Hi :-)
About 5-6 days ago, everyone was talking about Christmas and a couple of days ago through today and tomorrow and even the next two days maybe, it'll all be about how the old year was spent and how the new year will be spent and boy do I need a break.
Sounds pretty bitter and cynical yeah? Hehe nothing like that really.
I'm just a tad jealous that I didn't get to have any interesting or fun experience to talk about. It was just like any other day or season, sometimes even worse. Well, except the numbing idleness and loss of zeal to even do anything productive.... I actually meant for the previous sentence to portray the positive aspects of the holiday but it ended up being not so positive after all 😄. I think what I meant to say is that I'm enjoying the holiday feeling of doing absolutely nothing, just a lazy routine of cook, eat, see movies while doing the latter, watch skits most of my free time, sleep, rinse and repeat.
An introvert would love this very much; I'm an ambivert and I do like it, hence, the positive aspect. (Excluding of course the annoying parts of being home not alone, getting annoyed and not being the boss of your own self).
Again, I think our brains just go into some sort of reset mode when it's the holidays so that even if you have tasks to accomplish, you'd just keep procrastinating. Is this true for you too?
I live in Nigeria and the holidays are pretty typical this time of year.
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I'd say it's more or less the same everywhere else though from what I've seen so it's really up to the people to make it different if routine is boring for them. Routine/the "norm" definitely is boring for me and I enjoy spontaneity every now and then. I'm the one (well, in addition to a couple of my siblings), who's always looking to change up the sitting arrangements in the living room at home everytime we clean up more thoroughly than usual, or change up the kitchen arrangements... basically just give a place a new look every now and then. As I was saying, (🙃 I tend to veer off a lot, please bear with me and try to keep up), it's typical; travel to your hometown, spend extravagantly while there to show off and for some, put up appearances that they're successful, eat and drink so much, and then go back even more broke and with new enemies.
Haha this is the best part, new enemies. You're definitely wondering what that means. It's quite simple, yet perplexing.
When you come off as a wealthy person in most villages here, you attract the eyes of evil and extremely jealous poor villagers/relatives who would say things like, "oh so you're rich and my son/daughter isn't", or "you're rich and I'm not, never" and things like that, mean them, and then proceed to do some really dark voodoo stuff to make you unsuccessful or terminally ill.
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Relax, it's superstition but boy is it real.
But there's the good parts of going home really. The very interesting stories of tradition, the art,
travelling to your motherland if you don't already stay there, reuniting with family; close and extended, walks down memory lane with so much laughter and childlike euphoria, dining and wining with loved ones, so many events to attend without office worries more often than not, et cetera.
One may argue that the bad far outweigh the good but it depends on where you're standing and how you look at it. It's all relative, wouldn't you agree?
Anyway, over here, we don't travel to the village anymore. When we did as kids, I always looked forward to it. I didn't even have to wait for the holidays, my brother and I used to go with my dad on a lot of weekends but the holidays meant not having to stay only until Sunday because of school. This was possible because we live in the metropolis of the same state we're from. It's like hailing from a small town, say Attica, and living in the city of New York. When we became teenagers, my mom would say, don't go with your dad, if you do, don't eat anything, or shake any hands, etc. Yep, my mom's paranoid, but my people are also diabolical. It wouldn't be like this though as not all families from my place run, if my dad wasn't a deadbeat dad and mostly absent. I mean the man is a jovial and fun loving man and if he wasn't what I said he is, we'd be one big happy family going home together and fighting off the demons together you know, 😄. But since they've fought since I could understand anything, my parents that is, they got separated and for my mom, it's always a competition who all five of us like more or prefer or talk to more or even at all. She actually would prefer very outrightly that we don't speak to him at all, not after everything he's put us through. Buuuuuut, I mean we're not kids anymore, none of us need him anymore as a child would need a father so what's the point of bearing grudges right? Just talk to the man and only acknowledge that he bears the title father. This is solely me though oh and the oldest. The others don't feel the same way. They hardly even say hello to him at family gatherings.
This feels like some lamentable history and doesn't even really fit into the Ladies of Hive community but I'm a lady, one of the Hive Community so yeah, it stays, hehe. At this point though, I hereby decide to post this in the Life Stories Community as well or crosspost it.
Moving on, yet again, I think the whole point of starting this story was to express my lack of being a part of any beautiful and wholesome activities just like so many of you and also complain about how nothing interesting is happening over here, just a sick and sulking mother, an absent but hyper father, a mean brother and sisters halfway across the world. The sisters are the only ones brightening up this holiday for me though with their calls and the gifts they're sending me. 😁
Oh but not to worry, pardon me for sounding somewhat pathetic, it's a hive we're in so you feel it, I feel it too. All of your posts have been beautiful and I've felt all of your happy and even so not happy feelings. Thank you for all of it.
I've also desisted from making comments 🥲 to avoid sounding too cheesy or too bitter, LOL. But, I shall go on enjoying oh and making comments too because I've let it all out....
Hearty cheers to the new year y'all! May this be our best year yet. 🥂
Lots of love, xoxo.
