10 Days to 30 Years (Day 5... Voices | Self-Psychoanalysis)

I realise that it’s morning and silently groan as the happening of the previous day rush back to my memory.

I’m still on my bed, and because of fear of having a bad day, I mumble a prayer. I ignore the voice which reminds me of how ungrateful I am, talking to God as though He is at fault for the disrespect I got the day before.

“I told you not to interrupt your prayer because of the call...” the voice continues

“The past is in the past!” I scream to myself. I know I can’t keep blaming myself for my mistake, as guilt has never been an answer to any issue.

I turn and face the wall, hoping I would go back to sleep and wake up in a better mood, as it appeared I woke up at the proverbial wrong-side-of-the-bed.

“You will be thirty in five days and you are thinking of sleeping away your bad feeling? So much for maturity,” a voice says.

I wonder if I don’t need to see the doctor with the way I hear voices in my head.

The need to act mature, according to the voice, gets me off the sleeping position, but not off the bed, as I sit up. Looking at the floor, I wonder at what point I lost respect in the sight of my hairdresser for her to see me as cheap.

“Why are you so particular about how you look in the sight of people,” a voice asks.

“How people treat you is a function of how they see you,” I reply, not realising how suspicious it looks that I was talking to voices in my head.

“Maybe, but it’s actually not your business,” the voice replies. “People get disillusioned, they have their past experiences, and they have their expectations. All these affect how they see you, and they may be wrong. Sometimes how people see you have nothing to do with you, but everything to do with them.”

I am thinking of how true that is when another voice continues. “Yes, and why are you so concerned with being respected? Don’t relate everything to respect or a lack of it. It makes you lose sight of the main thing. I think it is another facet of selfishness.”

I stand up from the bed and walk to my wardrobe as the voices die away.

Are they right? I wonder.

Am I selfish and losing focus of the main thing?

What is the main thing?

My mind on the words of the voices, I take out the laundry. There is no way I can write with this state of mind, and I since I work better with my hands active, I might as well do my laundry which is so much, it is making me appear like I lack clothes.

As I wash, I come to some decisions, the first of which is that I was only going to the saloon when I needed to make my hair. It was no longer going to be a hangout spot for me. I would turn my relationship with my hairdresser back to one of strictly business.

Despite what the voices said, I feel like I have lost respect in the sight of my hairdresser, and I needed to give her space. I acknowledge that I was too perturbed about being disrespected, but I also know that I sense things easily, and my senses are usually right about 90% of the time, and what I felt when she told me I could leave if I didn’t accept her terms was disrespect, and it was definitely part of the 90%.

I also acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that she owed me nothing, and was also trying to save herself some money, buy trying to get a good bargain, and so I shouldn’t be angry with her.

As I scrub, I try to formulate a plan which would shock her so she would see that I could make it without her help. I think of what I could do, and a voice asks, “What do you have in your hand?”

I wonder when the voice began quoting scriptures, and was about to say it, but I knew I had to answer the question. I had my writing, and I instead of me to work steadily at it, and try to excel at it, here I am job hunting, and blaming some woman for my misfortune.

The voices begin talking of ways I could make it with my writing and begin to earn something good, good enough to plan and build with.

I listen, partially, while the other part of my mind finally accepts what has been staring me in the face for a while, but I have always denied.

I had a bad work ethic.

Silence; that's all I hear as I accept that I had a bad habit when it came to working.

I didn’t like to work, but I wanted the money, and got angry when it wasn’t forth coming. The silence was a sign that all the voices agreed with my ‘discovery’, and they all knew that I couldn’t go far until I worked on my work ethic.

My mind goes back to a movie I saw some time back; Drumline 2, when one of the talented drummers revealed that talent didn’t get him to where he was (he was highly successful), but work ethic did.

I ask of myself, maybe I have been praying for what has been granted to me long ago, but my bad work ethic kept sabotaging me, maybe my lack of diligence was the cause of my lack of success and satisfaction.

A voice chooses this point to quote the scriptures again, “Seeth thou a man diligent in his work, he shall stand before kings and not before mean men.”

I am about to ask the voice when it became a Christian, but my phone which is on the bench where I sit vibrates, alerting me that I have a mail.

Wiping off the sods on my hands, I reach for my phone and check the mail, it is a reply from one of my applications.
I am invited for an interview tomorrow.

Tomorrow? Who invites one for an interview the day right before the interview date?
I consider not going, but I feel the stares from the voices, and before I know it, I am deciding on the outfit to wear.

I had applied for a teaching job, and so I quickly finish my washing, and head back to my phone to finish up my online course for educators. I am rushing through the lectures when I decide to calm down. And go through my past lectures instead; I was not in the frame of mind to learn something new.

I study until I feel the hunger pangs, and wonder what to eat, when I remember that I was going to the island for an interview tomorrow, and so I couldn’t afford to spend anything.

I go to bed hungry.

Just as sleep overcomes me, I realise that I didn’t check the time I woke up, neither do I know what time I am going to bed, but more importantly, I realise I didn’t visit Facebook today.

I smile into slumber-land, at least I did something right today.

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Written by me, previously published here.