Looking at Onyinyechi with the eyes of an outsider, an observer, one might be quick to conclude that she's living the world. Maybe not as everybody else is doing, but exactly the way she wants it.
Onyinyechi is fairly complexioned, at least her face is. She has a spectacular gait to her steps, like she is ever dancing, self-consciously swinging her hips, or rather the part of her feminine anatomy where the stereotypical, African hips is meant to be located, she's been told over and over since she was a child. It's a beautiful gait.
But what Onyinyechi's observers would never get to know is that before she owned that beautiful gait, once as a growing child sometime in the junior secondary school classes, she used to practice different walking steps both in front of the mirror, and on her way to buy cream crackers biscuit for her elder sister, or one kilo of fresh iced fish, kote, for her mother. There was this particular girl at her neighbourhood then, Dorcas, who had this boyish way of walking, no she wasn't a tomboy, but she had this bounce when she walked. Onyinyechi thought it was cool, and practiced the bounce walk in front of the mirror in the bedroom when no one was watching, or on her way to buy cream crackers or kote, or on her way to/back from school when everyone could watch if they liked. She spiced up the bounce step with the haircut her stylist used to give her at her request, the one that had the frontal hair edges shaped like a boy's after the main cut was done. The only thing Onyinyechi did not do then was wear the male trousers, she would have but she did not want to be sent packing from home.
Overtime, Onyinyechi stopped finding the bounce walk and hair cut cool. She discovered another girl, Titilayo, who used to walk with her feet barely touching the floor. Her hands were usually carried in a particular downward slope most of the time like they were not meant for manual usage. Onyinyechi picked up a new lesson, this time in being Cinderella. She also tried her hands at deciding which akimbo standing style was more stylish; was it the one with the thumb at the back of the waist with the other four fingers at the front, or the one that takes the thumb to the front of the waist ....
Gradually, the idea of steps and stances fazed off Onyinyechi's consciousness that even when she landed the walk she has now, the one she has been teased over, misjudged over, even envied over; it was totally oblivious to her.
Onyinyechi is pretty. In her own way, she houses various forms and arrangements that come together to become beautiful, Onyinyechi is a smart girl, the kind of smart that makes 'smart' as an adjective inappropriate. Onyinyechi is brilliant, not in the usual kind of way, but like every other thing, in her own kind of way.
But Onyinyechi, in her own eyes, did not see any good, or plenty of it, in herself, like others did. She did not see much to be envied. Although she likes the soft pleasant feeling she use to have when she is told of how beautiful she is, or how intelligent, she never readily believed it. Despite the fact that she used to suspect herself, that somehow, she must be brainy, some kind of genius, she used to question it when she is told same by others.
Onyinyechi has had her fair share of life's aches, for someone in her twenty-somethingish years of life, or maybe a little more than her fair share. On the other hand, Onyinyechi has had series of triumphs, successes, laurels, and prizes, yet somehow she still used to find a way of reasoning out and proving that every other person was better off. She was hanging, desperately, to every negative possibly available, while at the same time wishing for every positive possibly available.
Onyinyechi would wish or do no man evil, but she wanted every man to not wish or do her evil, too; Onyinyechi was silly.
Onyinyechi has had people who'd loved her sincerely, but she clung to the way she was made to feel by those who didn't; Onyinyechi was gullible.
No matter how much anybody tried to come close, Onyinyechi would not let it happen. She could have as well told everybody to stop saying or showing any love to her, even though that was all she desperately wanted, because after all she just didn't, couldn't love herself, what was there to love after all.
Interlude.
Now, finally, Onyinyechi sees things, plenty to love in herself. She understands that she is the best and only version of herself. She realises that circumstances do not make her, but she is what she makes of circumstances. She met a guy she is convinced, doubly convinced loves her, and she doesn't doubt it when he tells her she is beautiful. She is sure of this guy because she found out he'd been, and is very persistent. She'd run, toyed with, disregarded, tried to frustrate him for years, testing him, but he persisted; he loves her, wow.
She even calls him "my prince", while he calls her "my delight".
Onyinyechi brags of this guy these days to everybody, interested or not. If anyone dares doubt, she's quick to show off the hands of her beloved, nailed for her, out of love.
Sometimes, if she is pushed, she'd even take such doubters to golgotha, and show them the cross where her love died, out of love, for her, and them too.
Now, Onyinyechi stands, walks, with her beautiful gait of course, and says, confidently :
No one can love me better than me.
She has found one who loves her beyond her senses.
She understands that there are plenty who love her, she doesn't blame them, there are tons of things to love in her.
Yet she maintains her stance, she surpasses them all
She loves herself.
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