This stories we tell

Fear can be defined as so many things but described as nothing. 

No description ever gets the exact feeling, still, we say them anyway. 

This stories we tell are our fears. This rise in irregular heartbeat and uncertain reality, pessimism is contagious so we fine-tune them.

All my life i've lived nervous about death. 

What happens in the after life? Why can't we live and live and live and just never die? Does death have to come with pain? This thoughts have haunted me, with no doubt have made everyday a huge task. The self awareness that one day death will come and you will not be ready, nobody is ever ready, even after almost eight decades, when Pa was gone we cried, wept our mouths dry and our eyes swollen.

And then i feared aging. The wrinkles, thick thighs looking like squeezed wrapper, an extra leg to aid your steps, for your full legs couldn't lift itself up anymore. What did the future have in store for us only 5feets and some inches above the ground, when shrinkage happened? 

Instead of actually living, i've sat at the far corner watching my life play out like a movie with every year a series of unfortunate events, some tragic, some pretty, others never ending. 

Towards midnight yesterday, a bird chirped over the roof of my house. In that subconscious state, the first word that comes to my mouth is "Blood of Jesus". 

Few minutes after, I look at myself and laugh so loudly, How did that happen? Where did that come from? That used to be only mommy's thing, screaming after strange sounds in a language she could barely understand, sprinkling anointing oil at the four corners of the house, for exemption from things that glided through the skies and others that crawled with their bellies. 

Me at the side laughing at her results from a half conducted experiment, dusty observation and blank procedures. I was the idealistic kind of Christian, the one who only does the things that make sense, if it doesn't add up it shouldn't even be considered. 

Emphasizing and over emphasizing on how she could be so crude with judgements, how she would vehemently say 'this one' was evil because her mind told her so. Times and times after, she would tell me "Adaeze you are still young, when you are grown you would know".

Is this is it? Maturity? This realization that all of life was governed by the supernatural. That your mind had a brain of its own. This awareness that the heart of man was desperately evil. That there was more to chirping birds at midnight and re-occuring incidents.

This is our fear (it's just like me to generalize problems). This is my fear. 

That I'll laugh at someone else's innocence, marvel at the thought that people do not know better, that i'm going to loose the spark of openness and wrap myself in lots of sighs - a woman of virtue said only few words.

I had always thought there was a school, a class, something, that just made every adult look at fun as passive, look at life like some dictator, making predictions with this fist of certainty. 

I celebrated growth when it was visible in others but me, lol.

Almost two decades after, and do I know what my life is about? 

Some day, I'm going to be told that my way of understanding was to naïve. New days would come and my taste in music and movies and entertainment would look like a circus. The 20's is going to be looked on like 1900, What can they possibly know? 

I fear that the streets which I once walked upon would not have my footsteps on it, new gravels would be graded in it. My memory of fun and my stories of adventure would look like fairytale and told as moonlight tales, impossible realities.

When this thoughts make my eyes wet, I wonder if I've had enough for the next level of the lifecycle. 

Whatever you were taught in biology about man's life cycle is crap.

It is birth- money- marriage- death, it just has to be. 

Own your truth say your truth, but what do we do with the fear, the doubts?

Pessimism is contagious so I'll just pretend this is the end. 

Precious Manuel