The Unaccompanied Minor

I'm proud to say another sister of mine is getting married, she's absolutely excited about the new life she has accepted. I think that love is the greatest thing that can happen to anyone, finding that one person that understands every word you cannot say, every pain you feel and promises to always be there. What can't you do with a buddy who believes in you? What can't you achieve if they continue to believe in you not regarding your "deficiencies"? You don't know this, but loneliness is underrated… or maybe you do.



One of my hardest lesson, still learning, is how to prioritize. I'm the boss at making foolish, spontaneous decisions, especially when I want something very badly. But I never made a spontaneous decision about love, oh wait.. I have, one time I made a quick exit, but it's not one I wish I didn't. I don’t know why I did it but today, I can recognize that events back then were part of a lifelong pattern in which thinking and doing have either come together or failed to come together, even though I've never done things I had not decided to do- I know, that was gibberish, but you follow. I like the idea of love, I'm a sucker for love related cry movies and Danielle Steel books. But somehow I carry around this silly thought that people are better off alone, no reasons to lie or apologize or explain or worry about stretch marks.



Biology determines much of the way we live. From the moment we're born we know how to breathe and eat. As we grow older, new instincts kick in. We learn from our parents, we become territorial, we seek protection… And most important of all, we reproduce. My sister is about to alter her DNA, maybe not but it sure feels like. She not going to be my sister anymore, she's going to be my sister mixed up with some weird DNA. She's going to have new traditions, new long standing and specific practices… Biology sucks! Biology says that we are who we are from birth, that our DNA is set in stone. Unchangeable. Life changes us. We develop new traits, become less territorial, we stop competing, we learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears, for better or worse- we find ways to change our biology. The risk, of course, is that we can change too much, to the point we don't know ourselves. Finding a way back can be difficult… wait, who said anything about "finding a way back" out of love?



I always said I'd be happier alone, like the unaccompanied minor. I'd have my work, my friends and my daughter as my candy and chocolaty treats but someone in my life all the time, like parents? More trouble than it's worth... hey, I got over it. There's a reason I said I'd be happier alone, it was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone because what if you learn that you need love and then you can't have it? What if you like it and lean on it? What if you shape your life around it and then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain… again? Losing love is like organ damage or like dying. The only difference is death ends, shattered love? It can go on forever. But it's better to have someone, even if it hurts, even if it's the most painful thing you have to do, even if it's the most painful thing you've ever had to do. Everything is a lot easier if you have someone

You're about to read top secret... don't tell my mommy!

Dear twentee5(er), I totally now get why my dad doesn't want his daughters to get married, yet. I mean apart from the whole wedding ceremony thing which he's not so great at, he maybe trying to tell us that there's a lot more to life than having a "happy ever after". I visited several friends during the weekend, one of which is a relationship atheist... like absolutely the Nigerian George Clooney, except he doesn't work in show business and it's all corresponding. Hey, do you ever feel like the universe is trying to tell you something when a particular topic is talked about, is a side attraction during a gossip, it's on TV, someone accidentally bought you a gift book- same topic or even at church? Anyways, it's not that all of a sudden I stopped believing my fairytale is out there, some exciting new things are occupying my mind. Things like how AWESOME God is, how he chooses the foolish stuff to make a mess of the too-school-for-cool-stuff, how I can never understand the depth of his wisdom or his existence.. for me, a concentrated deep thinker, I'm amazed. A friend of mine chatted to me about a seminar she attended, she used an analogy I found somewhat interesting. She compared God to a very powerful King who married a whore... talk about abominable acts and then she (the whore), in turn feels like she owes everything to him and decides to do only what is pleasing to this powerful King. The "whore' here refers to the world, especially Christians. She wrote: "... how great is our God, I think also that the fact that He saved me knowing my sin is pretty crazy is super cool... it's not like He saved me and discovered my sin and went 'oh crap!what did I just do?'... that just makes me desire to live for Him and love Him more...", I absolutely understand how she feels. Y'know people just want someone to be there when they're down, someone to say "I care" and mean it, someone to just say "everything would be alright". I find all these someones when I study the Bible and it's all I want to talk about.  I don't have a plan which is very unlike me and I suppose I could riff on a list of things I care as little about as mapping out one.... Let's see...Working out, The Nigerian politics, Boko Haram, HITV, Organic food, The Bush daughters, The O.C., The U.N., CNN, BBC and any other news TV. The Latin Grammys, What Footballer's earn and Australia.... I'm Just in awe of God's greatness! Okay, so onto the more carnally interesting stuff. I wrote a poem, "Girl" inspired by the word "Paramour" and I wasn't sure posting on here would be a great idea until "tweeps" insisted... in other news, I'm having some weird pregnancy-like food cravings, extra spicy Shawarma... enjoy your "Girl" :D

GIRL

Girl… she sits opposite the ghost, pale and vulnerable with a lot to say. They meet when it walks to her, they touch fingers passing through space. She thinks it's familiar and fearless, she knows it like she knows herself. It's like "word and opposite" but also like a synonym; One, the same and different. She to it is a doxy, in the darkness of her subconscious she's being pleasured and the reality of her existence is tinged with pain, bittersweet.


What real grandeur had your weekend to shout about, MisStress? Did you drink tequila like that's the name of the game- to kill her, lip rouge, chemise down… ticky tock, non-stop in your exotic world of selfish perversion. The goddess seductress, go on, be honest... no one can accuse you of a thing you're not. You are daughter of eve and your repertoire is prima.


Female. The lushness of pink. The definition of fragile. The strength of a tiger. She rides her bike through a hula-hoop set ablaze, blindfolded. She gives herself away, she puts herself together, she pushes a little harder and she never explains. Miss Glamour kitty-kat, her name is girl

Scribbles, scribbles, scribbles

Have you ever confused a dream with real life? Or faced a reality you had imagined, the exact same way? Or shoplifted when you could afford the piece? Or felt like your mind stopped working because you feel your strength subdued by a familiar aura? Maybe I'm crazy, but aren't we all freaks? Maybe it's 2011 and it was designed to happen this way. Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret, it's a character amplified. if you've ever told a lie and delighted in it, if you think stabbing people is funny to watch, if you say "like" every 3 words you speak during a conversation, if you've ever cried your eyes out because of someone else's loss, if you've ever partied all week non-stop, through a year. And friends, they were not perfect but I "loved" them, present tense applies also. Some I've seen, some never again but there isn't a day my mind doesn't wander to them. Managed to get on the other side,  trust me everything you see and hear from this place is ridiculous. The good thing is I've made space for new things to fill in. I'm happy, I've tasted extreme… I know what it's like to want to die, how it can hurt sometimes to smile, how you hurt yourself on the outside to suffocate a thing on the inside and how to exist without a plan.


I was very sick around January this year, doctor advised I visited a psychologist because I was diagnosed of nothing but Paranoia, what I didn't tell anyone was that I actually did. After two sessions, she diagnosed me of Borderline Personality Syndrome. It's an instability of self-image, relationships and moods caused by uncertainty of goals and may lead to impulsive activities that are self-damaging like drugs, excessive intake of alcohol and casual sex. The first question I asked her was "what kind of sex isn't casual?", she also said social contrariness, withdrawal and a generally pessimistic attitude would be observed. I thought she was a joke, last one I attended was January 3rd when I tried to prove that I wasn't crazy, only a little sick. I found my way to therapy when I found a church... let's not  concern you with the rest of the story.


My name is … well, I am Babe Ruthless. If a person can be defined, here goes: girl with abandonment issues, funky child, into pink but would rather do yellow, clumsy by nature, extreme somebody, lover of Shakespeare and music, somewhat selfish, supporter of world peace, kind of conceited (I often pray about it), errm… I can't remember the rest. When you want to become numb, death can seem like a dream but death- having the courage to face it and to careless about it's existence makes dreaming about it ludicrous and pathetic. I drifted from this world and all I can say now is I can now feel things again. whatever it was, I got over it using this place to talk and reading about God and trusting Him. These words are just thoughts, who knows… maybe I'm a liar but I went a little crazy to regain my sanity. I totally deserve a hug :)

Deny Deny DENY!

Everyone is scarred. We have them like secret road maps of our personal histories and diagrams of our old wounds. Every time  I look at my left arm, I'm reminded of Buckie and Belly… my bunnies, they were the stars of my evenings (RIP). Some wounds don't heal, we carry them with us everywhere and though the cut's long gone, the pain still lingers. What's worse, new wounds which are so horribly painful or old wounds that should've healed years ago and never did? Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us where we've been and what we've overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That's what we like to think but that's not the way it is, is it? According to my father, "the thing that brings a man down is the same over and over again". I can verify that statement, I grew up with the most amazing and incredibly smart man but he wouldn't keep off the bottles. So, I came to conclusion that some things we just have to learn over and over and over again. 


Deny, deny, deny! We deny everything; we deny that we're tired, we deny that we're scared, we deny how badly we want to succeed and the most preposterous is how we deny that we're in denial. We only see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, and it works. We lie to ourselves so much that after a while the lies start to seem like the truth. We deny so much that we can't recognize the truth right in front of our faces… no, we recognize it but how can we accept that we're wrong after being so right in denial? The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon; it doesn't protect us or make us untouchable, it makes us vulnerable, available for criticism, persuasion and temptation . We can only lie to ourselves for so long, we are tired, we are scared but denying it doesn't change the facts. You cannot fight the devil with a demon!




Pain, it comes in all forms. The small twinge like a cramp, a bit of soreness, the random pains you don't notice till you touch them like a rug burn, the normal pains that we live with everyday. Then there's the kind of pain you can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else; makes the rest of your world fade away until all you can think about is how much you hurt and how everyone else in the world is so different from you. How we manage our pain is up to us. We can anesthetize- drink it all away until we become comfortably numb and can no longer feel ourselves or embrace and ride it out with comforting support from loved ones or we can simply pray and hope the greater forces will help us push through it.



At the end of the day, when it comes down to it- reality, all we really want is to be close to somebody. So this thing where we all keep our distances and pretend not to care about one another, it's usually a load of bull. We choose who we want to remain close to, and once we've chosen those people, we tend to remain close by… a phone call or a PING!!! away at least. No matter how much we hurt them, they stick around- those are the ones worth keeping. Sure, sometimes close can be too close, like when you mistakenly throw on your best friend's underwear or when you go through your boyfriend's messages but sometimes, that invasion of personal space, can be exactly what you need.

Truth or Dare... sometimes a fantasy

Dear Twentee5, i think that generally speaking, this year has been a tough year for hearts. A lot of people died, disasters, riots, divorces, people lost their jobs, even broken relationships. Life is short and opportunities are rare so we have to be vigilant in protecting them and not only the opportunities to succeed but the opportunities to laugh - to laugh till it hurts, to see the enchantment and beauty of simple things and to live because life doesn't owe us anything, in fact I think we owe something at least, to the world. I like how I can close my eyes and see people as people; human- flesh and blood wrapped in a suit of disappointment. People are going to disappoint you, I totally get that but what happens if one day you wake-up and realize you are the disappointment? I want to draw something that means something to someone, but I can't draw. I can do this; write but the problem with writing is it's much. It's baring all, no subliminal or hidden rhymes can hide an emotion, there's no Picasso on the keyboard. I wish I could say everything I want to say but keep my identity hidden, be absolutely normal, like the passenger beside you on the bus, the stranger you stepped on at the market or even your sister.


Let’s play truth or dare, or maybe just dare, because nobody knows how to tell the truth anymore. I dare you to imagine a future moment in your life where all your dreams come true. You know… the greatest moment of your life and you get to experience it with one person. Who's standing next to you? Wait! Don't answer that, you don't want to disappoint yourself, I mean if I were you I'd totally down the bottle of vodka instead… LOL! People who are meant to be together always find a way to each other. A wise man once said – “You can have anything in life if you’re willing to sacrifice everything else for it.” What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming. When we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick sides or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us, and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.

You know I've got a lot of my "there are two kinds of people in the world" theories, this one is pretty silly... There are lyric people and music people. The lyrics people tend to be analytical. They know all about the meaning of the song, they're the ones you see with the CD insert out like 5 minutes after buying it, pondering over the lyrics, interpreting the heck out of everything, quoting the lines and writing about the singers intentions. Then the music people who could careless for the lyrics as long as its just got like a good beat and you could dance to it. I don’t know… I think it might be easier to be a music girl and not a lyric girl. But since I’m not, let me just say this; Somethings find you when you need them to find you, I believe that, and for me its usually song lyrics. Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it's because they are always getting ready to live, "I'll do this and that tomorrow"or "I'm saving this for her birthday"…Before they know it, time runs out. The fantasy is simple- Pleasure is good, and twice as much pleasure is better. Pain is bad, and no pain is better but the reality is different. The reality is that pain is there to tell us something- there's only so much pleasure we can take without getting a stomach ache with reference to my chocolate loving three year old and maybe that's okay or maybe some fantasies are only supposed to live in our dreams.

I, you and love... forever and almost always

Someone asked me why pretty girls are so arrogant and full of self. Well, first of all she knows she's pretty and she thinks that's the (only) reason you want to talk to her so she puts up an attitude because she wants you to like her just the way she is, she wants you to look beyond all the nastiness and show-off of self and chat to her anyway but the irony of it all is that the man would put up with her attitude only because she's pretty, so at the end of the day it's still a man's world. When you're young you think nothing can hurt you, like being invincible, your whole life is ahead of you and you have big plans. Big plans to find your perfect job, the perfect partner, the one who 'completes' you. When you find one you think "life has to be better than this" but as you get older you realize it's not always that easy. It's not until the end of your life that you realize how the plans you made were simply plans, quick question; why do we do it to ourselves? Why do we put on deadlines and make promises, why do we worry when we have no potency to control anything? I guess, it's human nature to dream, to make believe, to hope against and despite all.

When you look back at your life certain moments stand out: the day you graduated high school, your matriculation at the university, graduation, your wedding day, the day you found out you were going to be a parent. Most of the time they happen in that order and most of the time they shuffle. They say that truth is the best indication against slander, so what’s the truth? If you would take my advice, believe nothing! Just because a wise man said it, or you read it in a book like words of divine order, or because your mother told you…it doesn’t make it true. Believe only what you yourself can test and judge to be true. We all want to be loved…to be happy. So why aren’t we? Because we’ve become experts at sabotaging our own happiness. Feeling like victims, when in fact it’s the choices we make, the bad habits, the vices, the inability to show love and compassion when people need us, these are the things that tear us down. We’re not victims, we’re assassins when it comes to love and happiness. We applaud the sentiments, but we don’t change because we want what we want, so we do it, we say it, we try it and we victimize ourselves. It’s not a question of character or morals, It’s really about who wants what!


There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at crossroads, afraid, confused, without a road-map. The choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days. Of course when faced with the unknown, most of us prefer to turn around and go back. But there are people who push on to something better, something found just between the pain of doing it alone and the bravery it takes to let someone in, like a second chance or something beyond the quiet persistence of a dream. "I love you", it's everything I want to say everyday of my life or everything I wish I said the last time I saw YOU… perhaps, everything I want to say forever and almost always.

Love...

"How do you make a person love you without altering freewill?", a quote i grabbed from Bruce Almighty, Kind of like the irony of the existence of God that defines the power of choice.

Everybody wants to be loved ultimately, I mean they don't just want to be loved but be loved just the way they are and that's where the problems spring up. A lot of people don't have friends because they are scared of people, I know I am. Some have set boundaries for fear that they could be abandoned if anyone knew who they really are, others just take whatever friendship throws at them because "where else would I go?". I know a good number who'd rather hang out with people who really don't care about whatever just to keep up a certain social status.

Sometimes I wish I was born in the honest-to-god times when people were only fishermen, farmers or hunters and the simple things were valuable. When a virgin's body was a good man's dream and a woman's ambition was to submit to, honour, respect her husband and cater to her kids… but change evolved, LOL! On analysing the topic of love, I gave myself a headache, it's depth is appalling so maybe another day.

The game, a person can choose to play or not. My father lives a pretty decent life, he is a good man, honest with open hands, he never had to be sorry for anything he did or said (so he tells me) but I, on the other hand, I'm screwed. You know I'd have made a decent nurse or a psychologist, I like to care for people like I'm a really good listener but now when my dad meets people he says to them of me " my daughter is a chemist", as if I've accomplished the impossible. I'm still unsatisfied, I haven't learned anything of interest so like I said, I'm screwed!

I'm the kind that loves her space, I think people are messy and can only deal with a friend at a time, 2 maybe pushing it, if I had 3 close friends you might as well throw me a rope already. I realized that at some point people have to make decisions, boundaries don't keep you in, they fence you out to isolation. Life is messy, that's how it was made so you can waste your life drawing lines or you can live crossing them. Some lines are way too dangerous to be crossed, here's what I know, if you're willing to take the chance the view from the other side is spectacular.

Dear Twentee5...

When I was a kid, my uncle would say to me and my siblings "say when!" whenever he was poured anything into a glass for us and of course we never did. We don't say when because there's something about the possibility of more, more ribena, more juice and as we get older more money, more tequila, more love, more anything, more is better.I guess there's still something to be said about a glass half full, maybe it's just half empty. Who knows when to say when? Who's going to say when? Who wants to say when? I think it's a floating line, like drawing a graph of need against desire- where need is "x" and desire is "y" and everything is entirely up to the individual. Sometimes there's no such thing as enough, the glass is bottomless and all we want is MORE!



I'm thinking childhood memories and having a laugh, people never really get old they just grow to a stage where somethings become cooler than some other things. I know I'm still pretty much as childish as I was in primary 5 just need the right people to bring out that amount of clumsy. You know when you were a kid and believed in fairy tales? That ultimate fantasy of what you thought your life would be- white dress, black tuxedo, on his knees with a rose between his lips, the castle on a hill? Those times you'd lie in bed, smiling with total faith in Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, prince charming? They were so close you can also touch them but then one day you open your eyes and you feel like you were in some weird dream because reality is so odd, you can't have a grasp of anything. Reality is strange, some people have decided not to go out of the circle they know- mother, father, childhood friends. The truth is nobody has really forgotten that fantasy, everyone is still living with that tiny bit of faith and hope that one day it would all come true. Fate is a funny thing, it turns up when you don't expect, still unprepared. It's like one day you realize that the fairy tale maybe slightly different than you had imagined. The castle, well it may just be the parking lot of a hotel or the back seat of a car and the happy ever after... that too maybe happy right now. See once in awhile people will surprise you and once in a very blue moon, people will take your breathe away.



Generally, people are categorized in one of two ways- those who like surprises and those who don't. Well I don't like surprises I like to be in the know, i have to be in the know because I feel like when I'm not I loose control of my tiny grasp on life. Am I rambling? I think I'm rambling, okay that's beside my point which is this: whoever said "what you don't know can't hurt you" was a complete and utter half-wit… that's a bit much, lets say he was irrational because there's a difference between knowing and finding out.I have to know because I like to plan, to prepare for what's coming. I hate being out of composure, not knowing what to do. The first time I woke up without a plan, I almost committed suicide and I'm sure I can't be the only one who's like that. I learned to think like human, flesh and blood and nothing supernatural, I cant make anything happen just because. Sometimes it's better to stay in the dark, in the dark there's fear but there's also hope. Communication is the first thing we really learn in life but here's the thing, once we grew up, learned our words and started talking, it became harder to know what to say or how to ask for what we really need. Maybe life would be a little less complicated if we all could lay our hearts on the plate, bare it all out; the love, hate, anguish, jealousy, anger and humor. There are somethings we just can't help but talk about, somethings we don't want to hear our lips say and somethings we say because we can't be silent any longer. Somethings are more than words, they have become deeds. Somethings we say because we have no other choice and somethings we keep to ourselves because "who cares?". But not too often, every now and then, somethings speak for themselves.



There's a Chinese proverb translated to English means you can't choose your family. You take what fate hands you and like them or not, love them or not, understand them or not, you cope. And then there's the school of thought that the family you're in is a starting point; they love you, feed you, clothe you until you're ready to go out and find your tribe. The question is when… when am I ready?New beginnings, like the sweet smell of cupcakes- a vision of hope. This year, 7th of August precisely, I felt like I inhaled the fresh smell of the hot cake, I promised to let go and I did but somethings wont just rest. Who gets to determine when the old ends and the new begins anyway, is that something the calendar has to decide? It's not the birthday or the new year or that profound event, it's something that changes us, ideally giving us a hope of a thing greater ahead, looking at the world through a new pair of glasses, letting go of old habits and memories that may pull us back. It's really important that we stay hopeful, keep on believing and understand that amid all the crap a few things are worth holding on to- your decision, be wise!



We all have little superstitious things we do; never sweep your home or whistle at night, we don't step on the cracks on the side walk, never hurt the creepy geckos, or is it the putting on our right shoes first. They say don't walk over crossed legs and when you knock on a wood, step on a crack, you break your mother's back… LOL! The last thing we want to do is offend the gods. These beliefs lie between what we can control and what we can't, find a penny pick it up and all day you'll have good luck… who wants to pass a chance at good luck? But does saying it 3 times before dawn really help and is there anyone really listening at 11:11? I guess we do these things because we're smart enough to know we don't have all the answers, in fact, we don't know anything for sure. Something inside me knows, it knows like it really knows that there's a God and he's watching even so I know not to diss the juju from wherever it comes.