Honestly, this story is a bit personal, so here goes!!
Do not despise, was what kept coming to my head. I stood alone in the cold morning, the sun had risen i was staring into nothingness, the years had gone by like a flash, here i was no achievements, no progress in life. It was as if i had finished school yesterday and not 7 years ago in terms of prpgress. I talked to people, they called me a jovial person, lovely to be around, i bring joy to every room i enter they said, but deep down I was lost, what was I to do. I had to pick my life back up somehow. The world wasn’t waiting for me. My parents had long stopped asking when I’d “figure things out.” Friends had moved on, some got married, jobs abroad, new cars, new titles. I was still the same: laughing on the outside, hollow within. “Do not despise,” I whispered again. My late grandmother’s voice echoed in my mind. She used to say, “Do not despise, my child. Even a mighty tree was once a seed buried in darkness.” Maybe that was what she meant that even in this stillness, this emptiness, something could grow.
The street was quiet except for the distant sound of motorcycles and the cries of traders calling out prices in the market. I walked aimlessly, past the bakery where the air smelled of burnt flour, past the old barber shop where men argued politics. Everyone seemed to be doing something. Then I saw her Mama Tega(Mai kosai), the old woman who sold akara by the junction. She was there every morning, her hands shaking from old age but never too weak to fry another batch. People loved her food. That thought hit me harder than I expected. Showing up. Maybe that was what I hadn’t been doing. Waiting for life to happen, instead of stepping into it even clumsily, even afraid. I took a deep breath, the smell of fried beans and morning dust filling my lungs. For the first time in a long while, I felt something shift inside me. I didn’t have a plan, but I had a spark ll. “Do not despise,” I said again, this time not as a whisper, but as a vow.