To act out or not is the question.

When I think back to my childhood, I was stubborn, curious, hard headed and many other annoying things. I wanted what I wanted, when I wanted it. because in my little mind I was supposed to have it; any and every impediment to getting that thing could be overcome.

It could be defeated.

The grownups could do anything if they just decided. Why couldn’t they just decide that I would have the thing I wanted?! It plagued me. It frustrated me.

 I was incensed each time I’d ask my parents to stop by Steers or that fast food place round the corner and they would seriously say, “They had no money.” I would ask myself, how can it be that my parents don’t have money when they work? Then as the car ride from school went on towards home bound Kisaasi, I’d throw in a few questions and probable conclusions concerning one of the cognitive conundrums that haunted my childhood. I would shrug in consideration of one, give the benefit of the doubt in the other. That would be until we stopped at the market and bought stuff like tomatoes and potatoes. You real see you mum pull out a twenty thousand shilling note and you are in a bewilderment.

You know it.

She knows it.

Hec! the world and its wife knows that plain fries only cost three thousand, yet she did not spare it?! After a while, I’d comment on the fact that she said she didn’t have money, but bought tomatoes and the like. Then I’d try to be smart about it but positing that what I wanted was only three thousand. Eventually, before any other smarty pants argument could dibble out of my little mouth, she would magically help me see the logic my immature brain, my little childish and selfish mind had not contemplated.  I would sulk for a few more hours. I would feel so angry I would even cry tears so hot, you’d think I was a mini kettle; but in the end I’d be fine and capitulate.

The funny thing is that what affected me the most and made me angriest was the fact that she was right. I would know it with everything in me that she was right. That would get me all messed up inside first before it got better, if it did. Sometimes I had to be subdued by the very effective African form of subdual.

So yeah, as I child I was pretty childish, but that was it. I never really threw tantrums or gave people the silent treatment or  did any of the things  that children really do when they act out. All I would struggle with is coming to terms and accepting that truth, that fact, that reality that was in a head in collision with what I wanted.

Even as a teenager, I struggled and sometimes felt the need to implode and explode at the same time, but it never was that bad. I made do with deciding to be into metallica, being boyish, starting a band, wearing blue eye shadow; nothing drastic.

It was because somehow, just as it was during childhood, what I knew and understood to be right would always succeed in convincing me against giving in to whatever I wanted or felt like giving into. Yes, there would be conflict, but truth was always proved to be true and right. It was just logical to do the right thing; and safer too. I couldn’t imagine how  to start telling Mr. Twongyeirwe that I was expelled or suspended for this or that. Nope. Natta. Wasn’t going to happen.

In fact, sometimes I’d see my peers going through stuff and wonder why it was so hard for them. Why was it so difficult for them to snap out of that phase? What was so desirable about being a rebel? But now, in light of recent events, I think I understand. Most of the time, life reaches a point where to act out or not is the question.

Acting out is described as a psychological term from the parlance of defense mechanisms and self control, meaning to perform an action in contrast to bearing and managing the impulse to perform it.  People who act out tend to express their conflicts in preference to remembering them such that they don’t remember anything of what they have decided to forget an repress, but instead acts out to replace present activity by past memory. It’s like coping with the pressure to do what we believe is wrong by giving into the desire itself.

I had never struggled to a point where acting out felt like a viable option; that was until University and its woes. The stress, the course, the social drama, the curiosity, the relationship issues and above all the pressure to fit in. Ironically, I was so afraid I would end up being this person I had understood I don’t need to be, because of the pressure that required me to be this person.

I had so many friends and family that prayed and fasted and prayed again and fasted some more as I entered University, and understandably so. Uni can be a place you get lost in if you are not careful. But the concern was that I was raised as a girl who simply knew the walls of her home and the doors of the church. Even the high school I went to was a Christian one. I hadn’t seen the world and I didn’t know it, so my introduction to it was most probably going to be mega overwhelming.

The talks and lunches and advice all concerned remaining as I was; goody two shoes innocent little one. Keep with the good grades. Keep with the politeness. Keep with the music, but only in church. Don’t date until the four years are done. Don’t have sex; it is for marriage. Don’t do drugs. Go for fellowship all the time. I was like, let’s do this uni thing and be done with it. *insert gangsta with shades emoji*

Here it begun: On the one hand, I didn’t have many friends from High school in my course. So that was one. I am therefore eventually known as the fourth year chic, with a backpack and earphones that always walks alone. I dealt with that, until it was hard to. With law, I was yet to realize after failing my whole first year that it’s about reading smart  and not necessarily reading "all". That knowledge would have saved me time and stress. The grades went up and by God’s grace stay up but the motivation for keeping them there is questionable sometimes. I also learnt that the more polite you are to the boys especially, the more you get hit on and stalked and disturbed. So yeah, when you say excuse me in the library and you look like a shady guy, i just might walk past you. The music however was always been awesome. But then you are writing about love and generic life experience and not grace and faith and you expressly used to. You have also been reviewed by the Kampala Sun and somehow, all the red flags go up. Yeah drugs and weed and etc are as common as Rolexes on the road side. I can’t even explain how traumatized I was the day I walked through a hostel and realized I was passively inhaling fumes of weed. I wanted to remove my lungs and sterilize them oba? But now, where is that shock when you pass by your classmates and friends offering you a joint? Somehow the argument that it is smoke from a plant rolled in a piece of paper, makes sense. Haha. They all think I do weed now.

Also, when a boy that you know and would consider your friend, is supposed to be passing you gum from his pocket and a couple of condoms fall out, eventually your mind has to come up with something else other than the thought that, “Aya! That boy has sex!” Humans have sex, married or not; big deal. That exposure can want to mess with what you have always known about what God has created to be expressed and enjoyed in marriage, as well with the legitimate reason and design for it being that way.

What I’m saying is there is what you know and what you have been told your whole life as aforementioned. Then there is coming face to face with it for the first time and eventually how you perceive that fact post the whole ordeal.

Like everyone, you learn for yourself. It’s like having the sky described to you your whole life and then seeing it for yourself. You will agree that it is blue and vast and that it has clouds and that it is always above us and so on. But there is a particular shade of blue at twilight that is the prettiest; you will for some strange reason love the color of grey in the clouds more than white and on random evenings by yourself wish you could touch the sky itself.

If you have understood me correctly, I am not talking about Uni. I’m talking about life and the struggle of , “How we really know what we know.” It always at this stage or around this stage that most people are figuring out life and who they should be. Most people at Uni have finished acting out, or by fourth year they have found out all they were under so much pressure to find out about. So who they are is a deliberate and conscious decision. That's their choice and its kaawa.

And then there is you and me.

Who are you? What are you doing? How is what you have always known as truth, going to remain as truth?

There’s also the tiny problems that you think are enormous and undefeatable even in the presence of the knowledge of the truth. Yeah, all the older people keep on consoling you by telling you the older you grow the worse it gets, and from experience, boy aren’t they right? I just want to be the 6 year old, whose day was a bit unfavorable coz I didn’t have fries. Funny enough, I can walk out of my room right now and buy all the fries I want, eat them and work all those calories off in a week just by opening All England Law reports.

Lastly, there comes the question of what are you going to do? Give in? We all have given in, in some way. Is it to act out until the phase ends? What if it doesn’t? What about the scars that come with it? Will that be enough to keep me from plunging into the deep, for God knows that is my every human instinct? How about waiting it out and doing what you’ve always known to be right even if you question the premise of some of it? The probability of in the end remaining a frigid ice princess is pretty probable, so to speak. But is that really true? How about making the decision not to decide and just going with what happens?

I just want to give in the innocence I've been given.  I want to unknow all I know and undo all I've done and just start over. Everyday I am given innocence. When the coin is flipped, to take it or leave then become the other question. 

Hehe. 

Life and love and why.

But mostly life.

When life says grow up, the smart thing is to do so.

“ Who are you gonna be? When you’re on your knees who do you believe? Fear is a lonely man, You’ve been given innocence, You’ve been given innocence again.”

SWITCHFOOT

To act out or not, is the question.