The Bank of The River is Dry

For a while, I placed my head on the table and there was something pushing me inside to cry. I really want to cry. I just feel crying would make me feel better. But I don’t think I will. I won’t.

2:03 PM

The muezzin’s slurred voice finds its way into my room as I write this. A few minutes before, I had observed my Zuhr and didn’t bother to go to the mosque. Earlier too, I had been to the hospital for a check-up. I might be battling with Asthma. I was referred to another hospital but I’m not sure I’d want to go. If I wanted to, I should have gone. This just made me realize how much I am careless about myself, about my body. I have been choking on my breath since last year and I didn’t bother to check out what it could be. There was a time when a boil rose out of my right knee and didn’t bother to take any drug. It is not my fault; I get tired of things that make me seek for people’s help or something. I just want to live my silent life and write.

I am writing this to heal. Because I don’t exactly know what is wrong. Sometimes I just find myself worrying over nothing. I woke up yesterday feeling like there was something I needed to do. And clearly there was nothing to do other than get up and face the laptop and work. I was just sitting at my desk, scrolling aimlessly through my phone, switching it off, switching it back on, doing nothing. For a while, I placed my head on the table and there was something pushing me inside to cry. I really want to cry. I just feel crying would make me feel better. But I don’t think I will. I won’t. I have grown to learn how to bottle my feelings inside. I hate looking at myself in the mirror and pitying myself. Sometimes I wish some nights when sleep traps me, I wish to never wake, because I know the boat of worry will sail away from me when my eyes are tightened. There might be nightmares, but nightmares die when you wake. Am I veering? I’m not sure I have a direction anyway.

I am finding it difficult to read these days. And to write. I might not have said this to anyone but reading and writing are the things I survive. Sometimes I get tired of doing them, which I understand but when it gets too long for me to get back, I start to worry. It’s been a while since I opened a book and every time I try to, the sentences become blurry. I have only been surviving on shorts. And it’s been a very long time since I wrote the kind of writing I really want to do. I use writing to tell my secrets. I write to gossip. I write to inform and instruct myself. Writing is a compass to me. It is where I go to seek for direction. It is like a safe place; a shelter I camp in when fears overwhelm me. But these days, I write what my job requires me to write. I am not complaining because I have wanted to have a job because I want out of freelancing but I’m afraid the job is taking away what makes me sane. (I might be sounding irrational but I know).

I will head back to my normal life now. I feel something eased out of me. I think my head is open now to accommodate new things. I will travel back home to see my mum before I travel down to Ilorin, to finish this degree of a thing. I look forward to what I’d become after University of Ilorin but I think I’d be fine. Or isn’t that what we say?

I’ll see you some other time.