Yes folks, its official. More than two years since the last attempted murder on my heart, and I am feeling myself get ready to take on something more.
Lest you feel I know who it is, let me assure you: There are no present candidates.
However, I’m beginning to feel the slow burn of anger and my sense of betrayal to dissipate. I am feeling hopeful and free. Frustrated yes, because things aren’t happening as fast as I would like, but I take steps everyday to get to where I have to go. I take as few detours as I can.
I am getting there. Slowly, but surely.
I have pretty hair. Store bought hair true, but it is pretty. I bought pumice stones and foot brushes, dug out my foot scrubs and started to take care of my feet. Ya’ll I bought my first tube of lipstick, and a lip liner for the first time in three years, just last week. A magnificent shade of red might I add, in the tone I always wear. I still haven’t bought those high heels, but we’ll see how it goes.
The point is, I am changing my ways, and trying to work on this beauty regime. I am loving me in absence of lover. I am beginning to trust myself again. So maybe I will find a way to start trusting someone else again.
I am also trying to find a way to balance my home life. It’s hard, because I work and live in the same the same. My bed and the bed of my child, are mere feet from where I work. So this is the major challenge of my life.
I must admit, I’ve spent the better part of the last couple of years, holding the world at bay as much as possible, so I could stay here and spend time with Dayo. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. However, I find that depending on one source of revenue in Barbados, is proving a significant barrier to being able to afford to live independently, and still provide the kind of quality of life I want for my son.
Fortunately, for the first time in my experience of living in Barbados, I am finding opportunity all around me. I am taking on all I can, some I shouldn’t and am to the point where I must SCHEDULE projects in order to work on them. I make every effort to be pro-active about my work, and although production becomes frustrating as soon as more than two or three people are involved, I am still producing as much high quality work as I can and making a living.
I am surviving, and it pleased me to be able to start setting aside some money to groom myself.
One of my mother’s oldest friends, my Auntie M. — who my mother says is more like me than she will ever be (and this is truth) — has said to me on the phone and in person more than once, “when you were a little girl, you were the colour of honey and you lived in the Sea. You had magic coming off you in waves, and anyone who saw you, saw that.”
She says this, to remind me of myself. This daughter of the Sea, who never goes there anymore. Maybe I need to find a flat close to the sea. On the edge of water, and live there for a year or two.
I need to find that honey-coloured girl again, who didn’t need pumice stones, because the reef she played on kept her feet complete smooth. Who didn’t need lipstick, because her lips were always red stained with whatever fruit was around to eat. Who didn’t need pretty hair at all, and in fact spent most of her childhood with a low boy’s cut. I need to find that magic girl again.
I remember that the magic was my innocence. I was sad even then, and much too serious my mother has always said, but I know what Auntie M. means about the magic. I’ve forgotten what I had by grace, and must now learn again painstakingly.
I need to keep loving myself up. With Dayo’s help — he’s very much into kissing these days — I am forcing myself to do it, until I mean it. Until loving myself is habitual and requires no effort.
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