Who Am I Without Melancholy And Nostalgia

Conversation with my younger self.

I invited my younger self on a date.

Two of them whispered, “Am I the one you’re calling?”

You see, I have two younger selves. They’re more like twins but with very different personalities.

My 9-year-old self shouted, “It’s me, joor!”

My 13-year-old self bowed her head and whispered, “It’s definitely not me.”

I told both of them they could come. My 9-year-old self, who I’ll call Temi from now on, jumped for joy. She was excited to be outside. But my 13-year-old self, Sofiyyah, couldn’t understand why she had to go out. She told me she’d rather stay indoors. After some persuasion, she followed but kept walking behind us.

I asked where we should go, and Temi excitedly listed all her favorite places—Sweet Sensation, the park; but Sofiyyah stayed quiet.

“Sofiyyah, won’t you talk?”

“Please leave me. Anywhere you go is fine.”

We ended up at the park, and Sofiyyah took the lead, guiding us to the farthest corner. Temi couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Sofiyyah, what’s all this? Why aren’t we sitting at the front, cheering with the rest of the people?”

“Please, this is where I want to sit,” Sofiyyah responded.

Temi was about to make a remark, but I decided to interfere.

“We’ll just sit here.” I patted Temi on the back, stopping her from saying something rude.

Nobody spoke for a while. Temi, getting bored, finally asked, “Sofiyyah, who made you like this?”

Sofiyyah was about to speak, but the words didn’t form. Instead, tears started spilling. She cried so much, Temi almost cried too.

Temi turned to me, tears forming in her eyes. “Do you know why she’s like this? We used to be so happy.”

I didn’t know where to start, but I did anyway.

“Life happened, Temi. Alot happend. After our first year in secondary , our world changed. Maybe it was puberty or maybe we finally started understanding the world, but we changed. We became so sad and cried a lot. Everyone around us asked why, but we always pushed them away. They started saying we were always frowning.”

“But we always had a smile on our face,” Temi said, in tears. She couldn’t believe we had changed so much.

“The smile disappeared.”

“Is it back now?” she asked hopefully.

“I’m sorry, it’s not. But we’re better now. We smile often, but we still cry a lot.”

“Do we have friends?” she asked again, hopeful.

“We do. We have amazing people in our corner. We’ve had a lot of downs with friendship, but we still have good people who love us. And guess what? We’re still in contact with Goodness and Kosiso.”

“That’s nice, then. Are they still our best friends?” She called over an ice cream vendor and bought FanVanilla. We asked Sofiyyah if she wanted some, but she declined in tears.

“No, they’re not. We only speak on special occasions.” I bought FanIce instead.

“Do we still write and read books?” she asked, her mouth full of ice cream.

“Yes, we still do. We stopped for a long while, but even then, we kept a diary. We just didn’t write much. But now we’re back on track.”

“At least something is still right.”

“I guess.”

Sofiyyah turned and spoke for the first time since our conversation started.

“Who am I melancholy and nostalgia?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I just said, “We’re still trying to find out, but we will get better. We’re closer to God now and we believe that one day, we’ll find out. We’re holding onto hope.”

Sofiyyah kept crying. Temi and I hugged her. She resisted at first, she didn’t know how to love herself, but I didn’t back down until she accepted it.

We held hands as we walked out of the park in the dark, holding onto nothing but the hope that things would get better.

I didn’t even get a chance to tell them how hard life is as an adult, I thought as I sat on the bus home.

Well, maybe next time.

I couldn’t help but think about Sofiyyah’s question over and over.

Who am I without melancholy and nostalgia?