Aloneness

I rode home today thinking about beginnings and endings. I crossed 3^rd mainland bride staring at the full moon, tracing its curves and shadows with my eyes. It shone down over the day-blue water from behind transient clouds. It made the non-menacing day-blue water completely black and slick like shimmering obsidian, like you could walk across it if you tried.

Full Moon, transient clouds passing each other like strangers in a mist, pulling their trench coats tighter about themselves, protective and clutching. Even in a Cloud crowd, the Moon is alone. Magnificent, luminous, big and round, but alone.

I didn’t realize that I actually began my aloneness about two months ago, when I left Nigeria on a sort-of vacation (read: desperately needed break). I went to London and stayed in Someone’s house, but I was alone. I went out every day and learned new things. I discovered new-to-me places and bought too expensive lotions and a very pretty bra. And for the most part, I talked to myself and I enjoyed the conversation. The discussion mostly ended in Why? It was a question I couldn’t face yet. But I did enjoy the city of London where the cleaning and aloneness started.

I thought about endings and how many I’ve had over the past year. Too many endings, so many instances where I had to say goodbye whether or not I was ready. Endings that trapped unfinished sentences in their finality, shutting out Words that were supposed to be in.

Now, the Words that were supposed to be in are trapped outside and crowded in a jumble together with no place to go. So I had to start cleaning. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Then I went home. I got to the airport and realized I had forgotten to keep some dollars in my multi-currency wallet. I used my credit card for a trolley to carry my luggage but I had no phone. I borrowed 75 never-returned cents from a German man and called home and I waited.  After seeing my beloved brother and little sister and through precious moments being part of a unit again, a link in a chain- a swinging metallic and happy and connected chain, the aloneness waited. I was afraid.

I spent so much of my home time with the Aloneness that by then had grown from an infant to a full grown adult being capable of occupying space and consuming time. Some saw melancholic when they searched my face, others observed a deep calm, and still others saw simple shiftlessness. But no one saw Aloneness.

When it was time to return, I think I grew anxious, overwrought. I was able to coexist peacefully with Aloneness with the understanding that soon enough, it would only be me again, free to be with other people, free to leave goodbyes behind and finally free to clear out the Words. But Aloneness didn’t pack any suitcases or make moves toward leaving.

It wasn’t until I returned to Nigeria and then took a trip to Ghana that I learned the reason why Aloneness was here to stay, and should indeed be welcomed. (And I owe that to Lil' sis, without her the trip would never had happened and become the experience it became).

Aloneness was really my only opportunity to clear out the clutter of Words from abrupt (and some not-so-abrupt) goodbyes that were shut out when they should have been in.  So, one by one, I picked up sentences, never expressed feelings, thoughts, actions, assoc. Words and I cleared them out. Some were tucked into safe places and others were burned because Time had made them obsolete. I’m still clearing, but the clutter has lessened to a great extent and so has the burden that had begun to close in on me like walls in a too small room. Aloneness saved me from being crushed when I hadn’t even noticed my space was getting small, smaller, and unbearably tiny.

In short, Aloneness let me be me again. Just me. Intelligent, funny, silly, crazy, Intense, Inquisitive, Passionate Me. Me without the worry of displaced Words, crowding my space like refugees.

I think everyone has their season and their time to dwell with their own Aloneness. There’s always a reason. I was afraid at first, and that’s natural. But if ever Aloneness and I meet again, I should be extremely happy to receive my old friend, my own personal rescuer.

Caught in the Crossfire

  “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it Be… There will be an answer, let it be”


~ The Beatles, Let it Be






Last Friday, I was driving down a main street in a medium sized, relatively populated town. A huge market spans out on either side of this main street and it’s never empty.

The first thing I saw was a few people running. Their body language told me they were afraid and desperate to get away. Next, I saw cars turning, the sort of u-turns you see in action films and know the stunt double is performing. Immediately I became tense and on edge. Fight or Flight.

Then I saw it. A police vehicle was being high jacked; driven backwards and in a zigzag pattern. I told my driver to turn the car around -- luckily we were just by a break in the median. Old and not prone to common sense or critical thinking under pressure (or not under pressure), he failed to respond.

I saw men fighting to gain control of fire arms, pulling and wrenching. I saw others fighting to gain control of the vehicle. Before I could scream at my driver again, I heard a shot. I hit the floor of the car immediately and hoped that my little sister had the presence of mind to do the same. I saw her folded over in her seat and thanked God for that.

I stayed down and heard more gun fire, a spraying of bullets. Once I heard a break in the fire I knew either someone had gone down or one side had won. Who or what didn’t interest me, as I tentatively raised my head and realized to my utter dismay that my car had not moved and the skirmish was still in effect only six feet from us.

I screamed continuously “Turn and move the car! MOVE THE CAR!” at my dumbstruck but still breathing driver. It seemed everything happened in slow motion and then suddenly, the car was moving at a pace more so to my liking. I didn’t look back as we put more and more distance between ourselves and the scene, but I did stay low in my seat until we turned a corner where bullets could not follow. After all, Mama didn’t raise no fool.

I think I saw the bullet hole in the windshield earlier but I had not examined it or its full implication until we were at a safe distance. A hole the size of a quarter with circular cracks and then angry zigzag cracks extended up from the rounded ones.   

All I could do was stare in disbelief and pray and say “Thank You”. All of us in my car were a few inches or a weaker glass away from a shallow grave and mourning relatives. Even thank you seemed inadequate.

We got out of the car and took pictures then. We laughed shakily with glistening eyes and called them “Happy to Be Alive” photos. And indeed we were.

Later while clearing out the shattered glass, I found the shell. Long and bronzed and thick enough to obliterate any human flesh in its trajectory, thank goodness for big-bodied vehicles.

After an experience like that, I expected to feel… new, affected, and insatiably positive. I just feel happy to still be breathing. None of my issues were magically solved. No instant resolutions to my internal changes, my emotions. I have been given a second chance and still don’t really know what to do with it.

I am a victim or an active seeker of over thinking. Always thinking, my minds gears never stop. I often find myself waking to a continuous train of cognizant thought, punctuated with a “thank you for waking me up today.” Sometimes I have trouble keeping up and I sound scattered. Sometimes I simply hold a thought in a queue and address it when I find a gap. This phenom presents itself as a delayed reaction to the outside world, and I guess it is.

I make things harder than they should be, all the time. So I have resolved at least one thing. I know from experience that a leopard cannot change its spots, but the way those spots are perceived can make a world of difference. I have decided to let it be. “It” being things, that used to stress me, set me on edge, occupy my mind without my express consent. Keep praying, don’t run or artfully dodge. Face down life as it comes, but let it be.

Change

“The winds of change are blowing wild and free. You ain’t see nothin’ like me yet…”


~Adele, Make You Feel My Love   

I feel nothing like the person I was, or used to be. I’m darker inwardly. My insides feel like a hulled coconut, all the water drunk and all the fruit carved out in jagged chunks.


On the road between Ibadan and Lagos again, I appreciate the scenery that has become so familiar to me. The road is treacherous, full of pot holes the size of craters, tractor trailers that see it as normal to park on the road and block traffic and some of the most lush, dense and untouched green forests I’ve ever seen, lining either side

It is comforting to view the land like this, and imagine that it has been this way since the beginning of time. Changing so slowly that no human being can tell the difference until years later as he or she recalls the landscape of their youth.

So much has changed in me since the last time I passed this way, yet, physically, everything has remained the same. I can still ride along staring tirelessly at a sky the color of slate and muted periwinkle. The clouds block the stars tonight, but usually, the darkness plays host to a majesty of dancing lights. The air is fresh, smells like undisturbed earth.

My emotions for the most part come in waves, all or nothing at all and then, when the last of the tide has ebbed, I’m left with the still silence of a vacant beach.

I know this signals what it always does, that I am not at peace. My spirit is in a state of unrest.

For the first time ever, maybe, being here, where I decided to make my home for a while, I feel completely alone. Of course, I still have my friends, which I thank God for everyday, but then, everything else is in a state of flux. I am beginning to see the reason behind the statement “Nothing in life ever really falls apart, it only changes” but those changes sometimes feel like the foundations of the world are about to shift.

K tells me to stop running, which I admit is hard to do when it comes to things I feel that are painful. Much easier to put them in a box and focus on climbing higher, leaving them behind. It seems I habitually forget that even a mountain climber must descend at some point, and what I left in that box, I will eventually see again.

Feel the emotions, handle them, know them so that you can do away with the ones holding you back, she says.

K, to me has always been a warrior woman. When I think of her essence, a tall, armored and very fierce warrior maiden comes to mind with long flowing hair, a contagious laugh and a very big sword. Beautiful to behold but a formidable opponent even on her worst day.

K says that God shakes things up in a major way to give us an opportunity to refocus, not run.

I agree.

Reasons

When you have no one to blame but yourself in a bad situation, it makes everything just a little bit worse.



I’ve come to discover that extending outward, one purposeful, blaming finger through which all your frustration, annoyance and wrath are channeled alleviates the pressure some. With that one appendage, you are able to advertise to others, and more importantly, to yourself, that the current situation happened TO or UPON you.


An index finger is the difference between being a victim, worthy of empathy and comfort and being the catalyst, the gasoline parading proudly amongst flames and worthy of a long eye-roll and ridicule, or worse, pity.


Of course, it’s only natural to point the finger at others first. Cry, scream, throw some spectacular tantrums, and manufacture situations (consciously or not) that separate you from others you care about, or who care about you. Smolder with hatred at other people’s ability to move on and find their happiness, while it seems yours has engaged you in a game of hide-and-go-seek.


It’s easiest to light the match, toss it on dry newspaper and simply turn your back. Not so easy to actively search for the matchbox and all the reasons, feelings, frustrations that led to the match-lighting in the first place.


In the midst of the confusion, the anger and the sadness, there lingers a nagging question. One that is swept under the rug at every time it rears its hideously earnest face, because maybe, just maybe you don’t want to know. That unbearably honest question is Why? or in its milder form, How?


And I ponder, somewhat reluctantly, the answers to both.


Reasons seem to be a running theme for me at the moment. All I want is a reason.


Sometimes the most painful thing to accept or acknowledge is that you are not meant to benefit from every relationship or association that you enter into. Sometimes, you are meant to BE the lesson. End of story. And, sometimes, there is no reason.

Returning...

“like a child passing through, never knowing the reason. I am home, I know the way. I am home, feeling oh, so far away.”


I slept non-stop through the flight from Newark to London. This was partially because I refused to sleep the night before, opting instead to fiddle with minute details at the last moment. I also washed, dried and curled my hair and spoke to Rico* via phone and webcam.

Rico was an easy choice as a final conversation. He’s easy to talk to and happens to be in my same position. Talking to Rico also meant I didn’t have to talk to my friends whom I was lamentably sorry to bid adieu. Rico meant I didn’t have to hear my best friends voice only a short ride away for the last time in a long time, or explain to my other bfbf why I’d been so unbearably distant lately.

Sleep is like my own personal morphine. In the comfort of one’s own personal abyss, sadness doesn’t exist except in dreams and even then it doesn’t seem real, but detached and floating. The night before, I always forcefully ensure I can achieve a blissfully unaware state of relaxation. On the first leg of any journey that I am apprehensive about, sleep is my security blanket, blotting out the anxiety, the dread and the uncertainty.

In the airport at Newark, while I passed my passport to the ticketing agent, my mother walked up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder and another hand on my dad’s shoulder.

“Don’t look now,” she whispered, “But Phylicia Rashad is standing right there about to check in.”

Unfortunately, as soon as we heard ‘don’t look now’ my dad and I proceeded to crane our necks in her general direction. Sure enough, in a red sweater and blue jeans standing about 5’5”, there she was. Her face was paler than I remembered and surrounded by fluffy black hair. She smiled. She knew and so did we.

As I stood there, the ticketing agent next to me beckoned to her. There I was thinking about how quickly I could self-administer my sleep-morphine with Madame Rashad standing right next to me. Claire Huxtable would be so disappointed with my particular brand of cowardice.

Once I landed at Heathrow airport, (I awoke during the final descent and became cognizant just in time to hear the plane’s wheels hit the tarmac) I became expectant. Usually, at this point and juncture I get happy. Duty-free window-shopping is my last and final retail binge. Its’ a shameless free-for-all. This time I stock up on pharmacy lotion and liquid eyeliner. I also claw my way through the crowd to reach the much-sought-after Starbucks counter and order my last caramel macchiato (skim) and it was good. Fantastic.

What I did not expect to feel rolling over my tongue along with the espresso and caramel syrup was the same apprehension I nursed while placing my bags on the scale at the check in counter at Newark. Something about this trip was not like the others. I had a sense of excitement before, a constantly occurring new beginning, my chance to start over.

I stayed awake between London and Lagos. I had run out of sleep-morphine and like any addict going through withdrawl, I broke out in a cold sweat, had chills and forcibly stifled the urge to rock back and forth.

I ordered two glasses of wine during the meal which I did not eat. My father stared at me, his eyes inquiring. I quickly turned from him and up-ended the last of the house white into my mouth. There I held it and contemplated asking for more when I noticed the small old woman sitting beside me staring at my two already emptied glasses. I decided against another but pondered revisiting the first two for those last droplets that settle at the bottom, waiting.

Lagos was exactly how I remembered it, but that ‘home’ feeling was not-so-mysteriously absent. I wondered if it was my attitude, or my feeling toward what and who I’d left behind there, situations changed or dissolved, or if this place simply no longer welcomed me. For the first time since I moved here, I entered this city feeling like a stranger.

Failure

I eliminated failure from of my personal dictionary a very long time ago.

Oddly enough, it was the first time I was accosted by a crack head outside my Aunt Betty’s building on 125th way back in the day. I had always heard my mom and the others talking about who was on “that stuff” now and what they looked like with their skinny necks, uneven gaits and yellowish eyes.

Even as they described this and talked in hushed tones, I was on the verge of telling the entire room that cousin Lina* looked like that, so she must be on “that stuff” too. Fortunately, my 10 year old mind quickly stifled the urge to verbalize that thought, but it did remain in the back of my mind to be confirmed years later when I saw Lina* again.

My cousin J and I went downstairs to play, then get ice pops and candy from a store on the corner. On our way there, a very tall, slim man with skin that looked like caramel rolled in the ashes of firewood shuffled toward us. He wore a two-layer coat that hung haphazardly off one shoulder and a dusty black ski hat in the dog days of summer. I stared askance at his coat and long pants and thought about how glad I was I wore shorts.

We tried to walk wide to avoid him, my older and more street-smart cousin grabbing my hand and pulling me out of his path. To her obvious chagrin, he simply wobbled slightly to change the trajectory of his shuffle. He stopped right in front of us and a lump formed in my throat as he fixed jaundiced eyes on our faces.

“Ya’ll got a dollar? I need me a dollar.”

“Nah, man.” My cousin replied, staring directly into his buttery eyes, “We ain’t got no money.”

I froze as I suddenly felt the weight of the two dollars my mother had given us inside the pocket of my cotton shorts. I never was a good liar and felt with some degree of certainty he would detect the bills in my pocket and seize them. My cousin must have felt me go rigid because she jerked me abruptly forward around the man on “that stuff” and toward the end of the block.

He paused, then eventually decided it wasn’t worth lifting a dollar off two pre-teens that probably didn’t have it anyway.

“Them crack heads betta leave us alone!” she said fiercely as we entered the bodega with the bells on the doors.

What kind of person gets hooked on “that stuff” and wears winter clothes in the summertime? And on top of that, what kind of adult tries to bum a dollar off little kids? A FAILURE, that’s who. It was on that day while enjoying Now n’ Laters and Fruitella that I mentally burned the word “failure” and all its cohorts out of my personal dictionary. “That stuff” also became a non-option.

The tricky part is how to measure success now? Am I living my dream, doing what I was born and tasked to do? How to know is the thing. How do I know?

*- Names changed to protect the ‘users’

UPDATE: I just found this... I don't actually even remember where I got it from but....

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.

Food for Thought.

Dread

I’m back again. The crossroads. Yet another fork in my path, and allow me to express how tiring and repetitive it all seems. I don’t want to say yes to one road and no to another. So, for the past couple of weeks I haven’t.

Over a month has passed by with me staring at this new fork and throwing mental tantrums, complete with foot-stomping and flailing limbs. I have donned the solemn uniform of the exhausted and fed up: white t-shirt, yoga pants, baggy sweatshirt, comfortable socks. Every once in a while (and far too frequently say my favorite pair of jeans) I have employed Tiramisu and/or hot cocoa with marshmallows to keep me company on my shallow pallet of misery.

One great, saving thing about me is that I can not under any circumstances lie to myself. I’m in the habit of delivering the truth to myself with unrelenting swiftness and accuracy. Sometimes the truth bites.

This time, the truth went something like this:

This fork is going nowhere, it will not budge. No matter how many times you squeeze your eyes shut and wish it away, when you reopen them, this fork in the road will be right where you left it. Either you choose, or you stay here, in this very spot you stand now, staring at this fork in the road.

If you choose a path, you’ll have to say “au revoir” to one path and “yes, please” to the chosen one. That is the way it is. If you do not choose, you will remain exactly where you are while life, love and friends pass you by. You will rot in your lamentable ensemble and your socks will grow holy. At least you’ll continue to enjoy Italian desserts and hot cocoa and marshmallows with abandon. When you eventually decide to move, the only two speeds that function will be STOP and SLOW WADDLE (thanks mostly to the marshmallows. Tiramisu shall remain blameless). Regrets will take the place of your dreams.

I realize that I now know what it is to be completely paralyzed by fear, uncertainty. This doesn’t jibe with my “I can do it all” attitude or my “I always win” mentality. I’m probably the sorest loser I know. Defeat doesn’t exist to me, and when it does rear its ugly, misshapen head I find a quiet place of solitude to vent my frustrations. I imagine insanity looks a lot like me venting my frustrations.

I believe....

I believe…


1) that serendipity(luck, coincidence) like most things are God in action
2) in the healing powers of laughter
3) that strong friendships with other good women are sustaining
4) in my inner child never being far away from my outer adult
5) in the ability of a good home-cooked meal and a magnificent bottle of wine to bring people together
6) that you can’t hurry love

The weather outside my window

It’s raining soft rain, diagonal crystalline streams

Washing away today’s regrets and yesterday’s sorrows

a crisp, cold breeze blowing through the sky caressing each movable thing, playfully engaging

a multitude of lush, green trees, dancing on the wind right outside my window

they are so very alive, the young ones are jaunty the older ones sway

against a light gray sky, not so cheerfully pretentious as a blue one, and nowhere near as tempestuous as one filled with storm clouds

fat raindrops affix themselves to my window, they cannot miss the show

Visual pictures that lay troubled souls to rest, gentle imagery that soothes even the rawest wounds

The wind whispers through the sound of soft rain,

Healing begins as I watch the weather outside my window.

Part 1: Indecision

She lies on the ‘cool’ side of the bed. The fan seems to blow hardest there, and after he lifts himself off her, it’s good to feel the soft breeze over her skin.

She turns her head slightly on the pillow, used to the point that it lies flat, like a deflated balloon. Even the pillow case covering it is due for change. At once she notices how the beaded fabric irritates her cheeks as she turns to lay on her left side, then her right. But for now, even as irritation spikes and tickles her throat, like a persistent cough , the roughness scrubbing her face becomes secondary. There is only the irritated feeling and him.

Studying his profile she notices the slowing of his breath, the long eyelashes laying delicately on his cheeks, offering humble shade to closed eyes. Her fingers move to trace the shallow slope of his nose over the rounded tip onto his lips. She sighs and pulls her hand away… reluctantly.
His impossibly wide hand lays on his chest, palms down just below his pecs. She notices the fingers drumming to a beat only he hears. A small smile curves the corners of his mouth ever so slightly. He’s reliving the last twenty minutes, she knows.

She loves him, dearly; desperately at times. But she doesn’t want to love him anymore and that in itself makes some of the difference and explains the irritation rippling upwards at the back of her throat. Her thoughts echo in her head competing with the steady, precise oscillation of the fan. Her hand grazes the top of her right thigh as she thinks of the moments before, an unconscious motion which startles her. After all, she had foolishly hoped to be above thinking of him that way: Intimately.

A litany runs through her head. He is a kind man. The way he gives to homeless children proves this; she admires his compassion. He is malleable; he has an uncanny ability to find his way out of sticky situations. His urge to protect her as if she were made of the finest porcelain, his desperate need to marry her and procreate, his easy smile, the rambunctious laughter, so bawdy it causes people to stare when it erupts in public places.

She remembers just last week, before the bottom fell out of things, that they were in a restaurant, an Italian restaurant. He had laughed so loudly that several patrons stifled the next few words pouring out of their fountains of conversation to stare. She remembers too that he hates Italian food, and suffering through sweetened tomato sauce and pasta (which he doesn’t really understand) must have been then, a kind of self-inflicted penance.

She remembers coming home then and being snatched into an uncharacteristically zealous hug. His arms usually wrap slowly, not unlike the way one folds arms into a heavy wool coat or button-down sweater; inserting them slowly into the openings, careful not to snag a thread on the sides.

“Lets go out to dinner!” he said, “How about that new Italian place?” He raises his eyebrows enticingly.

She, being so tired from yet another day that looked exactly like the one before and the one before that, and also being so wrapped up in the zeal of his hug, giggled like a teenager and happily accepted.

Since the restaurant, she’d noticed several more penances, instances of him doing things that used to make him cringe and run for cover. Washing dishes, willingly picking up after himself, grocery shopping. Maybe he felt that somewhere along the way these small sacrifices would soften the blow, make her feel more important, more validated, less residual when things finally revealed themselves.

And at that moment she hates him with surprising intensity, while thinking of how she loved him at times with a blinding and stupid devotion. It was as if her emotions were lost, looking for a direction, a destination, a place to rest. They seemed to make sharp and sudden u-turns, skidding across slick roads and stopping with too much pressure on the brake pedal. Her chest aches. This must be what insanity feels like, she tells herself.

She eases herself off the bed slowly and nudges him with her elbow. Its past 6am and a days work lay ahead of both of them. In the shower, she sings softy, a slow and lilting song. What should sound delicate and lovely sounds mournful, even in her own ears. She stops as he appears at the bathroom door, clearly intent on joining her.

She shuts off the water quickly and hops out of the shower with the agility of a woman half her age. She smiles apologetically at him, wrapping her right arm around his middle, her fingers massaging reassurance into his skin while her left hand clenches her towel ever more closely around her body and struggles not to tremble.

He smiles back, blithely unaware of the tightened corners of her mouth as her smile droops into a scowl, and the narrowing of her eyes. He wonders what she was singing about.

She readies herself for the day laboriously, the mere task of rubbing cream into her skin seemed akin to a 10 mile hike with a hundred pounds of dead weight on her back. Bending to rub moisture into her calves, onerous and more keenly felt in her lower back than the day before.

She feels anger at the things that once punctuated their mornings, making them theirs. She feels a heat in her belly when she thinks of the things that they strung together to create their own routine, the fringes of their life, the carefully woven rituals framing the larger parts.

He asks to rub the cream into her back, give her hands a mini-massage; one of those fringes. She quickly closes the cap on the jar of cream and tries not to burst into tears she would end up having to explain.

He hums as he dresses and has a sway to his step. It is a happy jaunting sway that makes him look like he’s dancing in a ballroom. Ritualistically, he pulls clean underwear and socks from the top drawer and shakes out the folds vigorously before donning them.

Then, he glides to the closet to choose a shirt, a tie.

“How does this look hon? What do you think? Blue or Purple?”

“Purple, yellow striped shirt” she replies automatically. She often put his outfits together in her head during her weekly ironing. Purple Tie, Yellow Striped Shirt was always one of her favorite combinations.

He smiles. His eyes are full of affection. She wonders if this is what they looked like too when he decided to end everything she knew to be true. She stares back at him, knowing her eyes look bare, vacant and slightly red.

He leaves, bending to kiss her tenderly on the cheek. He strokes the sides of her face and subtly inhales the scent of her hair.

He leaves her then, his absence as arresting and as consuming as his presence.

As she listens to his car reverse out of the driveway, she moves toward her dressing table. She lifts her two favorite crystal perfume decanters and places them on the floor, out of the way. One, she’d had for years already. It was gifted to her when she still dreamt of a life well lived with the man of her dreams ; when she’d sat in front of a makeshift cardboard box with a sliver of plastic mirror resting between it and the wall, envisioning a proper dressing table, staring into her own eyes and dreaming her future.

He had bought her the dressing table she now sat in front of. One just like she’d envisioned. Just like she’d dreamed before that bit of plastic mirror that distorted her image so much she couldn’t be sure at times she was staring at her own reflection.

The beautiful antique delicateness of this dressing table pleased her. The carvings on the curved ebony feet were exactly what she had envisioned, as if he’d searched her memories for the exact match. When he’d moved the table into the house, she had wondered how it was that he knew so exactly what she yearned for.

Her second favorite crystal decanter had been a birthday gift. At the time, she’d considered it a bribe, a persuasion, an incentive. That had been before she’d disabused him of the notion of having children right away. He was still chasing a dream she had long stifled into a more convenient place in her plan.

She sighed heavily, opening the drawer. Her hands knew where to find the item she sought, although the journey, the memory was wearying and difficult. She carefully unfolded a note, written in a dainty hand on faded pink lined paper.

“I miss you. When will you see me again? Would it be greedy to request it be soon? Kisses, K ”


Tucked carefully inside the note, there had been a snapshot. A picture that had once been large, perhaps included other people, faces, lives and stories. It had been cut down to a small box, framing only the top of a head, a face and the top of a well-endowed milky-colored chest. It was an ordinary face at best. Roundish doe-like eyes, a nose she’d seen a million times on a thousand faces and a toothy enthusiastic grin, exposing a bit too much gum to be considered pretty, or even cute.

Who was K? Did she have a history? When was the note written? A week ago? A month, year? So many questions sprang from one line; a carelessly thoughtful note, scribbled on a ripped sheet of paper, and a snapshot.

She thought it strange that she wondered the first time she saw the snapshot, amidst roiling anger, that K must not have many pictures of herself, if she’d taken to cutting down group shots to isolate her own face.

And now, despite everything K was, is, might have been, K is only one person now, in her story, she thinks, K is the end of things.

From a Time Long, Long Ago...

I don't know how many will read this and remember when "Crying in the Streets" actually happened... but I found this on my old computer not too long ago. All I have to say is THANK GOD I can laugh about this now!!! Enjoy... or not.

Should I mind that I didn’t feel anything in my chest, when you had your breakdown?

Should I feel guilt? Remorse? Should I think anything other than “Is the sky blue or gray or both?” or “I wonder if that pizza they’re eating is good?...looks good.”

This is how I know that I don’t love you, or maybe don’t even like you that much. While you sobbed your guts onto the street, I stood there watching; a little annoyed that I was inevitably going to clean up this mess, because there was no one else. The tears poured down your face… the face that I am alaways startled to see for some strange reason, and I could muster nothing but mild annoyance.

When you hurt, I should hurt for you, or feel sympathy, or at the very least, tell you I can empathize. I should rub your humble back because I feel that way. Or wipe the tears away with my bare hands, and perhaps touch them to my lips and taste them; let the salt roll over my tongue and know the significance of that.

I should be crying tears of my own because it tears me apart that you’re hurt so badly. I should have offered to talk to you because you needed counsel, not try to drop you off at the nearest friend’s house, thinking, “I don’t want to deal with this. Your friend had better be home.”

I did feel bad…about the things I should have done and didn’t. But then, I thought, as I drove towards your friends house, carrying you in the passenger seat , that I should be happy, although I wasn't.

At least I know that I’m cured of anything, if there was ever anything that I ever felt for you and I felt bad about thinking that. But then all I could hear was you talking to your ex… the one that had you crying (like a newborn with colic) in the first place, because my radio was turned off and I left my CDs at home, and I realized just how inconsequential I was to you at that very moment.

And then, just like that, you absolved my guilt…everything I felt bad about, or should have done was gone, just like that.

So, I guess, what I really should say is Thanks. Thank you. Muchas Gracias.

Chance

Serendipity – Apr 12 09

I needed to talk today. Not about anything deep, involved or painful, but about the mundane, the everyday, the frayed edges of life that scratch irritably at the skin of my existence. I had in mind, someone that I wanted to share this with, but as I am continuously reminded, events barely follow the plans of any one person. Rather, circumstances mix in a state of seemingly chance-filled delirium to create a situation, a glance, a chance meeting.

I was at a filling station when one such a meeting occurred. The car in front of me backed into my bumper. The lightest tap, barely worth notice, although I firmly pressed my horn to make sure it stayed that way. The occupant of the vehicle in front stepped out slowly… but it was more like unfolding as the car was smallish and he was not.

I tapped lightly on the horn again. Waved. He glanced; squinting into my car, then came closer.

It was nice to see a friend. His deep baritone was soothing to my ears, reminding me of smiling uncles and days passed as a child listening to all the old men around the neighborhood laugh and talk and crack open peanuts as we rode our bikes round and round the block. His voice has a familiarity to it, a comforting timbre as old as tradition, like a worn-in armchair, a resting place. We caught up over chicken fried rice and cold spring rolls.

Although we did fall victim to a rather brusque and pushy, pot-bellied waiter who insisted I “must order a sauce, or else the plain fried rice will NOT be enjoyed.”

I blinked at him, “But I don’t want a sauce, just the rice please” He sighed heavily. The kind of sigh breathed when your store of patience is completely exhausted and the frantic search for internal reserves is almost as tiring as the object depleting it.

“But there is chicken. Don’t you like fish!?? Shredded Beef?” he squeaked, barely able to contain his displeasure. I am sure I saw his lip try to snarl of its own accord.

“No. No, I’d rather not, please, just the rice.” I insisted, plead.

My dining companion became visibly uncomfortable with the food-pushing waiter and even went so far as to wrest the menu from my grasp and quickly scan it himself. “Maybe he’s right.” He said as his eyes searched. “Maybe you could order some chicken?”

BENEDICT ARNOLD, TRAITOR, TURNCOAT! “No, no, it’s alright. The rice please. And a coke. Thank you.”

At that point, I supposed they both noticed the murderous glint in my eye, completely belying my calm responses. They wisely both raised their white flags and went back to their respective business.

Needless to say, I didn’t know just how much I wanted, needed to talk and just decompress until that conversation. It was a truly serendipitous meeting and one that proved beyond a doubt that God provides. For that, I am thankful.

The other side of serendipity…

I believe in Serendipity. I believe that what looks to us like happenstance, fate or luck is actually a situation engineered by God for a purpose. I think I used to believe in luck for luck’s sake, but there were too many coincidences. Too many times when I needed something and sent up a small prayer, only to have that thing materialize in the nick of time. Too many times I received something or someone I didn’t even know I needed.

I have always said that my friends are my friends because of one simple thing. Something in my soul recognizes something in theirs. There is, when you meet someone who is meant to be woven into the tapestry of your life, recognition, a spiritual embrace, a burst of joy at having found something so akin to oneself. There is a resonance, a call and the response echoing in time to the beat of a heart.

I have felt this. My spirit has called to another and received an answer many times and I am blessed to know the feeling so well that it is immediately recognizable to me. The best parts of my friends, the family I built for myself, are also the best parts of me. Because, really, they are me, and I am them. It gets philosophical, yes, but it’s something I’ve always understood to be elemental, as natural as breathing.

It’s Easter. There is so much to celebrate. So much to be thankful for. Here, is the cornerstone of Christianity, the closing act of the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate act of love from God to his children, the newness of being clean, the miracle of being forgiven. It is my favorite time of year after Christmas, but it actually means more to me than Christmas does.

It is at this time that I most want to be with those people I have built into my family. The time I most want to feel the resonance of dancing kindred souls around me, singing happily in every direction. Since I am here, on one side of the Atlantic, and they are on the other, I do not have the comfort of that and it’s terribly lonely.

I have family here, actual blood relations, but unfortunately, I do not feel at home in their presence.

So, I have decided to remind myself of those people, those souls who God has placed in my path. I thank Him every day for the gift of knowing you all.

Mom – I miss your love, jokes, the smallest violin in the world and your ability to see in me what I cannot see in myself, But I wish you could see in Yourself what I see in you.

Dad – I miss your quiet understanding, your encouragement, belief in me and the way your eyes narrow as you laugh loudly.

Suki-Babe – I miss talking to you because you inspire me to be a better me, you have the best heart of anyone I have ever, EVER known.

Peanut – I miss the dimple in your cheek when you laugh and your determination and your sarcasm.

So Brown – I miss your laughter, silliness and acceptance, whole and complete. I can be my WHOLE self with you, Sisterlou.

Pat (I mean GENE) – I miss my twin, BFBF!

Ronx – Your conversations, comments, wittiness, sage wisdom and understanding, the way we see eye to eye on so many things.. the sharing of our origins.

Fallback Crew of Fall 02 – Duah – “Duah, Duah, Doo-doo, Duah!” and the Ghanaian eye and the “Yeah, I could eat.”
Jaz- Your volcano of giggles, your humor and your enormous talent,
Keenster – oh, master of the deadest eye, but owner of the biggest heart,
Krys – The most contagious laughter, the most beautyful (T, 2008), the most courageous.

Blair – doses of Assholery abound, yours is second to none.

Lil Sis – You needed to belong to someone, and you do! You belong to me, for always and I will be here for you. I also miss you because… you just GET it.

HBPA – your caring, commiseration and realness. (and of course, your GREAT hair)

Dupe – I don’t have to miss you cuz you’re here… I really don’t know who is crazier, you or me (and that’s saying something) but the way you dare to FIND your dreams is remarkable.

There are so many people that now; I’m still getting to know. I don’t know if they will be a sentence, a punctuation mark, or chapters in the book; Acts and scenes in the script. I’m excited to see how events unfold. I’m scared sometimes that things won’t work out as I plan them, but there’s always serendipity.



Happy Easter to All!!!

Wednesday Musings

I wish it was Thursday:
I am having what I like to tell my staff is a tea break… during which I sit and stare glassy-eyed at my system and look as though I am knee-deep in concentration when in fact, I am doing no work at all. Nor have I done all day.

I have exhibited a willful lack of responsibility today. The insidious nature of laziness and lethargy has crept in and the simple fact is... I don’t WANT to do this anymore.

Chicken Parts:
I was at Barcelos this weekend (yes, Funmi, the burger is still bangin’). A woman who ordered about 5 bags of chicken began to unwrap each one to check and see if it was the part she specified. (Wing/Breast only).

To her utter dismay, as she cleared the overpowering weave out of her face (so disarrayed from being swung angrily from side to side as she shook her head woefully), she discovered that most of the chicken was thigh/leg parts.

With her eyes full of what I can only call an unappealing mixture of disgust and despair, she looked at her friend (who was anxiously rewrapping the chicken as though the mere sight of all those thighs was offensive) and said in her very affected British accent, “I haaaaaaaaaaaaaate chicken legs and thigh. This has RUINED my day!”

As I struggled to keep a straight face and avoid pointing, doubling over in laughter and slapping my knee, I thought to myself, ‘someone keep the neckbone away from this woman before it unravels her entire existence.’ Chick PLEASE, get you a day job and an air bubble and save the rest of us from catching the vacuous-ness.

The real post:
Written sometime in 2006? Or was it 2007? <>

Hey Peanut

“Hey Peanut! How’s life?”

This is usually the way conversations between me and him begin. Peanut. Despite the fact that he’s well over 6 feet and has about 60 lbs on me…pure muscle, he’s still Peanut. He’s got the long limbs of a man and the chubby facial innocence of a little kid. He hasn’t started to grow a beard or mustache yet, but he vigilantly watches for signs. Hope housed in tiny sprouts of hair, renegade and prickly.

He sighs heavily. The sigh of an old man whose seen the world and gets life’s big joke… or the sigh of an overly dramatic kid who’s the butt of that joke at the moment. I can see him rubbing his head, stroking his now close-cut hair forward with a half-smile on his face. Mouth turned up a little tiny bit on the right side, like the after affects of a good long laugh.

“I’m alright” he says. Typical teenage cool. He puts a little bass in there just to make sure I understand that his cheeks are no longer eligible or available for my pinching fingers.

“Really?” I ask, amused. “What’s new?”

“Well...” he begins. I can see him settling back into whatever chair he’s currently perched on, preparing to tell me something good.

“Wait!!” I say… “What’s the question of the day?”

Its this thing we do. We both agreed long ago that some rap lyrics today are entirely too ridiculous for words. So, we make them our question of the day…reveling in our own pension for assholery. And it’s great.

“Can you rock with it? Can you lean with it? Can you rock so damn hard you break your spleen with it?”

We laugh uncontrollably. Despite our many disagreements, this is one thing we’ve got down. Then, one of us has to ask the old standby… it was our question of the day for an entire month one summer…

“Have you ever been to Saint Tropez and seen a brother play a mandolay?” We laugh some more, both of us thinking... . ‘He really can’t be serious about that one.’

Then we talk about everything. Basketball, how hard (or easy) it is to be our Mom, working and coming home and then cooking.

“Shoot, ya’ll lucky she cooked for you as long as she did. I don’t know how she did it. Now that I’m out in the real world, I really understand. She’s amazing!! I develop severe narcolepsy at about 6:00pm everyday. Mom’s the bomb!” my diatribe begins.

“Sometimes, she gets on my nerves” he always disagrees with me there.

He skips around his involvement with the females, I guess he understands that I changed his diapers, and I will beat them off with a broom stick if I have to.

More than anything we laugh. Sometimes it takes everything I’ve got in me not to get all misty-eyed when I think about how tiny and precious he used to be as a baby. How he liked me best, and we would laugh together at ages 8 and 1 respectively. How me and my mom used to swing him between our arms in the park and how he would get a running start and lift his feet off the ground and enjoy the ride.

I could listen to him laugh all day. Even now. Even though we don’t see each other face to face as much as we used to (which is wholly my fault, as he doesn’t drive yet) I know by heart where his dimples show up when he’s laughing, or where his brow furrows when he’s upset and tries not to show it.

I look at him and wish I could protect him from the ills of the world; that rude awakening that slapped me in the face and stole my breath without me ever seeing it coming. Isn’t that what it means to be a big sister? But I know in doing this, he might grow to resent me when he realizes he hasn’t done something just because I told him not to. I know that people must be injured to enjoy other times more. So, against my better sense I urge him on.

“Just do it!” I say. “It’s all about the experience.” Even if experience means terrible pain, exile, ridicule for now. It’s a rite of passage. Sometimes experience will mean love, power, acceptance and joy.

The bottom line I guess is that I love Peanut. Sarcastic and stand-offish though he may be sometimes, he’s quite capable of taking over the world. I wish he saw what I see.

March 29, 2009


Some dreams get lost never to be found, some you throw away because the very magnitude of them shakes your soul to its core, some are written and rewritten like a manifesto and sometimes, less often than it should, something wonderful, sparking, moving happens. Some dreams you grasp with all the strength you can summon and you cry, and you pray, and you grit your teeth and walk through the fire.

I am a dreamer. I am a wanderer.

When I discovered the power of epiphany, revelation, I was somewhere in the area of 15 or 16 years old. I wrote poetry, very good poetry. I was deep. I felt old enough to grasp what was being realized and do something about it.

Lately, I seem to stumble upon revelations like a rock climber whose unlucky foot finds a loose resting place in a solid mountain side. Once the dubious piece crumbles underfoot, nothing exists as strongly in that moment as the need to find another foothold. It is a desperation so deep, its nearly spiritual, the longing to find a solid place that will sustain your weight long enough for you to move on to the next foothold and the next after that.

I had a plan for myself. A good, detailed plan. I was driven, focused, to the exclusion of everything else. Then, without preamble or warning, something happened that irrevocably changed me. I feel as if this mark, this scar, this morbid reminder is never-healing, unmerciful; the ache of it unrelenting. It was the very pain of that mark, that scar that forced me to look up and realize life was happening around me, to me… without my consent. The things that composed my day to day existence, like an orchestra building towards crescendo with layers of robust sound comforted me. I was happy to go through the motions, note by note. The symphony of friends, family and work all beautifully composed, lulled me into a sleepy existence.

They were the metronome of my life. Constant, dependable. I sweated the small stuff sometimes, and that was alright with me.

I remember when moved into my apartment in Silver Spring. After toiling so hard to gain this new freedom, to reach this personal benchmark, I was excited beyond belief. I smiled to myself for no reason at all. Every time my feet touched the plush carpet, I felt a small burst of joy in my chest. A sudden jolt like a Five n Dime firecracker, startling, sharp and pleasing to me.

My mom gave me a Swarovski crystal bowl as a housewarming gift. It came in a crisp red cardboard box with a picture of the bowl on the front, staged in an elegant setting. I examined the bowl, briefly admiring its beauty and elegance. Then, I packed that bowl away in the closet near the front door. It was supposed to go on my coffee table, offering sweet things to all who glanced in its direction. Then, I realized that the space was freer, happier and less pretentious without a coffee table. So, in the closet, the bowl stayed.

I kept telling myself, I will use this bowl for something special. An event that warrants the use of something so beautiful, so precious and so thoughtfully given by one of the people I love most in this world.

The day I moved out, I remember packing things carefully and compulsively into a box labeled “FRAGILE”. My heart danced a little as I picked up the red box with tattered corners. The cardboard was slightly bent, dipping in the middle in tandem with the hollow of the bowl and more flexible from being stored; from sitting on the top shelf with countless other transient things laying of top of it, being taken off and being put back again.

I opened the box and took out the bowl. It was still shiny, pristine. The colors filtering through it were so clear and beautiful and unashamed. I was surprised by the emotions that hit me in that instant with the sun filtering through the angles of the bowl. Pure yellow and shy orange shades caressed my face like an adoring lover. I wanted to break the bowl, knock it off the counter in one sweeping motion. Smash it into a million glittering pieces. And then… then I wanted to eat everything from ice cream to eba and stew in it that very day, make up for those days in the closet.

I studied the sunset through the bottom of that crystal bowl in the solitude and quiet of my apartment that evening. I sat on the carpet in front of the floor to ceiling windows and watched day turn to a glorious, smoky night. I wondered to myself what had happened to me while I danced to my very own symphony of sounds. I danced to work, griping about my co-workers, my bosses, I enjoyed the perks of living in 5-star hotels for a few weeks every month. I danced home to the sanctuary of a place I built all by myself, for myself. I swayed and twirled to the comfort of having my very best friends within arm’s reach and the fact that I never had to be alone, unless I really wanted to and sometimes not even then. I went to sleep at night knowing I was safe, that a sheet of solid ground caressed the soles of my feet, reassuring me. No loose footholds existed in my world and I was accustomed to that. I had put away all the crystal bowls in my life. Saving them and waiting.

It was like squeezing a lightly pebbled half-lemon into my open mouth after a lifetime of drinking lemonade. The epiphany was shocking and bitter. Only after disabusing me of old notions and the taste of lemonade did it betray notes of sweetness to me.

What I didn’t realize is that the symphony I’d built had become so layered, so loud and dominating that I’d lost this essential thin; This desire to put the most ordinary and clandestine things in crystal bowls to be looked upon, examined and maybe judged and broken by passersby. This desperate, spiritual need to decorate my life with grandness, to use what everyone else keeps for Christmas because I liked the look of the sky that day, or because I’d painted my nails red and it made me happy, or just because I wanted to. I’d sacrificed something invaluable for what was mesmerizingly easy.

Very few people know exactly what I was leaving behind, or what I was coming toward. Shedding a previous ME, like a snake sheds its whole skin. At a quick glance, it looks as if the thing could rise up menacingly and bite you, but really, it’s just a shadow of what used to be there. The actual danger has moved on, transformed, an old being with a new skin.

In truth, I left behind things that I still seek redemption for; A well of regrets that runs deeper than even the most far-reaching of my emotions.

Yesterday, nestled in the comfort of my father’s house, my wrapper hugged tight about me, I thought about those things floating in that deep well. The rains have come again as beautiful as before, or more so.

I moved closer to the window and I heard it falling in torrents. Violent and cleansing. I listened for the song I hear each time it rains a melody unlike anything else in the world, unique to this place, unique to me. Sometimes I think I may even hear God as fat drops split open on rooftops, on the grass, on whatever they hit. In the sound they make. Last night, I took off my wrapper and walked around the grounds in the violent and cleansing rain.

This morning, I woke up to the smell of freshly watered earth. Permeating, powerful and fertile. I find that doubts have been lessened, smudged like the writing of a marker that is not quite dry. In their place there is a lingering, honest certainty. I have questions now that I had previously stifled into my subconscious for the sake of easiness. Questions that now hungrily insist on answers.


I have a plan. Documented. Written with ink only I can read and understand, interpret. And as I revise and edit and decide on the setting and stage on which the play of my life will take place, I will remember if by force all the crystal bowls I packed away.

I will keep my eyes open for my chance at redemption.

May 4, 2008

It has been eight months and a few days since my arrival here and since my last entry. It was anti-climatic, my arrival, unremarkable in almost every way. Stepping off that plane in no way shape or form prepared me, or cemented my new reality, my new beginning, the next marked segment of my life.

In fact, as I sit here now, in the back of my car on my way from Ibadan back to Lagos, that day melts into countless others. There is something about the trees, the tropical weather that makes time pass differently. Sometimes in the evenings, I just stand outside and let a cooling breeze wash over me and I’m so glad, even thankful to be here. It’s a welcome departure from the sun at noon or 1pm, or 2 pm when your only thought is to breathe through the heat and try not to pass out. And then the rains come, not as heavy as they did in my youth, but spectacular still; powerful and seductive they sweep through suddenly raw and intense like a fresh wave of pain or grief. Sometimes, the rain is calm. It falls and the drops are preternaturally big but soothing like a melody in low tones.

They day of my arrival gets lost in other times I have arrived in this country, dreading the heat, the scent and the jet lag less than I dreaded the inevitable boredom. It blurs into times when I was the one leaving so many others, regretful expression molded onto my face, masking the joy I felt in my heart (I’m finally out of here!! Back home to everything that’s familiar to me, later suckers!!).

I’ve seen both my parents melt into the crowds beyond the gate at Murtala Muhammed airport, looking tentatively over their shoulders at me, probably wondering if and when I would break. I watched them thinking, ‘who’s the sucker now?’ and laughing to myself, at myself. ( Sidebar: I’ve also seen Don King parading through the airport, tufts of his ridiculous salt colored tresses swaying to and fro with his movements, waving a miniature American flag on a stick. Humiliation doesn’t begin to cover it.)

Outside of that, there is a reason why this compulsion to write anything comes in spurts. I have scarcely felt that urge since I’ve been here. I began work 7 days after I touched down. I didn’t have time to adjust. It was like trying to breath at the bottom of the ocean, with a powerful undertow holding you down, pulling you back. I just needed to break the surface, fill my lungs.
So many things have happened here, so many things have I seen. I look in the mirror now and I know it’s possible to live a lifetime in eight months. I don’t know this because I previously believed it to be so. I know this because it has happened to me. Inescapably, undeniably, I look into my own eyes and see someone I do not readily recognize.

On the way to work one early morning, the sun rose as we drove on the express on the way to the third mainland bridge. The sky was brightening with each passing minute, yet when I looked up, I saw the moon. Pale and shy compared to its nighttime majesty when it owns the sky, it was faint but still it was there. I wondered what it must be like for the sun and the moon; passing like strangers but for a few fleeting moments at dawn and dusk each day. Each glimpsing but a shadow of the other before passing beyond view. This, I feel, is how my inner selves reconcile with each other. They interact in glimpses, fleeting memories, The person I was before I came and the person I am now are different, too different, but sharing the same heart, soul and mind nonetheless.

Nothing could have prepared me for this. No research, familiarization, talking to others or optimism could have prepared me for this. I can honestly say I see something shocking, new, important, different everyday. I have loved in a way I never knew possible here and lost as well. I have stepped over boundaries I never dreamed I would encounter and bested them. My heart and prayers tell me that I am on track. Things have not happened quickly, or easily. I curse my traitorous intuition when I encounter daily annoyances that make my eyes burn. I will never complain about I-95, Beltway or any other traffic again. I will not be ungrateful when a beggar asks me for money or food (although I would still rather give them food) because just now, I am blessed with the ability to give. I will not let the ruining of my favorite shirt unravel my whole day because I have so many clothes here I cannot fit them in my closet, yet I notice how some of my staff wear the same things to work day in and out and always look ironed, neat and professional. I will not take for granted that the place I order breakfast from delivers when I’ve passed at least six children banging on my window looking for handouts on my way to the office. I have witnessed the last moments of a victim of a biking accident die by the side of the road because no one could help.

I have seen only 3 ambulances during the entire 8 months I have lived here. I have seen at least 6 bodies of car accident victims either laid out on the road or already covered with a wrapper or sheet. I have seen forgotten people and been afraid to remember them myself, for, what could I do?

Then again, amidst all the tragedy, I have seen hope for this country. A booming economy, but so many skeletons in the closet, I wonder who will help clear them away? Who will bring light to the benighted, who will give color to the colorblind? And as I ask these questions, my task, my purpose begins to take shape. Ask and you shall receive and I truly believe that.
I came home for a week or so in March. For a moment, it was as if my ‘other life’ hadn’t happened at all. I was right back on the smoothest roads I’d felt in a long time. Guzzling starbucks (skim lattes only) and talking on my cell phone that never once dropped a call. I wrapped myself in the luxury of constant electricity and dared to wash (AND DRY) my hair without fear of PEPCO/ NJ GAS taking light and leaving me with a half damp head. I reveled in a place where (the majority) of everyone follows the rules, where there is order. It was fabulous. Truly. But something within me couldn’t deny that I feel a certain peace being here, for now at least. Something that lies still inside me, instead of trying to break out through my rib cage and escape. This thing… it lies still amidst the uncertainty of this country. It breaths in deeply and is still.

I can’t count how many times someone has asked me what I’m doing here. Why did I leave the ‘land of opportunity’ to come to Nigeria. They stare in slack-jawed amazement when I tell them I just did. I was bored, I wanted a change. Mostly, I think, this is because they see it as a change for the worse. A lot of people spend their lives trying to get away, or at least thinking about getting away, yet, here is this oddity standing before them, insisting with gleaming glossy eyed fanaticism that they were bored.
But you see, that doesn’t even begin to cover it, but how many people do you know have time to listen to the when’s and whys of a complete metamorphosis? So, for now, I’ll stick with, “I just did. I got bored and needed a change, that’s why I’m here.” When you think about it, it doesn’t sound ALL that crazy does it?

Written August 2007


The beginning.

So many people have asked, and so I feel that the first entry must encompass my decision. I do this not because I feel I need to explain myself or my actions, however erratic they may seem, but because I want (and maybe need) to voice why I am heading in this direction.

I could say this has been building my whole life, subconsciously, but that might be an untruth. I went to Nigeria in January, not kicking and screaming but definitely not willingly. I hastily threw outfits together and braced myself for what I perceived to be yet another interruption in my own personal rat race. ; A disruption of my day to day activities. Get up, pick an outfit, get in the car, go to work, come home, pay bills, eat, gym, TV, phone, friends, and sleep. All tasks completed with blinders on (black, leather blinders with chrome studs) got to be half-way glam… or at least as glam as I could afford.

The point is, the unwelcome, uninvited interruption turned out to be a head clearing rush. It's akin to being completely color blind for years and then one day seeing a vibrant blue sliver of sky. Naturally this leads you to have ideas… internal revolutions in which you might realize that there are other colors to be discovered and/or made by your newfound hyper vigilance. I came back seeing colors I never knew were there.

Once the mind has discovered something, that something is indelibly etched; you can never forget its there, you can't just go back to the way it was.

There is a whole other world out there that I know nothing about. I could know Nigeria better. I don't really speak the language.. I understand little more. I cook some but not a lot. I know the culture I grew up with, but I know pieces are missing.

So, here is where I found myself on January 26th, crying uncontrollably on Virgin Atlantic watching the sun recede into the horizon and remembering my autopilot life. My father, a relatively short man with a loud laugh and shaking belly stared at my crumbled visage. Never one to acknowledge emotion, much less talk about it, he grabbed my hand over a plate of pommes frites and ribs in London Heathrow airport just as my tears were drying and asked, "What's wrong?"

These two words cracked something open in me that I'd been too afraid to break down myself. How could I tell him that the optimistic, bright and happy young individual whom he sent away to college was not the person who sat across from him now? How could I explain that he and my mom were the litmus test for what individuals can accomplish and that I didn't feel I would ever reach that one decisive mark?

I began at the beginning… Everything is just alright. I find that my job is not mentally stimulating…nor does it pay enough and I have been languishing in Maryland for the last three years battling this mentality that "its too late for me to do what I really want" which is crazy because I'm only 25 right?

Then there's my 'purpose' I haven't discovered it yet. But I know it involves helping the world. (I know I know, let the eye rolling commence). But I am not contributing ANYTHING great to society as it is. And I am so deep in the rat race right now that I can't think straight. I exist in a benighted state.

My fear is that this is how life passes you by when you're not looking. I know the fabric of life is not composed with flashy buttons or shiny pins. It is composed of the threads that weave everyday life the seemingly mundane the ordinary that weave together to form something tangible. The days pass by and suddenly, you have a cardigan… (eh… make it a Michael Kors cashmere sweater, black please).. and you have no idea how it got made.

The move, possibly the scariest and most brilliant thing I have ever done in my adult life is my answer. It's my salvation, and weirdly enough, it was suggested by my seemingly unobservant Dad.

Since the decision was made, strange things have begun to happen. I went on an 'eliminating the fear' kick. I cut my hair. (a little background for those to don't know, I formerly suffered from undiagnosed hair neurosis. I was obsessed with growing my hair by any means necessary, so imagine the stylist's shock when I took the braids out, saw my natural hair snaking down my back and instructed her to cut it all off.)

The hair cut…. was a huge step for me. Hair is security… an affirmation of womanhood and being without a LOT of it for even a short time is nerve-racking. Its just symbolic of the last few years of my life, stuck in neutral afraid to take risks afraid of what will happen, only doing things I KNOW I'm good at, instead of giving something else a try that might actually be a challenge… who I'll upset, who won't really want to be around me anymore because I chose a different path, afraid of waking up the next day and thinking, "I made a terrible mistake".

For now, I'm willing to take that risk.

The friends who have fed my soul for the past eight years, held my hand when I didn't want to walk alone, sustained me when I had nothing left will be my friends even through this latest development of mine. Those women and men who have literally helped mold me into a worthy individual by breaking off pieces of themselves and patching up my holes will never really be separate from me. I am pieces of them and they are pieces of me, figuratively speaking.

:::Warning! Preachy-ness ahead. Cease reading if you simply cannot DEAL:::

And who could forget the grand master of my destiny? He's walked with me all the days of my life and will continue to walk with me until those days are over and I am with Him. He's been there in my darkest hour and on my brightest days. When no one else would come, He was there for me offering unconditional love and acceptance and friendship. Although I can't see His grand plan, I have faith that I will be sustained, watched over and protected. I am ever so grateful for this gift, and hopefully my gratitude will manifest itself in ways yet to be seen. Thanks JC, for everything.