Maame

by Jessica George

We are His children and there is nothing God wouldn’t do for us. We are loved and we are blessed.

I wake up every day and I smile when I need to and talk when I have to, but I am in constant pain, and I have been for too long.

I wipe my nose and tell the empty space around me that all I want is to be less sad.

I don’t like taking pictures of myself; what I look like in the mirror and what I look like through a camera somehow seem to be two different people, so there aren’t many images to choose from.

“Maybe you talk to yourself because then you don’t have to factor in another person’s reaction. Or even, you enjoy engaging in conversations where you can be completely open and honest, but maybe you feel the only way to do this safely is when alone. Do you tend to keep how you’re feeling bottled up?”

My parents are not special people, they’re ordinary, and one of my problems is that I’m expecting perfection from ordinary people. They are not saints or masters of knowledge, just people, people who have children, which, last time I checked, required no proficiency test. People who continue to make mistakes, attempt to learn from them and repeat, until death.