She Is Blind

TO MY DEAR READERS.

TO MY DEAR READERS...

I have looked forward to this... To placing the "THE END" tag on my work. My very first work. To telling my readers why it was written. To explain to my readers how it was written. And to tell them how much they have pushed me forward.

I was only seven years old when my mother drove me past the School for the Disabled in Minna, Niger State. And in the split moment the car drove past, I spotted a girl. She was quite fair, with pale blue eyes, her blue uniform sitting on her beautiful little body. She was my age, she was beautiful, and in the second I saw her, I loved her, so much she occupied my thoughts for the rest of that day. But sadly, as I grew, I forgot her.

She remained buried in the coffers of my memory until ASUU strike hit and I had nothing doing. I had always loved books, and after reading through the entire Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and several Dan Brown books, I was pushing forward. I love history, and so I was feeding myself with Sharon Kay Penman's *When Christ and his Saints slept* when I read of one of the characters, Ranulf, meeting and falling in love with Rhiannon, his Welsh cousin, and I somehow remembered the blind girl (even though I am not sure she was really blind) I fell in love with.

I imagined my mother had pulled over and taken the girl, and let us grow together until she became a beautiful and supple young woman, and somehow, I wondered where she was and if I could see her again. And that was when She Is Blind was born in my head.

It was evening when I wrote the first episode, sitting behind my father's car I was supposed to be washing, and swatting away the mosquitoes flying around my legs. I typed furiously at my phone screen for an hour or so, and I then posted my first episode on several groups on Facebook where they were rejected, all except two. I waited until night time, and saw four comments on the first episode, all pleading for a "next", and I started wondering why other authors hated it when people asked for a "next". Mine meant so much to me, especially when I intended to post only seven episodes, one every day for a week.

But my phone developed issues and I wondered if it would all end there until I found my father's laptop untouched, and I continued. The comments kept me going, the likes made me happy, until I got a new phone, and now it feels so refreshing to finally end it, and funny too, that a story I intended to write for only seven days with seven episodes would reach several long chapters.

I have not really talked about my characters a lot, and I will now. I made myself David, imagining I met my blind love in school—secondary school because I just graduated, and my memories of it are so bitter sweet.

And I made David me. I made David do things I would do if I was angry, if I did not pause to think, things I would naturally have done if I never had self restraint, immersing myself in David so much. And that is why you all think David is a self serving and rough person, although we all agree we have to love him for some of his actions.

AB was a character I never planned, same as Jemima, but with time he became me, the funny and crazy part of me. I divided myself in two brothers, and with AB I became someone who paused to think, someone with a cool clear head. Gift was my blind love, and Blessing was a character I felt had to be there, for support of my blind love.

I don't want to make this lengthy, so I will stop here. But I just want to say I intended this story to be as relatable as possible to my readers, a preborn love for them before I knew them, without even knowing them. I put in some of my experiences because I knew they were some people's stories, and some have been through worse (by the way I never impregnated anyone), and writing this has been a beautiful period of time.

I realised that I was God to the people in my story, because I was writing their story, and answering their prayers, and knowing their future, and providing for them. I felt like God and came to understand how God feels, loving us and wanting to bring our story to a beautiful happy ending.

If I will write another story I do not know, but I hope She Is Blind left it's mark in your hearts. And I hope I leave a mark in your hearts, as the realest author, because I tried to reach your hearts by writing about experiences I knew you could relate to.

Love you all.

©️ Terngu Oryiman Emmanuel, 2022.