My life, right now, is somewhat of a mess. All of it. I have no idea how I got to this place. All I know is, this was not the plan.
My health – all of it – is at junk status. My body, mind, heart and spirit seem to all be in cahoots. All are withering like six-day old dozen roses.
I weigh in at my heaviest and, my BMI status labels me obese. I have not listened to my body, have not fed it for optimal performance. I have instead glazed it with caramelized popcorn, greased it with spicy wings (with blue cheese sauce – the only way to consume wings if you ask me), and sparkled it with speckled eggs (egg-shaped magic). I’ve had to take iron supplements to revive my haemoglobin level, after symptomatic anaemia all but sent me to hospital. My major confidant has become the 750ml red bottle of Pinotage… If bodies could shame their keepers, mine would cry the loudest.
I failed my first block of my final year undergraduate degree. A Golden Key invitee, four years in a row, and still I failed. I failed what was meant to be the best year of my university life. Now graduation is postponed and I lag behind my peers.
God. Even thinking that name feels blasphemous. I have gone so far off the track that calling this higher being, in whom I used to trust for my life in its entirety, feels ten kinds of wrong. These days, the urge to pray is so overpowered by the feeling of an impending lightning strike that I do not even entertain the thought. That I feel like a hypocrite may have something to do with thinking I might be smote. “What, you do not believe in me anymore, but you come running to me when it’s convenient?” is what I imagine God’s response to my prayers to be. So I don’t. I don’t pray. I simply let others do the praying. I have no right to ask for anything if I don’t like the big guy now do I?
And my lowest low of the year – being a mistress. I have absolutely no idea how I have the audacity to be complicit in the very thing I called out my friend for, all of last year. She was a mistress, and fell in love with the cheater. We spent hours, each week or so, talking about how wrong it all was. Then, at the first opportunity, I become my friend. How audacious. I do not even like the boy. I’m using him, breaking a relationship for my own selfish desires.
I almost had my sexual debut. Almost, I say, because the power-girl in me will not allow it to have been my first sexual experience. I did not cum. So it doesn’t count, period!
This, with a man in a relationship. A relationship with a girl I knew, a girl I advised him to go after, a girl who should be looking up to me, a girl who deserved more than what she had been handed.
I first got with him to get over a person I was infatuated with. Then it was because I was lonely. Then it was because I wanted to. Regardless of his relationship status, or his blatant feelings for me. It was all just about me.
So, I decided, it may be time to turn my life around. I am actively participating in my own version of the Eat, Pray, Love experience. I am working on myself, my body, my heart, my spirit. I am changing. I am finally getting the help I need, in attempts to become a better, healthier, more selfless, and smarter black girl.
(Written in 2017, in a trying and different time)
Blaq And Gold 