ONE NAKED WALK…

Purposely, I stayed away from writing on here. Not because I lost interest or because I was too busy.
No.
Let me tell you, there were nights that I had to fight the urge to pick up my phone and just post away. But I stifled it. I wanted to know what would happen to me, if I did not run on here to eviscerate all the time. But for those that write to live, we cannot stay away for too long. It is like the curse of the werewolf on the night of a full moon. We cannot resist the changing. The urge, to release all of what we really are on the inside. Good, bad, ugly, monstrous.

And so I am here.
Eviscerating again.
My tail between my legs.
Gasping for the air that I kill to breathe.

Today, I want as always to talk about me. And if you are here reading, hoping to read about the woes of the world. About the fighting and the terrorism and the hate, blimey, forget it. On here, it is always about me. It is my world, you see. You, you are my audience, the words are my orchestra, and me, I am the maestro.

I often think about the kind of life that I have lived. From birth till now. Sometime this year, I woke up and realized how very blessed I was. From awful family to deader than dead friends, to the great people that stole into my life and have taken permanent spots in it, to the ones that my heart beats for, to the times I have been hungry and bleh and oh so unhappy, to the times when all I had to go on was the bold thoughts in my head, to the times when it seemed that there was not enough space in my frame to accommodate anymore bliss (yes, super happy moments). To now. Yes, to now. To this moment. This moment when all that matters is happiness according to the definition of me. Now when I care not for the inner thoughts of people that I consider irrelevant to the bigger picture that I dream of when I sleep (or at least try to).

Yes.
Name it, I have lived it.
Hum it, I have sang it.
I have lived all the extremes.
And yet, who has it made me today? When I let the flames lick at my flesh and engulf me, what ashes remained?
I will tell you.

Today I am Nneka. First of her kind. Citizen of Mars. The Lagos UN-SHORT gal. Awkward. A tad strange. Fire and Ice. Moon child and Vampire.
Today, I am relaxed. Breathing easy, tumble weeding my awkward self away.
I do not wake up at night scared. Not anymore.
I do not feel the need to fight. My rights or no. My gladiating days are over.
Now, all I do is laugh about everything in my head. Ursula and I. Laughing it the heck off. Everything is a joke now.
Now, I am whatever I feel like being. I am baby girl to my mother, muppet to my boss (he really has no idea the high voltage case study that I am, but anonymous is a very comfortable position to be in, and anyway, that is that), super woman and candy girl to the triplets, hopeless romantic to some, Armageddon to the ones that would dare to stifle my identity, devil to the angels, angel to the super super kray kray crazy ones.
I do not think twice about anything, so connected I am to the inner me. In fact, my instincts and I, we are always holding hands, walking towards a sunset.
I fear absolutely nothing and no one. I regret nothing. I wish for nothing, and I hope for all.
The safest place in the world for me right now is my head. The more time I spend with people, the more this fact is pronounced.
I do not consider shaving my legs a chore anymore (take that, Paul!). My obsession with clean places is still on point. I still sing-scream in the shower. I still hate cold floors and wet places. My breasts are hopelessly impossibly still small. I still tear up when it rains and gets cold and I see homeless kids on the street. I still believe that hugs solve half the problems of humanity. I still do not consider myself a paragon of physical beauty, however, I do not feel ugly at all. It is hard to feel ugly when you are un-short, anyway.

All in all. I like me now.
Getting to where I am, it was so hard. So hard.
Being born with the natural inclination to be different, I did not bargain for the huge amounts of hold-me-backs I came across.
Not as if they are not still there. The difference now is that I simply honestly ridiculously supercalifragilistically do not care. My mind, one day, she completely locked down on all that. My Ursula sits on her throne and looks down disdainfully on them all. What a disassociation.
Again, I like me now. I am still a klutz. I still stumble. On and off, the abyss pulls at me. But hoo haa, I like me now.
And why not?
In the end, I am all that I have.

So then, I am not going to give unreal hope to anyone out there that has been to all the icky places that I have been to. However, I tell you, if there is an atom of you that wants to live, fight for it.
For you.
Because in the end, you have nothing, know nothing, except all that you are and all that you can let yourself be.
And so ends my naked walk.

Peace!!!