From the response I got to my last post, I realised that I bummed you guys out with talk of my dead dad, and then the breakup.
First of all, regarding the breakup, TRUST ME, I’m fine. I learnt a few lessons; the most important one being that I should never EVER compromise, no matter how connected the beard is. Normally, I have three major things I look out for in a guy and I guess I asked for trouble when I compromised on one of them.
One of my least favourite people in the world are those ones who have a low level of self awareness. I cannot stand them. That’s why I do a lot of self reflection to try and “check” myself. I always want to be sure that I’m the person I think I am, or tell people I am. Does that make sense? Anyway, that’s what all those quizzes were for. Bottom line, I’m doing fine.
In other news, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! I dressed up extra special to the lab and got a lot of compliments. The work I’m doing today has many steps and some of those steps have long waiting periods. So I’ve been using that time to wander about aimlessly (from lab, to the office, to the toilet, to the tea room) so that people will see my outfit very well. I refuse to be hidden under this giant lab coat. The good thing is, if you hold a notebook and pen, no one will guess you are a birthday wanderer.
I only had 30 minutes to do this post so I have to go, which is fine because I don’t really have any motivational birthday thing to share. I just didn’t want it to be like I threw pictures at you.
Please say a prayer for me today. For the first time in a looooong time, I am ok with where I am. I have finally accepted that I can’t change the past. There’s absolutely nothing I can do to “undo” most of the mistakes I’ve made. Once in a while, I might have a tinge of regret over what could have been, but I eventually get over it. So if you want to know what to tell God, just tell him that Ngo is incredibly grateful.
The year before my dad died, a friend of mine went to see my mother about marrying me. The guy had said it several times that he would see my mother first, then go to the village to see my father. I didn’t pay any attention because he was never even an option. In fact, if God himself had come to me in a dream and told me that this my friend was pregnant and the baby was the son of God, I still wouldn’t have considered him. That’s how much of a non-option he was.
Anyway, he didn’t tell me he had seen my mother until after he came back from his trip. He narrated his encounter with her and the whole time, I couldn’t stop laughing. He concluded sombrely, “She said I shouldn’t try it. And that if I step foot into your father’s compound, he will shoot me from the gate.”
At that time, me and my dad were still mending our relationship. We had come a long way from the days when he would threaten to publicly disown me in The Guardian or The Vanguard newspaper. We went from not speaking for long periods of time, to regular phone calls just to find out how the other person was doing. It wasn’t perfect because sometimes, the conversations got intense and the words used were still abrasive, but it was something. So when my dad died, I immediately felt very exposed. I developed (and still have) an irrational fear that one man somewhere will marry me and treat me badly because there’s no one to shoot him. I didn’t realise that I had a certain sense of protection, until I lost it.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Did I tell you guys about the one where I got dumped some weeks before the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial? It was a very unpleasant dumping. It was by text… so for a long time afterwards, I had the words of the text. I read, and re-read, and chewed on those words. I took screenshots and deleted them. The text was three long paragraphs and included a bonus screenshot of a conversation with his friend in which his friend warned him to “steer away” from me. By the second day, I knew the words of the text by heart. I no longer had to check my phone to read it. The highlight was the part where he said I’d brought nothing but drama and toxicity to his life. To be honest, the text didn’t shock me because before then, he had hinted at it. He used to tell me about internet articles he was reading to learn to deal with the narcissist in his life.
Anyway, maybe it’s because of age, but I’ve developed a remarkable ability to recover from stuff like this so I knew I’d be fine. However, in the first week, I spent countless hours on websites reading about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and taking online personality quizzes. I first did the ‘3-minutes Narcissistic Personality Disorder Self-Assessment (instant results)’ quiz and I passed. The result was simple; You are not a narcissist. Still, I’ve watched enough Dr Phil to know that a diagnosis is never that easy. No right-minded potential narcissist would take that kind of quiz seriously. First of all, it had only 10 questions! Secondly, the result was just five words.
So I took more and more tests with longer, more specific questions. I fell into an abyss of quizzes and Reddit think pieces. I took ‘Toxic personality’ quizzes. I took the “Are you his peace or pieces?” quiz… “Do you take care of deez nutz or do you drive him nuts?” quiz. The only quiz I failed that was inconclusive was the “Are you neurotic?” quiz and I will tell you why later.
The good thing was, I didn’t have any major school work going on at the time, so I had ample time to brood. I spent the time taking care of my plants and went out twice to buy more plants till there was no more space for plants. I started watching The Office (the American one) and became obsessed with the cast of the show. It was just me, my plants and my quizzes. I eventually stopped taking the quizzes when one of the results read; “Be more confident and love yourself more.” Also, I saw where he posted ‘heart eyes’ emoji on some other girl’s IG post so it all made sense.
Some weeks later, the Amber/Johnny trial started and I felt so relieved. I watched clips of the trial, watched both Amber and Johnny testify, I read the horror stories and I realised that on a batshit crazy scale of one to ten, (with 1 being Pam Beasley/Sandra Bullock/Reese Witherspoon and ten being Amber Heard), I’m on a solid 6.5! Crazy-ish, but with mad cooking skills that will make up for it. Bottom line, there is yet hope for me!
I think I’m a decent girlfriend. I know how to take good care of my man. My love language is industrial-strength adhesive quality time and wifey shit acts of service. I just need to learn to communicate my needs/expectations better and maybe not cling like a koala bear. Hence the inconclusive result of the Neurotic quiz (but let’s not dwell on that).
This started off as a Father’s Day post, then I somehow veered off course and landed here. Who knows? Maybe my dad is watching over me from heaven and still shooting men to protect me. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- Other than that, I’ve been fine. I’m done with lectures and exams and I’ve started work on my dissertation. It’s a lab based project so I spend long days in a dark lab, treating skin cells. I’m working on the effect of a strain of bacteria on the expression of a particular protein in skin. It’s been very interesting. I’m becoming more and more confident in the lab to the point where I no longer need supervision.
One month ago, I was “The Contaminator”. I was touching sterile equipment without gloves, leaving my skin cells exposed, wearing the same lab coat to different labs. One time, out of excitement, I removed an entire batch of cells from the incubator and carried them to “show” my supervisor. She was in another lab down the corridor. The poor woman saw me walking towards her with the bottles, grinning from ear to ear like an idiot, and she looked like she was about to cry. I was expecting a round of applause for my exceptional cell-culturing ability. I figured the tears in her eyes were tears of profound joy, or maybe pride. Then she said in the calmest voice (because she is the sweetest, most patient person on this earth), “Ngozi, you know we can no longer use these cells right? They are most likely contaminated now”.
“Don’t worry!,” I said, “I covered the cells with the blood of Jesus this morning.”
I jest!
Anyway, I had to start the experiment from scratch. Since then, it’s been fine. I am a bit slow with my work, but that is because I am being overly cautious about contaminating stuff. Some days are interesting, some days are monotonous.
My birthday is in a few days and it’s a big one! I am actually excited about it, but it’s going to be a very quiet day. I initially had big plans to travel to an exotic resort somewhere to celebrate, but I’ve had to postpone all that till after I’ve handed in my dissertation. I don’t mind at all. I thought of at least doing the customary birthday photoshoot but I kept procrastinating it and now there’s no time to do it before my birthday. Besides, what law says we MUST do a birthday photoshoot when we turn 40???
I am excited because this is the official age where we are allowed to stop giving a rat’s ass about what other people think right?
Did I tell you guys the one about how I quit my job, packed up my stuff and moved halfway across the world to get a Masters degree in Clinical Biochemistry?
Every year, I wrote it as a part of my New Years resolution. Every January, I would start several applications to different universities. By February, work would get in the way and with each passing month, the application deadlines would come and go. Ocassionally, the application portals would send reminders to “log into the portal to complete your ongoing application”. Rinse and repeat the following year.
Last year though, I finally did it. To be honest, there was an incident at work (long story) and it was all the push I needed to move.
My first day of school was eventful. I barely slept the night before because I was both excited and nervous. I had picked out my first-day-of-school outfit with my brand new ‘first-day-of-school’ black suede boots. I was going for the mature-student-casual-chic look; black blazer, white turtleneck, black jeans. In the morning, one of my friends called to wish me luck and she prayed with me. She encouraged me to go to class early, and make positive declarations.
So I got to class an hour early and the room was empty. It took me a few minutes to choose a seat; close enough to the front so that I could see the projector, but not so close that my olodo will show. Then I opened my Bible app and began to pray, pacing quietly around the room.
“I am the head and not the tail. I am above only and not beneath…”
“I am the head and not the tail. I am above only and not beneath…”
After the prayers and declarations, I still had about 45 minutes to spare so I sat down and waited for the others to arrive. Then 30 minutes. Then 20 minutes. I thought it was weird that no one else had come to class. I mean, it was the first day of school!
When it was 10 minutes to the start of class and no one else had shown up, I knew something was wrong. Yes, I am the head, I thought, but surely the tails should here by now!!
Then I double checked the timetable and realised I had misread it. My first lecture was actually all the way on the other side of campus and I had declared myself the head of empty tables, chairs and projector. I set off but I had to walk slowly because my brand new ‘first-day-of-school’ black suede boots were tight around my ankles and caused my ankle chain to dig into my flesh… like an anklet of thorns. And that kids, is how I arrived at my very first lecture almost 30 minutes late.
The only entrance to the lecture hall was in the front of the hall and because the God I serve has a sense of humour, the floor was tiled so I walked into class with my first-day-of-school boots announcing my arrival… KOI. KOI. KOI. Like an academic Lady Koi Koi.
One glance around the room and I immediately noticed that everyone else was dressed so casually. I might as well have worn a wedding gown and red cape. I could’ve sworn (I’m not 100% sure) but I think I saw someone wearing something like pyjamas. With canvas.
Academically, I struggled a bit in the beginning. Before now, I hadn’t opened a Biochemistry text book in over a decade. Plus my brain is honestly not what it used to be so I have to work extra hard to keep up. It’s a different kind of learning here. The teaching is fast paced because they expect that at MSc level, you should know the basics. Nobody is holding your hand and begging you for assignments. If you like submit. If you like, spend hours and hours of your day watching reruns of Friends. Na you sabi.
Our lecturers (consultants and doctors) prefer to be called by their first name. I’m still trying to get used to that. I guess it’s fine if it works for them but as for me? Lol… I haven’t even graduated yet and I’ve already changed my prefix from Miss to MSc.
MSc Ngozi S. Orji (Masters)(considering PhD)(Sister is a Dr.)
…because you all will address me appropriately.
One time, one of our Consultants sent an e-mail to the class complaining about the poor attendance. It was a normal e-mail… but the next day she apologised to the whole class for sounding “a bit harsh”. I pulled out my phone and read the email again. And again. As far as I was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that email. All she did was ask us, romantically sef, to come to class for lectures using words like ‘implore’ and ‘kindly’ and ‘please consider’…
Unfortunately, all this niceness doesn’t encourage me to learn. I need to be threatened repeatedly. I just need someone to remind me that if I don’t work hard, I will fail and disgrace my lineage and the school fees I paid will be wasted and I will end up hawking akara on the streets.
If I do end up selling akara, I honestly can’t think of a better place to do it. I’ve fallen madly in love with this city, especially now that it’s getting warmer outside. I love LOVE this place… but I’m doing that thing I do when I don’t want to admit how much I love or want something so that if, for some reason, it gets taken away, I can tell myself that it’s fine. So when people ask me, “Are you planning to stay back here after school?”, I say “I don’t know. Maybe. Whatever”.
As a bad bitch.
One of the things I’m enjoying the most is the anonimity the city provides; the freedom of not knowing a single soul. Maybe one day it will eventually get lonely, but for now, I enjoy it. My apartment is in the centre of the city among these massive, beautiful, centuries old buildings. I love the buildings.
In other news, I’ve gotten my green belt in karate! I went from white, to yellow, then orange, and now green. I still can’t fight for shit, but it keeps me fit.
I joined a new church and like everything else, the culture is very different. It’s a white nice church… there’s a lot of emphasis on prayer and worship which is good. Every Sunday, they make us hold hands and pray for the salvation of Putin. And they are serious about it too. The only thing they expect to “die by fire” is barbecue.
And there’s a coffee stand by the entrance of the church hall so people get cups of coffee and take it into church and sip on their coffee during service. Me, I don’t drink coffee in church so that the day Jesus comes to the church and scatters the coffee stand and flogs all the coffee drinkers, he will spare me… and the kids of course.
By the way, if you’re still reading this, thank you.
ps- Been listening to a lot of love songs lately (don’t ask me why 😒😒). I just wanted to share my favourites;
DMX’s death hit me hard. I wept like he was my cousin.
For me, his music represented a happier, simpler time in my life. As a child, and even up until my teenage years, we (my siblings and I) were not allowed to go out as much as we would’ve liked. In that sense, my dad was strict. However, because he was a music buff himself, he bought us loads of music albums. And that’s how I started listening to Gangsta rap at a very young age. I was only 10 years old, but I knew what Kurupt would do if you gave him 10 bitches 😉
I heard DMX years later in Secondary school and what drew me to him was the colourful ways his rage came through in his music, maybe because I had a lot of pent up anger myself. I also loved that he had a playful, funny side. And that signature growl of his… when you heard the growl or the bark in any song, you knew DMX was up. For the longest time, I lived on his music.
Every time a death hits close to home, I react the same way; First of all, I’m hit with a painful realisation that “life is too short”, then I panic and I start to do too much at once. I start thinking, ‘I haven’t done anything I really wanted to do with my life!’ In recent times, it’s been work work and more work! ‘If I died today, the work won’t stop. Who will talk about how much I touched them their lives??’
So I will go out once or twice, or buy a nice gift for myself or some other thing that will make me feel like I am intentionally living life. And then days later, I will fall back into the same old work-home-church routine.
After my father’s funeral, I went out and bought a whole new set of pencils, paintbrushes and new oil paints. I even bought a canvas and an apron. I did like two rough sketches on my sketchpad and practised how to mix different shades of green paint and that was it. I haven’t done anything else since then. Some days ago, I noticed that mould had grown on the pencils. Meanwhile, the canvas is still under my bed.
Years and years ago, I used to practice Karate. I thoroughly enjoyed it then and I can’t remember now why I stopped taking lessons, but it is one of those things I’ve always wanted to go back to. So, two weeks ago, I finally registered because life is short right? Then bright and early Saturday morning, I was in Karate class. Surprisingly, I remembered a lot more than I thought so my Sensei took me out of the beginner’s class and threw me in the regular class. He said my form was good.
He kept exclaiming, “Excellent!” “Faaaantastic!” “That’s it!” and silly me, I let all the hype get to my head. I got carried away. I forgot I wasn’t 20 years old anymore and I was throwing kicks like Chun Li. The only thing I didn’t do was a fireball. After the class, I was a little sore but I was so pumped! Fast forward to Sunday afternoon when I thought I was going to die from the pain. Every inch of my body hurt and I couldn’t stand or walk straight.
I called a spa, booked a therapeutic/sports massage, and went there with a small jar of Aboniki in the pocket of my sweatpants. My masseuse could see how much pain I was in but she warned me about using Aboniki. In her words, “Aunty, you will hate yourself if you use this on your skin”.
Pain meds were not working and I had work the next day so I said, “Please use it like that.”
Long story short, I really should have listened to her. As I lay down there in flames, all I could think about was how for decades, angry mobs have wasted tyres and fuel on thieves and robbers when they could have just rubbed Aboniki on their bare skin and left them under the sun. Right then and there, I re-dedicated my life to Christ because I now know that hell fire is real.
It took one full week for me to be able to walk straight-ish again. My calves and my ribs were still sore, but I went back again bright and early on Saturday last week. I am told that it will get easier over time.
Other than that, I’m ok. A lot has changed but I can’t fit one whole year in a single blog post. Work takes up so much of my time so I barely have time to do much else. I come home and I just want to eat and snack and sleep. Also, I have decided to not talk about work at all, or as much as possible.
I’ve been sleeping on my couch because I bought an orthopaedic mattress a few months ago. If I’m listing my biggest regrets in life, that mattress will be in the top three. A lot of people advised me to get the semi-orthopaedic but I stubbornly refused and I got the full orthopaedic one. Now I’m stuck with this huge concrete slab that is covered with a nice cotton bedsheet. I’m thinking maybe I should just accept defeat and donate the mattress to NURTW to use as a speed breaker for heavy duty trucks. Then I can buy another mattress.
Anyway, life is short.
So I want to get a nice little tattoo. I’m thinking of getting something sexy, yet meaningful, like a symbol. It’ll be hidden of course, somewhere no one can see… except my gynaecologist.
I also want a belly button piercing… just a tiny stud. I’m not trying to set off metal detectors.
I want to not be so shy or self conscious all the damn time.
I want to move to an island with white sand beaches and turquoise water because who says we can’t live in a holiday destination?
I want to draw and paint more. I want to cook and bake and try out new recipes.
I want to learn to play the guitar. I found a tutor but he said I’ll have to cut my nails. I’m not sure I’m ready to give up any form of swag 😒
I want to write more because I’m happiest when I’m writing. I have a song in my head that I wrote a long time ago. I have stories to tell that are also hiding in my head.
Anyway… RIP DMX. And thank you. They say we should give people their flowers while they can still smell them. Realistically, we can’t give flowers everyday, but I hope you rest well in the knowledge that you touched lives and that we loved you.
That morning during breakfast, I sat close to a rich girl and her friend. Don’t ask me how I knew she was rich. She just sounded rich… and she acted rich.
Anyway, I was shamelessly eavesdropping on her conversation with her friend as she described the events before and after her father’s death. From the conversation, I gathered that he was an extremely wealthy man (I told you she was rich!) with lots of kids scattered around the world… but that wasn’t even the interesting part.
It was they way people behaved when he died that astonished me. His body wasn’t even cold yet, and extended family members started showing up to let her know that her father had promised to pay their kids’ school fees, their medical bills, fund businesses etc
A number of women crawled out of the wood works with kids that they claimed belonged to him. One woman showed up with a kid who looked nothing like anyone in all the family trees in West Africa, talmabout “We adopted this child together and planned to raise him as our own”. Meanwhile, two of his ex girlfriends took them (his family) to court over claims that their father “owed” them. She talked about how difficult it was for her and her step brothers to deal with their grief in the midst of all that mess.
I was having breakfast with a senior colleague, but we weren’t talking so I could concentrate on the conversation at the next table. As she spoke, she found it more and more difficult to suppress her anger and I felt sorry for her. Her friend was a passable listener, just managing to make all the appropriate exclamations at the right time, but I knew I would’ve made a much better listener. In my head, I had a thousand questions that I wanted to ask her.
They finished their breakfast and left. Wide-eyed, I turned to my colleague. “Oh. My. God. Did you hear thattt??”
He hadn’t paid any attention to them, so I told him the story. I may or may not have exaggerated the number of kids the man sired, and the number of ex-girlfriends who took them to court, but he got the gist of it all. There was silence as we were lost in thought, each of us pondering over the girl with the dead father. While we settled the bill, I made a mental note to call home to find out how my dad was feeling. He’s been ill and I hadn’t heard from him.
Then I got preoccupied with work. So by the time I picked up the phone to call home later that afternoon, I was told that my dad had died.
——————————————————————————-
One of the first things I learnt is that grief is not something sacred that you save to share with a special someone. I don’t think it’s something you’re supposed to hold on to like a prized possession… I suspect it’s not even a healthy approach to dealing with it. So cast it out. People will reach out, they will call you, they will visit. Let them. The people you expect to jump to your rescue might not know how to.
I am writing this, but I still haven’t let anyone pay me a condolence visit, except my boss. After my dad died, I spent a week locked up in my room, lying in bed and ordering ridiculous amounts of food.
I didn’t tell anyone because how do people announce stuff like this?? I always thought that this kind of news just sort of… spread. My family friends knew. They heard almost as soon as it happened, but who was going to help me spread it in Lagos?
It was when my church group posted the duty roster for Sunday’s service that I used the opportunity to send my church leader a text. Good morning dear. Please have someone fill in for me. I won’t be able to make it for service because my dad died a few days ago. And that was when the calls really started coming in. I answered a few people then stopped because talking to people, just talking alone, made me cry.
I let them assume that I had travelled home because I didn’t want people to gather in my house to tell me sorry. Holding back tears is not one of my strong suits. More than anything, I just wanted to be left alone.
Somewhere in all of this, there was a guy. We were only about a couple of weeks old when this happened and in the time we dated, I had fallen sick and then my dad died. What he got was the very worst version of me. So when his patience wore thin and he decided to return my key and pick up his stuff, it hurt like a motha (still does) but I didn’t fight it.
The rest of my family is around for Christmas… They had planned to come anyway, before the death thing, but now instead of going home to see him, we’re in my house. I had so much anxiety about playing host to all of them because my house is no mansion and I have slight OCD tendencies, but we’re making it work. I got extra pairs of house slippers for inside the house so that everybody has a pair… and no one has asked about the size 47 house slippers by my welcome mat, or who owns the extra toothbrush on the bathroom sink. Like I said, we’re making it work.
My remote controls are not lined up according to height and the TV is always tuned to Zee World, but I’m glad they are here.
Gtbank will send you a link that isn't working, then dismiss you.
Sukurat ended the chat because I said I can't call from where I am. If I could call, would I be chatting with you?
@gtbank@gtbank_help@cenbank
I'm happy the producers are not going to waste our time with the fakeness that is Harrison and Bronte. They should not be given that satisfaction...
#MAFSAU
