Today…

Today.

Sigh!

The thing I am most afraid of. Today.

Not yesterday, because I could always convince myself that none of it ever happened.

Not tomorrow, because no one gives a rat’s ass about him. No one has ever seen his face. For all we know, he could be a figment of somebody’s imagination; conjured up so as to feed his hope and keep the inevitable hopelessness at bay. We know nothing about tomorrow, so we will pay him no audience until he becomes man enough to come in here and face us.

The problem I have is with today. It is the one thing I cannot run away from. It is as present and as real as the scar on my right index finger where a bicycle spoke pierced when I was 10. He cannot be ignored and cannot be done away with. He is just there, acting as a constant reminder of just how depraved and dilapidated your life is; how what you keep saying and what you keep seeing kinda don’t add up.

Today.

The day I refused to get up.

Over the last few days, I have been going through what can only be termed as a mentally and emotionally excruciating ordeal. I did not get here because of a single isolated event. Nooooo. They were several; several dudes who ganged up and decided that this was the time to acquaint themselves with me. It has been attack after attack after attack; from who I am, to what I believe, to what I thought I had decided.

I have been avoiding my laptop this whole week. The reason for this is that I am thoroughly convinced, maybe I am not sure, that all this started when I decided to uncover some of the scars from my childhood that I had kept safely locked away in the vault of my emotional bank. I had then labelled the box ‘No Access’ and struck its existence from the bank records such that at any time, when anyone did an emotional audit, everything was always sauber enough not to arouse suspicion.

Then I had to go out and rant about how I had been raped as a kid. As I penned down that piece, I had pictured what the consequences of my new found transparency would be, but nothing prepared me for the onslaught that came; not from without, no you guys were just amazing. Calling me up to tell me about how it took guts to do what I did. No, the siege came from within me; with my mind leading the charge.

Apparently, it did not take it kindly to its secrets being revealed and decided to make an example of me for anyone out there, stupid enough to follow in my footsteps and all of a sudden develop a conscience.  Unbeknown to me, when my mind allowed me to start using my darkness to help people find light, it had put a contingency plan in place, lest my vulnerability became too much and threatened the image that they had worked for over two and a half decades to build. The sacrifices it took to get us here were too great for me to be allowed to cause it to crash in one day because of my need to ‘decompress.’

The last few days have been brutal.

With my mind waiting till when I am by myself before it could begin. Its shots came hard and with marksman precision; aiming at my weakest and most vulnerable fronts: my constant need for approval; my heart’s constant cry for my mother’s love and affection; my low self-esteem and poor self-image; my feelings of unworthiness and constant need to prove myself etc.

It reminded me of my days of isolation, when I was all by myself yet in the midst of people; of the days when I had to be high for over 20 hour a day just so I did not have to face the reality of just how messed up and broken I was; how everyone else looked so perfect and I was the one who always got stuff wrong. It reminded me of the days in Juja when I would walk out at night, looking for people to ambush me just so the pain would remind me that I was alive; of the nights I found excuses to sleep at my friend Jack’s house because all my roommates were out and I did not trust myself to be alone throughout the night.

I tried the affirmations; tried to encourage myself but it’s like the more I did it, the more I felt the mockery that came with it. I have been afraid of falling asleep because of the uncertainty of what lay on the other side. The days drag by and the nights are not enough.

I kept a straight face though. Smiling most of the way. I got a new haircut and tried to call back and text back as many people as I could. I went for walks, half-watched movies and tried my hand at multi-tasking. I did everything just so I would not allow my mind to be free enough to focus its attention back to me.

Tuesday was the day I broke. I got home so drained from trying that all I wanted to do was get on my bed and not get up. Got on the bed with my BlackBerry and earphones (A mistake, big one at that.) 15 minutes later, I had deleted 200 songs and was strongly unimpressed by the 246 that I had had mercy on.

By morning, I knew what I had to do. My body got up, because it was needed to be places and do things; but my heart stayed in bed. I left my phone with it, just so I would not have to talk to anyone, lest they ask me if I was good and I be honest enough to tell them I was not. That would be too great a burden to put on someone because now they had to ask me what was wrong.

As I write this, I am not even sure why I am telling you this. I just am. Take it or leave it, it does not really matter.

Sigh!

Today…