I am changing…

…and it’s making me cry.

I always thought I knew myself inside out. I was wrong. I look at my friends, the people I grew up with. They all seem to have morphed into these strange, sophisticated, sometimes b****y creatures - and it’s not just the girls. They all seem to have - I don’t know - grown up? Or maybe just grown down.

I met one a while back. She’s a hotshot lawyer. There she was in her bobbed perm and pinstriped power suit and attache case, and in my mind I had this before-and-after image of her in our shapeless high school skirts. See I was in this high school where - well, the nuns didn’t want us to distract any men. So our uniforms were so amorphous that they’d make a coke bottle look like a cabbage. Hence chicks from our school had this rep of being suuuuupuuuuus ! Coz after being seen in those sacks [and we were rarely seen], any civilian clothing was glamorous by comparison. It was entirely the before-after effect.

Anyway, back to lawyer lady. We met on the street and chatted for a bit, then suddenly she laughs and says “CB you haven’t changed a bit!” I was so flattered. I don’t ever want to change.

And yet I am.

In the past year I have done things that I swore I would never do. And they weren’t good things. I have broken promises that I vowed on my life. I have learnt that ‘I will love you forever; nothing will make me stop loving you; I will never hurt you’ are empty. When you say them, you probably mean them with every fibre of your being. Or at least I did when I said them. But now I realise they are just words. Better to say I love you, and mean it, and leave it at that. Those other big words are just big words.

I wear skirts. And I like it! I met my cousin last weekend. She was maid-ing for a wedding so she was all done up in satin and chiffon and make-up and she was miserable. Her and a friend of ours - who was also maiding - were ranting and whining, and I was laughing my heart out. See, when we were younger, we had this ‘burn-the-skirts’ club. Those ones of ‘catch me dead in a dress.’ Well after a while they quit whining, coz, well, I like skirts now, so I could no longer feel their pain. I’d still rather wear jeans 24-7, but some of that denim can be A-line and wide hemmed.

I fuss about my hair. Me. Who specifically grew dreads so that I would never have to. I actually spend money to look pretty. And it’s not entirely for the benefit of butterfly. Me, myself, on my own behalf, I, actually want to look pretty. And to wear heels. Whether I can actually wear them is something else, coz I walk like a duck. But that I want to wear them is like a shape-shift in itself.

I like soul. I mean I sat at a rave and listened to DJ Adrian and actually enjoyed it. I’ve always liked old music - kina Beegees and The Police and Ray Charles and Elvis, the original rockers. And I’m partial to Rick Asley and London Beat and Black Box and what was called funk. I’m into new jack kiasi, but within limits. I mean I love motown philly and naughty by nature - but i never really felt Tony Toni Tone. And I always said people who loved soul are way old. But guess who was bopping her head at Galileos and wishing I was uninhibited enough to shake the rest of me. Sigh.

That’s another thing. I want to dance. I actually want to dance. In public. Not just in my bathroom where nobody can see, but in the open, to real music. I don’t know if I actually can - coz I chickened out when I had the chance, but I so want to shake that there what my momma gave me. Not around a pole though. Except maybe for a particular private screening, maybe.

I like handbags. That is like a miracle, since I used to swear by rucksacks and monkeybags. But lately I can’t resist buying these pretty handbags. There’s this rasta dude who has the most amazingly unique sets for just 2sock kenyan. I buy so many bags from him that i often get freebies.

I function best on four hours of sleep. This for me is the most traumatizing discovery, since I have always prided myself on the ability to sleep for days and days. It’s a talent. But lately as soon as I clock four hours, I’m wide awake and fresh as close-up. Should I make the mistake of going back to sleep, I will wake up on the wrong side of an elephant stampede. I was lying in a very comfy bed with a very comfy person and just itching to jump out of it and DO something, anything! After four hours, if I am still in bed it better be coz I’m doing something worthwhile. Like reading.

I read slowly. Me. Who once finished Sidney Sheldon’s Stars shine down in four hours flat, now took six weeks to get through LOTR. How embarassing. And I don’t watch news or read newspapers. They have become suddenly boring. Don’t read magazines either, except Reader’s Digest and occasionally Eve.

I bow out of political arguments. Amazing!! Mostly coz I never have a clue what’s going on anymore. Somebody told me Orengo was minister of tourism and i was like “That’s nice.” He isn’t though, is he? I mean I know I gave up learning minister’s names after the last reshuffle - and there are too many now to learn anyway - but Orengo tourism? Er…

And then - I stopped arguing. This one is total twilight zone. My brother’s favourite passtime was to pick fights with me. We once argued for one hour about whether a gate was pink or purple. And the argument was not ‘is too - is not -is too -is not.’ The gate was actually lilac, and Kid Bro finally admitted he just felt like arguing and that he liked listening to my points.

Lately if you say the sky is green I’ll just say ‘okay’. I just can’t find the energy to fight anymore. Princess got in trouble at school - the kind of trouble that would normally make me go and bitch-slap her teacher. Instead I wrote the teacher a note, then called her cell phone and politely asked her to stop being, you know, unreasonable. It was effective, sure, but the old me would have beat the lady down hard.

I find myself longing to be domestic. I am SO not, and always prided myself in being unfeminine, but now I look at my pal cooking and cleaning and I actually get envious! And worse - I envy the power suit! I want to do the whole short-skirt-blazer-heels-dinner-and-laundry thing. Me who hates blazers and would rather tweeze and thread and wax all in one millisecond than actually wash anything!! Eff, that is scary!!

Some stuff about me hasn’t really changed. I still believe I have a wild side. And I pierced my nose, got dreads largely to convince myself that that crazy side is there. [and will get a tattoo if i can get someone to drug me without hurting me - I have SUCH a phobia for pain. You shoulda seen the nurses dissing me during post-labour stitching. They couldn't nyita how somebody who had survived labour could be wincing over stitches. Hey, it hurt! It's so true what the say - once you see your newborn baby, you forget all the pain. Or at least I did, so I yelled when they put needles down there. Eish - sorry guys, TMI]

I still love cartoons and ice cream and black forest and rock music. I still have a phobia for snakes, cockroaches, and getting fat [which is understandable considering I went through high school with the nickname Yokozuna]. And I still believe in love.

But I walk home and some idiot gang of men catcall me. I want to stop and give them a piece of my mind. To terrify them into silence, to make them think long and hard before they talk that silly again. I used to do that. I was once mobbed by four armed cops and I made such a royal ruckus that they apologised and walked away. I even spoke jeng’. Note : i do NOT speak jeng’, but that day, somehow, I did.

But these days when I’m catcalled, I walk on seething, or at best stare coldy and walk on. Even Princess gets upset enough to tell them “Stop calling me rasta, that’s not my name. Mummy that stupid boy is calling you dada. Are you his sister?” Me, I just walk on. Then I get mad at myself for not saying something.

I speak my heart, then I apologise. Me, who always said ‘As long as I’m not lying, I can say what I want.’ But now each time I gush and mush I feel dumb. I sit back and retract my words and generally embarrass myself even more than the mushy words did. I act like I’m insane, or in love - mostly both. Then I feel ashamed for admitting it.

And I don’t know when I last wrote an honest-to-goodness love poem straight from the soul. I don’t even know where that is anymore. It’s been replaced by some shallow plate that I fill then scrape and say I’m sorry. Where’s the girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, and s***w anyone who didn’t like what it said? Why am I so ashamed of loving? It used to be enough for me to love someone, to know that I loved them, to tell them that I loved them and let them decide. No regrets. But now I feel dumb for even allowing myself that leisure. I say a word, then ask to have it back. I am that scared of being rejected, of looking stupid.

That at least hasn’t changed. I’m still proud. And I’m still afraid of looking stupid. And that’s the one thing I wish I could change. I wish I wasn’t so afraid of what you think of me. I wish i could just be me, and let you love me for me - or not, if that’s your will. I wish i didn’t want to explain myself, to validate myself, to justify what i feel. I know the logical solution to that is ‘don’t’. I wish I knew how.

I never used to care what people thought. I used to enjoy being a rebel, being different, being weird, not fitting in. I used to thrive on criticism, to enjoy going against the grain. It made me feel important to be doing the abnormal. Now I cringe at the slightest reproach. I ask for it, I demand it. I always say ‘be brutally honest’. But then I hide and cry. I can’t handle the truth. Not anymore. But i don’t want people to lie either. I don’t want my ‘intelligence’ insulted.

My most important value is to be true to myself. But how can i do that when I don’t even know who I am?

I look at you, and you are so together, so solid, so sure of yourself. I really like that about you. You are who you are, and you’re beautiful. I thought I was like that. I thought I knew who I was. But I don’t. And knowing that makes me curl up and cry.