A LETTER TO MY SHRINK

[08/11, 4:56 pm] The_Mjango: I wanted to call but I got home and got lazy. Like now I’m in bed after eating and watching the last episode of money heist.

Funny how the series I watch doesn’t surprise me. Okay, like I’m never really surprised after any outcome because I anticipate it. Being a writer, or better, a story teller, is like I can almost see through the eyes of a fellow creative writer. Series and movies are basically written stories that are visual and audibly narrated. So yes, if I had the task to write a story like Money Heist, I’d probably write it with hard to swallow twist and turns, nail biting sceneries, introduce sharp suspense, and even ‘kill’ a character to cut the walls of a reader/watcher’s heart which in the long run is often bitter-sweet. Okay, it’s ever bitter on their end, but on our end as the story tellers, we know you’ll die a little but still you’d want to keep reading or watching because you cannot live without the closure. We’ve already hooked you. We are nothing close to engineers but we sure do know how to create an emotional rollercoaster. We capitalize on emotions. 

But killing a character can also be a heavyweight risk. You could lose your audience afterwards because you emotionally killed them too. For instance, I remember one of the series I spent my lockdown catching up on was Lethal Weapon. That series is just as lethal as it sounds. Okay what am I doing. In simple terms it’s really good. Riggz, who I and probably like many other fanatics – thought was a main character. Well he was, until he wasn’t. And so because I am a writer, just to explain my point, I was so damn sure nothing could happen to him that equalled death. A writer cannot kill a main character unless it’s the end of the movie or series. I still remember when I was in class two I cried when Terminator lowered himself into hot acid. But when did he do it? At the end of the movie. 

So knowing there was season three, I was overconfident nothing could possibly happen to the two main characters we had grown fond of. Until it did mjango! Wueh!  Daga right through the chest! Yes slicing the right wall of your heart, piercing the centre of your trachea and the borders of your right lung. The pain! Ah manzeh Riggz died. It felt like losing a close friend. You were with him in the previous episode, relatively like saying just yesterday and today he is no more. Mjango the denial is now what I can rightfully call lethal! It was killing me. I kid you not, I couldn’t sleep well for like two nights. Seriously mourning the death by a gunshot to the chest of a dear friend on screen. I swore not to watch the next season. But what do you know about the writer’s psychological game? I still went for the third season though shingo upande. Driven by the hopes that probably Riggz survived. He must have survived. My writer instincts still insisting that if it were my story, I couldn’t have possibly killed the character that has made me money for two seasons. 

I mourned together with his partner, Roger. Demotivated to even live. Not even showering or shaving his beard was worth it anymore. What was it for? That he’d go to an office that’s void of his partner in not just justice but life itself? Ah! 

Anyway, heh, that’s to express that writers do go through alot. I bet the Lethal Weapon writer must have had a hard time killing his favourite character and still writing his way through season three. But it doesn’t make sense. I think I want to Google and find out what really happened to Martin Riggz beyond the screens. Listen to me still in denial. 

And so as a writer, I go through stuff as well. I went or maybe I’m still going through it. I’m not sure. I’m just there. Well, I guess that’s where you come in as my shrink? Yeah you’ll have time to tell me. For now I know you just want me to lay back and stare at the ceiling from this cosy black leather couch of yours. As I spill all the beans I have knowingly and unknowingly being storing inside me. 

By the way speaking of denial, I or we lost our lecturer recently. 

Sigh. 

As much as I cussed on the days his classes took place, right now it feels like I can bear with his classes if it means he has to be alive. I remember the last time I answered a question in his class. He picked me. Because like with all other lecturers, I always seem to look like I have an answer if not the answer. I was in a sulky mood because it was just after 7.30 in the morning. His class couldn’t be at any other time of the day. I’m not a morning person. Best believe I had dragged my feet to class since failing to attend is just as bad a crime as using your phone in his class, missing a CAT and failing to recall what he lectured in the previous class. He’s, or gosh, was the unpredictable type. 

Sigh. 

I aced the very first presentation in his class. It was actually the first presentation in my entire university. He was a hard man to impress. So you can imagine how good our group must have felt to draw a smile of approval and impressiveness from him. Rest in peace Daktari. It is well.

[08/11, 5:49 pm] The_Mjango: Oh shrink, I’m sure you don’t mind my digression but bear with me. I am ranting out. You told me the diagnosis of a patient comes not from their story but from the digressions they make in their stories. So back to my case. 

You called me and said it had been long since you heard my voice. I tried to make it seem like it cannot be that obvious but you said the emptiness on the streets of my blog and every other place I make noise online was screaming on the highest frequency. Well somehow, having you ask it hit differently. Others had done so but you? Yours hit a nut in my heart. Like the last strike to make the rock break and have my acidified waters run out of it. 

I had never actively decided to confront whatever it is that caused my disappearance. They asked and I said, “Storms of life.” True, it was best summarised that way. Yet again, my inability to confront it was more because I couldn’t really touch where the problem was. I knew there was something clogging my passion’s gut but I couldn’t quite identify it. Sick but I didn’t know where exactly. In pain, but cannot touch where. Bleeding, but internally. 

Even now, writing this doesn’t mean I have found the gangrene eating me up. But after you called and we talked effortlessly for more than 30 mins while I was in the midst of people did feel like the remedy to my undiagnosed disease lied in talking to you. That somehow in our conversations that seem to always be gassed up with life and interesting mind boggling things to talk about lies the highway to finding my diagnosis. Or we might not. But best believe it will relieve the inner pressure that I didn’t know I have been harbouring.

Maybe pressure from trying to make ends meet because I have and I’m still growing into a man of my own. Maybe pressure from trying to achieve a status quo through chasing paper. Maybe pressure to write a blog about Men & Money in relation to Women that saw me interview men to give opinions on the same but never really triggered the creative interest to turn it into a blog. Now I have raw material seated in my whatsapp and I have been nowhere close to exploring them. 

Maybe the pressure to have my life constantly on the move because I’m sort of a workaholic. Work triggers my dopamine. Not just any type of work but the work that I love to do. So don’t ask me why is it that my dad once called while in Nairobi asking me how the cucumbers in the farm were doing and I was like, “Kuna cucumber kwa shamba?” My face had turned blue. Yet I say that’s not work. Don’t ask me that. 

Maybe I have been anticipating a big win. Or the frequency of big wins and it kills me silently not to experience them. 

Maybe I have been socially deprived. Some other dopamine is triggered when I’m around a company that I adore. It extracts the life from within me. With uni closed since covid landed on Kenyan soil, my social life took a dump and has never really left the ablutions. 

For instance, I met Sugar for the first time in seven months nearly three weeks ago. I had briefly visited Nairobi also after seven months. I behaved like someone who was visiting the city for the first time and that was not even the worst part. Ask the matatu guys at bus station. Otherwise known as BS. A lot of BS does lie in Nai.

Maybe pressure from fishing overnight and overnight only not to catch any tangible story that awakens the creative cowboy in me. 

Maybe I’ve been under self pressure accumulated overtime to see the work of my hands on this blog grow significantly. A desire that had now seemed overstretched – to see the effort I put in here be directly proportional to the growth I witness. It has been close to four years but a riot rose up in my heart that there wasn’t anything to show for it. 

As I said, I cannot really arrest the ghost that has been haunting me. I mean, it’s a ghost. But I haven’t been my best. This is the time I guess it’s really becoming clear that daktari hajitibu na kinyozi hajinyoi. I have been other people’s daktari, I guess. I guess it’s becoming clear that outspoken people are the loneliest of souls. We are ever in the best of our personalities and social regalia that makes it easily assumed that we are okay. Leaders are the most haunted by the demons of the night. Everyone’s calling you a role model and that does nothing but put pressure on you to keep putting on your best coat. Even when you have a hard time washing it. So you keep dusting it, not washing it because they don’t look like they can stand to see your imperfections. 

It’s not obvious that the cutest guys can easily sweep every chic on the streets. They keep asking, “Who can say no to a cute guy?” It’s not fathomable in people’s eyes that a smart and good looking guy such as you mjango would be as single as a tongue. 

I know what you’re about to say. That I am wrong about everything including my writing passion. You’re right my shrink. I was wrong. Because that was then. During that phase. The phase where I let a little fox with fire on its tail run around my wheat farm that I have worked so hard to grow for four years. 

Ladies and gentlemen, with the ladies list starting with my very own shrink, take it from me that you’re about to witness a makeshift in this blog that you have so badly grown to love. You’re about to be two times proud of visiting my creative space than you have ever before. 

My shrink said that going MIA can either be constructive or destructive. I asked her whether it could be both. She said yes, and it is both when it starts as destructive and ends as constructive. Making the good out of the bad. So maybe there’s some good at the end of the horizon after my phase is over.

Probably my shrink will diagnose that phase as being somewhat depressive. And it should be clear to you by now that I am human too and not just any ordinary human. A writer. Writers go through stuff. We are the silent heroes after a best selling movie or series. That makes us superhumans.

I kept telling myself that this is my passion going through the test of time. May I be found to be of gold material when the fire dies down. May I be found to have burnt but not destroyed. So my shrink gave me the word for that. The word is REFINED. Refined gold.

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For what it’s worth mjango, thank you for being loyal. Thank you for always believing in me and my course. I am not about to give that all up. It’s been close to four years. About one month to celebrating four years. But I won’t wait for that in order to upgrade your experience here to business class mjango. Don’t you think it’s about time you became not just my reader but a royal guest in my empire? Clothed in a purple velvet robe and beneath it a beach short or bikini for my ladies. Over there, mrembo you will not be called madam. You’ll be referred to by me as “My Lady,” and by everyone else as, “Your Grace” or “Your highness.” Why a bikini? You might ask. Because it’s damn palace in the middle of an empire. It has jacuzzis and swimming pools overlooking the ocean. It’s upto you to choose your bed of water. A high end party every week. For the spa and massage enthusiasts, we will have the best Indian masseuse in the globe at your service. If you’d like a kamasutra flavour added to it, be my guest mjango. You’re VIP for heaven’s sake. Boys, we’ll have BBQ weekends and a classy gym open 24/7. The only limitation to your royalty will be yourself. And I? 

I will be the emperor. 

The fairest lady from Rwanda on my left and the fairest from right here in Kenya on my right. (I’m loyal mahn). And every Tuesday evening, we will sit by the camp punctuated by everything nature and a bonfire in the middle of our circle to bond and hear ever captivating stories from your emperor. 

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This is all to say, we are moving from wordpress mjango. Get ready my royalty, the flight takes off after this blog. Kindly note, for those who have subscribed to my blog via email, worry yourself not. You will still get my blog notifications. However for those who have followed my blog on wordpress, as you unpack your bags in our empire, please remember to subscribe again on the sidebar you’ll find over there. Yeah, a sidebar. The bartender is a funny chap from England. You’ll order your first martini after landing as you subscribe again to The Mjango Series Empire.

It’s been a pleasure mjango. See you on the other side.