I had a yearning. A deep yearning. Let me out of here, I constantly thought to myself. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be around you people. I want to be on the outside looking in. And then, the day came. The day where I would have my most innate wish granted. I seized it with everything I had. Revelling in my new found freedom and sure within myself that there was no possibility of going back. Things would be good. Things would always be good. Because now, I was free.

How can I explain it? These days I hold onto the slightest happiness like a lifeline. Maybe it’s because I get so few moments of joy these days, that I will the few joyful moments to last longer than they should. In between preparing for my examinations which sap most of my energy away, and a terrible, most heart-breaking news I got recently, it’s a lot, to say the least. But hey, that is why I have my little joy sources, right?

“We lost him,” she said and suddenly, my heart stopped beating. The scream I let out drowned the rest of Mom’s words. My eyes were already blinded by tears. Too blurry to see, I clutched my phone tightly to my ear and made my way out of the hall and into the open. Stumbling and falling, but moving nonetheless, I had a hand to mouth because I couldn’t afford to scream. Not there. My tears flowed in torrents, and I felt that element of shock slip into me. My ears were beginning to ring painfully. I was losing it fast.

I am adverse to hype. My appeal to anything and everything would only come after the hype around to it has long died down. So, even though the entirety of my timeline on social media and Nigeria at large have been gushing about this single film, friends and family as well, I couldn’t bring myself to see it. Until, a couple of days back when I was roped into seeing it with a friend, and let's just say the experience was...

I knew even before I gave birth to him that he was different. Maybe it was because even up till the delivery day, my tummy still looked like a very nearly athletic woman, or maybe it’s because he actively responded to me when I talked to him. Not actual words. Just sounds. Sounds of assent and dissent when needed. He was already my best friend before he came into the world. Which was just about right because he was going to come into a fatherless world. When I presented a healthy baby boy to the doctors on arriving the hospital, as I’d already delivered him in the cab I came in, they only looked at me astonished, cleaned me up and sent me home.

There were two phases in my life when that was all I read. Graphic novels and manga. In my graphic novel phase, from Archie to Spiderman comics, to Pilgrim’s Progress, there were all I soaked in. The lights, the colours, the sounds and sparsity of words appealed to me for a long time. Although for works like Pilgrim’s Progress which is one of the best graphic novels I’ve ever read, I’d like to think there were more than enough words to keep me going.