You Are Doing Yourself

If people could read minds, what would be in the papers about you? Me, I’d have done whatever it’d take to disappear every time I think. You know why? Because mine would be ‘addlepated’! But somehow, I remain, because no one knows my thoughts.

There is a confined space in my head. People are locked up in it. They are variants of me. They are my prisoners. Whenever I have a thought, some of them sneer: “Just look at what you’re thinking about.” Others cheer because they love to see the outcomes. The ones with a conscience wail because they know I am capable of bringing my thoughts to reality, for none of my folks up in there can tell when I will strike and embarrass myself. I remain the only one who approves my thoughts, no matter how preposterous they are to me, their host.

You are in a relationship with your partner and you are busy assessing new faces in a crowd, trying to figure out which one is fuckable. “Just thoughts, nothing else,” you say to yourself. But the people in your head are sneering at you saying, “Is it me you’re doing?” While you are still assessing and not listening to the sneers, the ones cheering you are reminding you of the bitter, light-skinned feminist in all her spotless cleavage and dread-headed glory saying, “Monogamy is not real. One can only resist these urges!” The wailers in your head are already mourning your next move, which would be whether to flirt back or willfully ignore the magnetic hotness trying to ruin your existence. Only you can approve these thoughts because you alone are in control of the outcome of these forces of darkness (or light, as the case maybe). Folks in long distance relationships can relate; you cannot lie to my face, you know where I live, don’t you?

Some of us are at an event with our significant other and the thought of how you’re already rolling in the sheet with another hottie you’re looking at (who may or may not be concerned about your existence) is causing the wailers in your head to mourn your faithfulness. “They are just thoughts… We can’t control them… No one is monogamous,” is what you allow her whisper to you, she and her gang of bitterleaf clique. And so, you take her words as greenlight to keep thinking about what that hottie’s pussy would taste like. You forget it is not her situationship you are letting her ruin. You’re busy doing yourself! Whether you are successful in your scheme or not, you get home and before you sleep, you think about your bae and the guilt would make you upload a picture or two on social media, captioning it: “My heartbeat, my life, yxcbnkjgvgyifczdfcnvnxx, my everything!”

Be doing yourself, you hear?

Just be doing yourself!

You have an attraction for someone and it is very clear they’re taken. But you just keep doing yourself. “Excuse me, we’re almost friends, right?” you snap at the wailers in your head. “Allow me make a fool of myself for a second, if you don’t mind.” You touch them here, put your hands there and willfully forget your hand on their thigh, to be invasive in this mission to make them uncomfortable with how you’re almost in their underpants. You forget you have the ability to remove your hand from their body; let us all be one-handed all of a sudden, all the while not paying attention to the sneering in your head saying, “Are you not doing yourself?” Until she starts avoiding you like you’re a re-visitation of the Egyptian plague.

You know your pretentious selves. Please, you’re not doing me. You are doing yourself!

How much can we really embarrass ourselves without dropping dead out of sheer humiliation? Is it going after a girl you like on an empty stomach? Is something not wrong with you? Knowing she’s always with her friends, you still pick a seat close to her! FUNKE!!! Willfully ignoring these warning signs, you write a phone number on a piece of paper and beg her to collect it when she clearly does not give a shit! I wonder who else does this to themselves. You are pleading and smiling to ease the sorrow you feel, while imploring her to collect the paper. The pain! The hurt! The sorrow! And yet you still muster a smile every time your eyes meet! Can you not see that you are doing yourself? In spite of your bêtise about a phone number, you walk up to her again and hand her a note saying: ‘Let’s just be friends.’ My goodness! What is life? Can you be anymore deaf to your sixth sense?

Can I?

Please do not feel sorry for me. This is just who I am. There is no guarantee I will not repeat it next time.

At the end of it all, I tell myself I was bold and courageous. My prisoners are laughing, some are crying and my guardian angel is ashamed of their assignment. I walk about wishing I am moving out of Lagos the next day, but I am stuck here. Who will answer this question? Who am I doing?

I am doing myself.

By the way, have you looked up the meaning of the word ‘addlepated’ yet? You know you want to. Don’t pretend you know the meaning.

Written by Django