As a rough year for me folds, a new one is emerging from this tenth trip around the moon. I was born to my favourite girl this month back in 83 and I can imagine her young bones carrying my forming ones on a day like today.
The disbelief is yet to stop hitting me with what I can only term confusion over how am I still here. It is not that I hated the idea of existing but there was a time I had no clue how to live. I have to add that life hasn't been that fair though the experience has given me some beautiful memories that overlap my pain.
Childhood was one beautiful dawn followed by a fun day then sealed by a long night. Teenage came agonisingly slow but heavy on chaos plus family drama, especially after time added an orphan as an adjective to sometimes describe me before ending in early motherhood.
Parenting meant scaling some intimidating heights emotionally but the expectations required me to mature overnight and behave according to how a 'married woman' and a mother should. My traumatised self -because I didn't mourn my mum- decided to bury what turned into the skeletons I am unearthing as we speak.
Nothing pinches my now thick skin more than Gender-Based Violence. The anger someone abusive stirs in me can help the devil in his said kitchen. I was once at the receiving end of such and it irritates me that we still deal with such to this day. It is why I volunteer where I can and especially in prisons as that's where most abused women end up ironically.
My brood has been what has anchored me in this realm more than anything. There was a time I lived for them solely before I could feel the desire to do it for myself. Motherhood has been my redemption and a challenging joy. They have loved me defiantly and I have felt so unworthy of the attention it comes with, sometimes.
I usually don't know what to do with being loved.
Love has visited only to quickly disappear and the aftermath swept everything to hell. My now doubtful heart sits outside its porch to admire those who trust other hearts enough to invite them in then hides behind its thick curtains at sundown. At night, the mending continues.
I have always found it safe to fill my emptiness with good reads and solid documentaries. I simp over well-acted films and obsess over animes. I have even tried accomplishing it with my love for black tea and toxic affair with coffee.
Sometimes it is not the brown in my cup that I yearn for but the dust that rules under my feet that does the trick. But for that, I go to my garden (an acre and a half of it) and let the earth slip its soil into my fingers and caress me back to life as the birds sing for me if I am lucky.
I hope I get to rant of a kind October and watch her days fill me with warmth and light but first, let me worry about the weight of a flipping calendar page!
...the digital artwork is mine.
wambuku w.
