girls just wanna have fun...

It’s a morning of random thoughts.

Top of that list is the lovely Flo, about whom I am so engulfed with sadness. This girl, this girl had the spine of a dinosaur. I don’t know, I’m just assuming those behemoths had to have had some incredibly sturdy spines, unless of course they didn’t, which is why they are no longer in existence. In which case the girl had a spine of steel. I know, why didn’t I just use that in the first place, the word was gone, something that happens more frequently now.

I think the truth of Flo’s demise has not yet sunk in, I keep sitting here, looking at that picture from Mukiri’s wedding and hoping this is some sick joke. But deep down I’m afraid of the reality of finding out that it really isn’t. I mean, c’mon, I know it’s true it’s just not real, is there a difference? I think there is…

So there, she was loud, and jolly and no-nonsense and sweet. She managed to be all these things at the same time on occasion. I know without a doubt in my heart that she is with Jesus, and that heaven’s choir is sounding so lovely with her voice in it. She sang, Lord, did she sing!! And she brought me out to sing with her. Me and my freshman eccentricities, in a place that was very unaccepting of the uuhhhmmm... ‘free-spirited’ Christian that I was then. She helped me to strike a balance between my trademark short skirts and pleasing the brethren.  I eventually let them go (sort of), but it was in my own time and after my own processes…

She was something, that girl, she was something… I will miss her... So will a million people I know, but she lives on, she lives forever in our hearts… But we must inure ourselves to not having her around anymore… And we shall meet at Jesus’ feet in the fullness of time.

I’ll keep going forever if you let me, but I’ll stop now before the wells open…

So I met this man the other day, we used to work together during one of my many tu-small gigs. I haven’t been the lean trim one, you know, since ever. It’s not something I care about much, people seem to though… It’s the kind of society that places every plus sized girl in the want-to-be-thin group. Me, I just know I have seasons, sometimes I want to eat everything, and sometimes I don’t want anything.

Naturally the size of my fundamendos fluctuate with those seasons… and people notice. And make a point of pointing it out. Every damned bloody time. Like sijaona. As though I told them I was on a to-be-size-10 marathon. I have written about this before, and now even saying this makes me feel as though I am defending myself. As though it’s wrong to be like me and actually love being like me, and not at all on a regimen to make me Ajuma-esque. Like it’s sacrilege to be a big happy girl not at all trying to fit into the ‘it Ajuma figure’.

Anyway, so he congratulated me for losing a lot of weight since he last saw me. And enquired whether I have been ‘doing a lot of practice’ whatever that means. Recently that’s been happening a lot. People lauding my new weight loss, of course silently insinuating that they didn’t approve of what I was before, but now masquerading it as a compliment, ‘Umeslim, you look really nice, umekuwa ukifanya nini?’.  Which I never know how to answer because I genuinely haven’t been doing anything differently. Go explode. And yes, I will say it at the risk of sounding like an angsty teenager trying to be understood.

It wasn’t always comfortable to be me. I didn’t always love it. And now I do, the thick seasons as well as the thin. I have clothes that fit both, and I can hold my own. So, you know, can I just be left alone. Those backhanded compliments, those unspoken reprimands, as though being size 10 and/or older and/or male automatically earns you the right to open your mouth and volunteer your crass and prehistoric opinions. Woishe die.

But it’s the thing I know I will have to deal with forever, because those mindsets won’t ever change. Having to come here and vent and end up feeling like I’m defending myself for not being slim enough, not having enough of a rack for my size, for being almost as big as my mother, it’s a thing that’s just going to be there, like the sun. It's going to be like my own little cage, my own little Paul's thorn...maybe it's supposed to teach me patience and tolerance, make me more like Christ, who was/is also patient and tolerant. Still.

I have enough of everything, too much of some things :)))))))))))) but you know what, I love it… I take care of myself, but I go easy on myself. Life is hard enough without counting every calorie that goes in versus out… Let the girl fly free...

By jolly, let the girl be…