It’s all a lie. The grand-gesturing as a show for the true meaning of life. It’s all pointless and it makes zero sense. If I were to ask you what love or life was, you would tell me some long harangue (because you’d be talking to yourself) epilogue of some subjective idea you view your pitiful existence to be. But that’s all it can ever be: subjective. As experienced by you and you alone. I have recently come to the brutal realization that life is redundant. It simply exists for the sake of. No causality, no reason. Well, other than the fact that your parents decided they liked each other a little too much and boom… nine months later you exist. Without consent, or permission. I’ve heard of reported stories of children that took their parents to court on the plaint that they were born without their (the children’s) permission. They made their case that it was their parents’ choice to get hitched and knocked up and now because of that, the kids have to pay bills and make a living. In a world that, to put it exquisitely, is dying. And honestly, I side with them to a degree. Life is parasitic. It tricks you with this idea of status, of this need to reproduce yourself. And when you’re finally popped out of that primordial cave we call a womb, it’s sort yourself out? Who wrote this manual?

And yes, the conservatives will say that it is biblically decreed. They will be the ones that will chastise you for living your life child-free. But why would anyone want to bring new life into this rotting world? Every Saturday, there’s a new war. Every Tuesday, there’s the threat of nuclear missile strikes. And what’s more, those guys seem to make it seem like it’s also my problem. Like, hello?! I’m from a proclaimed third-world country in Africa, the only beef we have is the one we have on our plate at supper time. The world is rotten and I will have no place in barely trying to raise another inevitably rotten soul in it.

I lost my job last week as a cleaner at my local neighbourhood supermarket. This was around the same time that the global stock market crashed. But that second thing has absolutely nothing to do with me. After all, I am too poor to concern myself with such business. I am an orphan so; no help came from the parents. And a single child, so we’re going three-for-three on the tragedies. Apparently, I was let off from work because the economy had grown bad and blah blah no money to pay me blah blah…

In truth, the owner just wanted spare cash to squander every other weekend instead of running his damn business. But I couldn’t blame him, the business was his. But the country apparently, was not. You see, the acting government was doing a real mucky job at running the country they said would be so easy to run by deleting all the previous nefarious deeds. Well, actions go as far as words are concerned and as soon as the guys got into power, they did worse. Taxpayer money got squandered left, right and center. And in the effort to create the desired surplus to actually run the country they had to overtax everything. And I mean everything, basic goods, tampons, even cancer medicine. You know, I get it… but even cancer treatment? Really?

Anyway, that trickles all down into less money in citizens’ pockets and well, I get fired. More salt to the wound, my girlfriend left me too. After months of her boosting me up with ‘I love you’s’ and ‘I won’t leave’ and the best one yet:

“You’re the only one for me”

She kind of realized that I couldn’t be the only one for her. The possibility was too damning and so she made her escape. Even left the pathetic little goodbye note under my pillow. I had no time to be distraught. I never do. But even as I tell you this, here I am on top of the Mtwapa bridge staring into that sweet embrace down below. Ooh! Two hundred meters, that’s like two football fields. It would be a good two seconds. I started out by condemning life for being no good. Well, mine wasn’t. it was a mistake. A stain on the canvas that is the universe. Ironically enough, it was the universe’s idea that I exist. To torment me? There was no love destined for me when Sheila left. This was not a life gifted to me by my folks. And it’s not like I mean that they wanted the absolute best for me.

Well, it’s not like they didn’t. Every parent wishes their child fortune in that pathetic attempt to relive the opulence that they were denied, in their progeny. But I’m not doing that. I am not potentiating this cycle.

‘A poor man will always birth a poor man’

Fantastic quote. Too bad I never bothered looking up who said it. But it makes sense. Poverty bares no generational wealth. And if the only way to get wealthy is by luck. More even than hard work then…

ONE

TWO

THREEEEEE….