Life Happened to Me

As my head registered the fact that the phone was not going to ring, my heart continued to flutter intermittently in hope. It just would not get it would it? The guy was not going to call.

I wondered what I might have done wrong and I realized that I did not have to look far. A guy who had heard accolades and sweet things from a former secondary school mate had had only high hopes about meeting me. When he met me and I opened my mouth what he heard from me was different from what he had expected.

As I flayed myself for opening my mouth too wide I also wondered why I had to justify myself to anyone. Anyone who didn’t think I was good enough for them was really not what I needed around me. Heaven knows, I have had my own fair share of life. Who was it that said that life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans? It sure happened to me. What I had planned versus some of what I got are so far apart they blow my mind. Yet, I cannot deny them. Less than I would have fancied and as much as they stink up the joint even for my own poor nose there is nothing I can do about it.

The story that had come up about my past in conversation with this expected caller had gone such that I daresay he couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Yet it is not my place to chase after him. I would sooner hold my breath than do that.

The woes, throes and echoes of my past have rang so loud in my life that it is time I shelved them. Having to bring them up to a new acquaintance or even an old one for that matter is such a priviledge I don’t think I want to share it anymore. Most would just use it as an opportunity to raise you on a pole and take potshots.

As I thought about why I had related the not too pleasant details of an intimate relationship gone awry to a new friend and prospective date, I wondered why I was looking for his approval anyway- I didn’t know him. Did I think he would give me a pat on the back for my mistakes or did I think he would be ready to carry the baggage he had to be sure tagged along with me just by virtue of my having had the kind of past I have had.

Well, I look up and I see that God has written a number on me. I am not to be toyed with. I cannot fill my experiences, missteps and misjudgments in a single volume book how much less in a few conversations. Trying to do that not only appears to me to be an effort to seek approval or some kind of pity but it is at this point having me wonder why at all I tried to.

Why do I need to explain myself, seek approval?

Am I proud of where I have been? I don’t need to answer you on this! Have I been through hell, murk and dirt? Is that really your business? As a condition to date you I have to awaken my past? Roll over and move on. I need to step.

God is working on me. Even in all this- expectation, disappointment, rejection, I still see his Hand- making me stronger, better, gladder and ever ready to take a no but never tiring to take a shot at life, believe, hope, dare to expect. Yes, the other person has a right to say ‘no’. And I have a right to not be defined by where I have been, to move on.

Yes, Twenty years ago, I was spick and span (sans a molestation), a former class mate felt strongly enough about that to recommend me to his friend. Sadly enough though (?) life happened to me. Get used to that or fall off my radar.

Sincere Ramblings

I’m sitting here on my bed wondering about the myriad that have been lost to jungle justice. A fifty naira note stolen here, a phone over there, pepper…. And there it is- bloodshot eyes, a raving mob, lost minds, a tire and matches’- Jungle Justice! A life lost prematurely, judged by a gathering of ill informed, ill engaged, self-righteous, misfits no better than the ones they strain to judge.

I imagine the feeling of helplessness that comes over the victims. Strength cannot save, nor can they stand in the face of this unjust ‘just’, their lives never to return cut short by the arbitrary and random whims of an impersonal mob.  No one dares intervene. To intervene would be to be judged an accomplice, perhaps the mentor of the errant, likely by eyes reeking insanity. To intervene would be to be judged- by jungle justice.

On a level it happens everywhere. Not just on the streets- the arbitrary and deranged gang-up against an individual at work. It might clear up in a minute. But imagine if it hadn’t. You just tasted helplessness.

It might be among a group of friends- that unexplained situation that flashes past your face when you are suddenly the one looking in from the outside because they all just decided you were up for ‘mean-spirited or wicked pot shots’- for some reason. You might not end up dead on the streets but imagine a little tilt to the left and you just might be. 

What about the chance happenings, the unexplained choices that decide a person’s death just by them running into an irate mob while they were on an innocent errand. Does even one person blink? Does even one person speak up and ask, “What is going on?” Or does someone really wake up and is too scared to ask?

Then what is the fate of innocent people every day? What is the fate of lives lost on a mob’s whim? What is the fate of an innocent whose only sin for arraignment is ten naira stolen? Can’t we rise? Can’t we awaken? Can’t we love? Is the milk of human kindness dried up in our hearts? Is compassion lost forever? Has hunger ripped mercy out of the mercy-judgment equation? Or are Nigerians the world over simply to be sent on mandatory individual, personal and intense one-on-one deliverance?

Cannot that life taken make or see a million times that fifty naira if just given the chance? Cannot jungle justice be judged? Cannot jungle justice be stopped? Can people be given a chance to live? Can thieves cease to kill? Can those arraigned for death be given a decent exit? A dignifying one? A humane one? By the Courts?

What about the innocents tried in the courts and still found guilty? Roped in? Who pleads for these ones? Surely, the worst off is the innocent cut down before or after they have risen, having lived incomplete lives and their justice perverted. Who would save us from this? It could happen to anybody. It could happen to everybody.

Where is the will? Where is the mind? Where is the strength of humanity?