I need to give you a heads up on this one: This post explores sensitive themes. If you’re not in the frame of mind to go down such a rabbit hole, do scroll past. And always take care of yourself, would you?
Walk with me.
It’s July 2022. The very first day of July, actually. Exactly one week since we laid Dad’s body to rest. (Funny, 2 years on, it’s still a fight within myself to say “body”.)
Everything is still raw. His absence all too real. The guilt doesn’t help either, compounded by the guilt of having to leave my Mom & brother at the family home with a fresh mound of dirt to wake up to every morning.
But I am my own revenue driver, and my bills need to be paid. So work, we must.
I don’t remember much about the day I took this picture, July 1st, 2022.
The good folks of @weareparable & @manyattascreens are hosting this wonderful event, “Love Letters to Cinema.” I don’t remember it, but I know it’s wonderful as I have the pictures to prove it - I’m the one taking those pictures.
There’s something @abelmutua says rather often: “Timing ya Mungu ni mzuri, lakini timing ya Shetani... MARIDADI!”
Let me ask you: When was the last time you saw a bowl of fresh razor blades just lying around? When? Me? Not once before, nor any other day since this first day of July 2022.
Grief has this nigh-hypnotic ability to make you question what the point of this existence even is. And oh how powerful it is in that hypnotism.
So here I am, in the thickest of griefs, welcoming my work as a distraction. Yet the enormity of the grief will not allow me to escape its clutches even for the shortest of moments.
And then.
And then.
A bowl of razor blades. Just there. Some even still encased in their paper packaging. And the one blade just... there.
The timing.
Maridadi.
I flirt with the thought.
Heavily. Intimately. Passionately.
Then my mind wakes up to the camera in my hand.
I raise it to my face, release the shutter. Almost as though to retake my thoughts.
Photography may have saved my life this day.
2 years on, I had to look for this photo again today.
I’m fine. I had the most delicious burger for breakfast, so I promise you, I’m fine.
