"NOT ADMITTED"

She clicks on the Whatsapp group chat, 

Yet another "Congratulations, you've been admitted", with her heart heavy, she angrily leaves the group, minimize out of Whatsapp.

There she is patiently waiting for chrome to load her admission status, this is the third time today she's logging into her jamb caps. 

Her eyes almost eager with hope, she muttered under her breath, "God please"

The network server makes matter worst by going sluggishly as she clickes "Regular admission status" she closes her eyes, hoping against hope, praying fervently, that this time it'd be different. 

But it's not, because as she opens her eyes slowly, she's greeted with an arrogantly boldly written, "NOT ADMITTED", screaming at her. Suddenly the dam breaks. 

Silently, tears begin to stream down her eyes, taking a rather familiar router via her chin. 

The urge to throw her phone across the room intensifies, she wishes she could will her admission into existence. "It's too early to lose hope or start disbelieving, let's not give ourselves reasons to doubt God or panic", she says out loud, as though begging herself to believe these words. 

She offs her mobile data, and continues from when she stop at reading her African novels. Movies, novels and sleep has been the only way she had be able to keep sane. To keep it down, the fear that grips her whenever she checks her admission status. 

The fear that it might happen as it did last year and she would have to spend another miserable one year at home doing absolutely nothing worthwhile, another year of fighting back to back depression and identity crisis with the gnawing thought that her life, the one she envisions whenever she closes her eyes is just out there, waiting for her.

 Another year of hoping, believing, and trusting with a broken heart. Another year of trying to put the pieces of her life together, building from bottom to top. Another year of being highly delusional and crying herself to sleep every night, and smiling brightly by noon. 

Another year of misplaced priority, watching her weak heart make out feelings for mere kindness, snapping into the endless loop of making the guy that acts nice a figure of misplaced affection. Another year of carrying friendship on top her head like some government job, because the truth is, she really doesn't care half as much as she acts, but she's bored and keeping the friend thing going is her breath of fresh air. 

Another year of fighting, the suffocation of being her, the urge to want to not be seen in a crowded room not because she hates the spotlight but because she knows she'd become the butt of the joke. Another year of feeling inadequate, of wishing her body was different.

 Another year of coming to the consciousness that she was indeed beautiful but not the regular kind, instead a beauty liken to abstractions like wisdom, intellect and personality but never on the surface. Never inside out, only inside. 

And this thoughts happen to come upon her a lot, strangling her like two gold chains wrapped around her neck. 

She laughs at her silliness, for indeed she was behind schedule but where's even the finance to be on schedule? Maybe it's a good thing she's not in school yet, maybe not. 

@favvy_Okwans🖤.