Geckos on the Wall.

Words of Precious Emelogu: "I dislocated my shoulder. In fact, it got so close to a fracture. Marvin (my housemate) rode me to an "orthopaedic hospital". We sat down with the tens of patients who sat patiently, and eagerly waited for the Doctor. It was a private clinic, one which mixed Traditional practice with conventional medicine. The doctor was an orthopaedic doctor who did traditional practice! I was in terrible pains.


We were there by 11am, trust Nigeria we were attended to by 6pm. But we waited and typical of Nigerian medicine people, you need to be dying to get attention, and unfortunately I was not dying, so my terrible pain reduced to 'considerable' on its own. Laughable as it might be, I only got an ori massage for my pains and charged horribly. We left the hospital with a determination not to return.

We scoured through 3 other places before we met the man who thought he got it figured out. This Doctor felt Ibuprofen was harmless despite my incessant complaints that I had an ulcer history. I went to heel a shoulder and I revived a dying ulcer. One thing I endured was pain. Pains of a dislocated shoulder! Pains which whittled down to bearable.

This shoulder still hurts, despite the "figuring out". I could use it to do hard things. But it still hurts. I don't sit up at night, wriggling in pains and anxiety again. I am not conscious of the pains, but I feel them. I could say I have become comfortable with the pains.

There are people who have taken to their pains like me, as duck to water. It is there, but you have decided to just go ahead and ignore it. From the hands of terrible relationships and horrible people, from abusive partners, from intolerable situations, but you have gotten used to it, and you are now all too familiar and comfortable with the condition of pain.

Well, I want to engage you. Pain should not be your comfort zone. You deserve to be happy. Like Geckos on the wall, the wall should not be your comfort zone. You should not wait to be pushed into the wall. There are conditions of conditioning ones existence to the tune of happiness. And one of them is understanding that happiness is local. No one has the right to your happiness except you.

So, when you make those decisions of 2017, make happiness the top choice. Decide to be happy. Let go of all the negative energies around you. Quit those abusive relationships, kill those killjoys with your resolve to be happy, and your wild smiles. One thing I don't want to see on Socialmedia this year is women who almost died before they quit or the ones who quitted as corpses. You deserve to be happy too."

Cheers!