What would you refer to as intimidation? Is it the power or ability of others to make you feel less confident, or is it the ability of others to make you want to hate yourself?
I can’t say. Intimidated is what I feel now, I feel like I cannot just be exactly what I want to be.
I am here in my mother’s Ex-best friend’s house, she is rich, fucking rich! She owns her own mansion here in portharcourt and her children are so cute, the ajebo kind of cuteness. I am wondering why God allowed my mum to die? As I wonder, I realize her mistakes – I mean my mum-as I realize her mistakes, I see myself on the same path.
Now I am wondering, in thirty years from now, maybe my children would feel intimidated, maybe my children would wonder why I made mistakes, why I couldn’t make them feel ‘among ‘.
The last thing I want to be is a bad memory, maybe not ‘bad ‘ in that sense but a memory not worthwhile.
As I write, I realize that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was wrong when she said ‘marriage is not an achievement ‘ because, it is. Not just marriage but the right kind of marriage. You might wonder why I would say this, well, my mother married wrongly and her Ex-best friend married rightly and right now, you just need to see her family, ACHIEVEMENT is written all over them, unlike us, so unlike us.
Maybe intimidation is the feeling that others are way better than you are.
Truth is sometimes I feel I can’t be better than my mum was. What could make me better? The ability to be strong? Or the ability to avoid mistakes previously made? I have the former but the latter? I can’t seem to avoid mistakes previously made, I could try but, I am not strong enough to. The two work together, it is obvious, strength and avoiding mistakes. What if I am not strong, what if strength eludes me? What if I am a photocopy of my mum, meant to live her life, make her mistakes, die her death? What if my life was staged long before my birth?
Truth is, I could never know. I would rather take life a day at a time until I overcome but, what if I don’t? I bet my mother wanted to overcome too. Again what if overcome for me, for her and for my unborn children and who knows, what if I don’t live at all?
My mum’s Ex -best friend is telling me now about how her daughter is in her final year in Babcock, how she would do her masters by next year in the UK. She says her son is going to Canada next week for his medicine course, she says she is making her children read hard. I feel tears gather in my eyes but I don’t let them out, I just smile, a smile that holds all the questions in the world.
I return home to my aunt and tell the tales, my aunt begins to cry, my mom used to feed her best friend, my mom used to clothe her, my mom was doing far better than her best friend, but death came and now her best friend is way better .
I don’t feel jealous of them, I believe in time and seasons, I believe that someday, someday if life permits, my children would look at Me and see a hero.
❤,
Duruem Glory Ada.
Every story 