Mirror on the wall

I wrote her a letter today.
I’ve seen her gliding and slipping, making countless bargains with thin ice.
I’ve watched her jump and learn how to use her wings only seconds before gravity claimed her.
I’ve felt her go through ups and downs gracefully as if she was born on a seesaw.
I look at her now and reminisce that fateful day as if it were a second ago.

I remember sitting on that scrawny chair on a chilly Saturday morning. I wondered if my eyes gave away how much I’d been dreading this.
I tried to bargain with my body to conceal my nervousness but it continued to shake in a polite ‘no, thank you’ fashion.
I looked at the panel of late fifties doctors staring at me. I wondered how long it would take before they would conclude I was there to waste their time.
The question however, hung heavy in the air between us. It wasn’t any different from any other interview really. Another game of hangman where I tried to guess the words they wanted to hear before they tighten the rope on my already frail dignity.
The question bounced back like an echo.
‘Tell us about yourself. Who are you?’
I folded and unfolded my hands, finally placing them atop my thighs in a desperate bid to stop the shaking.
I heard myself recite the response I’d been trying to indelibly latch onto my brain the night before. I rambled on and on about my character strengths and strengths I’d been coached to present as weaknesses. In between shaky words and laboured breaths, I could see they were not impressed. My already volatile confidence started to waver. I could feel my adrenaline slowly transition from fight to flight.
One of the interviewers half smiled at me and simply asked,
“Where do you come from? What is the name of your village or town?”
I was puzzled but nevertheless I replied.
He looked at me and nodded,
“That’s where the ‘you’ starts”.
I never quite understood it then. I simply buried it under the carpet as a ruse he had used to outsmart me and expose my mediocre answer.

It hits me now as I look at her that the man was right. I am a lot of things but even more significantly, I am my past. I am because I was.
I am that little girl walking home barefoot with dirty shoes held in both hands like a trophy. The girl dressed in sand casually strewn across every other part of her body and a smile stretching across dry lips she has been licking throughout the day. I was that little girl happy to be going home to a hot meal after a long day of running around with my friends.
I am her who fiercely embraces her culture because her mother taught her how important roots and origins can be.
I am her, a little older, watching people I love suffer and die. That broken girl wondering why humans couldn’t stay a little longer just because little girls still needed a father. I am her rushing back home from school everyday to check if God has brought him back yet.
I am that teenager who put on a brave face so her pain wouldn’t be another worry designed to wrinkle her mother’s cheeks. I am that girl who worked hard for her grades because she knew failure would be an unfair trade to the people working behind the scenes.
I am her, celebrating with my mother after every small win.
And the wins kept coming and prayers got answered or denied, but we knew God was in it.
I am her a little older, fighting a different kind of battle.
Her, trying to find balance on these eggshells society wants her to tread.
Searching for herself under a pile of masks and layers of mixed emotions.
I’ve known her to sink into pits that the word depression could only dream of creating.
I’ve watched her dance with anxiety,
Back and forth,
Twirled her dizzy till she fell.
It has fed on her doubts and left her the overthinker that she is.
Most nights this ‘twenties fever’ doesn’t let her sleep.
Her goals can get so overwhelming and seemingly out of reach sometimes.
And this letter is for those nights,
Nights when the fever hits its peak and she wishes to be that little girl climbing trees and doing cartwheels in her backyard.
Nights when she might feel like indulging in a temporary high and escape the numbness for just a second in time.
Nights when her spirit feels darker than the coffee on her trembling hands.
This letter is for those mornings when she wakes up feeling strange and alone for no reason at all.
When she wakes up feeling disengaged from everyone through no fault of theirs.
Even those mornings when she doesn’t want to get out of bed, but simply stream through Netflix just to be in a world much further from the reality of adult life.
I wrote this letter and I’ll keep writing more of them so she doesn’t forget where she comes from.
I need to remind her that hers is a story worth being told.
May she never forget that she didn’t collect all this armour just so she could raise a white flag.
She didn’t attain scars so she could hide them when they didn’t fit an Instagram biography standard.
She who fought is her who could still fight.
She is because she was.
And later, she will be because she is.
I look at her in the mirror as I write.That little girl whose pen tends to be louder than her voice.
I haven’t the slightest idea where she’s going but I know she’ll be okay.
Even her shadow says she’s someone worth following.

You can’t separate your past from your present. Even a past you consider ugly. It’s always the first chapters of a book that help us understand the characters. All that you are is both accumulation and/or depletion of what you once were. You are because you were.
I hope when the opportunity to tell your story presents itself , you find the courage to show us your castles as well as your ruins.