3CB

As opposed to …

Every once in a while, my body chemistry goes completely out of whack. I know it’s not PMS, because that was three days ago. It might be a case of metabolic confusion, because I’m taking mild coffee to counteract the effect of pain meds. I’m recovering from surgery, which means I’m on a lot of pills that make me very, very sleepy. Also, I’m a tea person.

I do feel rather schitzophrenic, and it would be fun to whack some snow with a flamethrower right about now. I feel angsty, because it’s the beginning of the year and I have absolutely nothing to worry about or look forward to. The horror! I remember an episode of Dharma and Greg where he was complaining that he didn’t know how to relax. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I just can’t handle the calm feeling of no-stress. Apparently, I’m such a control freak that I’m worried about not being worried!

Anyway, Lang’ata has had an unusual amount of traffic this week. So this morning, our matatu decided to take the scenic route – through Kibera. We started out on the Southern Bypass and ended up near China Mall.

As we navigated the murram, I think I was supposed to be humbled by the bustling life all around me. You know, barbie, slum tourism, that kind of thing. Instead I kept thinking, ‘Why are those pigs walking around like free range chicken? Maybe I shouldn’t get meat from that pork butchery anymore. Is it drinking while it’s pissing? From the same mud hole?!? How can anything that filthy be the source of bacon? *shudder*

Well, according to science, pigs are actually the cleanest animals in the world. Not that you’d know it by watching them eat while they piss. And how they can eat trash and spew bacon is still beyond me. Safe to say I am sufficiently traumatised – at least for the next five minutes. I mean come on … it’s bacon!

Also, the matatu cartels on route number 8 are scary. The way they reacted to us encroaching on their road, even our makanga was intimidated! In other news, there are some really posh apartments near Kibera, complete with gated sections and GCE school buses. Who’d ‘a thunk?

Okay. I have tons of work to do, so this mood needs to be on its merry way. Unless it can somehow lead me to a flamethrower and a gigantic pile of snow. Onwards onwards.

♫ Life Must Go On ♫ Alter Bridge ♫

When I was a kid, I watched this movie about a girl with leukaemia. She had a list of 50 things she wanted to do before she died, and at the end of the film, I wrote a list of my own. I keep losing and rewriting the list, so I don’t how many of the original items are still there. Once in a while I take it out and replace things with more relevant activities. Other times, I cross them off completely, when they no longer seem worth doing.

Lately, I’ve made a more conscious effort to do the things on my bucket list. Two years ago, I went horse riding, but I didn’t enjoy it. Last year, I went rollerblading. I didn’t particularly like that either, though I did lose quite a few kilos, judging by the way I was sweating. Apparently, rollerblading is good exercise.

I’d read about that in books and things, about the fitness benefits of shoes with wheels. And all the instructors at the skater park were deliciously skinny. The girls weren’t quite so small, but then I’ve always heard it said that guys shed weight faster. I don’t know why those wheeled shoes shed pounds. I mean, it doesn’t look like you’re actually doing anything except standing. But between bending your back and knees, maintaining your balance and trying not to break things, you actually do burn calories.

Princess and I had three lessons a piece. By the end of those three hours, I could stand on my blades without falling, get up unassisted after falling, and sometimes stop myself mid-free-fall. Yes, I do notice the emphasis on falling. In those same three hours, the princess was skating backwards, doing rollerblade limbo, and running jumps over street-hockey sticks.

At some point, soaked in sweat and sore from falling, I sat in a corner and watched the kids.  I wondered why it was so easy for them, why they seemed to catch on so fast. My theory is they’re less wary, less self-conscious. They’re not afraid of getting hurt, looking stupid, breaking rules, or doing it wrong. To them, it’s a fun new adventure and a way to move fast. (Apart from the instructors, there were only two adults on skates, with maybe fifteen kids. My fellow adult was skating with her three year-old twins.)

I’d always daydreamed of zooming along the tarmac on my rollerblades, but the actual blading wasn’t nearly as much fun. In fact, it was barely fun at all, just really exhausting. It might be because I was concentrating so hard on not losing any teeth. Maybe if I practice more, spend some time on it, I might start to like it. But then again, it only takes one spoon of ice cream to get hooked, so maybe rollerblading simply isn’t for me.

For some reason, that makes me sad. At least two things that I’ve always wanted to do have ended up as duds. So how many more items on my bucket list are non-starters? And how many things I’ve sworn never to try might end up being fun? Like … oh … I don’t know … bungee jumping? I am so confused right now.

Over the holidays, I went to Lake Victoria for a stroll. I’ve always loved water. Or rather, I’ve always thought I loved water. When I lived in Dar, I’d spend hours at the beach just listening to the waves. I did swim in the ocean once or twice, but it didn’t give me the pleasure I anticipated – the current was too strong and all those sea animals creeped me out. So that’s one more bucket-list item that flopped.

Meanwhile, being at the beach (and inside the ocean) in Mombasa felt like such an anti-climax. The energy was all wrong. It felt almost oppressive. And as for Lake Victoria, rather than the waters being soothing and serene like they are in my dreams and in my poetry, the waves were rough and angry, the atmosphere indifferent.

I’m often accused of spending too much time in my head. Reality will never quite compare, even on the few occasions I dare to take a peek and scope things out. I have no sense of adventure, and I don’t feel the need to experience things for myself. I’m quite content to read books about people doing exciting things and fill the details in my mind. Life is so much better in my imagination, and in a way, that’s really, really sad, because I guess it means that I’m not really living. And yet, for now, I’m quite okay with that.

♫ Wild Thing ♫ The Troggs ♫

I’ve always had this thing about being true to myself. The only problem is I don’t see myself how the world sees me. I suspect few people do. I’ve never really noticed that though, because most people hide their ‘blue skin’. They wear masks depicting what they’re supposed to be … or what they think they’re expected to be.

I read an article a few days back that put it in a very interesting way. The article claims we all need love to be happy, but we hide that need, even from ourselves. Then it goes on to talk about meditation, which I don’t do anymore, so ignore that part. Anyway…

At the core love is what we all want, but we are too buried in our protective gear to receive it. Love in an evolutionary impulse. To be loved means we are safe, we are fully accepted and we belong. If we belong then we know that other people have our back and we’re going to be okay when danger lurks. We can relax, be vulnerable and open up to the good that life has to offer.

But we don’t live in an ancient culture anymore where we physically belong to a tribe or not. It’s not okay to be vulnerable, but vulnerability is where love lies. Nowadays we have to dress a certain way, act a certain way, socially contort ourselves a certain way to find acceptance. We engage life not from any authentic core, but from a series of sub personalities. As we do this we create different masks to wear within our families, work and even among friends.

I suppose I’m at the extreme end of this spectrum. I believed that being true to myself meant putting my entire self on display, then crumbling when that ‘self’ made people run away. What I realised is the ‘self’ I was portraying wasn’t really my blue skin. Because of my depression, I has such a negative self image that I couldn’t see anything good about myself. It was so pervasive I couldn’t recognize the strengths everyone else saw. I was getting all these compliments and still viewing myself as worthless, unwanted, unlove-able.

Thanks to some home therapy from a good friend, I’m starting to acknowldege my strong points, and that gives me a much better sense of myself. I agreed to focus less on my weaknesses. In fact, I promised not to talk about them at all, so I could focus on the stuff that’s good. But then I saw the poem about blue skin and I wondered if I was back to square one, hiding the very thing someone might be trying to find in me.

Except that’s not really it. When we’re looking for someone to love, someone who is like us, we’re not really looking for flaws. It’s not like I want to marry a man with a temper just because I throw things around when I get mad. And the ideal person to handle my mood swings isn’t someone as moody as me.

What we’re hiding are things we think others might not accept. Things like unusual hobbies, eccentric taste, embarrassing pleasure points. I might hide the fact that I’m 32 and still play Super Mario, or that I spend hours at a time watching reality TV. (Not the Kardashians. I prefer Extreme Couponing, Long Island Medium, What Not To Wear, Secret Eaters, True Hollywood Story, Say Yes to the Dress, Brides of Beverly Hills … Shows which in some ways are worse than the Kardashians … *sheepish grin*)

Everyone accepts Big Bang Theory as mainstream comedy, but a lot of people still think watching Stargate Atlantis makes you a nerd. (I love all the Stargates by the way. Except Stargate Universe, that one is kind of dark. But for the others, Daniel and Sheppard are way hot, Sam is my hero, O’neal is pure comedic genius, Ronon Dex is an absolute dream, and how could anyone hate Teal’c?)

I might hide the fact that I don’t understand Afro-Fusion or John Legend and prefer to listen to Nickelodeon soundtracks. A guy might pretend to like floetry he doesn’t understand, or a girl might deny enjoying Papa Shirandula or Vitimbi. This is the kind of blue skin you can spend a lifetime camouflaging. And we hide it so well that we could miss out on the blue-skinned love that walks right past.

I guess the blue skin thing isn’t an issue for me because I like to shock people. I actually enjoy exposing the blue and watching people’s reactions. And now that I’m teaching myself that I’m worthy of love, I know that some blue-skinned boys will come my way. It feels good to know I’m growing enough to willingly accept their affection when they show up. It took me long enough, and it’s definitely about that time.

♫ Me and you against the world ♫ Rags soundtrack ♫