#My5Links

The 5 links are so hard to pick, but I went all random and picked the first that came to mind. 

My most popular post

This has to be ‘The things we Don’t say‘.  I decided to out a skeleton…stripped naked and fed the gawking eyes. Coincidence of sharing a skeleton with a girlfriend gave me courage; I wrote it, then I hated that I had written it, contemplated pulling it down after pressing ‘publish’… hid from the internet, then I felt better. As if I had emptied my heavy sacks, right there on the screen. I felt good. The response was to this post was intense! I could not tweet for a day or two. I felt like everyone was watching. Up to today, I have never managed to reply to all those comments! What shocked me about the response is the numbers of ladies who dm-ed me, or commented, speaking of similar experiences. Sad!

I Need Balance!

Sometimes I like to dress up in my fish-nest stockings, red heels, paint my nails and lips crimson, stand in a balcony, and puff away on cigar, pretending to be immortal; deathless like the gods. When they ask who my name is, I like to say that it is Yolanda. Yolanda has a defiant tone in it. Like the world bursts and bows when I puff. I am one, but sometimes I feel like we are three or more in one when internet is concerned. When I sit on one side of the screen, as I open windows and others and frantically type, I am allowed to be a persuasive liar.

Sounds of my Hurtbeat

I am not so big on talking about feelings. Being a guy, I am genetically predisposed to keeping it all bottled on the inside until it starts gnawing at my very being. Occasionally, the festering emotions find a crevice in the otherwise cool, calm, emotion-free exterior and they manifest in random belligerent behaviour and passive aggression. I realize now that I may be on the fast track to alienating all my remaining friends. So, in an attempt to salvage what’s left of the mildly healthy relationships I still have going, to you my heart I bear. I find laying out my soul anonymously to hundreds of faceless strangers to be immensely therapeutic.

A few weeks ago, I met up with a pal for drinks and to catch up. He couldn’t understand why I insisted he bring along a book I had lent to him years ago. He was more confused when I blew up when he handed me a replacement for the book which he had misplaced. Needless to say, not much drinking or catching up was done after that. What I couldn’t tell him was, the book was a birthday present from this girl and the reason I got so upset over him losing it was, it was the last shred of evidence of our once thriving friendship still in my possession.

A few days before the meet up and the ensuing blow up, I received a wedding invitation in the mail. She was getting married! I didn’t know until I read about it in the bloody card. I was livid! I could not wrap my head around how we had gone from screening potential mates for each other to me finding out she was getting hitched in a mail invitation. In a futile endeavor to preserve mementos from the sunny days of our relationship, I had to get the book back; the exact one that she had gotten me. But just like the friendship, even that was gone.

We used to talk all day, everyday. She knew my deepest darkest secrets. While most people would freak out at the murk and number of skeletons in my closet, she played the part of confidante with an effortlessness that would shame a priest. And I could always count on her honest-to-God, unadulterated opinion on things. I returned the favor as best I could. How then did we go from that to exchanges limited to one generic birthday text per year? How did we go from her dragging me shoe shopping because my opinion mattered, to her making what is probably the most important decision of her life without at least giving me a heads up? What if she is pregnant too? What if she is moving to another country? I can’t help but wonder how many more life altering decisions she has made without my input.

I try hard to think back to that exact moment the friendship went to the dogs and I keep coming up empty. I wish there was a monumental incident to mark the beginning of the end. I even wish we had fought because then, this whole situation would have made a bit of sense and it would have probably justified trying to fix the relationship. But we didn’t fight, we didn’t cross each other or hurt each other in whatever way so there is nothing to fix. The sad truth is, a friendship that took years to build fizzled out in just a few short months and I have no idea why. I don’t blame her entirely. A friendship requires work and we probably should have put in more of it to keep it alive. But I can’t help feel like she gave up on it long before I did.

Anger seems to stand out from the array of emotions I am going through, none of which are pleasant. But anger I can deal with. I can smash up stuff (mostly stuff that I don’t have to pay for), I can scream myself hoarse into a pillow, I can punch out the couch cushions. What I can’t handle is the sinking, sick to my stomach feeling that comes after I have ran out of shit to smash, my throat hurts, my arms are sore and my knuckles raw. I am not angry at her though. I am mad and jealous of the world she now graces. I mourn the loss of her from mine. I know I should just RSVP, congratulate her for finding the elusive and somewhat mythical “one” and just deal with my issues. But the bottom line is, I miss my friend and my heart is breaking because I cannot tell her so.

By an Anonymous Guest Writer

Lets Flirt and Die Happy

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end (Sylvia Plath)

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty….how free it is, you have no idea how free (Sylvia Plath)

I don’t know what people mean when they say ‘relationship’ material, or ‘wife’ material. What is that? Cotton? Kind of dry cleaning material? Wash in warm water, without soap? All I know is that people are too serious about life that sometimes it escapes them, slides off their palm…and they stop living. Or maybe I am the one who isn’t serious about life…and I don’t know which between the two is supposed to be right. Things exaggeratedly excite us that all the time we are walking on life’s path, we skid and fall, trip on thorns and all. Relax people. Relax. It is never that serious.

I am a staunch member of this ‘flirtationship’ dogma. Here, we preach insanity and a little pinch of sanity, ‘unseriousness’, freshness and all. Things here are kept fresh! Let us not kid each other. There are many flirtationships that go on in our wrapped up boxes. In the wake of the day, we can’t just wait to hear the click sound, or see the red star, or the (1)…depending on the twitter client one is using.

I will tell you what I think of flirtationships. They are amazing. They are fresh. We spoil it all when we start putting tags on things. ‘This here is a relationship’…’and this here is a marriage’. I wish we could try playing loose, not in the real sense of the word, but you know what I mean. Stop labelling things! Labelling things fronts responsibilities and expectations. People rarely deliver. Thus I think you are safer not labelling. Put it in a box but don’t label…if it turns out as sugar, well and good…if it turns out as poison…well, die happily. You had your five good minutes!

Unfortunately, life is not edged  and smoothened as well as I would love to have it. At a certain point and time, people expect you to vow an undying commitment to a certain person. After a while, this commitment is   supposed to bear fruit and birth a ring on a finger. Nuptials thereafter. Subsequently, we are supposed to put up with heartbreaks, Mpango wa kando, bad sex, even no sex….all this just because life is the way it is and people are human! We then get used to each other, too used to each other that the staleness pongs! We become too acquainted with each other that we start taking shortcuts. One call or text is enough for a day! ‘But I called you this morning?’…’ Shit, I have to buy her flowers on Valentine’s day’…have to’s, expected to’s…see? It is all methodical and boring! ..life becomes a schedule, like an alarm that goes off every morning or a Tuesday that comes every Tuesday! I call it living as if we are planning death.

So what is a girl like me to do…who wants it all fresh and random all the time? What’s a girl to do who can’t stand falling in hopeless despair for a man? To be hopelessly at the feet of a someone… creating opportunities for disappointment? Don’t you think that this hopelessness is something we create as human beings? Moving away all the furniture that occupies our hearts to create space for bouncing balls that will most definitely bounce out. Why do I have to invest in that when I can flirt away with a particular person..who cares about me…and whom I care about, with no big expectations…no lines drawn.

A very good friend of mine once told me that it is very easy to fall in love with someone, what is hard is staying! I wonder if it is possible to fall in love with someone and still keep it a flirtationship. Flirt in love! Well, Maybe I am selfish, and I am on the wrong path of pursuit for happiness! But seriously, why does it have to be all regular and boring …all methodical….why are you just about to ask me ‘after the flirting, then what’… there has to be a then what? Can’t we live without thinking about tomorrow? I have two people in me . One wants to follow this set of rules, to create a space for this emptiness to occupy, to have a probable heartbreaker to tag on my arm…because there is fullness to this emptiness, a kind of a thereafter and long-term satisfaction. However, my shadow just wants to be random. I just want to have my cake and still eat it… to just be slack with it. I do not want to create expectations, responsibilities… I do not want to be disappointed.

In other news, @Marvo3

He said

I said

I do not need to introduce him. He is the man who gave clinical questions a new definition. He just does not care, he blurts it out there in the open, unpunctuated, ‘unweighed’! @Marvo3  makes it to my blog because I know a few lot of us out there with the same problem, and that I know people have started looking at me with this facet in mind. Clear the dirt in your eyes people. I won’t bite. Sometimes when people behave in such a linguistically decadent way, a nut snaps! I mean, what he asked was not bad by the way. I wish he had the art in him to craft it in a stimulating way! If you are going to ask something shallow, ask it in a very ingenious way…redirect the stare from the shallowness of your content. Again, twitter is not a brothel. It is not somewhere you will find girls lined up for a handshake and a push into a toilet for a quick one. Mbieiv! And If you have to pick up lasses, there are ways…there is an appropriate rhetoric! Do some research!

Judge me now.#okthanksbye

The things we dont say

Skeletons are a name for the buried caskets. There are those however, that belong to our closets. Those that we hide behind layers and layers of nice outfits. Sometimes we hide them because we killed the bearers of the bodies, other times; we hide them because they are just skeletons…burdens we bear for no apparent reason. Manacles for our undeserving arms and legs. Nevertheless, at times, pulling the skeleton out does help. Maybe not much, but at least, it keeps us from suffocating in the stink.

I read blogs run by writers who expose even their innermost secrets to an online community that is very much all and sundry. Some behind pseudonyms, others face on. Without wavering. I envy the audacity in their writing. However, isn’t it through your own experiences that you manage to teach? Not? Well, my writing mojo today comes to me in the wee of the night, spurred by thoughts of my sisters and a chat I had with a newly made friend…this mojo today comes out to undress me.

I am an overbearing sister to all young girls, and mostly to my sisters. I fear the sight of young girls walking home alone from school. I see harm in the face of every man who steals glances at them, even innocently. Every time I watch the news, I rarely fail to catch a piece on a she who was defiled. So it becomes even worse. I carry around a chronic fear, fear for my sisters…always thinking that someone is going to harm them… I am overprotective of them, even though I rarely show them this. But why?

I am ashamed of speaking about it. I have not told a soul too many…not even my closest friends, that this overprotection is not out of sheer love but things unrelated. At the moment I am debating on whether or not to stop typing because I do not see any sense in this post, and because my family reads my blog… However, let us see how and where it goes.

I do not remember his face, not even his name. But I do remember the colour of the door. It was wooden and blue. Behind it is where our forced violent rendezvous would be. Days and days. Me, 6 years of age…him , 40-something. My mother and his wife were best friends, and she would send me to her house for this and that from time to time. If I found him instead of her, he would usher me in, lift me up and work his fingers up my dress. 6 years old. I used to call it ‘that thing that he does’, only in my mind. There are times he would sit me on his lap and force himself in. He made me discover why I had a hole down under…. At times when we watch news, we fail to comprehend how a grown man forces his way into a girl whose organs are not even formed. It was too painful to forget. Too painful that for years and years sex and pain were things I couldn’t separate. Each existed because of the other.

If you know me that well, you know how photographic I am about the memories of my childhood. This was the onset of the vividness . Pain makes me memorise, unfortunately. In it was the kind of pain that leaves an imprint in your mind, the kind that makes you jump even at the mention of a word remotely associated. I remember things, even colours of shirts he put on…and his slippers, cut at the back into half to fit in his short foot. But the weirdest thing is I do not remember his name.

We stayed in a suburban area, in rental houses before moving back to the rural areas. I was always the earliest to get back home from nursery school, and the nanny would leave me alone for the better part of the afternoon. He would carefully time her, wait for her to leave, and then he would come for me. I never said no. I was afraid of him. I never told. Before this post, only a tweet pal knew about it. I do not have memories of loosing virginity to a boy I even remotely liked. When time came for me to allow one to ruffle the diamonds, and he asked “ Why there be no blood now? “, I blamed a bicycle that up to now , I cannot ride.

I have been ashamed of this for 20 something years. We since then moved location. Why I decided to blog about it? Because someone asked me why I am always worried about my sisters, and I could not tell him the exact reason because I am ashamed. I will not blame it for anything that is happening in my life right now, even though for years and years, it made me feel dirty and unwanted: and as usual, this came with its own mortifying branches of ordeals in the struggle. I have however picked up pieces of the broken pots and dusted my dress, moved on from that. But the fear I have for the young ones who have not even learnt the difference between an eye and a nose is what strangles me day and night.

The courage to share comes from the coincidental realisation that a very good friend of mine went through the same ordeal as a child; and the questions in my mind as to why we are ashamed of talking about these things. Questions as to why girls are raped and their eyes forever face the ground, never looking up again in the fear that the world will judge them. Anyway, understand me when I say that I fear for our girls…the young ones in the rural areas and even the urban areas who do not have the advantage of a school bus to take them home…even those that spend the day in the scavenging watch of vicious uncles, cousins, and neighbours. I fear for them.

Well, my skeleton is out. Let it go stink somewhere else.