Hey, It’s me.
The selfish lady who forced her way into life. Just here wondering how I lived my life, what was I doing when everyone was making friends. It’s like I’m hanging by a loose thread. The thread knows it and dangles me, not caring how hurt I get.
I’ve always read about happy endings and I thought I’d have mine but these were just lies I pushed down my throat to comfort myself.
It felt like I committed an unforgivable offence in my past life and I was paying for it.
I lost my dad immediately after I was born, and my mum couldn’t stay for so long; she died three months after my birth. My grandmother took care of me but she hated my existence. She said I robbed her daughter of so much goodness and still killed her, even when it shouldn’t have happened at all. This was a hard pill I had to swallow every day with constant reminders of how ill my luck was.
How bad could it be? I just had to go to school and prepare hard so I could make it. My grandmother put me in a public school because private school was a luxury a murderer like me didn’t deserve. No excuses but it was a school with a large population and I was still lagging behind. I was so slow and I needed proper attention. My grandmother’s cruelty was draining the life out of me. I had so much going on and I was missing out on school.
I wanted to be successful so bad but the odds against me wouldn’t budge. The school was hard, being mediocre was also hard but being born was the hardest.
If it wasn’t school, it was confinement. Every morning I’d scrub my skin so hard thinking it would come off, thinking the stains of my ill luck would wash off because a friend I tried to make in school told me it stains.
My ill luck stains and rubs off on her. I was basically tagged as a jinx.
Damaged
I wanted to say so much and pour out my mind to someone. Therapies were too expensive and I couldn’t afford them. Speaking to someone and being heard was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I yelled so loud in front of people but it was just into the wind and no one could empathise.
Years passed and I finally found love in someone called Tayo.
Love really is a beautiful thing. He listened effortlessly, it was like he knew how hungry I was for love and attention and he showered me with it. Love was a surprising realisation I didn’t know felt this good. It was a different feeling but I appreciated it. He made me feel alive, I felt like life was worth living.
Life was starting to make sense maybe I was hated so much to be loved this much…but was life starting to make sense or was I just in denial?
Tayo didn’t love me, he pitied me like a lost puppy. He didn’t just show me what I was missing but also what I’d never get. and he stripped me of the self-confidence, self-esteem and self-dignity I had left.
I’ll just never be good enough and it was high time I stopped trying to be and just accept that that’s how it’ll always be. Tayo said to me “You’re not special, you’re as random as random is, I just thought you needed someone and I felt bad for you. But I haven’t stopped needing someone”. I retorted, “Please don’t go”, I begged shamelessly, he was the only thing that made sense in my life and now he says it was out of pity, he should have just let me be.
Every day I had reasons to lose my self-esteem, the only thing I really wanted to keep to myself forever, just wouldn’t stay no matter how much I tried, it’s crazy how I wanted to be loved by him, how selfishly I wanted to be the only one, I just can’t stop him from going after better girls
Crushed…
I had a burden that weighed me so down I couldn’t feel my existence but I had a dream and it kept me sane and moving through it all, shoved down so much hurt and pain I was shutting down, I reached out but no one found me, I was melting away and no one noticed. I was broken, bare and undiscovered.
Flight…
Always been my dream to be a bird, free with flapping wings, soaring so high. I never had the courage to flap my wings, I probably just thought it’d be better and someone would come by and listen but everyone was too busy figuring out their lives to notice how messed up mine was.
Though they said empty barrels made the loudest noise, here I am lying empty with no sound. Just entangled and painful silence.
Tomorrow or someday you’d find this letter by my pillow and see how high I flew in search of my solace. At peace maybe.
Yours? Or No One’s
That quiet girl in the corner
Bewaji Williams.
