DEAR ALEXA

Year Five, Age Fourteen.

Dear Alexa,

Have you ever felt so much anger at the world, at the people around you? Have you ever felt so much hatred that you get blinded, there's just no space in your heart for love and light? This hatred and the anger you have in you, so overwhelming yet you hold it all in and you wonder if you could scream it all out.

This, Alexa, is exactly how I've been feeling. It pains me to admit that I'm sinking into darkness, I've lost the simplicity that comes with being a child and I miss it. It's funny how I had being so hasty with wanting to become an adult and now on the way to that stage I've always wanted to be, I'm starting to dread it, I wish I could go back.

I thought I would look forward to resuming school in September but after everything that went down last session, I'm not so sure I'm ready to face everyone in school. Fear is such a crippling emotion and that's what I'm feeling right now. Fear of being judged, I don't know if I would be able to stand the things they will say about me, the look on their faces, the thoughts in their minds. I know you're curious about what happened so I'm going to start from the beginning.

In my last letter, I had mentioned how I was regularly sent back home because of school fees. Well, it only got worse as I got sent home almost everyday, my teachers even started to get worried as I was missing a whole lot of school work and Junior Waec had been fast approaching. I would go to school everyday just to get sent back home, sometimes I would hide in the toilet just to avoid the bursar whenever she comes to call the names of students still owing arrears from the school fees. I would keep on hiding all day from the bursar as well as the principal because he now recognizes my face as a regular debtor. And sometimes, I didn't bother to go to school at all to save myself from the trouble of walking to school just to walk back home after some minutes.

I had gotten so used to the questions I get whenever I'm walking back home from people who didn't know how to mind their own business. It was always annoying, having to answer their questions even though I knew quite well they were aware of the reason I was not in school. I always felt like they were mocking me, deliberately rubbing my predicament in my face so I stopped answering their stupid questions. It made them label me as rude and disrespectful but I was beyond caring. I had also labeled them as nosy, uncaring, gossip mongering, old vultures. I used to be a nice kid, the kind of kid that always had a pleasant smile no matter what, the kid that was always positive and kind to everyone around her, the kid that loved pleasing and attending eagerly to people's wants. But now?

Now, my experiences has shaped me into this closed off, angry and bitter person that rarely smiled and didn't care about people's wants or opinions. The only smile you will ever see on my face these days are the forced fake smiles that even takes the greatest amounts of efforts for me to put on. The principal had made it clear he was not going to allow me to write the Junior Waec if I didn't pay my exam fee. Mummy definitely didn't have any money to pay as her business was close to non existent then, we had even closed up the shop and stayed at home at some point while she told everyone she was sick. It was days like those ones that we didn't have anything to eat while my father gallivanted around spending his money on his new wife while we suffered.

Father always had one excuse or the other whenever I called him to ask for money. He never has money although I've always had a sinking feeling it's his new wife that was preventing him from sending money to us. There are times when it feels so surreal that my parents are divorced and my father now has a new wife. For me, he got demoted from the role of my precious daddy to just being a father the moment he decided he didn't want to be in our lives and he was tired of fulfilling his responsibilities as a dad. How can I say I have a dad when he is never around, we only get to see him once in a month when he comes to visit so he is never there to reprimand me if I do something bad, he isn't here to save me from Irene, he isn't here to see how Marcel is growing, he isn't here to get worried about Ivonne who has been missing for months. We have no idea where Ivonne went to or where she is ever since she left the house, she just disappeared while mummy started beating herself up for chasing her daughter away and Irene acted like she doesn't have a twin sister who is nowhere to be found.