uMwizerwa wa Ngoboka

Sister love, I felt it the uncountable number of time you dug your very long nails into my butt tryna wake me up. I heard you call me six hundred and sixty six times or more. I sensed your footsteps on your way into my room. Yet I did not wake up, didn’t show any sign of life. When it felt like too much, I gave you a very weak yes, meaning just let me sleep. However you took it as an invitation, an invitation to start lecturing me, giving me ultimatums. “You have two options,” you said in your most stern voice. “Either you wake up by peace, or I shall evict you from that bed and throw you out God knows I can!” In a more insisting voice, I tell you I can’t do wake up. At this time I’ve run out of excuses. I had the headaches, stomach pain, PMS and I couldn’t come up with another one. On a more serious final tone, you take the covers away and leave me to fend for myself. I sleep for a while and go back to take the covers and sleep again. This, love, was not me a...

After hours of waiting, the doctor was finally able to see me. I was apprehensive of what would come next, but I entered anyways- I had no other choice. Walking was really hard for me, I wished I had wings to carry me. I couldn’t tell the psychiatrist what was going on with me, instead I made analogies about trees falling. If a tree fell in a forest, and no one was there, does it make a sound? Even better, if a tree fell in a forest and no one saw it, did it really fall? I was the tree in my monologue, and I wondered what would happen if I was no more. I had experienced imposter syndrome in highschool, and i thought i had grown used to it. I thought, it wouldn’t be as crushing as it turned out to be. Despite passing all the classes I took in the fall, it didn’t feel like an accomplishment. Instead, I braced myself for failure to hit me straight in the face. Winter break came, and everyone left for home or other more interesting things. I stayed looked in my room. When my food...