Dream Count

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The diesel truck is gone, a misty silence falls, and I am moved to be standing out in my balcony on a new morning in this new year. I am mistress of all I survey. Actually, Aunty Jane, I do like my life. I flail for meaning sometimes, maybe too often, but it is a full life, and a life I own. I have learned this of myself, that I cannot do without people and I cannot do without stretches of sustained isolation. To be alone is not always to be lonely. Sometimes I withdraw for weeks merely to be with myself, and I sink into reading, my life’s great pleasure, and I think, and I enjoy the silence of my own musing. Sometimes I revel in long spells of satisfying sexlessness, unburdened by the body’s needs. Sometimes my house lights blaze brightly with dinner parties and game nights, and I bring together my different friend groups who otherwise might never meet. People I grew up with in Nsukka meet friends from university in Enugu, and people I met in the many permutations of my job here meet other Abuja people I know from outside work. Many of my friends are dependable and trusted and close. Jide is the oldest and closest, and of course Hauwa. In the past few years, Hauwa. It makes me happy to think of the high peal of her laughter and the focus of her brows as she deep-inhales her Loud. These days I have fewer nights out, but I still enjoy my whiskey neat, and dancing in lounges till dawn, and returning home with my eye makeup smeared, tired and happy and high. I should have sai...