"When you begin to love yourself only then will you be able to love others," the woman said.
"I understand," I said.
"You are aware that today is the last day of this meeting. It is a three days program and so far, we have completed two days successfully without any complications."
"I understand," I said again.
"Do you still want us to talk about your parents?"
"No!"
"Are you going to change your mind anytime soon?"
The last day of the month is usually not my favorite day of the month. It is the day when I feel grateful that the burden of the current month was finally coming to an end.As today began, I felt a certain degree of failure. I felt the failure of not being able to recall the past clearly. Whenever I think about the people I have met in the past and how they would act as though they were some god of intelligence, it irks me. I just remembered a man I met a long time ago. He was so curious to understand my perspective about God. What could I have said? Well, God is a sky magical being. I didn't even drop the remaining words before he burst into a ridiculous laughter. You feel the embarrassment that I felt? Perhaps no, because you are not me.The first
Today was the first day of the month and I fell sick so I decided to write a letter to a friend I haven’t mentioned before in this diary. His name is Henry.Dear Henry,How is surgery like? Have you tried it? Like for critical cases or...why am I even asking when you are not here? This is the greatest dilemma ever; to go or not. What if I forget lots of things and have memory loss? What if I forget about people I know? I will just spend lots of my time here and talk?So, my guess was right all this while. A reason I feel and act somehow like three in one. A reason I speak sometimes and wonder who spoke. A reason I send messages and wonder who sent it. You remember when I questioned you based on it? It is now clear that I act differently. My personality isn't constant. It is clear that I feel too co
Explaining to my friend about my illness and some aspects of my life was the best thing I did today.Dear Henry,You know that day I said I was really sick and couldn't bear the rays the phone was emitting, that wasn't the beginning of the illness. But then, there are lots of my friends that I didn't want to fail to be there to comfort them that's one reason I had to persevere.From my understanding and what I have been taking note of in my life, it triggers when there are too many noisy people around, when I hear too much sound, when I'm exposed to too much rays of light, when am in a very hot place like walking under a hot sun or too much stress. When did my illness start? It started the moment this month began. But I don’t want to spend the whole of today talking about my illness rather I want t
I don't have much to say about Henry. If I were to describe him with words, I may end up filling an entire exercise book about him in one day. He is not someone I talk often about but he is important to me as much as Goodness is important to me.There are days when I think about him and how our friendship would have grown if his parents had not migrated to a different state in Nigeria. There are days when I wish I could have done better in improving our friendship. Did I try? Yes! I did the best I could do to keep us in contact at least.Henry may not be an important personality in this book but he is one of the few persons in my life that has changed my view of society.
"I forgot to ask you about your arrangements with that woman last month. How did it go?" Uncle Max asked this morning before leaving for work."It was good. She understood how I felt about life and she was willing to offer me her childhood experiences even though I didn't ask her for it," I replied with my elbow behind my back.Uncle Max arranged his files inside his bag and informed me that he was going to work."What about Miss Bisi?" I asked before he stepped foot outside his house."She is there," he said without facing back."Are you not planning on apologizing to her?"Uncle Max let go of the door and told me to mind my own business.
"God loves you, Perer," Aunty Matilda visited today with plenty words of encouragement for me."I am not sure about that," I said. "If he loves me as you have claimed, he wouldn't have let my little brother die.""Death is a mystery," Aunty Matilda continued, brushing her fingernails with her other hand."We cannot explain how it happens, it just happens.""Of course. We all know God's reputation, Aunty Matilda," I smiled. "Always making sure that everything happens perfectly for humans.""Well," Aunty Matilda shrugged nonchalantly so as not to appear flattered by my evaluation. "He knows what he is doing compared to all those who doubt his words.""I don't need God in my life," I clarified Aunty Matilda's thoughts about her efforts. "I don't need someone who only shows up after the main event. If God truly exists, he should have done something in my life a long time ago. He should have made me und
I spent the whole of today thinking about the summer rain and the deep blue sky. I wondered if the clouds were still watching over me or if they had lost faith in me. Due to some reasons, Aunty Matilda said we could not go to Lagos until she was sure that everything was placed in its appropriate position in Lagos. She basically postponed our trip to the next day.I thought of Henry today and how long it would take for him to send me a new message. I also thought of Delaney who I was slowly losing interest in. I wanted to know if she was holding up and not spinning around a corner stone. Maybe she was spinning around! Maybe she wasn't! How would I know?
Today, I realized that I have been falling off the cliff only to discover I was still alive when I hit the ground. If only I could learn to not think too much. If only I could learn to live with death.Between the man with an Arsenal jersey, using every gallop pass to mistakenly slap a man's clean-shaven head, and the fair lady with an Irish lipstick, using every moment to flash her selling point, I sat on a bus headed to Lagos, wondering if the sole of Aunty Matilda's shoe is the reason why she feel a certain discomfort.