NKEM… MY OWN.

If you didn’t already know, I am Nigerian. Intrinsically from the Eastern part. Igbo to be precise. And that is where the title of this post is from… An Igbo title for an Igbo girl, ya dig?  Nkem. My own. It means, my own.

 

Now see, I cannot count the number of times I have said I will cut a person off, stay away, unlook even when the person needs me… so many times. But like the proverbial alcoholic, who always swears never to go back to the bottle but picks it up the first impulse they get, I never follow through. Like my colleague said recently… “Babe, you don’t have that type of heart”

But aye, I wish I did.

I wish I did not forgive so easily.  Sucker for human emotions that I am, I melt at the first sign of genuine good feelings. When a person is sorry, a person is sorry. It shows. You can either accept it or you can choke on it. I mean, we are all human beings, right? We are fickle and frail and there is not a thing that can be done about it. Live and let live.

I have forgiven my friend, the one from “A Tale Of Two Friends”. I can have a conversation with him, work with him, meet him if I have a corporate glitch that needs fixing, all of that. But that’s about it for me. I am not even sure I can call him my friend. Even though we know that whether we like it or not, events have made it that we will always be forced to have to be friends. Wherever in the world we are, I feel in my heart, that we will always care about each other, be interested in news about the other. In whatever twisted or warped way we choose to go about it, that underlying element will always be there. And that… goodness… that just makes me so tired. Now, he makes a show of saying out loud how he does not do friends. And even though I know deep down that I may not be included in this(and hey, no jokes, I may very well be), what’s the point? I also make a show of not doing friends. I protect that part of me that is untouched. We forget, that in judging others for being human, we expose in us, the very humanity that we disdain and think that we are above. And because I do not even have the energy to spare, it works out just fine. He is there, I am here, and we smile. I have never before been in a circumstance so satisfying, so real, so crisp, so just. Let nothing tamper with it, let it remain so. Oh please, let it.

What I want to say though, is that finally I can be happy with me. Now, I need no one. I go to work, do what I have to do, plug my ears if I have a spare minute. I do not want to hear what they talk about. I couldn’t care less about some rap song or type of make up. I just want to work, use the gym, go home, drink cranberry juice, and be alive. I want to be my own human comfort pillow. I do not want people in my space. Loud voices and their respective owners. I want to be happy on my own terms.

My own.

I want to be crazy for me, by me, and with me. A certain type of democracy for my convoluted existence. I never want that balance to be disrupted. I am very satisfied to chat with Paola in my chatty moments. It is a shame she lives in another country. She has been one of the only people who have seen me the way that I am and still think I am special. I am okay with her and Yeside and the other few significant others.

But before I bow out of this post, let me confess.

I want to love. I really want to. I want to open up myself to that force that is supposed to be greater than me. I want to quiver with the force of it, cry because of it, laugh from the sheer joy of it… I want all the parts of it. I have often asked myself… “Who will love me the way that Edward loved Bella?” “Is it even possible?”

That I will become another person’s reason for living? That if I died, it would break another person’s heart, bring them to their knees, destroy them, make them never be able to love again? That my smile will be the reason a person will want to face a bad day? That the prospect of an eternity without me would be unbearable for another?

Think about it.

Me.

Sonia.

Me.

I am actually smiling right now.

Come on. You all read my blog. You know how scary I am.

Who, in his right mind, will let himself love me?

*sigh*

Even I, were I sane,  probably wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole!!!

But I need wine. I do.

And lots of cranberry juice in-between.

*HUGS*