Diaper:repaiD

"First Love" by Adele

...forgive me first love / I am too tired...

I am really tired. I am not sleepy. My mind is tired of thinking. My eyes are tired of reading. My right hand is tired of writing. My left is tired of holding my papers as I write, motionless and unattended to.

My wrists are tired of typing. My legs and hips are tired of walking. My back is tired of toting around the textbook makings of a bachelors degree. My mind is tired of thinking.

And I am tired of myself. I am working really hard, diligently, around the clock. I am reading, comprehending, deducing connecting, from no light in the morning to no light at night.

I look tired too. And I'm getting sad because I'm lost; like I'm not here.

When I went home to the parentals this weekend, everything seemed so real, so normal. We laugh like nothing ever happened but returning to my not home is evidence that a lot happened. But I go, happily, eat heartily, study, and play with Lima only to return to this hell as if there is no heaven to validate its existence. And the keep sending me back. They keep dropping me off.

I don't expect to go home. I don't think I could live there anymore. There are no pictures of me where there used to be, which I think means that there isn't hope that I'll return so they'd just as soon take down the pictures so as not to be reminded of who is absent.

It hurts only because when I'm in the library for hours, alone, reading and taking notes, I have time to pause time and wonder why I am doing this. I don't know what I am doing or why I am doing it, sometimes.

This would be a good time to tell a Mom or a Dad that I feel a little overwhelmed. But I don't think I can ever trust them with my head or my heart again. Even with this light load (just a little academic melancholy), I fear that if I asked them to hold it, they would just drop me off somewhere again. Because Africans believe that there is no child that you can just throw away, except for one: me.

Special shoutout to Starbucks and 5 Hour Energy Drink for slyly stealing $30 of my money every week.