DIARIES OF AN UNENDING PANDEMIC by Nwanne Favour

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Dear Obiageli,

Words fail me and that is the surprising thing. Words shouldn’t fail me, I mean, I’ve spent most of my life scribbling God-Knows-What on paper, yet I am here, strangled by a familiar feeling. Yes, words have failed me.

You know how you think the world will go this way and that way? How almost certain that your life will always float on an air of normalcy? How you write schedules on paper and put them on your wall so you can see them yourself? So you don’t get tempted to procrastinate? Yes, Obiageli, I know you know. We were together, we made those plans together and I still remember how your voice had rung in my ears when you said we had to go clubbing on the last day of our final exams. Go clubbing? Me? I hated clubs, with all those loud music and the disco lights. But I had promised you that we would go, I had promised myself that I would try to step out of my comfort , try to dance in place with loud music and disco lights. We had been so certain, so very certain. Is that why this hurts this much? This break from the norm? The fact that we thought that somehow the world would bend and twist to accommodate our plans? The world would never bend, it would only bend us.

I have looked for words to describe what it has felt in the last seven months. I have desperately searched to give words to all these crushing emotions. There is a certain power that comes with naming things, but I can’t name what it is I feel. There is a mild sadness covered with a fleeting hope and a vague desire to make meaning of it all. How did life hit the pause button? How did it even stop? One day, we were all dying to go to travel to anywhere that was called “abroad”, so long it was not Nigeria, now here we are, stuck, sealing off borders, hoping not to go anywhere. There is a hopelessness that comes with that. This acceptance that things may never be the same again.

I still don’t know why I am writing this to you Obiageli. Maybe because I know you won’t see it and because this paper can hold a secret more than your mouth can (so we fought about what happened and we may have had what was a falling out, but did that give you the right to tell Tega the things I told you in confidence?). We had been friends since our 100 level days, I held you when your stupid ex, that hungry looking Ekene, cheated on you with a girl that was not even fine, you were there when I thought I would fail that course because I had drank two cups of coffee and arrived late to the venue. Now, there is a silence that has plastered itself between us. It would not have mattered if life did not stop, if buildings did not harbour hollow sounds but it matters now when you have nothing to do but sit all day and think of a distant future filled with people touching each other side by side, with faces free of masks. It matters because of every other thing that exists, to remember has become suddenly very easy. Why did you have to sleep with Henry? My boyfriend? No, my then boyfriend?

I guess this is what a pandemic does to you, a coronavirus pandemic. You remember, you remember a lot. You sit and think and remember. I have looked at my family and I’ve felt a deep sense of gratitude, just seeing that they still walk and talk and that loud voices still bounce off walls into the ears of one person to another. I’ve felt everything – a slicing anxiety, a ferocious panic, an unknown restlessness – and yet, I’ve felt nothing – a lasting numbness, a flattened desire, a dark blankness. But it’s the unearthing that freaks me out the most. This thing of digging, of pushing memories, of memories sprouting up, of time like water, yet of an irritation of such abundance of time, this falling into yourself, this fear of knowing how breakable we all are, this uncertainty of just not knowing.

Writing sometimes feels limp, like a deflated balloon. Putting all of these emotions into paper still feels like too much work. By now, School would have been a thing of memories, of what we had done, and sometimes regret, of the things we wished we had done. Will there ever be a final exam? Why do I want to write about this part of me that feels empty without school? Why is there this numbness? Why do words feel insufficient?

I haven’t learnt a skill and I don’t know if that means I’m stupid or something, but I had a plan. I needed to get my degree, build a portfolio, build a career. Social media in this time can comfort you as well as break you. When did my Whatsapp status turn to a boutique for online stores? I don’t know. There are things that are scattered inside, things that are hard to name. Is that what a pandemic does to you?

Obiageli, you see, anger is like fire. It burns and burns and burns until there is nothing left to burn. I have been angry; I have burned with rage. You were my friend. I don’t know why, I still don’t know why what happened happened, but you see, life is a fleeting thing and I am unearthing. I read a book on forgiveness, they called it a release, an escape from a prison. I’m letting this go, this anger has burned me too long. I have looked and seen sharp images of you two on my hostel bed, doing things I don’t want to put in writing, I have heard my heart beat rise and fall by remembering but I am unearthing. Obiageli, I am not angry anymore. I am not. Life is fleeting Obiageli, I have been angry enough, it has brunt me enough but you see I am not angry anymore. I am still thinking if my life – our lives – will ever return to normalcy.

I feel I’ve become almost too philosophical. Is this what a pandemic does to you?

N. K.
8/8/20