a
NUTSHELL point to get a remembrance of a friendship lost or a memory long forgotten. I still get letters from my best friend, she is my pen pal, yes we still talk on the phone but you can never remember what they said months later. I guess this does make me an old soul, the book reading, the letter writing, quilting, crocheting and knitting and I can proudly say I do not enjoy most things people in my generation enjoy. My brother once pointed out to me, “ it’s either you were born before your time or you’re a reincarnation of some eighteen-century maiden.” Sometimes I think what he said is true. I can sit alone and never get bored, I can enjoy having a conversation with Mr Chege who can barely stand for more than five minutes, he suffers from dementia now so he still remembers me as a young girl. He keeps telling me I am too tall for my age. I hoard things I should let go because they hold a sentimental value to me. I want to tell my kids one day, “you see this, I was given by…” even if its wrapper. There is always a story behind something. I still have the chocolate wrapper I was given by an old lad I liked once pressed between the pages of one of my novels. My friends know all about my weirdness, they have come to understand the oddity that is my life, with my habits, the way I talk and wear, my fixation for coloured socks and r-rated t-shirts as I have accepted them the way they are. I do have a small circle of friends, it is hard for a person who is accus-
circle of friends, it is hard for a person who is accustomed to solitude to acquire a large group of friends. The few I have I keep close. They laugh at my perverse jokes and add on theirs, they will hold my hand at the toughest times and they will help me without any expectations. Few people can say that they can trust their friends that much that they have people who accept their oddities. Being clumsy seems to be instilled in my DNA. I am the houseguest who always breaks something out of nervousness or spills a drink on another by accident or trips on thin air or drops a bag only to spill everything in the bag on the ground. I also suffer from pediophobia, this is fear of dolls and such. My father analyses it as Freudian dream interpretation where the dolls represent something bad that one happened in our home. I can’t remember what happened and my family doesn’t talk about it, so I never ask. The thing is, I do love myself not in a conceited narcissistic way but more of I have accepted myself and who I am. Flaws and all and it takes big guts to do that, in this twentieth century we live in. to look in the mirror and smile at the person you are inside and out. I don’t have a secret to it, I just open my heart to myself.
Above: Bella displaying her delightful oddities
Sanaa Magazine
7
