This Novel in My Head

I have always been a passionate writer, but in the recent days it’s only been happening in my head. An awful laziness has got into me and for sure it’s a bad one as I find it so easy to postpone writing. I am loosing the initially ever present urge to express my unspoken words in writing. Surely, why did I stop writing yet I have so many things to write about all stored up in my crowded head.  This is a silly question, but sincerely, why can’t I keep in a safe place all these memories which will soon fly away out of my head! Or even better yet, why have I lost the connection with pen and paper as a confidant and a vending place for things that trouble my mind!

There is this novel I have always written in my head; in fact it should have been ready for the market by now because its publication should have come so long ago. As long as before even my graduation.

The novel was supposed to be a narration of my life’s journey in comparison to a sewer cycle. It was supposed to relate my life to the various stages sewer water goes. As it comes from the initial stage where it is still not mixed with other domestic wastes, when it is still pure treated water in a tank to when it is received as raw filth coming from huge pipes into sewer ponds. I was supposed to be a gradual comparison of this cycle to my simple innocent life as a child through to a wild teenager trying anything and everything bad and unlawful as I grew into an enlightened and responsible adult. 

How I got this idea! I was at a botanical garden one afternoon, alone. I had just come from a Jehovah witness meeting and was feeling so fresh and holly. Being in my forth year, naturally, I was waiting to receive the world, or is it the world waiting to receive me with all the nice goodies. I was so happy I had finally made it past the mucky stages. In my mind I would come out of school and get a job straight away. I would start being independent and even provide for my younger siblings and old granny, the exact imaginings of any teenager getting into adulthood.

This undocumented novel was to be about my very big dreams. In this novel, I immediately got my first job after school and started saving money for later investment. Well, it now sounds ridiculous, but I have always wanted to be the boss and my children the beneficiaries of a re-known dynasty. I have always wanted my grand children to be like the present-day children of Manu Chandaria; to inherit something, to have a starting point or something to fall back to immediately after school. So I wanted to start a ranch. A ranch, because my dad kept low breed cattle and so I grew knowing that to be our family business or maybe just because I wanted to continue with what he had started, Mbajah’s dynasty. Then I wanted to start a hay production company; this was certainly because of external interactions I made with people, Jaymo to be specific.

Yes, Jaymo was my classmate in high school. Very important to note is that I used to beat him in class, but because he had a father, a father who had a company producing animal feeds he was able to go through a self sponsored program in college and immediately get a job in his father’s company long before even I got to my final year in college. Speaking of this makes me feel like am being jealous. Or maybe I am actually being jealous; ah-ah this is not right so I won’t talk about him here though I really admire his zeal. Topic closed.

Back to my unwritten novel – yes- the novel was supposed to be about the good life I had as a child. When I would get all I wanted from dad or mom, be it school fee, Xmass clothing, special delicacies, medical check-ups, spiritual guidance from mom and once in a while disciplinary torment though strokes of a cane from dad or very hardly ever slippers slaps from mom. I know it’s all weird but now I miss what I hated most, being punished for a mistake I had done. This was a good life that lasted till class four before things begun to change. This is the point at which in my comparison, clean water went through the kitchen sink or the U-vent. This is the stage water started losing its purity and the same would continue till it got the large city council sewer lines where it met all grime from all quarters…

Enough with this! Instead of talking about it, why should I not start writing it down? Yes, the actual writing of the novel instead of talking and thinking about it. That will do me a lot of good because travelling back though life till I get back to the purer end of the sewage will refresh my soul and mind, I believe. Imagine telling this story from the start to the end! It will be like re-living my life; to identify places where I had a score and the exact spots where a clutter was registered. That would help me avoid the kind of mistakes my parents did or the ones I did as a child or a wild teenager. Or even better, writing this novel will help me re-cycle my life. Just like water is relieved of its impurities my life too would feel fresh at the final paragraphs.

I am sure this is not going to be joyous ride through the past, because emotions will be evoked. Oh God! Will I really talk about the painful moment exactly as they were? Writing about happy moments is always easy though it might also be a little painful if the events are compared with the present difficult state, but still it won’t be as painful as having to write about the exact feelings I had at the lowest ebbs of my life. The moments I get chills referring to even today, like when my mom passed away, when the pastor threw in soil on my dad’s coffin, when my cruel pastor reminded me of my state as an orphan in a bitter talk…

No! No, I can’t!

I can’t write about those moments without shedding a tear. I can’t write about those moments without hating, again, the people who made me live through them, some whom my heart had slyly forgiven. Oh! God! Why does it have to come back, why does the pain always have to come back? Why do these memories keep niggling back to the corners of my heart like slithery demons? Wrong question! … God, why me?

I am memories. The bitter ones, the sweet ones and even the ones that only other people remember are the same things that define me. They shape my character, they give me strength to face the world and make me human, a loving and caring human who knows what is right to say or do at different times or places and what not to. These very bitter sweet memories are the corner stone of my conscience and for this reason I will re-live them once more through this keyboard and screen.

I will write, starting with the sweet memories, yes, writing about my life’s fun moment like when I received my admission letter to a national school, or when I had my first kiss. Yes. I will write about these fun times and when it gets too exciting, I will bring in the sad ones. This will help me bring balance in things. It will be like a reality exhibition of my own life with all the lows and highs in natural harmony as designed by God through Satan’s interruptions.

Ha-ha, this is brilliant. Very brilliant! This is what I am going to do. I am so bright. “Write about the fun and wild moments and bring in the painful moments when the excitement gets too much.” Don’t you think this is brilliant? Either way your opinion doesn’t count because this is my life and I am going to write it all down.