Life,Actually

  The more that I walk this Daddy's Girl journey, the more observations I find myself making about girls (or people, if you will) who are thriving in their Daddy-daughter relationships.  This time I found myself harshly judging somebody for making a mistake that I deemed really fatal. I just could not wrap my head around the fact that somebody with a present father could let him down like that and then it hit me that actually, it was these people who have the privilege of being born into loving families with stable parental figures who made all these seemingly silly mistakes. Why? If I had that kind of background. I told myself, I'd never do anything to jeopardize it. I'd show them that I was worth loving because I would never let them down. This was my line of thinking and I was neck-deep into judging people I did not know enough about when it hit me! Of course they made mistakes! Life is about making mistakes, learning and growing from them, not about trying to walk th...

Today i am thinking about the time when i was 8years old and i was part of this kids club and one of the older members was getting married. We were all invited and obviously i wanted to go. I've always been a person who loves going places. But this wedding was happening on a Sunday, a church day and my grandfather said we were all going to church, end of story. I remember how i cried and whined until he let me go to the wedding ( Classic last born behavior) . I got what wanted, what a joy, right?  Wrong. Despite the fact that i was with all my friends, i did not enjoy the wedding. We had to walk an etremely long distance to get there and i specifically do not remember getting any cake which,  at 9years old, was really all that a wedding is about. That and watching people kiss. I also don't remember how i eventually got back home. I realise now that my grandfather probably already knew that this outing was not worth it and that it would have been better if i just went to chur...

You know that you are doing an absolutely fantastic job as an adult when you and a two year old baby are crying together right? That's a joke. But it is the first thing that comes to my mind when I find myself crying in her kitchen while her two-year-old baby screams her lungs off too. It's almost comical, I think. The worst part is that this cannot be said to be my most embarrassing meltdown this year. In fact this is actually mild compared the others. Remember the one poetry show where I could not remember my lines and ran offstage to bawl my eyes out in the arms of a friend? No...well it happened THIS YEAR! And let's not forget the missed-bus incident and so many other emotional meltdowns I had this year. Safe to say by the time December came around I was exhausted. So much so that at one point when life was caving in on me again, I remember just taking deep breaths and mentally asking God if this is how Joseph Solomon (Google him)  and so many others lost their faith? B...

  I am sitting in a waiting room, almost bored out of my mind, when I realise that i really haven't done this in a long time..waited, i mean. I haven't sat in silence in a room with little to no stimulation and waited for events outside of my control to take place so that I can move on to the next stage. This probably explains why there hasn't been a post on here since the beginning of the year. This waiting room is quiet but not completely silent. The cashier can still be heard attending to a customer and close to the queue, a five year old is being chided by her mother for trying to collect all the bacteria off the room's surfaces with her body, a couple who serendipitously realised they are on the same bus are catching up in the corner and next to me i hear the rhythmic breathing of the teenage boy next to me. There are also sounds coming from outside, the loud hooting of cars, people hollering at each other in the streets and the screeching of brakes is faintly audi...

  Letter to the one with the shears pointed at her locks. Beloved, You will tell your friend that you want to cut your hair, just a few weeks after the breakup. She will ask you if you really want to do this or if its the pain talking. She has already held you as you cried, was one of the first people you told when it happened so she understands. You assure her that it is not the heartbreak, but the craving for something new. If only you knew that those two are the same thing. You decide not to do it then, but months later, on a random August morning, you wake up to grab a pair of scissors and chop off 5years of dreadlocks. You do not really know what you are doing and why.  Are you just chopping off hair, or are you letting go of an identity? Is this just for fun or is this another way to silence the screaming inside? Yes, it is unbearably hot and the hair has become too heavy to carry but is this not the hair you've prided yourself in growing for the past years? It doesnt ma...

  The first time I tried to make a boy love me, I failed dismally.  My boyish structure and introverted nature made sure I did not stand a chance next to the curvaceous and confident girls in my grade, and, yes, I compared. Every single day I compared myself to every other girl around me. “ Why was I not as interesting as they were? ”, I wondered to myself. What was it about me that made nobody interested in me romantically? The only thing I could think of was that I was not beautiful enough. Yes. That had to be it.  So, I was not surprised when, the second time I tried to make a boy love me again, I failed. I sort of expected it.  I did it some more after that and eventually, it became a game I played with myself. How many times could I throw myself against the rocks and still come out standing?  The answer is: as many times as I felt the need to mask my feelings of abandonment with something less confounding. That is what love did for me back then, or  wh...