No More Birthday Blues

For a few years of my life (I think between the ages of 17-23) I was often sad just before my birthday….may be not sad but at the same time not exactly excited. I stayed awake the whole night and unconsciously didn’t forgive those who forgot to call or text the whole day.

I also had a habit of counting my losses, reminding myself that I was a year older yet what had I achieved? And I suspect that because I actually expected these negative things to happen they eventually did (like having a boyfriend who forgot my birthday).

Well some years ago I woke up on my birthday and I didn’t give a flip who called me or not…..I simply enjoyed my day and was grateful that I had seen another year. I remember what I did, what I wore and even my hair style; I also remember having a wish list and one of the items on my list was a wristwatch and I ended up getting 2 : )

I don’t know what led to this liberating act; I figure that I had simply matured!

So it’s my birthday again and I had planned that by this age I’d be a top shot communications executive and I’d be married with at least a kid or pregnant and would have travelled to at least 5 continents and had my face on the cover of a magazine or on a building on Times Square, would have walked a runway for Diane Von Furstenberg modeling one of her great wrap dresses or on Forbes list of top so and so to look out for……blah blah blah!  LOL, I dream big right?

Well I guess Someone had other plans! Or I was the one not paying attention, not sure.

 I have another wish list by the way, and since the last time I publicly declared my list I got some of it, I’ve enough faith now to believe I’ll get all of this one;

·       I have been in love with photography all my life but finally got the courage to do something about it and take my training seriously; I got a camera! *Wide smile* However, I want to be ‘in front of the lens’ so I want to model a product (Nail Polish because I have nice hands; Hair Product or Human Hair because I have fantastic hair; Makeup products because I have great facial features that don’t need to be altered just highlighted) I’m allowed some form of self promotion please! Or simply model clothes at a MAJOR Fashion show. Kindly NOTE I will keep ALL items used at any of these jobs.

·       A Professional Makeup Box with wheels that opens up into about a million compartments OR simply a ZUCA Pro Artist Bag

·       Be a part of the Makeup Artist Team for any International Fashion Week (We can start in Lagos, South Africa, London then move on to other places)

·       To be 1 or 2 dress sizes smaller (so you can get any healthy device that would make this happen FAST)

·       Mary J Blige inspired Wardrobe *grin*

·       A holiday (I will let you decide destination, however a certain region in the Middle East knows my name so I can make a quick stop just to say hi)

Remember it is a WISH LIST but you can make a young lady happy! Happy Birthday to me *dancing*

Please forgive my image I’m a ridiculous Joker fan

What is a G to a 5 year old?

I asked my friend Seyi to write something I could upload on the blog today, within minutes he scribbled something and emailed to me. After I read his article which was full of abbreviations (rather lazy of him) I laughed and spent the next few minutes thinking of his ‘message’; it truly amazed me how the mind works and how we learn lessons from seemingly unimportant situations. Enjoy…….

I grew up thinking a ‘G’ was just the alphabet between ‘F and H’, I guess I could never have been more wrong. (I will not bother to define what a ‘G’ is but am sure we know in what context this is used).

My perspective on life’s general issues has always been broad, may be because I’m the middle kid and try to see stuff from my big brother’s angle and from my baby brother’s point of views too (Which I grant you isn’t the best for any growing child; having to consider what everybody thinks)……obviously I turned out to be a ‘people pleaser’.

That aside though at the age of 5, a ‘G’ to me was any one taller than I was and I’m very serious, it was as literal as it gets, if I have to bend my neck backwards to look at you, then you had to be a ‘G’…………….and come to think about it the tallest person I knew then was my Dad : ) so the logic is right.

Well as I matured and got over my height=G mentality, I learnt that D(G)ISCIPLINE is Key to a “G” (need I remind you, the ‘D’ is silent *wink*). Forget about right or wrong or good or bad, trust me that’s not what this is about, most folks who actually excel at whatever it is they do have put in the time and paid the dues.

You can’t expect to drag babe with D’banj, he has been in the game and whether yours is built in, his has been polished over time by repetition and with that comes experience. Might sound frivolous, but he has been disciplined in his pursuit of women and money. You also can’t expect to knock Warren Buffet’s hustle in the capital market….that man eats, drinks and breathes stock and I definitely won’t want to enter the ring with Mohammed Ali in his prime.

Discipline makes you stick to your task; American Navy seals who we often admire in movies always seem to win the war, not necessarily because they are physically stronger than the opposition or possess better arsenal (although those ship and weapons in the movie Battleship no be from here sha) but it goes beyond physical strength to intellect; for years they have mastered the art of reading, sleeping less, quick thinking under pressure, living to survive in seemingly terrible situations etc.

An Olympic gold medalist will probably train every day and not wait for 2 weeks to Olympics; the world’s best instrumentalist will stay awake for hours practicing what lay men call “Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do” before an award winning production or a performance. Discipline is that ‘thing’ that will get you going when you feel like you’re about to drop dead or give up.

For me a classic example of a ‘G’ and how discipline improved his life as a whole is Mr. Iron Mike Tyson; I’m an avid Boxing fan and I hate when people judge Mike based on the 90’s. Yes in the totality of his career he could have done better, but in the 80’s, he was unstoppable and I mean UNSTOPPABLE!

Mike had all the physical attributes to succeed in the world of Boxing and beyond……..but prior to when he met Cus D’ Amato his legendary trainer he was unable to qualify for the US Olympic team of 1984 losing twice to Henry Tillman but this same man cleaned up and unified the Heavy Weight Division after a couple of years with Cus. Guess Cus kept him focused, put him on the right track and basically just never giving Mike the option of saying no. And that was it -we had the shortest and youngest World Heavy Weight Champion; a 20 year old standing at 5 ft 9inches.

Left to me I could write about Mike forever, but I’ll leave you to run stuff through your mind as to how much Cus’ training and discipline changed the 80’s for Mike. Undeniably, Mike Tyson in his Prime was simply a ‘G’.

The Betrayal

The wetness of my bed woke me up before I heard the commotion around me

I put my hand to my eyes more out of confusion than anything else

Then I felt it, my room was wet, dark and cold, something wasn’t right

My hand went from my face to my chest; eyes wide open in fear…..

“My Child! Where is my daughter?”

I quickly jump out of bed and land into a pool of water,

I slip and fall out of shock and the ice coldness

I get back on my feet before I even bother to think of what is happening,

I open my door and more water seems to flow towards me

Where did this come from?

Who did this?

I have to find my child

Now I hear the noise, people are shouting names

Not so bright reflections from Flashlights I see through the window

I shout out my daughter’s name,

I run down my hallway towards her room

I shout again and I still don’t get a response

Her door is ajar and she isn’t there

My fear can’t be real, my raging heartbeat threatening to burst through my ears

My front door is wide open and I run outside

The water seems to be getting higher,

I walk around blindly, shouting my child’s name

There is something terribly wrong

The screams are louder, the fear in the air can be sliced

My neighbors are running, mothers are yelling, children are crying

Some are trying but failing to hold on to some belongings

I see an old man just stand in the corner, looking up into the sky, hands raised

He doesn’t seem to be making any effort to escape like other people

The chaos I see stops me in my tracks; holding on to my gate as I stand chest deep in water

I have never seen this before; I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack…….

 

……….it’s been 4 days and I can’t find my daughter.

I’m sitting on the floor in a makeshift refugee camp for displaced people

“Displaced? Four days ago I had a home, a child and a thriving business and now I’m called a displaced person?”

I still have on my body the T-shirt and wrapper I fell asleep in the night before that dreadful experience

I wandered in the floods looking for my child, no one came to help me, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep and now I’m sure I didn’t breathe

For I was dead, something left me the day I moved through the dirty water that refused to go away looking for my daughter.

 I walked into something, I thought it was just floating clothes so I moved it away with my hand but my finger got hooked and as I tried to remove it I recognized what I had touched- a body, long dead and almost completely decomposed.

I looked up and realized I had wandered into a cemetery, the floods had moved bodies out of their place.

I turned and walked towards another direction, there was no need to scream, no one would hear or help. What difference would expressing disgust make? I had a child to find…….

………The ground had literally shifted beneath us

 

It’s been 13 days, I found my child, I found her body

She has swollen to double her size, she has gone dark and her once flawless skin looks stretched

I sit and stare at her for a long time, fighting anyone who tries to take her away from me

There are no more tears.

I had cleared a path for my child; a perfect journey totally different yet better than the one I’ve had to walk

And now she’ll never get to her destination.

She was all I had, my best friend; wise beyond her years; always seeing through the hard front I put up as her only parent

We saved each other from everything…….apparently not this one

This was beyond the strength I had ‘built’ over the years, I had no control

She has never been afraid of water, even in the bath tub as a baby

The cool breeze that accompanied the closeness of the water to our house,

She always loved to take walks and feel the serenity the water brought

And now it had turned its back on her, taking away the life she didn’t owe it

Within seconds, without warning, a beautiful blessing had become an ugly curse………