. when he returned. This was not the treatment someone like me who worshipped food would tolerate. After the proposal, while I was deciding how to execute my plan after my return to Ghana, he pushed the nuclear code too early. A female friend had visited me while he was away at work. Esi and I were in the house when he returned. He was rude to her, taking the television remote disapprovingly from her and changing the channel. When Esi failed to get his memo, he called me aside and gave what sounded like a stern instruction. He had expected Esi to leave as soon as he entered the house. His unwholesome attitude had failed to get Esi out so he wanted me to tell her to leave right away. I left with Esi and returned his ring to him through DHL. After that, the thought of turning 30 and growing old assailed me. That was when I began to pay attention to the things that mattered most in life. I was beginning to think more about adding value to myself and perfecting my trade. My liberation came when I started to care less about what people said, the expectation of society of me and how I ought to respond to the demands of fame. I was beginning to think of how to give meaning to my life. It came with its own doubts and, sometimes, confusion. But that turning point before thirty proved pivotal in my life. It defined the other major decisions I made afterward, such as setting up a school and paying more attention to my businesses. After having Ryn, I decided to go back to school. In 2018, I went to the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) to pursue a Master's in International Relations and Diplomacy. I entertained the idea of venturing into politics or governance after the overwhelming endorsements and suggestions that came my way in the wake of the #DumsorMustStop protest. If an opportunity ever presented itself, I didn't want to grab it blindly and cluelessly. I had to be prepared. I needed to have something to offer beyond my fame in the entertainment industry. I needed to know how the world spun and be familiar with the interplay of power and the role of an individual like me in it. Going back to school also served as a welcome distraction from postpartum depression that reared its head menacingly after I had my child. Her father was in London, and I did not have the companionship and emotional support I needed. It didn't help that I saw him on social media with younger women. Ours wasn't a relationship that endured. It wasn't fair to expect him to be tethered to someone with whom he had no future. In my mind, he was free to be with whomever he wanted to be with, but my heart couldn't be at peace with the reasoning of my mind. I had lost business opportunities and acting roles because of pregnancy and childbirth. I had lost my shape and was not sure when I would recover enough to be on set, to be Yvonne Nelson again. While I brooded over this, the man who had put me in that state was enjoying life as if nothing had happened. It was tough. School, therefore, gave me something to think about, but it was not easy either. Ryn wanted fresh breastmilk always. When I pumped breastmilk into a feeding bottle for her, she refused it. She wanted it fresh from the source, perhaps, because it gave her the opportunity to cuddle and suck the love that came with the nutritious milk. Compelling her to adapt to the new formula pained me. My attention was always torn between lectures and my pretty little angel at home. There were times I asked why I got myself into this situation, but it was worth it. I sometimes spent the whole day on campus and would return home after 7 p.m. The joy of holding another being that depended wholly on me was therapeutic but challenging. Until that bundle of joy came into my life, I used to think more about myself and what I could do with my life. It is now more about her. Knowing that I have a responsibility toward her- a duty of care, and a charge to make her world better than mine, keeps me going. It has added another layer of maturity that I was forced to embrace before I turned 32. I'm heading towards 40 and motherhood has taught me an awful lot that nothing in the world could have taught me.