Could This Be the End of Us?

The bus had already passed the bus stop I was supposed to alight before I realized. Lost in a series of thoughts, like in the middle of a million dollar deals I have to close, questions were popping up, seemingly uncomfortable conversations crept by, ‘deep stuffs’ left me bewildered. What is friendship without love? We have heard it many times but let’s see it this way. You have people that you call your friends but you can’t even tell them your mind. Be a man! Act like an adult! But we have forgotten that we grew up to become adults. No one has been here before. Your day ones are even the ones putting pressure on you. Whala no come too much like this.

I feel we just need to ignore what people say. Raise the middle finger at them. But sometimes, we might be trapped in our own close-mindedness. Oh! I just mixed up two things. There is something about centrists I think you should know. They try to embrace the opinions of both sides. May be not something interesting anyways. Listen to everything they say, pick the valuable ones and leave the rest. Maybe not the best advice because it’s hard to tell ourselves the truth especially when it is about us. So what? Life is short so ‘ginger’ yourself. We give different meanings to this statement, may be good, maybe not so good. Life is really complicated, but as complicated as it is, it will soon cease to exist.

I thought I had escaped one before another thought popped up, they get my time lol. I saw a white guy who kept his nose mask close to his elbow, not the first time actually but in Nigeria, people just mask down when they are not using the mask or remove it completely, and keep it somewhere else that you won’t find on their body. Every Nigerian has a story to tell. And has the same thing ‘they’ rant about.

So on weekdays especially in the mornings, the bus arrives every 30 seconds, but if you go to the metro station on Sundays especially if you go around 11 AM, the bus comes every 5 minutes. On Sundays, only one escalator is active out of the two that operate in ‘rush hours’ on weekdays. I lost my Chinos to a gossip bench that clearly stated, ‘Don’t sit’, because I don’t understand Russian or whatever it is. And I had to eat this grilled chicken while time was against me. Grilled chicken will not be the end of me. They had just painted the bench. Am I a joke to you? Lol.

Not like European cities are better but they pay attention to the little things. If not for the call that came in, I would have reached Ibadan. ‘What did I forget?’ I asked myself. To be sure I had everything intact. What did we forget? We once had the potential to be at the top. Maybe we still do. We are determined. We are resilient. We fell and we rose. We sank into the ground and we emerged. We rise after every fall. Why can’t we rise again? Could this really be our end?

STEPHEN ATOLAGBE

picture lead @emmanueloyeleke on Instagram.