This Is Not About Now

It would be important to start off by saying how incredibly amazing I am.

Not to say I don’t deserve to move about with high shoulders, but that in this feeling, valid as I think it is, I want to admit that I am scared.

Future-scared, some would say. Makes the cut, but this time, something more, something worse.

Seeping into my mind every time is this constant reminder that I might never be enough.

Dreams are good and all that, but what happens when you find yourself feeling insufficient? I have traversed so many parts of myself, trying to get braver or to hone my skills, all while learning new ones, adding to the cart of modern skillsets that appear necessary in this fast-paced world. Self-rejection is all I feel at the end, and it plunges me back in.

Some days, I don’t want to do anything. Writing this now, and it’s the same feeling. I pick up my phone from time to time, reacting to every beep sound, to check if there’s anything new in the mail. It was an exciting experience two or three years ago when my mind ran free, and I was more averse to painful heartbreaks. Not the kind from love—at least at the time—but from rejection emails or from complete silence from the recruiter at the other end. Still, I push. I remember always saying to myself, “This is not about now,” nudging myself further, agreeing to the death that keeps you alive, that takes breaths from you after every rejection.

Or maybe not.

#

I am in my sixth year in this city living alone, and there are so many wrongs happening in my life, so many memories that won’t just leave. Worried about everything, I have chosen rest. The street is longer than usual today, so I am trying to board a bike instead. Phone hasn’t beeped, and neither have I received any calls from family, so I’ll just head to the pub down the street with this okadaman.

He engages me, but there are other conversations in my head. Engaging them alone, I ignore his.

Or he thinks I am ignoring him.

Reaching there, I pay him off, walking into the pub that doubles as a viewing center. There is a loud, crying crowd jeering, others, disappointed at an ongoing game, but I just want booze, then I’ll be out. He comes to me, not minding how I look, worried why I paid the game no mind. “Hello, my name is Raphael.” I could see him. He had an Arsenal jersey—a fading red, sun-beaten like an over-dried carrot.

There is silence because I have my airpods on.

Removing my airpods, I just nod, showing that I acknowledge his presence, not necessarily because I heard him. “I said my name is Raphael,” he says again, louder.

How did he know? That I didn’t hear him? Why is he smiling?

#

I have chosen a few words to say at my dad’s burial. There is a mob of crying ladies gathered under a canopy, hastened tears dropping off their eyes, caused by the words of the priest, and I am wondering if they were hired.

Dad and I were both in that bus when it capsized. Happy that I didn’t die, my mom held me close, worried what two losses would do to her soul, pain throttling from her heartbeat into my skin as she hugged me in the hospital. “Are you fine?” she asked, after what looked like six days of her son being in a coma.

I still remember everything. Like the day you encounter a rainbow on a coal-tar road, naive about the effect of rain when it meets spilled fuel. I cannot forget. That day, as she hugged me, I asked, “Where is Daddy?” The innocence in my voice turned into burning tears, hurting my cheeks.

Trapped by the memory of my father and I, moving around the shore of Ibeno’s high beach, happy that the wind made us laugh, I cried more.

“One day, son, you’ll become a seaman,” Daddy would say on one of our trips. “What’s a seaman?” He would laugh, would lift me. We would run into the sea, running back when the heavy tide came. We would jump. We would run after ourselves. I was always happy around him. Until he had to go offshore three months later, a regular ritual, not coming back until another three months, then I would be moody all through.

“You need to cheer up, okay, and prepare for school. Daddy will be back soon,” mother would say.

She held me tightly in that hospital, my mummy, and I would understand what it means to be happy that you still have some hope and sad that you lost something dear to you. All hope is never lost, right?

#

I answer to Raphael. “I don’t think I’m in the mood to talk right now.”

He doesn’t respond, but stares at me, smiling. Confused, I veer off, heading to another table, hoping he doesn’t follow, but he does.

“It is a loss from the past haunting you, right?”

Again. How did he know?

I am staring at him, worried that this might just be a ghost, pushing myself into my seat, hoping he disappears.

And he does. Literally, the crowd doesn’t recognize this.

I am frantic. With thumping heartbeats, I strode out, unwilling to be in that pub anymore. My eyes catch the name of the pub. It reads, Dreams.

I feel an itch under my feet. How?

I drop my head to scratch, and I am falling.

I feel so wet—drowning, bubbles blowing out of my nose, struggling with the formlessness of water, conscious of death’s fork tethering me in, legs above my head, a continuum of restlessness.

#

Someday, I, Matthew, will write about this dream.

I am up. Slept off writing an essay. “Just another bad dream.”

My laptop is in sleep mode, also tired from constant use, I guess. Thankful, and hands on my laptop now, I try to close it and head to bed, but there’s a beep notification.

It is an email.

From a Raphael.

“Are you awake now?”

Picture credit: Richard, Flickr