I was very hesitant about writing this piece. In fact, I had already concluded that I was not going to write and publish it at all.
That explains the last minute publication.
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I was unexpectedly born into a family of seven. Then I made it an eight. Because my mother had a sequence by which the sexes for her children were determined, everyone expected me to be a boy. My mother’s children came first as a girl, followed by a boy. So six years after my parents had their youngest daughter at the time, I popped up. And just like every other family relative, my parents expected me to be a boy.
My father took all of his children to the same nursery and primary school. Some proceeded to junior school then transferred to another high school but I left Ndow’s Comprehensive at fifth grade and went to West African International School where I graduated high school in 2017. But in those five years of my life at WAIS, I learned a lot through countless mistakes I now look back to in amusement.
2012-2018 must have been the most eventful time of my life yet. I tried different things ranging from creative writing, acting, football, dancing and singing, student body leadership, modeling, one day I was an IT enthusiast and the next I was an aspiring chemist. And in all of that, I also learned of the act of kindness and its effect in people’s life. I learned about how my actions can ruin things just as much as they can mend them.
When I graduated high school, I went through a phase of great change. I suppose it is what I mean when I say, “if you knew me from high school, you would have to meet me all over again now.” Maybe everyone can say that, maybe not.
Over the last few years, I have said reluctant goodbyes to friends whom I have known for over five years. Friends, with whom I learned many of life’s loveliest and painful lessons. Yet some of them, have been lessons presented to me as humans.
While friends and school were the most of what I spent time with back then, I have always been – and will continue to be – very solicitous about family. It is the base of what my life revolves around. What I do, what I do not do, and I quote from William Shakespeare’s book, The Two Gentlemen of Verona‘ “I now like no discourse except it be of love. Now I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep, upon the very name of love.” Just like that, is how I am about my family.
There is no doubt that we have our imperfections within ourselves, but I suppose that is what it means to love. To accept people as they come to you, flawed yet beautiful, sometimes impolite yet very kind, and imperfect but perfectly so.
My mother. God, I love that woman. She often asks me when she sees me writing on a notebook or journal so fastidiously’ “Mariam loi binda?”
And I would tell her it’s nothing. Sometimes I say it’s for a school work or something of that sort. Many times, I sit and observe her. I would watch as she gives great attention to whatsoever chore she is engulfed in and one day I thought to myself:
If I ever become half the mother my mother is, I would consider myself a successful one.
Of all the attributes I carry within me, strength has to be my favorite – or at least one of them. It had aided me through lonely and painful times just as it refilled itself in happy and memorable times.
I am not the nicest person you will ever come across. Nor am I the most brilliant. And in this journey of life, none of us are. There will always be someone out there, with a nicer way of speaking, a nicer way of walking, a nicer way of thinking and even a nicer way of looking. And there, ladies and gentlemen, is where contentment comes in.
When they ask, “who are you?” You tell them your name, your full name. And you tell them of all the goodness you possess. All the beauty and art that exists within you. Because at the end of the day, who better to speak of you, than you?