Hey love,
I got your mail, I’m proud to say you’re my first (dirty mind, first person to send a mail). Thank you very much. I once had a bad experience that just makes me laugh when I remember today, I’ll tell you about it, I was a really sick child (I mean physically sick) child. Back in the day my parents thought it would be good if I got to see the world like my pairs did, so I was shipped off to the boarding house, as the naive happy go lucky child I was I thought of it as an adventure but alas, it was one of the most horrible things that could happen to a nine year old, those seniors were mean, I don’t mean the normal hazing, I once had one tell me she just hated the mere sight of me and she didn’t know why, from a 15-17yr old to someone half your age, that’s a little bit sadistic ain’t it? Even though I had a bad medical condition, I’d still get huge punishments and all. I became really shy and quiet and I started keeping it in and shoring up the bricks for my self-imposed walls, one time I got so frustrated with one senior that I wrote (writing has always been my outlet, hasn’t it?) down my frustrations in a book, I rained so many curses on her and her future generations (what’s a nine year old to do?) in my little notebook. Then a so-called ‘friend’ of mine at that time came to visit me in my room, I wasn’t there so she decided to snoop around, when I came back, it was pandora’s box in the open, the whole hostel had heard about what I did to Senior Seun Aina and I was punished and beaten severely. I couldn’t fathom why my friend would do that to me, so I became a recluse, I kept to myself until I was pulled out of said school. The first day I got to my new school I fought with the girl captain in a bid to establish my territory, I was determined that no one was going to hurt me that way, never again. But the downside of it was that the walls kept me in as it kept others out, I never learnt to relate well with people and if anyone tried I just gave them irrelevant information that I was already emotionally immune to and in my mind I’m like ‘knock yourself out’, it stops the dogs from finding your scent and it’s very bad, really bad because no matter how hard you suppress it, you’ll start looking for companionship, a best friend so to say, that you can share everything with, and because you never learnt to sift the wheat from the shaft, you start looking in the wrong places and what you’ve spent your life trying to avoid may eventually slap you in the face with a comeback. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say here, so here’s what I’d do if I were inclined to take my own advice:
1. Step away from the past
Ever heard the saying yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery, today’s a gift, hence it’s called the present. How are you supposed to move under the weight of the past you’re so evidently carrying like a 45pound chip on your shoulders, it may look hard and seemingly unreasonable to just drop your past like that but what has remembering and holding on to it gotten you except a mixture of anger, misery and regret really? It’s gonna feel lighter after I promise. It’s high time you moved on.
2. Be your own engineer
I have a friend, she’s absolutely brilliant, and beautiful too, I’m gonna lend you one of her numerous advices that she generously dishes out when she’s irritated at a certain person’s silliness lol, instead of trying to get people to be genuinely interested in you, why don’t you make yourself genuinely interesting first, butterflies are attracted to flower petals not the green leaves, bees are attracted to the honeycomb because of honey and so on. It’s easy to sit down and think everyone is out to get you but you know what’s more appealing? Working to make yourself a better person. Don’t know the person you pretend to be, know who you really are; know your graces – enhance them; know your faults – work to improve where you’re deficient, there’s none more beautiful than a person that is genuinely in love with who they really are, not who they pretend to be.
3. Get a sieve
There’s a saying that trust isn’t given, it is earned. That friend that always tells you what’s going wrong with every other person’s life will also tell others what’s wrong with yours. This is one of the reasons why we have to give ourselves time, if you’re too in a rush to make friends you’ll also be in a rush to get rid of them. Study people, watch out for their good sides, watch out for their bad, are they characteristics that you can live with? This is totally different from making assumptions, those only land you in trouble and they are usually the results of the paranoia you talked about.
That’s my two cents/kobo. I hope you find relevancy to your situation in it, I’d love feedback from you by the way. You’re beautiful, in and out, never forget that.
Love,
Gloria.
