A Loner's Journey Through Lemonade Making

Chapter 1| When Life Gives You Lemons..

Welcome!

The first time I heard the saying, 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade', I had thoroughly questioned the IQ of the person who came up with that.

With the level of intelligence of a ten year old who didn't think or read broadly, I had come up with four questions for the pioneer of the saying.

Firstly, Life didn't give people lemons. Life wasn't a farmer, but a place people were thrown into and forced to struggle in in order to survive. So where did life get the lemons?

Secondly, who would drink the lemonade?

Thirdly, were we life's servants who could be ordered around?

And lastly, did we run lemonade stands?

Only a few months ago did that saying start making sense to me. The day after I heard it, I sat before a computer in the library and asked Google all my questions during break time. Apparently, lemons were acidic, sweet and sour fruits. And in the saying, they represented sour, bitter and unpleasantly tough situations. The saying made sense after all. We were just to make the most and best of the difficult situations life put us in and not be dismayed.

I had tried and was trying to live by the saying, I really was. But it wasn't working. Perhaps the advice wasn't meant for everyone.

Why it didn't was the only thing I could think about for a whole week. So I had turned to Google, who was never too tired or annoyed to answer my questions.

Several articles on the internet had told me that there were different types of lemons. There were small lemons, big lemons, sour lemons and sweet lemons. That day, I concluded the lemons life had given me were sour.

Life.

It was a weird thing, a weird place. It was almost as if life was biased, like it was a bed of roses for some and hell on Earth for others. Some people were born with silver spoons, into wealth. Others were born into abject poverty. And what did life do? It turned a blind eye and deaf ears to the pleas of paupers to make things easier for them.

Although I was only thirteen, I had had my fair share of life's ordeals.

Being an orphan was an extreme sport. It was harder when you were an only child with no relatives to walk you though life and take up your dead parents' responsibilities. Life automatically became tougher when one's parents kicked the bucket, especially if they were too young to take care of themselves.

When I thought of my parents, I saw nothing but caskets and darkness. Maybe they were dead, maybe they were still alive. I didn't know what to think or believe. I didn't know my last name, nor any of my parents' relatives.

Their disappearance from my life had made me take a compulsory course in the University of Life- Loneliness and Sadness. It was a never-ending course; I would never graduate.

Being lonely on a planet with approximately eight billion people had taught me a few life lessons. Firstly, I didn't need anyone's company to survive. I could be on my own, yes, but I wouldn't be fulfilled. Secondly, I would forever be an empty vessel. Thirdly, trust only existed in fairy tales. And for the time being, the last was that the world was a wicked place, and only the bravest and wisest survived.

This was my life.

...........

Three years ago, in the middle of August, I was unofficially adopted by the Onyekachis, a childless, mismatched and incomprehensible pair.

Aunty Ijeoma was Uncle Blessing's wife. She was a light-skinned, fierce woman who could not tolerate rubbish from anyone who wasn't in her husband's family. An assertive woman of the world, a boss lady, a confusing character. She was a jigsaw puzzle that gave me a headache whenever I thought about putting it together and a dragon whose mouth spat fire. Aunty Oma was someone I strongly believed should be in Nollywood. She was a force to be reckoned with.