It’s not your fault. You’ve lost your way. I imagine that now when you look in the mirror your reflection is a stranger, that prodigal son that emerged from the harmattan haze only to find a lone drummer and a one-legged chicken not yet slaughtered. A lackluster welcome.
You’ve forgotten who you are. You’ve traded in that sweet soul for dreams of rooftop views and designer labels, and success, no matter the cost at which it comes. And imaginary friends you pull out of the air; you take them to bed with you and you’re still cold. They adorn your vanity with insincere praise; abstract appreciation and tiny unnatural hearts crowning a head filled with hot air. (It’s great to be “liked” isn’t it?)
Are you not aware that people like us don’t suffer from this? I can’t even call this suffering. Your mothers toiled endlessly, and their sweat was the only moisture to kiss the unrelenting earth. They cracked their nails and spirits, trying to cajole something, anything at all to sprout from the stingy soil. And where were you? Lamenting a supposed loneliness you have created for yourself. You barricaded yourself in a palace of haughtiness, held up by the beams of your superior intellect and all-round virtue, and you scorned any visitors, accusing them of jealousy. Anyone that tried to reach beyond those walls was met with the sting of thorns, barbed wire, fingernails filed to a point.
Lonely? Depressed? Child, people like us are all too familiar with these emotions. They are states of being rather than transient moments of feeling and experience. Your mothers’ leathery skin thickened to contain the void of disappointment and meaningless futures within, and to keep the useless promises of hope out. Theirs was a grim fate, a funeral shroud used as a baptism gown. The threshold of their worlds began and ended at the entrance of the homestead. Meanwhile your horizon remains limitless. What is there to cry about?
People like us don’t do this. Wipe that ungrateful face and suck in your belly, round and satisfied with too much meat. Straighten that back, and watch that slovenly swaying of hips. You don’t need that rest you take everyday, “to clear your head.” People like us are more useful, more instrumental and less ornamental. What a disappointment you have turned out to be.
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