CHAPTER 6: God, we need to talk
26 August 1988
Mhama told me how people didn’t know what they wanted from women. We are always told that the man is the provider, in response we look for men that can actually provide. We then are labeled gold diggers. She says she has stopped minding what people thought. She lives her life as she pleases, she is her own authority. Mhama is trusting me more with her deepest thoughts, I think she is intelligent.
This entry conjures up a lot of emotions. For a few years I had also convinced myself I was my own god, every decision began and ended with me. I answered to no one, even my mother. I smile sadly at the irony, she set me on a path that she soon lost me on. I remember the day she gave up on me.
I had gone out with Garikai and not come back home. I came back in the morning, it was a Monday, a school day. I was so drunk I could barely see the road. Of course a 15 year old staggering home early in the morning was an intriguing sight for the housewives that were sweeping their yards.
Mhama was outside when I got to the house, a couple pairs of eyes fixed on me from houses across and next to ours. I believe what I hurt most was mhama’s pride, I made her look like she did not have control over her only child, we got into a verbal fight and she declared, loud enough for our audience to hear
‘I do not know who you take after, I do not have a child like you, you did not come from my guts’.
In my drunken state, this did not bother me much, I dismissed her with a wave and went inside to sleep off the alcohol. The memory makes me feel so sorry for the broken family we were, the broken family we are.
I look up from my laptop and notice my colleague , Rue, staring at me.
‘Are you okay?’ She says quickly when our eyes meet. ‘We have a deadline and you have just been sitting there staring into space’.
‘Sorry,’ I reply, ‘I am almost done’.
I continue with my work, at the back of my mind however I keep thinking about how my life has since changed compared to then.
All this thinking stirs up desperation in me, after I get home later on that day, I am almost angry. I make a beeline for the bedroom and sit on my bed. I close my eyes and picture myself sitting at God’s feet, they are huge and I can’t even see his face.
‘God,
I know you’re the King of all, nothing happens that surprises you. You cause everything to be. To say that I completely trust you now would be a lie, I don’t. I have given you all the control for my life, I gave it up to you. I trusted that you would do a much better job than I had done with my life.
I’m desperate to convince myself that you’re good to me. I have sinned, over and over again. I don’t deserve your mercy, but I need it. How can I live without your goodness? I don’t doubt you, but right now I just doubt your intentions for me. I’m human, I break. I cannot take this load that you’re giving me. I will break. This is too much for me.
I don’t want to get confused about you, which I am right now. All these people that have put their hope in you because of me and what they have seen you do in my life, you’re going to upset their faith just because you don’t want to give me a child, for what? Is this who you are? Who are you? A God that says one thing and forgets it, or doesn’t care to fulfill it?
How then are you different from man, if you can lie , if you plan my life with such sloppiness. I have seen you work in my life before, I thank you for that but right now that is not a comfort. I refuse to scavenge for comfort from has beens, I need your kindness now. I can’t accept less of you, the God of impossibility.
I am not sure I am supposed to talk to you like this, I apologize if I offend you. If I cannot trust that you have my life under control, I don’t have the will to live , I don’t have control over my life. If you don’t, then who does?’
My heart feels constricted, no more words come out of me, only tears. They wreck my body as I struggle for breathe. Sitting on that bed, I wonder if this is how people feel right before they decide to take their own life, empty.
