Just Live

The things that give us the most pleasure are the simplest ones. Really, come to think of it. When you get hungry a plate of food suffices to get you full and satisfied. It doesn’t matter whether the plate cost 50 shillings at the kibanda around the corner or you went to a five star hotel and paid a couple of thousands for it. The feeling of being full is pretty standard the world over. I’m not talking about taste because clearly the tastes will be varied at the two places. I won’t go on and start discussing which place will offer a more savoring serving as that is not the purpose of this piece. However, I will state that we all know a kibanda that serves food that tastes better compared to a big restaurant with some fancy name and were it not for the gram and status quo we would prefer the kibanda any day anytime seeing that it’s also pocket friendly.

When you get dehydrated, the thing that gets you back up quickly and quenched is just the same old water. You might go for milk or juice or beer or soda or vodka but what gets the job well done is the simple formula of hech-to-ooh. A tight hug does the trick for dear friends who haven’t seen each other for a minute. A warm bath or cold shower after a long hectic day at work relaxes our nerves. And it’s even better when it’s quiet and peaceful. As calming as some chill music is, or how serene that painting you bought during your vacation is, some moments just require shutting your eyes, laying still in that bath and listening to the sound of silence to provide all the energy you need to recharge and recollect.

And in as much as most of us want to be thought, seen and known as kinky. Deep down we all know that there are times when we simply want the tried, tested and proven ancient missionary sex to relieve the tension and give us the pleasure and satisfaction that makes life worth living. I don’t have the statistics but I suspect most babies are conceived this way as it sure is a passionate, sweet and gratifying position, and the best part for the purposes of this article is, that it’s not strenuous at all to both parties, most especially the female who gets to just lie and spread her legs and, maybe just maybe, lift them a little to which if she has to the man will help hold them. These times, the times we want and crave missionary are the most times. I can almost bet on my life that ladies agree with this because we are lazy as fuck and we prefer gifting kinky sex on special occasions as compared to gifting actual normal human gifts to our better halves on these occasions.

My point? Simplicity is love and life. All that is precious to us is quite the simple stuff; A forehead kiss from your boyfriend. Holding hands as you walk and cross the road. A hot mug of tea with an omelet for breakfast. A two minutes call from a friend just to tell you to break a leg on that interview you have been waiting on for weeks. Your colleague telling you how nice that blouse or suit fits and looks on you. Your boss congratulating you for a job well done on that presentation that you slept at three preparing. A stranger smiling at you for no reason at all. Or just the stupid game on your phone that you play when you are bored. God made life simple. Don’t believe that? He made man from just soil/dust and a breath or air. (I’ll discuss the complexities of that some other day and on a different post.) All we are required to do is wake up, eat, socialize, be grateful, sleep then repeat. Life is a cycle of the same old things, habits and routines so stop fretting. Stop worrying. Inhale, exhale and just live.

Midnight Torments

“Recovery from anything is the most badass thing a person can do.”

Like Olaf, I will always have a cloud floating over my head. The only difference is that my cloud is not to facilitate my getting to enjoy summer but to rather remind me of a terrible time in my life and the terrible decisions I made. It’s true, a butterfly can flap its wings from a million miles and cause havoc elsewhere and for me, it caused an eternal internal tornado in my existence. However much I’d want to wish the cloud away, it will always hover over me and constantly whisper the terrible things in my ear. And I have come to accept it. I am, though slowly, embracing my demons and we now hold conversations because I refuse to cower anymore at the corner crying and let them dance and have a fabulous time at my pity party. Sometimes we have rough altercations. I’m not sure if that is healthy but hey, what would you have me do?!

My little dark cloud recklessly drove me to a place where even my subconscious could not take it anymore. You see, my subconscious is this little sweet person who is normally calm and ambitious. My voice of reason and morality. She is forever dreamy in her magical world where she fantasizes way too excessively and way beyond the allowed measures. I don’t always listen to her and when I do, however much I want, I don’t always follow her advice. In this case, yes, this one that resulted in me having an eternal dark cloud always in my heels, my subconscious had warned against the decision I was about to make but there’s no way on earth I would have followed her because I thought to myself, unlike her, I don’t reside in a magical dreamy spectrum and it was inevitable for me to make the extremely difficult an impalpable decision that broke me and left me paralysed. However much disappointed she was, she still embraced me and gave me the tight bear hug that I so much needed because she understood that it killed me and crashed me into countless pieces to do what I did.

The day I decided to fully embrace my demons came from an extremely low point. I had hid in the toilet for a good twenty minutes. What makes this terrible is the fact that the toilet didn’t have a lock and my partner, who I was so determined not to see me cry, could swing the door at any moment and see me drowned in tears and sorrow. Before I went to the toilet I had laid in bed for two hours straight, desperately trying to cry myself to sleep to no avail. Plus the mosquitoes were on a rampage and I’m not one cover myself fully in bed. There’s this popular writer in my country who wrote about the mosquitoes and how he could barely sleep because of this one mosquito and how he had incessantly sprayed an insecticide branded doom and the mosquito still wouldn’t die, how he had even tried calling the company’s customer care to complain but the lines were dead thus he ended up concluding that we, the customers, were the ones doomed instead. Acknowledging that I was doomed and there was no winning that fight against the mosquitoes I sought refuge in the toilet while my sweet partner dealt with the mosquitoes physically and mechanically. Luckily he didn’t open the toilet door, guess the mosquitoes were truly too tough to crack up, and after feeling a bit confident that I was now composed enough I went back to bed.

A few moments later, I was back to inherent sobs that wouldn’t allow me to breathe properly. I longed for a super tight hug but it was not coming since he’s no mind reader plus I suspect he was dead asleep. My nose was loaded, my eyes swollen, my throat dry and my face wet and tear stained. I didn’t feel beautiful or worthy to talk to my Father as I had been keeping him at arm’s length. I didn’t feel worthy because I knew whatever lousy damned excuse I had for hiding and keeping him at bay wouldn’t hold him back if I called. He has always got me. Always so ready to comfort and embrace me. So I called and apologized honestly and asked him to kindly have me back, dust me off because I really needed him. Weirdly enough, and she never does this, my subconscious roared loudly and told me to get up because I already had what I had asked for and I was good to go and live again.

Okay, I know why she roared. She was tired of my cries. I am not very attractive when I cry and I’m super annoying. There’s just no getting through to me once the water works start. I could clearly feel that my heart was no longer heavy yet here I was burning myself up, clinging to the duvet crying rivers. So she shouted and told me to wake up and write all that up before the words drifted away. All writers know that their great pieces were written when their emotions were raw. And my subconscious was right, she always is, the words do drift away. So I woke up and wrote this in past tense. Wipe that smug off your face, we all hide behind writing in past tense because we get to show that we are past it. We understand that sometimes an abundance of sympathy can be more overwhelming than your demons muddy feet pacing all over your soul.

And I think that’s totally okay because if anything, it shows a flicker of faith and hope that we believe in better. And what did JC say about faith the size of a mustard seed? Thus, I know I will be okay. And I don’t exactly know when that will happen but I do know that I’m done with letting those bratty demons put their muddy feet all over my gorgeous furniture and soil my mopped floors. And if my place has to get dirty then it won’t be without a fight. We shall wrestle then clean up together as we throw jibes at each other.

On a different note, I know this piece is quite vague and you’d want to know what precisely what was/is the problem but I’m not quite ready to open up that much. When I get comfortable with sharing everything I might redo this piece and let you on on what was going on. For now let’s leave it as it is.

Total Commitment

“Dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose firm. Dare to make it known.”  —Philip P. Bliss—

Recently, I have been watching a series. It’s the first I’m watching in close to six months. Six months. That’s the time I’ve been out here in the world since I cleared campus. Well, not technically since I’m still a ‘student’ as I didn’t graduate in my allocated time. Partly, I agree that it’s my fault and the other part (the most part) is because I went to the University of Nairobi and it’s well known what happens when you get there.

It has taken me that long to watch something since I was busy trying to get my bearings and put my shit together like every other person fresh of campus. Turns out my shit doesn’t want to get together (insert lol emoji) so I’m back to taking each day at a time, living the hand to mouth design trusting all will be well. Off course, I feel terrible since I have tons of debt that I needed payed yesterday but what do I do? I have thought of being a con artist but my poker face isn’t so good. I fancy the idea of getting a sponsor but I wouldn’t hack it: I’m too stubborn, terrible at following and obeying orders and definitely not the type to let someone decide what I do, when and where. I envy those who can manage that. But more than that, I despise the idea I cannot manage my problems and I have to rely on someone else to solve them. Hey, I reside in the era of strong independent women who are the CEOs of their lives and who believe they can have it all and actually do have it all. So, why would I give someone all the power while I, myself, am power hungry?

Since I have tried business and failed, I’m taking a short break to gather and center my chi again. Actually that’s not entirely true. My business hasn’t failed, it has just stalled. I have some stock and the only major problem is operating capital since the sales were not high enough to meet the operating costs. To cut on the operating costs, I’m now selling my products online. Saying products has made me feel like a drug dealer so let’s switch that with merchandize… hehe I’m not sure if that has brought the difference I was looking for but we stick with it. Doing business online is a terrible thing for me since it doesn’t give me the work vibe that makes me feel I’m doing something substantial with my life. I feel idle and somewhat a loser. The fact that I live in Nairobi, Kenya, doesn’t help it, since the jokes and spite associated with ladies who ‘claim’ to do business online is funny yes but still hurtful. This results in me overthinking and spiraling with anxiety and I truly hate that. To avoid all that, I recalled that I love watching movies and series. Since reading just wasn’t working.

And that’s how I ended up watching this wonderful series. After a few episodes, I realized I was still thinking too much and to engage my mind properly I put on the subtitles. I tried two languages, French then Italian, then it was again too much since I have never learnt Italian and the little French I learnt in high school seemed to have been forgotten which didn’t come as a surprise since who surely remembers what they learnt in school? I therefore resulted to the good old English. And thank god I did. Otherwise how would I have known that the producers felt it was necessary to indicate the music playing at the end of the episode was dramatic… made me think how they must have anticipated, put a lot of thought and were quite satisfied with the dramatic ending they put out for us to watch and didn’t want us missing that the music was just as dramatic. 

Drifting

I am worn out

Exhausted

Frustrated

I currently hate my life, all of it!

Nothing gives me satisfaction

Well, that’s not entirely true

I haven’t tried eating junk (cannot afford)

Crashing cars (cannot afford too) and

Jumping off buildings

(I hate pain and I’m currently in a lot of it)

I’m slowly drifting (don’t know to where)

Floating away from all that I hold dear

It pains me but so what?

It’s only me who got me

For this, I know I’ll be alright (maybe)

I sure lost what I previously had

But I can work and get it all back

It’s scary; as I imagine hell will be!

But what other choice do I have?

My alternatives are quite simple

Surrender & die or fight & still die!

The Cerci in me knows her pick

Spin, bubbly

‘Radiate with pure joy!’

For some strange reason, I can’t sleep. All that’s in my mind is the first time you kissed me. How you looked deep into my eyes despite the fact it was pitch black, how you touched my neck tenderly thankful that I didn’t have hair falling onto my shoulders and getting into your way, not that you would have minded pushing it back or tacking it behind my ear, your blank face as you searched for the perfect words to help me recover from the shock that you’ve always had an interest in me for the longest time and you just didn’t know how, where or when to tell me and that you’d be delighted, more than honoured and the happiest you’d ever been, should I give you a chance to prove yourself to me.

How you’d bared your soul naked to me, how vulnerable that must have been and surely must have felt… the yearning you had, how softly and tenderly you held my hand… and finally how you asked “Babe, can I kiss you?” After I’d agreed to giving us a chance. How you drew closer to me, one hand holding both of my hands and on my lap, the other on my neck. The way you drew in slowly, closed your eyes and finally locked our lips. It was a wonderful out of this world feeling. My mouth was suddenly so full, bubbling like I’d taken a thousand, differently favoured, bubble gums, topped up with a mouthful of sparkling water, though a strange comparison, I felt like fireworks were exploding in my mouth leaving their ever so spectacular views (read tastes) in there coz the feel good feeling of seeing fireworks was never enough I wanted to taste it(I’ve always thought the displays looked like multicolored candy).

How I struggle to word that moment ;surely how do you describe such a magical moment and not strip it its beauty? Your lips locked mine softly yet so firmly… I felt as if you were claiming me and certainly, you were. The hand that was previously on my laps had somehow found it’s way to my waist, the grip, firm as well, was so pampering, it made me aware of my or rather our surroundings. The trees breathed slowly and rhythmically releasing a wonderful breeze, “how is this possible yet I can hardly contain my breathe?” I thought my chest was busting open, My world was spinning so fast but the crickets went on and on with their songs while the mosquitoes buzzed and danced, Natures Orchestra.

The feeling of your tongue, totally indescribable! You drew me in a little bit closer, tightened your grip and claimed my lips with some next level passion, your mouth felt so warm, your lips so tender, it was all so comforting that I knew I wanted to grow old experiencing that for the rest of my life… When we broke off from the kiss, I could swear I saw a million and one shooting stars in the night, that was a few moments ago bottomlessly black and blank. How couldn’t all my wishes not come true now, when I had just experienced a simple yet so rare kiss, that was super astonishing and mind blowing. There’s no way I’d I’ve pictured, imagined, dreamed nor wished of it yet it had come to pass and I’d now be experiencing such kisses, with definitely more sauce and spice (wink😜 wink😜) for eternity.

The look you gave me after the kiss was different, somehow and in a good way you had become someone different, it was no longer tension nor worry, i could sense the urge of you wanting to protect me from everything and everyone else. You wanted to explore life with me now more than ever. I could see and smell a pot of bubbling love boiling inside you that you just couldn’t wait to serve and share with me. And then;,,, there was the smirk that was plastered on your face, a look that said something along, “settle down missy 😛, buckle up! coz your about to go on a roller coaster that never stops… if you think you’re going anywhere? I’m never letting go, I’ma hold you down and give you the time of your life.”

So far? The experience has been worthwhile. But what steadied my heart was you saying, “Thanks babe, that was wonderful!” It felt amazing to know that I’d given joy to you too, it was somewhat a confirmation that you had a seat in the roller coaster too and no matter what you’d always hold my hand… that as you made me happy I’d be reciprocating the happiness, probably more. I can never get the image of that perfect night out of my mind nor can I ever shake the feeling off any cell of my being. Not that I’d want to anyway.