She & Her

CHAPTER 3: CHAMOMILE SUBLIME

•Jovana•

I think I may have detachment issues but I pretend not to care just to see if they care. I treasure each and every relationship I have and that can be more of a burden than a blessing because one thing I have come to realize is that I am more expendable and replaceable to people than they are to me. That hurts.

When I understood this the most was when I had to change schools for my senior year. I spent my year 7 to 9 (JSS1-3) in a particular school. There, my sister and I were boarders which means we had to stay at our school's hostel for the semester. For three years we stayed at that school, that's the longest we've ever been because we transferred schools very often. Of course, bonds were formed, mostly with me and the others. Except for the girls we practically lived with in our hostel, Kia and I saw no need to socialize with the rest of the fake ass classmates we had. She knows I noticed this too but I befriended them anyway.

I feel like they're forgetting me, they're all forgetting me. No matter how hard I try to be involved in their lives. I'm nothing but a figment in their memory now. I also think Kia feels this way, she's just a lot tougher than I am, emotionally tougher. We entered a new school and we had to make friends all over again and lose them once more when we graduate.

It's only just hitting me now, seeing how all of them have moved further up the ladder of life without me. Because I am the emotional one of the two of us, when I shed tears, I shed them for the two of us. Over the years, I noticed Sequoia become emotionally retarded. Like, along the way, the way she was able to feel and express herself and her emotions minimized. She's the type of person who thinks if she cries or talks about how she's feeling to other people, they're judging her, they don't care or they think she is seeking attention. Other times, she doesn't want to give her perpetrator the satisfaction of seeing her break down. Mostly, I think she's just scared of what could happen if she finally trusted someone and opened up to them, this generation doesn't exactly bear the best kind of humans. So, I don't blame her. To be honest, I would do the same, but I don't have the tiniest energy to mask my emotions, in fact, I wear them on my sleeves.

Because we're Africans and Christians, our mum believed in corporal punishment, hence the overemphasis on the scripture which says "spare the rod and spoil the child," this was always her excuse when she give you a slap that can reset your whole destiny or plain flogging. What if that scripture wasn't translated correctly? Did Mary ever hit Jesus? Or does it originate from the fact that in the past, when slavery was legal, our ancestors got punished with this method, and, since it is what they recognized as "discipline," they did the same to their children, then it just went on?

Now, the thing about twins is that we always seem to know what the other is thinking no matter how hard they seem to feign aloofness. That's one thing Sequoia tries so hard not to remember, she thinks she's so stoic but she has her tells in those deep black eyes of hers. Scientists say no one truly has "black pupils" but I can swear that once our mother died, a part of her died as well and that's when all the colour in her drowned. She started to smile less, socialize less too- not that she was ever much of a people person.  She just retreated into her cocoon and left me to fend for myself in this wicked world when we're supposed to be in it together.