LIFE THROUGH MY EYES: FINDING YOU

Finding You

*Ping*

A text from my mother and all i could feel was the jolt that travelled around my body. It says “don’t forget lunch this Sunday”.

As if i could ever. This text comes up every Friday and even though i have told her severally that was no need to keep sending me such messages, she still hadn’t got the memo. “You are always working” her words not mine and if you are a good code breaker, there are several lines after this that says “that’s why you haven’t found a husband”

I come from a family of five, seven if you are counting the parents and while I’m not the oldest, i aren’t the youngest either. You could find me in the third place in the family tree, between a boy and a girl on each side. My eldest sister, Sarah is married with two kids while our youngest just got engaged. The more reason why all faces has turned to me. I mean severally, I’ve heard aunties question my mother why the youngest daughter has to get married before her eldest. My mother had been lost of words and this had made them take advantage of the situation more and more. And for while i had thought she had forgotten about that incident but it seems she had only been working out her strategies.

Months after that scene, she had started dropping little titbits like “if i was seeing anyone”, “what of that fine man in my office; is he married” (the fine man: David whom she met once when she came to my place of work to drop something off)

There had a time when marriage had been top on my mind too.

I remember my sisters and I being little girls and how we were teased that a certain boy was our husband, we didn’t find it funny then and it always end up with us crying. But I guess puberty kicked in and our bodies started acting to things around us. I remember liking a boy in school then, he was a year ahead of me and so fine he was. I’ve never thought myself as a beta so I guess one could conclude it didn’t start so normal. It started with a quarrel, an apology and him giving me a valentine card on February fourteen. It had been so cool then and to feel like you belong was a good feeling then. Others girls had gotten cards too so you can deduce what I meant by “to belong”. My sister Sarah had gotten a card too from a boy in her class. Our youngest Rose hadn’t gotten any; I mean she was eight and still in primary school. It hadn’t gone really well though, Sarah had to console her giving her one of hers since she had gotten two which I had found out only days after. At that age, the farthest thing on my mother mind had been us being in relationships.

We had even gotten talks like “if any boy talk to you, tell me”, “if any boy touch you, tell me”

After high school had been when the pressure had started. Little by little. On a Saturday, my mother had just returned from a wedding of her friend’s daughter. She had regaled us on how “Bisi” the friend’s daughter had meet her fiancé in her first year in the university and how they had gotten married immediately after she finished her program. “I wish the same for you, my daughters” she had whispered in a slow voice that night. Sarah had been the most affected that night. At that period she had been studying biochemistry in school when her initial goal had been to study medicine. Her plan was to buy another jamb and apply for the course of choice and mother talking about marriage had made her angry.

I on the other hand wasn’t too concerned. I too had gotten jamb to study accountancy and I felt the words were really for Sarah since she was eldest and all. Sarah had gotten married two years after that night. She was in year three then and was still studying biochemistry.

University hadn’t really been my scene at first. I had been a little like brainne (if you remove coming from another planet from the equation “see supergirl”). I had a hard time forming relationship. Nose in my book, it seemed I carried the title “nerd” on my forehead as an official designation. I had five roommates, one of them had been in the same department with me and I guess with her help I stretched out a little. I had also formed romantic relationship. One I had broken up with because I hadn’t been interested in sex with him and the other because he felt I was more interested in books than him.

And for a while I thought to myself “what’s the rush, you are still young”. So I stayed single. Even though mother was still dropping her hints, I remained single. She didn’t know that and I wasn’t going to tell her.

But I met him and everything changed.

………to be continued

Post by: Abubakar Abdul
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