The white Elephant
This is when things
don’t get talked about and you all act like it’s not there. But the thing with
an elephant is that it’s too huge and it cannot be ignored. The more you ignore
it, the bigger it grows and it starts to shed toxic mold. My white elephant
almost squished me In my last year of high school. It was my last year at home. I didn’t
want to leave home. I wanted to prolong my time and clung to the last bits and
hoped it wouldn’t happen. Now that I have learnt that talking about the white
elephant scares it; I know I should have sat my grandma down and told her, “I
am not going to the city, I want to stay here and cook and clean for you and
look after the animals.” But I was too scared of the adults.
The Money Elephant
The money elephant is a sibling to the white elephant. Mine used
to be the- who will give the child the money elephant- Because you are
everybody’s child but no one’s in particular.
The Sunday before going back to school would be my worst,
when my mother didn’t give me cash because she assumed my grandma gave me some,
and my grandma didn’t give me because she assumed uncle gave me some. In the
end it would be my uncle’s wife giving me money for pads and underwear, and me
learning not to ask for money, ever.
The money elephant
drags me down even now, I still don’t ask for money, even when it is owed. This
results in me doing a lot of charity work, or getting cheques three months later.
It doesn’t help that I am a creative, and I recently discovered I have the creatives’
curse. That thing that makes you charge Ksh 500 for a job worth Ksh 5, 000, and
you still wonder why you cannot afford that trip to Maldives.
The Warped Personality Elephant.
This elephant differs from one illegitimate to the other. It
could be Low self esteem, bitterness, Perfectionism, Anger. I have been boxed
by each one of these. But with time I am finding ways to get out from beneath
the elephant’s foot. When my self esteem hit rock bottom, at 12 I found a way
to deal with it . Not the best way but it helped me manage adolescence. If someone
asked -why don’t you have a father- I had a ready cutting sarcastic answer that
ensured they never asked me anything else; ever, even what time it was.
Self esteem comes and goes, but I have learnt how to work
around it. I do things I am good at, I hang out with people I like, and I help
people.
per·fec·tion·ism
pərˈfekSHəˌnizəm
noun
noun: perfectionism
refusal to accept any standard short of perfection.
My perfectionilism/perfect mode/perfectionism Elephant dissolved
exactly one year ago, September 2015. I will tell you about it sometime. It is
called the rotten orange story. It is in my notebook somewhere.
The Trust No one Elephant.
We learn to trust
no-body early. I guess it is from the idea that they will just up and go and
leave you. I would never admit I have
trust issues, but a close observation at the kind of relationships I keep is
telling. I used to be a very private person, my life I lived in the pages of my
diary. I sorted my issues by myself. I broke friendships very quickly when
trust was broken. I was self reliant, and even trusting in God was a problem at
sometime. I always needed a backup plan.
We, of the fatherless
race have a shield all around us, it’s like a motto- before you hurt me, I will
be so far away. If you gain our trust, then you are a superhuman. I have
friendships spurning 18 years. Mostly people who know that if I am telling them
something, they better guard it with their lives.
Thanks google for pics.
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