Ask myself.

I had to ask myself and I’m yet still going to have to ask myself.

That’s the way I see it, you have to make use of whatever you have been through to help you through whatever might come ahead.

Otherwise, you’ve gone through that for no reason more than history’s sake, aging stages, and footprints in the dust.

I had to ask myself, “do I want to be happy, or sad for whatever reason?”

Had to ask myself how exactly I would I like strangers to describe me and how they felt after encountering me.

I could make them feel the sadness around me from whatever has hurt me. Or they could feel the negativity that I carry around – enough to drown everybody else with me in the tears that fill open wounds, cut from the grudges I hold.

Or maybe, if I can make them feel just how painful my sorrows have been, they can lend me some pity, and pat me on the back a little more than my father did when I was young, needing it most, trying to develop some confidence around girls, around bullies that taunted “fight back”.

Perhaps even envy, if I work hard enough, get a whole lot of things that other people don’t have.

I could devote myself to making people’s dreams come alive for me and then crush them just to remind the world that it’s dreams are smaller than mine,inferior, and boast that I am favoured by natural selection – possessing even this talent, become pretentious with it, make it colourful and transform myself to a beautiful African peacock, impressing American readers, enchanting beautiful Brits with my wits…

And even still, I could turn the other cheek completely, and love the things of light and pursue the joys of God and love all that is right, and fight for people’s rights – for people’s souls and freedom from the bonds of man and deities alike.

Or maybe I’ll just laugh it all away. Take nothing seriously – myself included – and bask in ignorance, and let everything die a joke – myself included – and ride the waves of time carelessly and call it living. Call it freedom and actually care not what the thinkers make of me.

Yes, I had to ask myself and I’m yet still going to have to ask myself which is the person I’m willing to embrace with my energies of being human being…

And the answer is for me to decide, and not the point of this plot – that is for you to discover when we encounter, or you read some of my blog.

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3) Going through Growing: Love.

When I was a young boy, I had a dream that felt real.

In the dream, I had met the perfect girl and her name was Love.

Upon waking up and realizing that I was dreaming, I denied that it was just another of those random dreams that our brain entertains itself with while we sleep.

She felt so real and also made me finally feel real.

She brought a new light into my world, and made my heart beat faster. Her presence alone made my grass grow greener.

She brought rainfall to my soil and my soul grew fertile.

And of the things about me that wasn’t hers to ignite, her light was enough to light me into the required direction.

I tell you this truth, I never felt realer.

The next day, I couldn’t forget how she made me feel and how it felt being in her presence.

But the one sad part was that I’d forgotten her face.

I mean, I remember she was beautiful, caring and sweetheart.

But now I had a mission to find her without a map for starters.

And so I began looking far and wide, and ended up giving this heart where I thought I had found her.

I shared the story of that dream in which I first met her. Spoke of the kind of house that we owned and the children we cared for.

The mini-bus car that we drove through long vacations. The fights we survived and falling in love over and over.

But then as time went by the story slowly unravels. And the cover comes off to reveal that the one next me to isn’t that dream girl.

And you feel that love come and tumble down from your heart and you get the feeling in your gut that you’ve got to get out.

And so you do. But it hurts. Because it cuts – until it bleeds.

And you get scared of making the same mistake again.

And slowly the armour comes on, building gradually around your now faint little heart.

Your world has fallen apart.

And by the time you’ve stopped searching so hard, she suddenly walks into your life and you don’t know what to do because all the other times you had plans but now you’ve been caught in your sleep.

And it feels like that dream that you once dreamt. Remember?

And you jump straight into her love and relive it just as perfect as you dreamt it.

And everything is right, through the tough times and good, because you always find a way – but mostly she always saves the day.

And you love her and love her and she also does the same.

Until one day it creeps into your mind that perhaps this one too is like the last.

It’s quite stupid of you to forget that you’ve made the same mistake in the past.

And so the roses turn black as the storm thunders your mind.

You buy new shackles for your heart, the one she broke out of your hold.

Things turn sour, you do silly things to test her truth – things she doesn’t deserve for all the love she’s brought to you.

And that’s about what I have done until suddenly it began to break her too.

And you see a tear in her eyes, can’t believe it was you that put it there and you break once again… And your chains can’t save you from this pain.

And it all goes snap! You lose control and you fall to your knees, and if you only allow yourself to break in front of her, you’ll begin to feel that this is you becoming real – just not the way it looked in that dream.

And this the truth, that now you’re really falling in, falling deeper into the love and this falling you probably shouldn’t try to control because you’d be allowing yourself to fall into her arms and if she’s the one she’ll be real but if she’s not you will heal.

2) Going through Growing: Innocence.

I’ve been experiencing a haunting. I’ve beeen seeing a ghost.

He visits me sometimes when I’m alone doing whatever.

He looked familiar from a distance, but he confirmed that he was the ghost of my old friend Innocence.

He died too young.

He died with the seed of his dreams still waiting in his pocket.

Whenever he visits, we have long conversations about the times we spent together and the moments we wasted that cannot be brought back.

The sight of him frightens me about what I may yet become in this world now that he is no longer of it.

He is one from the past and we can only ever talk about the things we did and the people we once were.

He always reminds me that he cannot help me with my tomorrow because he does not have his own.

He is the face of wasted miracles.

It is so sad to see youth without life, living in the land of regret and sorrow.

Whatever kind of man I will become, I will forever be haunted by the truth that Innocence is lost, damned and bound to be forgotten.

Forever seems like a long time when the good continues to die, while evil prevails.

And I can’t seem to shake the thoughts of the evil that I am unknowingly capable of.

The evil that will be judged and accorded to me.

And it will be deserved. And that’s what gives it more weight.

That Innocence is gone and I did little to help him. That when he was here, I thought it would be forever.

That he asked me to help him learn how to bring his truth to fruition. I always sat there, saying I’d listen, but always responding by telling him why these dreams were impossible.

Saying, we’re too young to make it – but look, I didn’t know we weren’t too young to die.

But maybe if I believed when they told me, then the truths of death could have been our first reason to try.

1) Going through Growing: Trouble.

I remember some of the days when I was a little boy. Living in a settlement somewhere.

It was me, my brother, my sister and my grandmother. There was also some of my other cousins, some whom I have forgotten, and their mothers too.

My father was not there. Well he was sometimes around, but nowhere in sight in my memories.

It was me, my brother Happiness and our sister Sadness.

I think I was my grandmother’s favourite. But I know she loved us all.

Her name was Nurture. And my mother wasn’t there neither.

We lived with my cousins Anger, Curiosity, Lady, and Temper – and also the others that I have forgotten.

I had my best friend Trouble, he lived not too far away and I did everything with him.

All of this happened so long ago I hardly remember.

It happened when I didn’t even know it was happening.

Once, in my first year of school my teacher was absent and there was nobody to take her place.

So they split our class and made us sit in on the floor in the grade two and three classes.

Eventually, those accommodating teachers had enough of us and my whole class was told that we could go home early. I think about 3 hours early.

And since we hated school, Trouble and I were at the front of the crowd as the group of first grade children made their way towards the exit gates of the school.

Then, suddenly, somebody changed their mind and we heard shouts pleading that we all turn back and return to the classrooms.

Trouble and me. We wasn’t having it.

So, we ditched. Thinking back to it now I’d like to know – if we discussed it before finding agreement, or if maybe one of us just ran and the other followed suit like the made up gangsters we thought we were.

We ran. Out of the school gates with our big ol school bags bouncing all over our backs.

Then I looked back and saw that the teachers had unleashed a fourth grader upon us.

He looked so BIG!

And he ran so fast too.

But obviously not fast enough for us. We were the fastest things in the world, we thought we were.

We ran. Out the school gates and down towards the bridge and eventually across the bridge were mamas, aunties and grannies washed their laundry in the river.

Across the bridge in a flash, and a left turn, we can see Trouble’s house from here, but behind us, we can also see that catcher still chasing.

Eventually, Trouble makes it home.

I keep going. I live just a little further up the hill. So I’ve got to keep going.

When I arrive. Granny is surprised.

I tell her what happened with the absent teacher and that we were let out early. But obviously, I mention nothing about the dude who chased me halfway home because that would raise some suspicion.

Granny was okay with it and I spent the rest of the time with her, waiting for my older cousins to get back from school too.

They eventually do. And I can now join them outside and play, play and play.

Then, at the entrance gate of our home, I see Trouble – but he’s not alone – one of my aunt works as his caregiver and she has come to tell my granny that she had to send Trouble back to school when that fourth grader came to their home and took him and left her with the full story.

Now it was granny’s turn to also hear the full story.

But remember. My aunt is Trouble’s caregiver… So she works at Trouble’s house.

But me. She’s a blood relative.

My granny is my granny.

I’m in for some real tough love.

They call me in to the house, their each weilding freshly cut sticks of mass destruction, and my back is the mass. They whack me. Destructing my back indeed.

A whooping I will never forget, even though I have forgotten everything else.

But I remember some of those days. And I am going to share some of them with you.

We will Awaken.

We will awaken to faulty and damaged economies.

The ruins of the almighty twenty first century.

We will awaken, but at least we will awaken.

Some will not awaken with us. Our prayers are with their souls, and condolences with their loved ones left behind.

We will awaken still knowing more about the moon than the surface of our oceans. For whatever good.

Man’s technological advances have been humbled. Nature raises her hand of judgment upon us, as this virus continues to sweep through the lands, Man is reminded that he is not god.

In isolation, perhaps we will search our own souls and reflect. And maybe at the end of the tunnel, we will come out with a little more focus and appreciation for the things we often take for granted.

Perhaps now more than ever in most of our young lives, we are connected. Sadly in weakness and dispair, but hopefully with a common understanding that this here life is uncertain, and time waits for no man, dread discriminates not by colour or borders, and maybe we can all learn just a little – to broaden our shoulders.

We will awaken to taxes, recession and dispossession.

But at the very least, we will awaken.

Yet, most of us will awaken without ever having reconciled ourselves to these harsh realities. We will continue our planning as usual. Awaiting to know the dangers of the bee only after it stings me.

And to those, I just wish they awaken.