To Kill Father's Ghost ꘡꘡꘡: The Letter

To my beloved Raniya.

I hope your day is fine my love. I was just thinking of your smile. How beautiful and radiant it is. Truth is I always think about your smile. It amazes me and rewards me in great measures.  Like somebody actually listened to something I said or saw something I did and they smiled. Isn't that amazing? It makes me afraid too. See I haven’t been around many smiles before. I have this funny knack for turning them upside down. I can’t count how many frowns I  have made, but for heaven’s sake I truly and sincerely hope that God forgives me.

I am afraid that one day you will truly see me. Your eyes will open to my shortcomings, your ears will hear of my inequities and your nose will smell the stench of my numerous failures and your beautiful smile will fade away.

My dear, I have become very dependent on your smile. It is the only time I feel whole again. A stream  of fresh water coursing through a perched riverbed. I am a broken soul, my Raniya. Oh my God, I am so broken, I don’t even realize when I’m breaking up those close to me. It’s my nature and I fear for us. Like the hulk, I’ll turn into a green monster and your smile will fade away together with your love. I am I afraid  it will be too late. Like everyone else, you will leave.

That is what I am most afraid of. I have to confess to you my love, it terrifies me everyday. I could never recover from that. I don’t have anymore energy left. I desperately want to believe that this is it. That we have finally made it, and I can at last let go and just be happy to be alive. Indeed once or twice I have let go, and it was beautiful. The most beautiful thing ever, I saw God here on earth. I felt life all around me, I became one with the universe. It was that evening we were strolling by the river, the soles of our feet licked by its playful edge. That was when I felt it. My entire body and soul; one with the universe. A leaf gracefully fell from a pine and as I watched it meander midair, across your smile down onto the meadow, I knew that a part of me had shifted from the cool breeze high up on to the firm stability of the ground. It was beautiful. A moment that lasted forever and I knew that was the kind of freedom and happiness I yearned for.

Raniya, I have a question for you though. How can I take all this goodness? Cursed be the day I thought it was even possible for my wretched soul to be happy. What would I do with happiness? I would spend all my days and nights worrying about losing it.  Oh my wretched soul, it will never know peace. I’d probably lose all of it, and I wouldn’t know how. I can’t bear that, I can’t bear that my Raniya. So, it’s better if I didn’t have my desire now, so that I don’t have to worry about losing it. When that evil day comes it will pass me in my misery just like my deathday and I won’t notice. I will have finally dealt fate a blow. I will win.

For what it is worth, I hope you keep it in your heart that you will always be my moon, my light in the dark. You will always be my star, my forever beauty. Even as we part ways.

Yours faithfully,

Prince Oyalla.

See dad, I am not afraid of my ugly. I own up to it even if it scalds my ego. Some day I’ll grow into a real man, I’ll probably be able to hold down a relationship but for now I am just a man trying to get over his pain.

***Editor's note***

Thank you Brian for this beautifully written piece. Domestic violence and abuse, sadly has become the norm. Families torn apart with the children mostly being the worst hit by such development. Violence isn't the answer (I'd have ended the sentence with "get help", but getting help isn't always easy now is it?)

To worsen matters, the problem almost always becomes cyclical as children emulate what they see the parents do and imbibe it as the norm. Wife/Husband battery therefore becomes the norm for these ones. May the good Lord help us all. Amen.

Peace.

To Kill Father's Ghost ꘡꘡: The Knowing

I knew all of it dear father. About all the other women, the anserine investments, the alcohol problem. I knew why you fled from the city, where real men stride the streets. Toiling everyday for dreams bigger than them, constantly changing themselves just to grow into the men who can slay lofty ambitions. Where men take risks and eat from the sweat of their brow. From he that pushes a cart ignoring the sun’s raging fury, to she who ignores the uncertainty of the future and sets up a multimillion Pesa company. But you my father, couldn’t ignore anything. It was too tough for you. You noticed everything,  and it all scared you.

You couldn’t stand the heat of the city, you couldn’t compete against men faster, wiser, stronger than you and so you ran back to grandma. You ran back to the village, to your mother’s feet. She gladly welcomed you back and that is when I finally figured it all out. I figured it out when you left your wife to fight it out alone. You didn’t care about the oath you swore to God, nor your children’s futures, nor your honour. You just wanted away from all the stress, you needed to catch a break, to just go away and figure yourself out. The very things you sneered at in me. That is how I knew.

You were a spoilt man - kid. Mothered out of your senses and entitled to your detriment. Everything was easy for you, until it wasn’t anymore. You lashed out. You battered your wife in my presence. I saw you many times, but you only saw me once. Then you started with me too. I blamed you, but now that I am almost your age, I see why.

You were trying to hide it. Trying to hide the fact that you were never man enough, projecting your fears on me, trying to make me a man. But you went about it all wrong dad, you only made me hate you, drift away, stop caring. You did not have to be so mean, so violent, so abusive. You only made me just as mean, violent and abusive instead. But I won’t waste words up here blaming you for it, I am trying to 

find myself, to be a good man God knows, I try every single day. I try so hard sometimes I feel like I can’t take the pain anymore, but then I get up and I try again. I have to prove you wrong even in your death. I will be a real man some day, even if it is on my last day.

For now, I am just like you. A chip off the old block. I am afraid that I am indeed not a real man. I am not settled yet. Afraid of staying in one place for too long lest people figure out the real me. The broken me. I’d rather they stick with the charming, confident always joking me. Only I can know that it is a façade.

I’m afraid of relationships and commitments. Those bloody things, cursed be the man who thought it would be a nice idea. Unlike you, I’m still not married yet at this age, you beat me on that one. I see your sick smirk old man. Even in the spirit world, you still have it in for me. You see, I thought I would finally do it this year but I fell too deep in love. That is why I have to handle something papa. It’s funny how I still seek your approval to this day but I hope this is manly enough. I am going to confess to her, I’m going to say everything. Look at what I wrote her. It’s the most honest I’ve ever been in my life, and even though I feel sad, there is a silver lining of joy knowing that I am better than you, at least on this aspect. I can be honest to myself. 

(To Be Contd.)

Frank Friday: Being human

Back when I used to hear spending time with nature, I'd always picture myself neckdeep in shrubbery in some jungle or some other wild place. After all, nature equals wild yeah? Lol

I've never considered myself an outdoorsy person but then I still enjoyed the little things like watching the day break, or how the clouds move. 

I used to stay up late just because I wanted to hear and feel the night after all the hum drums the humans must have made. You know, we make so much noise. I sometimes wonder if all the noise is heard in space and how. Does it sound like a mighty drone of bees? Or like the dound of crashing waves? Only this time, the noise is magnified thousands of times over. I'm not a scientist so I can't tell the correct value of the magnification, not that you mind do you? 

So, not until I moved into a house with a balcony view did I realise what I'd been missing. I've always wanted to live in one and it happened, onto the next wish. The minutes I spend there drinking in all the sights that take place above and below me is something I can't describe. Just know that God is truly great. 

I could spend hours just gazing up at the sky, it's just that that we humans have something other living beings don't. It's called a job. Hence, one can't possibly do enough of the above. It'd be termed, “wasting time.” Well, thank God for “small” mercies, for those pockets of time that one can freely indulge.

Peace...

To Kill Father's Ghost ꘡

Dear diary,

On the day he died, my father was angry at me. He had been mad at me for as long as I could remember, but that morning, it was different. A different kind of anger. Like lava stirring at the lip of a volcano, deceptive, slow, but burning wildly.

He did not curse or make a derogatory comment nor grant in disapproval. He hadn’t beaten me up in a while, he couldn’t. He just sat, like always, in his foyer chair completely still, silent as a corpse. I carried him there from the bed. As I placed him down, I noticed his lower lip quivering, dangling like a bell, chipped.

Four weeks earlier he had stubbornly refused to stay in hospital any longer. He could still get his way then. Now as I stood back and considered him, I thought that his disease had finally worn him down to a point of silence. To this day I regret the morbid satisfaction I got out of that thought. I truly and honestly do regret it. It is the one and only thing I regret about his death. A son should not get any thrills seeing his own father give up on anything. Not covertly and most definitely not overtly, it is more sinful.

I was wrong though, he had not given up. In fact he did not care about the illness that had slowly chipped away at his body like a river over a rock. His mind was on something else, someone else. Me. He was mad at me. So deeply, so passionately that he just eyeballed me in angry silence. Big yellow disease-laden eyeballs just gawking at me, the last of their lives draining out by the minute but still seeing no good in me. In retrospect, I think he looked scary. Raised cheeks, the battle scars of a virus that doesn’t know when to quit. Eyeballs at the end of their tethers, sockets wide. His skin was patchy, scratched to oblivion. Cracked lips that sagged so much his lower incisors were always visible. It was a sad sight, something had taken my father’s countenance and replaced it with a stranger’s.

Sad it was, but I was not sorry. He knew I wasn’t and that’s what made him mad. The nerve father! How dare you demand that I be sorry? Why didn’t you take it like the real man you always wanted me to be? Is that why you hated me? Is that why? Won’t your spirit tell me? I know why father, I know why you despised me so much. It is because you knew it. You knew that you were not a real man either, and you detested the fact that I had figured it out.

(To Be Contd.)

Frank Friday: In the cool of the Morning

 

Hi there, *waves vigorously and enthusiastically*

So! I've resurfaced. I had to. I knew I would. The question was, when? Well, now we know. It's been a minute, wow. To think it's been exactly a month I last said hi😄. It feels so good to be back. 

So, hi again. How're you? Missed me? Missed me not? Oh well, I trust you've been well. If you reside in Nigeria, well, you have no option other than that, regardless. Yeah, regardless.

So, a lotta water has indeed passed under the proverbial bridge, whew.

1. Someone took a really long break from her  hair business. Too long a break if you ask me. But you're not, right? 
2. Another someone finally rounded off her studies. Awaiting results *fingers crossed*
3. Someone travelled miles to hook up with man *face palm* (a friend's phrasing). 
4. Still that someone relocated to a foreign land. A land of the non smilers (thankfully, that someone's surrounded by the opposite). A land of the hustlers and buzzites - Lagos. 
5. And yet another someone upped and took a bold step into the oldest institution ever institutionalised (lol). Yep. 

Who's been this someone biko? Righto, yours truly, moi. And that institution's marriage!! Yaaay right? Lol, ok, whatever.

So bloggy dear might be taking a different direction soon. Can't say what exactly and why, let's call it a feeling. Even better, intuition. But it'll be for good, really. 

More gist

More yarn

And yes, insight into what the dark side other side feels like. Come join us, I'm recruiting😉

Hang in there, I've got a juicy story to share. Will post Tuesday, God willing. Courtesy of a benevolent contributor. Shout out to Brian, all the way from Kenya. Salut!

See y'all soon...

Peace