Someone I know once said, “Writers are generally neurotic,” he was very quick to add, “I am not that neurotic.”

I tried really hard not to watch him declare this while he twisted the hair at his temples right out of their roots. I remember this at a time when the world is celebrating the very first African American President, and my country’s president has declared a holiday to celebrate the fact, which I might add was quite hard to recover from.

I will relegate my issues with the President, for sending the country to a holiday when we should all have been working to improve our still under developed economy, to second tray, and instead focus for a while on me.

That is the other thing about writers; ego. Well, what can I say, in a week when I lost a laptop, then discovered that even all the back up I had had been erased from its storage, and that I was considered a suspect in the theft of the said laptop.

I’ll move on to discuss the police system. I understand that the police force is being paid better than they were ever paid in the 90’s. I think they are still not being paid enough. That would explain the disgruntled attitude in the policemen who came to investigate the theft report. One of them even declared that we should have solved the case in house instead of calling them in. I was hoping that at some point in between his complaints he would see the following equation:

Theft/criminal offence + police action/investigation=Police Mandate: To maintain law and order, to preserve peace, to protect life and property, to prevent and detect crime, to apprehend offenders, to enforce all laws and regulations with which it is charged.

Well, he didn’t, and we are having a lot of difficulty getting the particular police station and officers to investigate the crime.

That said and done, I hereby force myself to recognize the good things that I do know about.

1. Well, Obama is President of the United States of America. Not only do I see this as a great historical milestone for the world and for the African race (the African person has proven himself many times before, in medicine, technology, literature, mathematics, don’t you dare forget all that and hinge all the validation for the intelligence and capability encased within the colour of your skin on one man), but I also see it as a chance for all of us to reconsider what makes us, and what breaks us.
2. I realized that I am blessed with a very good friend. If you have a good friend, you know what it eans to know that there is one person you can trust with anything, even the deepest of your darkest secrets. Well, there rarely is such a person. I have come from being an individual who relies heavily on outside validation, to an individual who understands that we are who we are, and we can only work to be the best of who we are. Finding one person who cares to laud and support my efforts without asking anything back, is special. Now all I have to worry about is that I will take too much and not give anything back.
3. There was a time the structure of my family took away from my confidence. I mean two fathers (oops, I almost forgot the third one), a mother, two stepmothers an assortment of brothers, a stepsister and nieces and nephews, some of whom think I’m just a family friend; that can be daunting. This week, I appreciate all of them, even those who have backed out on me, and those who will not yet accept me, but most of all, everyone who has helped me be who I am.

As I close this week, I have a small, rather juvenile message, for a certain person somewhere. Hate, is an exhausting emotion. To expend that much energy on a person, indicates that that person matters much to you. So stop and think, why do you spend that much time, and energy hating me?

Juliet Maruru is a neurotic writer who sometimes allows the world to see the jumbled up the work of jumbled up grey matter on www.jmaruru.wordpress.com