I’m not sure how I feel about the end of this year. For most of the week, I was down with a really bad flu, and every time I stepped outside the door, I felt like my bones were rattly and hollow. I was dizzy, unsteady, and terrified of falling down because my ribs hurt like a mother and I was sure that if I did fall, they’d shatter like a cheap shot glass. For the first time in years, I wished I had a boyfriend, just so I could call and ask for chicken soup. Unfortunately, Dial a Delivery only does pizza, and while my adorable baby brother did bring me some medicine, it turns out he was sick too, so we ended up both blacked out with the doors locked and the curtains closed. Thank goodness for family.

The plan for the week had been to take some down time. In other words, sleep and watch back-to-back crime documentaries. My little princess was at a sleepover with her cousin, and my supernanny had gone home for the holidays, so I had the house all to myself. It was awesome until the germies kicked in and I was too sick to pick up the remote.

I had a house full of junk food since I didn’t plan to cook, but I had zero appetite, so the pizza and the yoghurt and the sandwiches just danced inside the fridge and mocked me. I can’t be sure they were actually dancing, but between the Lotem and the Syndol and the Coldcaps, I can’t be entirely sure of anything. I did get to spend some time with a very special person, and I’m grateful that the flu stayed down long enough to let me enjoy that.

Today the flu eased up a bit, so I vegged out on the sofa watching Bridal Plasty and Kendra. Also, the Kardashians. I don’t know what it is about those shows, but somehow, once I get them on, I just can’t look away! I’m glad they mostly show them in marathons. I’m also glad I have a really fast trigger finger. You know, so I can quickly change the channel when the neighbours walk by. After all, I’m supposed to be the kind of girl that watches Viasat Crime & History, not Girls Next Door.

Speaking of the kind of girl Im supposed to be, I quite like Justin Bieber’s ♫ Love Me ♫. It’s pretty catchy, as long as you don’t compare it to The Cardigans. But then again, I also like Britney Spears and the Furi Furi Remix Video, so hey *shrug*. Yes, you may judge me *cheeky grin*.

Anyway, questionable musical taste [and meds] aside, the end of the year makes people think about a lot of stuff. I got a message from a friend late last night. He has just achieved a lifelong dream that we share, and I’m really proud and happy for him. But it made me a little sad because I have quite a few dreams [including the milestone my friend is celebrating] that I’m yet to accomplish, and I have no idea how I’m going to reach them.

Some people take courage from others. I hear them say, ‘If so-and-so can do it, then I can do it too.’ Im not like that. When I see what so-and-so has done, instead of noticing the similarities between me and that person, I see all the differences. Then I poke a million holes in that idea and end up thinking that if so-and-so did it, there’s absolutely no way that I could ever do the same thing.

For example, I asked myself an important random question – how can I describe myself as a likeable person when I know so many people that don’t like me? My Life Coach would probably say I should look at the one person that does like me [preferably without declaring them crazy for doing it]. I’m fortunate and blessed to have more than just one person. I have a friend who called me at 2.00 a.m. just to wish me a happy birthday, while another friend walked out of a meeting to call me that morning, even though we haven’t seen or talked to each other in years!

I have a little brother that ploughed through the rain to bring me medicine, only to black out on my sofa right after because he was so sick himself. I have another brother who travelled all the way from Uganda just to bring me birthday cake. I have a friend who spends hours on the phone with me every single day just making sure I don’t kill any of my playmates.

I have a supernanny who is so fond of my baby that she came back from her holidays three days early to beat the fare hikes. I even have a friend who’s giving me free driving lessons in his brand new car! It’s heavily insured of course, and there’s plenty of chocolate involved, you know, to keep me watching out for that tree. With such a strong support system around me, it’s hard to listen to the naysayers. But we’re human, and I’m depressive, so sometimes, it’s just as hard not to.

Anyway, for the first time in a long time, I’m thinking about shutting down my blog. It started when I was watching Kendra earlier today. She’d been asked to do a Playboy shoot, and she wondered if she should, now that she has a baby boy. I mean, granted there are lots of saucy pictures of her everywhere, but like Hank said, those were ‘before’ pictures. I’m not sure what she’ll tell her little boy one day when he’s with his teenage buddies and they’re playing with some magazine and suddenly his mum pops up, literally.

It made me think about my blog. When I write, I’m very open and uncensored, probably a lot more than I should be. I write what I feel in the moment and I don’t always think about how it will affect other people – or even how it will affect me. The passion and desire to express myself is always so insistent that I have to get it down. But when I think about it later, I wonder if it was a good idea. Mostly when the person that I wrote about asks me to take it down. With my little girl spending so much time online now, I start to wonder if an open online journal is the best thing for my princess to bump into.

It’s like that fashion blogger from the Philippines, I forget his name. I watched him on FLN a few weekends ago. He said in the beginning, he put everything on his blog – his messes and his greatness. When he got high, when he got arrested, when he got wasted – he wrote it all down. But once he got big and realized he had some younger fans, he started to censor himself a little, just to keep his readers safe from nasty influences.

I tell myself sometimes that it’s good. When my princess reads my blog, she can see me as human, realize all the issues that I struggle with, know that when she faces some of these things, she won’t be the first and she won’t be alone because mummy has been there and mummy will always be there. But I also worry about her peers using it against her. I mean I’m sure when Hank Jr’s buddies show him pin-ups of his mum, it won’t be with a pat on the back and congratulatory beer. That only works on American Pie and Fountains of Wayne.

I’ve lived my life, found some enemies, held some grudges, made some mistakes, but I’d hate for anyone to use them against my daughter. I’d like her to be judged on her own blank canvas. I’d like her to paint her own picture. I’d hate it to be like that Jeffrey Archer book where Richard’s dad won’t let him marry Jesse because of who her father is. And no, its not weird that I can remember the character names but have no idea about the title of the book. I think it’s part of the Kane and Abel series. Maybe. Or it might have been a Daniel Steele book about Jewels…

I’ve also wondered about explaining some mistakes to my little girl. How can I tell her not to have sex in her teens when I gave birth at 21? How can I make sure she finishes campus when I didn’t do it myself and turned out so well? How do I explain why I always have condoms when I’m clearly not married and don’t particularly plan to be? It’s hard enough getting her to church when I have no interest in it. Thank heavens for Sunday-School-Teaching-Grandads.

My little girl isn’t so little any more. She just turned 9, but she looks [and acts] a lot older than that, and the boys are starting to notice. We had ‘the talk’ when she was 5, because her classmates were already ‘doing it’ in the toilet. Doing what, you ask? In her words, ‘kissing and playing with tails’. I give the anti-rape talk every chance I get, and sometimes she asks me to stop because it scares her, but I need her to know when to defend herself, and how.

I want to keep her safe from all the evil in the world, but I sometimes wonder how to keep her safe from me, from everyday events like having a glass of wine at the office party, or nibbling green cookies at a birthday thing, or dropping a durex from my jeans pocket, or Twilight and Vampire Diaries! [The cookies were medicinal by the way, and very, very scary. I am never ever ever doing that again. Ever! *shudder*]

I believe that I’m a good mum. I believe it because my baby is healthy and happy and doing well in school. I believe it because when she gets home from a sleepover, she gives me a giant hug and I know she actually missed me. I believe it because she asks a lot of questions, and we talk about everything.

We’re at the stage where she still thinks I’m cool and wants to try everything that I do, so she had dreads until the school made us shave, and she has fake tattoos every other week. She wants makeup and smartphones and gooodness knows what else, but we’ve agreed at what age she can try all those things, and that age is a long way away. Besides, since I have two tattoos, a hole in my nose, a love for rock music, and dreadlocked purple hair, then the only way she can rebel is by becoming a nun that loves Beethoven.

Still, I do worry. There are few things she would ask for that I wouldn’t let her do. Not because she’s spoilt, but because I’ve done them all myself. But there are also lots of things I’ve done that I pray she never tries, and those are the tricky ones. For now, I take it one day at a time, do the best I can, and keep my eyes open for a shotgun, because teenage is getting here faster than I can worry about it.

Conclusion? Well, flu meds are more useful for end year thinking sessions than booze is, mostly because you spend the entire time asleep, there’s no potential for a hangover, and they’re infinitely cheaper. This is the first time I’ve been online all week, and now that my ribs are feeling glassy once again, it may be time to slip back into bed.

All year, Ive been saying I want nothing but to sleep for three days straight. This week, I have, but that was mostly because I was too sick to do anything else. I do feel good though, and positive for the year to come, so if the world does end in 2012, I’ll be going out with a smile … mostly because I didn’t get that chance to use that shotgun yet. Happy New Year all, belt up, glove up, play safe, and see you at the Mayans!

♫ Closing Time ♫ Subsonic ♫

… lo and behold … nothing happened! I at least expected a thunder clap, or a unicorn, or the onset of instant wisdom and white hair … but nothing! Nada, zilch, zip … and for some reason I can now hear Bamzigi’s voice in my head. Anyway,the point is I looked in the mirror the next morning and thought, ‘I’m 30. Wow! Where’s the toothpaste?’ I spent all year agonizing over the big three-oh and yelling at people who said it was no big deal. Turns out they were right! I should have taken bets.

I remember sitting at my desk that morning as my workmates hugged me and asked me why I didn’t tell them it was my birthday. I whispered, ‘Because I’m 30. My life is over!’ It was probably more of a wail than a whisper. But then my beautiful friend played me a happy birthday video on Youtube by The Beatles, which made me laugh, but also made me feel old. I mean, she couldn’t pick a song by oh, I don’t know, Justin Bieber?

Anyway, in the run up to the day, a lot of things happened, including the planning of a party. It wasn’t for me. It was for my little girl. See, my little princess was born on my 21st birthday, so every year as I get older, I focus on planning her party so that I don’t have to think about mine. This year we had musical chairs and ice cream, and lots of balloon volleyball. We also heard the best suggestion ever! Usually, I just put her name on the cake, and count out her candles. But this year, her uncles were in charge of the cake. They put down both our names in pink, and suggested that instead of putting 30 and 9 (which I insisted was ridiculous) we should just subtract our ages every year. Then we’ll be 21 forever! #WIN

As we were getting stuff ready, my dad asked what us girls would like for a present. The question took me off guard, but I quickly recovered and mentally ran through my January wish-list from last year. Back then, all we had was a mattress and a radio. Well, okay, we also had a fridge, a microwave, and a TV which we had bought the day we came back from Tanzania, but other than that our house was empty.

But as I ran through that list, I noticed something interesting. Every single item had been crossed off my wish-list! In two short years, and without even realizing it, I’ve managed to get everything I want, from viable Internet to a vacuum cleaner and two tattoos! I may not be where I want to be yet, but it feels good to notice that I’ve actually made progress! Now all I need is a 100th Floor Penthouse, a Burgundy X6, and enough money to retire and spend the rest of my life reading novels, listening to rock, and watching documentaries. It would be cool to clear my debts as well, but I’m a good risk, so that doesn’t really worry me so much.

Now that the drama is over and I feel relaxed again, I can focus on the rest of my plans, and on the stuff that I’d like to achieve in the next 10 years. I’d like to save up enough to put my little girl through any campus she wants, and I’d like to have enough to feed myself in my old age – which isn’t asking a lot because I don’t plan to live a day over 65. Long Story. Fortunately, there isn’t a milestone breakdown at 40 so … oh wait … crap.

I’m reading a book called Approval Addiction by Joyce Meyer. It’s interesting because a lot of the stuff in the book makes sense to me, even though I’m not really religious. She says something early on that really moved me, because it applies to directly to me.

I was so afraid of being rejected that I acted like I didn’t need anyone, like I didn’t care what anyone thought of me, while deep down, I was trying very hard to please everyone and act the way they expected me to.

She also says that when you’re afraid that people won’t like you, you subsconsciously behave in ways that attract their dislike. What you fear is what you get. Joyce says we base a lot of our decisions on how we feel, without realising just how fickle our feelings are. The main message of the book is that you don’t need anyone to approve of you because Jesus died for you. That doesn’t really work for me because, well, that’s a story for another day.

But for now, what I’m trying to do is gather the philosophy of self-love. I like the quote that says it’s hard to love a woman who doesn’t love herself. I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks, and I realize that all my insecurity comes from my desire for approval, and my conviction that I’m not good enough. I approach it the wrong way. I deal with my fear by eliminating the need for people, when what I should do is stop wanting them to like me so deeply. I need to change the way I feel about me, and the only way to fix it is inside my own head. Hopefully, the book will help me do that.

It’s funny, because a lot of people see me as someone self assured and confident, and in a lot of ways, I am. But in a lot of other ways, I’m just a girl that’s scared of saying or doing the wrong things because if I do, the people I love won’t love me anymore. The book gives an analogy of a crumpled $50 bill. Even if it’s dirty, crumpled, or splashed with mud, it’s still worth $50. Self worth is something that comes from the inside, and nobody can really give it or take it away.

Every once in a while, I meet someone who clicks with me in every possible way. I start to think that if somebody that awesome likes me, then I must be worth something. But when you place your self esteem on someone else, you turn them into a drug, and sooner or later, you’re going to get addicted. And then when they have to go away, you’ll have withdrawal symptoms. That’s never pretty.

I suppose what I need to do is stop placing my value on my family, my support systems, my friends, or even my little girl, because I may end up simply being a burden to them. My sense of self should come only from myself, from consistently learning to focus on my good points instead of my bad, from teaching myself that I’m here because I’m worth it and I deserve it. We all do. It’s easier said than done, but it’s a lesson worth learning, and now that I’m older and wiser, it’s a skill I hope to achieve.

♫ Imagine me ♫ Kirk Franklin ♫