Existential Crisis Laced In Chocolate Chip Cookies

The rickety clock reminds me of time. Of a time when we ate jollof rice & merried. When all we cared for was dodging mother’s white slippers and fathers blue-black belt for caution. A time when we ran back into the classroom just at the sight of Auntie Bose returning from the principals office, or when we held hands at the back of our classroom with our boyfriends and girlfriends.

A time when everyone wanted to plan the end-of-year parties, a time when everyone wanted to be class prefect just so they could skip the “names of noise makers” list. A time when all we did on Friday evenings was sit around with the neighbors under the tranquility of the moonlight playing tinko while we heard our parents chatter in the heat of smoked fish and the stench of cigarettes and gin. Also, a time when we’d twirl in our church dresses and suspenders, and arrive just in time for Sunday school.

But before we know it, we are grown and pressured to take life more seriously because they say to us “with age comes responsibility!” So now we work to keep body and soul together but with a level of freedom to keep late nights, but not too late; and to engage in shenanigans with our significant others.

This rickety clock reminds me of a time when one second you are ecstatic and the next second, you think on your illuck and momentarily slip into a phase of manic depression. It’s like adulting comes with a certain box of regrets for doing something one way instead of the other & wishes to have handled situations smarter. A time when our livers work overtime at nighttime on weekends; you need to pray for us.

But now we are old, and burned, and tired. Buried in deafening silence in this house that used to be commanded by music (instead of kids of our own & kids of our kids – Grandkids that would run around the house like we used to).

But we had none of that because in the midst of all our metrics & values, we got too comfortable, we got carried away. Lost track of the time and the craft of preparedness. So we sit on the lawn, side by side, in our termite-infested chairs wondering where the time went. But we do not think for too long, because we know we are culpable. We sit for hours listening to birds chirp and crickets quirk but we never speak to each other. We had stopped speaking for 4 years. Not because of abhorrence, but because we knew we were bad for each other all along and never went our separate ways. Because most of the time, we shared the drugs. All we did was engage in youthful exuberance and hide in the shadows of “we are young, we have our lives to live, it’s our time.” But the time was never ours to begin with. It was an entity of its own. It wasn’t young or old, or reckless or calm, or bias. It was itself, it was time. 

So when the goon (time) visited, we were miles behind. Before we could scamper around, it was too little too late. Now all we do is sit around, feeling the last bits of our hair turn complete grey and aching around our joints, while we drag on old cigarettes that tug on our lungs painfully with each inhalation process. Because, what’s the worst that could happen right now except the inevitability of death. 

We hoped it’d come quicker. Death. We had heard the stories and all we cared for was that peaceful end gifted by giving up the ghost. But not suicide; sermons from Sunday school taught us that it was a straight ticket to hell. And like most Christians, we lived our lives in fear of hell instead of worship and adoration of the Jeova Sanctus Unus.

 

 

 

 

In essence, careful not to let life pass through you, but live in such a way that you pass through life (whatever that means lmao).

May the force be with you, xx