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Real Time: Thursday, 17th January 2019:

I think when you’re too focused on things that are not building you, things that are a spur of the moment, things that come and go, feeding too much into superficial desires, you’re neglecting LIFE, you’re depriving yourself of LIVING, you’re afraid to LIVE. These habits get repeated abnormally until it’s instilled and believed that it’s a way of living your best life amongst other things of this sort.

In the meantime, you’re performing acts of negligence, you’re neglecting your ambitions, your purpose, your potentials, your greatness, your awesomeness. And do you know why? because you’re afraid to LIVE. We’re afraid to push ourselves, we’re afraid to be outcasts, we don’t want to “embarrass” ourselves, we don’t want to disappoint our friends, we want to belong, we want to fit in, superficially.

I have been living like this most of my life – until recently. Listen, there’s nothing wrong with indulging in some spur of the moment experiments, but if they’re top of your priority list because it has unconsciously and obliviously become normal and a way of life and living for you, then you’ve got your values rooted in for distasteful results and unhappiness. We pursue happiness in the wrong way.

Hey, I’m no expert in Happiness, I just discovered this, and I’ve just hopped on the next train, opening up and sharing this new journey as authentic and honest as possible, and I feel so good about it. Feels like baggage been lifted off my shoulders. Feels like I’ve just gotten a very hot slap on my face.

You know when your better half, your boo, your bae (as we call them) is busy with his nasty things on the side, cheating on you and shit, the day you find out; how do you feel? That’s exactly how I feel about this super-recent life discovery, I’ve opened up, I’ve allowed myself to vulnerably and willingly reflect, ask myself honest questions, and admit that I’ve been a runner from LIVING. My priority list has been shit & I have been randomly getting so angry at myself – even now I’m angry at myself, I feel like a fool, how did I allow this to happen, to go on for so long? **claps once**.

I didn’t have a super rosy childhood. My parents were going through a divorce at the peak of my teenage life, 16 years old. During all of this, my little brother passed away at age 8, (he could have been turning 25 years old on the 25th of January, a few days from now), a few days later I found out that I just failed and I’m going to repeat a Grade (but I knew that I didn’t make it, I had gotten to be very rebellious), a few months later my dad eventually moved out to go stay with his girlfriend who was younger than my older brother. I was prohibited from visiting him but I always found a way to go see him behind my mother’s back, he literally lived a few blocks away. 3 years later my grandmother (his mother) passed away, 2 weeks later he (dad) passed away, I was 18-19 years old. I was a mess.

Before all of this, I grew up watching my mother screaming and shouting at my dad, my dad couldn’t be bothered, he’d be sitting on a couch, with his legs crossed, “reading” his newspaper. It was a norm, I was used to it as well. I was very young, I didn’t know or understand why he was being shouted at all the time. But I remember that my dad didn’t really spend his most nights at home, he’d be absent for any preparations when schools opened for me to go back to boarding school (yes there were days when he was present and “available”), my mother would have to make transportation plans on how I’m getting back to school. He’d miss going to family burial services, he’d disappear and just resurface days later. He was there but he wasn’t there, he was present, but he wasn’t. This was normal for me.

This was a normal LIFE. But then now and then I’d ask myself inner questions like, but then how did these people find each other, got married, had us but fight all the time like this, how did they allow it to get this far? But hey, it was “normal”.

My Father: My late father man, he had a very quirky and meek character, low key funny. I loved him to bits! The fact that he was an Architect made me brag about him so much at school I remember, (but who wouldn’t brag about their dad being an Architect in a small town? 🤷🏾‍♀ and I know what you’re thinking, that he MUST have left us with a massive beautifully designed and planned out big house? Nah, he still left us in a 4 roomed house dude. I wonder why he never did. Anyway, I’d pass so many houses that he planned and just point out to them and say, hey that’s my dad’s work).

He was very popular in my hometown, they called him Izzo, Bra Izzo or “Izzo wa di-plane”, meaning a man with/who plans and designs. He had his regular drinking spots where I’d find him chilling, sometimes so loud and cheerful with his “friends”, a side of him I didn’t see at home. This one time at his drinking spot, I’ve caught him dancing (with a rhythm of lifting 1 leg up and jumping with the other and switching sides). I was shocked, to say the least, I couldn’t wait to go home to tell my mom. He was just weird man.

I loved my dad, he was a weirdo. I miss him.

The more I think about his life values, the more I realize that he never dealt with whatever he needed to deal with, instead, he took it out on us, his family. From bits and pieces of information I have collected and the little he has imparted about his upbringing to me on just a random day, it was not rosy at all.

I’d still like to sit with one of his childhood friend/s, a family member from his side and just try to get to “know” him better as an individual. Unfortunately, so many of his family has passed including his older brother who was forever and always so loud and extremely funny, quite a little bit the opposite character of my father. I adored him dearly actually. I remember one weekend at boarding school, he paid me a short intentional visit just to give me some pocket money from my father, he said. I think he was fairly drunk, as I got called to go meet him and I was asked who he is, I lied and said that I don’t know who he is, he’s just a friend of my fathers, I said. I know right, I suck big time! May his soul rest in peace, I feel so shitty that I did that. Sigh, anyway, I’d really like to get a chance to make plans to meet with someone who knew him (dad) a whole lot better before he got into a union of marriage, having kids and so forth. My mother only knows the romantic side of it all of course, but I want to know more.

I don’t want to end up like my father nor my mother. My mother was transparent and honest enough with me to tell me that she doesn’t want me to end up like her, that she wants, wishes and prays MORE for me.

I am spurred on by ambition, I am not running anymore, I don’t want to be afraid to LIVE anymore.

Unafraid To Live.

To be continued…