Fancy this; it is 7:30 in the am and you're rushing like a mad man between dashing for the door and getting back in the house to pick an item you forgot, your shoes halfway through the heel. Your blazer dangles on one shoulder and your bag is half-closed, half-gaping. Man! You overslept. Again! This time, HR might really get you because doesn't Murphy's Law insist that anything that could go wrong will surely go wrong?
7:40, just ten minutes later and you could swear you've been waiting on the matatu for three decades. Three entire decades! Yaani! Indeed, siku ya nyani kufa miti yote hutereza. Istoosheee, today is the day donda wants to ply all routes. The devil himself has decided to play clown in the circus he has created and you're his unwilling victim but what to do! You're right on the edge and so much as a tiny shove will scatter your temper in every way. God forbid donda asks if you've paid which you did as soon as you boarded that God forsaken ma-three.
Ten minutes later and you're alighting at the gate but looks like you forgot your ID. You heave a tired sigh and give the security guy a tired look. At this point, if they're hell bent on firing you, let them seize the moment. Somehow, you're in. Right at the threshold of time and as if on cue, HR comes for the clock-in register. You thank God for small mercies.
It is now 10 o'clock and seated on your desk, your last nerve screwed by all this Valentine's talk, a bunch of roses comes in as delivery for your desk neighbor. Just the other week, it was her birthday and she talked the office deaf on how her toes had a grand time sinking in the ocean sand down at the coast last weekend. And how she got a tan but all you see is wicked sunburn. You roll your eyes so heavily you could see the back of your brain. Here it comes, "aaw, but why does he have to do this Sasa. Aki I tell him he doesn't have to spend so much on me..." Blablabla. She mentions about a surprise weekend getaway as she hands you one of those balled chocolates from the package. You could care less.
Lunch hour is here and you can finally stop molesting your keyboard. It has taken the jagged end of your severed attitude and God knows it could do with a rest. You make for the canteen and wonder why it is half empty. Apparently, people's boyfriends' or whomever it is that warms their beds were around early to pick them up for lunch. Valentine's lunch. You and your ugali-matumbo combo sulk in the corner and hope that the day ends sooner.
Post-lunch, what is otherwise the obvious countdown till 5, you're not doing much except scrolling through the phone. Social media looks like a blood bath with all the red. It's like red threw up all over it. Fake smiles, caked faces, roses, chocolate and thousands of discount offers in red posters. Does a number on your heart because just last week, you had a someone. This week, besides nursing a torn and shredded heart, you have to put up with flaunted affection which you perceive is turned up a notch to itch at you. Malicious people left, right and centre. You're also the recipient of charity chocolate from the overflowing surplus of your very-loved-and-cherished colleagues. Consolation price or not, who cares.
As you board the same matatu back home, all you see is creased red attire, not-so-neat hairs, withered bouquets of roses, sagging packets of chocolate that are testament to the heat's effect and tired smiles. At least you share something in common with all these fellows: tired and withered. Oh, your will is so withered! However, your tired is getting you home to take an unnecessarily long hot shower, perhaps skip dinner and curl up in a ball and bawl your eyes out at just how much you would give to be all loved up, cocooned in someone's arms and be serenaded to their voice as they lie that they don't know where they would be without you. That you are their lifeline and other non-brilliant hackneyed lies like that. Their tired however is getting them a clean shower and more red dinner dresses and a four-course meal with reservations and a dusk-till-dawn kinda hot session if you catch my drift. Love is a beautiful thing. Or a battlefield. A battlefield mostly.
But what is life. You try again next year if your broken heart fails to kill you sooner.
May the day break.
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