For most part of your formative years, you will be the shy guy who had no real social skill and depended solely on others for social cues. You wouldn’t speak till your friends spoke, their presence gave you confidence to speak and act. In school, you struggled to read in front of the class, whenever you had to speak to an adult you struggled to make the words form on your lips, oh how your mom hated to see that. She hated to see you fidget when asked simple questions like “How was school?” “What class are you in now?” but you trudge on, determined to just survive. One Christmas, the girl whose hands you were holding days before comes to the house and you spend the next hour avoiding her because you are too shy to look her in the face because you know your dad would tease you mercilessly.
People think you are snobbish because you have rich parents but they do not realize that you dread being in public, your books and the television have been your companions for too long, that human interaction seems alien to you. The only friends you have are your siblings, cousins and close neighbors, so everyone thinks, “Na because hin papa get money”, they call you “big boy” their voice laced with just enough sarcasm.
Then you get into secondary school and for once in a long time you are not quite as invisible, your body is changing and so is your outlook on life. You are surrounded by boys, who like you are trying to figure out their life, it is a topsy-turvy time in your life, filled with so many lessons, so many revelations, so many mistakes but you take them in your stride, they will come in handy in the future. But you have found a voice, maybe it is not as loud as you wish it should be but it will do for now. You still can’t speak or read in public especially when the opposite gender is around, one minute you are boisterous, cracking the boys up, the next moment you are cold as a fish because a girl is in your midst.
Now you are in the university, surrounded by girls, what is worse, you are studying a course that is commonly associated with women but it is something you are passionate about and heck, you just want to study, be your own man, hopefully become the Minister for information, which was the dream you sold yourself when you picked “mass communication”. So every morning you are in a lobby filled with women that you have to interact with, soon you realize talking to girls is not as hard as you have thought, it just as easy as speaking to your boys, soon you are reading in front a crowd, yes, you still get a bit dizzy and your tongue feels heavy but you are reading in public and that is all that matters.
You are no longer invisible, you have your boys now and they look up to you, the girls are interested in you, in fact they throw themselves at you, for once you have become the cynosure of attention; the guy who lifts the spirits in the lecture hall, whose absence is noticed when he is not around. It is intoxicating; you are enjoying every moment of it and in your second year, Ted happens and you are back to square one!! Theodora, the beautiful girl you met over the holiday some time ago, she will break your heart so bad, you become unsure of yourself around women; you start to question if you are ever good enough for anyone. You retreat into your shell, for the remainder of your stay in the university, you do not date, girls are back to being alien to you again. Every time you try to get back on the dating scene, it ends in pain!
You have left the university, you have served and still nothing has changed, in your wake, pieces of your heart lay strewn, feed for hungry vultures; you are no longer the same, in fact you have sunk deeper into your shell. But you trudge on, “na shy you shy, you no kill person”, you give up trying with the opposite sex, because each time you try you end up hurting and you do not want to hurt anymore. You become one of those guys who look on from afar but make no attempt to join in on the fun.
You move to a big city and for the next couple of years you spend it attending weddings, parties and baby christening, you long for those things but you aren’t capable but like every human you dream and hope that someday it will be your turn. You are not doing badly financially but you could be doing better, yes, money is the name and turning up is the game but hey, you cannot afford to turn up; at least not the way they do it in your new city. Oh did I mention, you have added bitter, insecure to being shy and unsure, so every time you draw close to the opposite sex, you find a way to sabotage it, you have become too angry, too cynical, your battle scar from that one relationship.
You are stuck behind your phone watching others getting on with life, while you are stuck battling your demons. Life is hard, but how come it’s just you feeling its brunt? Everywhere you look someone is getting engaged, getting a new apartment, getting a car, you look at your account number and know you are way off thinking about any of that. You are stuck at a great job with a lousy pay, your lofty dreams seem feasible but you have no financial strength to set them up.
At work, you are the aloof, nonchalant guy, if only they can see the demon you fight everyday just to be able to crack a smile, if they could see the battle you fight every day to get out of bed, if they could see the war rumbling in your head as dreams and reality clash! Everyone is married and it is just you, they are having kids and you have none, they will be grandparents and you will be stuck waiting for your turn, waiting on a miracle, waiting on God.
Years later, your friends are seated together reminiscing about the past and then someone mentions your name and another asks, “Yea, what happened to that guy?” They pause for a moment, say a few words about you and then go on as if you hadn’t existed, because your footprint has been lost in the sands of time.
You go back to being the invisible man.
ARY'S DIARY 