I have this thing with my eyes! I don't do it on purpose, it just happens.
I noticed a few things while in high school. I always maintain eye contact. Whenever I sit in a posture that is not upright I feel like I can't breathe properly, so most times I have to sit upright, shoulders back and chin up kind of upright. I also stare a lot. Sometimes I'm just looking at the air in front of somebody (I can't notice what they do on their faces) but I will stare.
You know those moments you have with a friend(s) where you just open up about things you probably brush off? It was that time. My friend told me that at first, I confused her. My posture, stare and eye contact made her think for a while that I was making passes at her. Well, after knowing me she realized I just do that unconsciously and there was nothing much to it. That confession, however, made me feel a little insecure. I sought a second opinion and it was almost the same. I then decided to avoid making eye contact or doing things that may send mixed signals because, in high school, you didn't want people telling the admin things that aren't true. I tell you it couldn't last for more than a weekend. If I wasn't maintaining eye contact, my eyes would land on everything else and it became a distraction. The fact that I was aware, made me intentionally avoid eye contact and I constantly thought of what the other person might be thinking. I was very uncomfortable at that time. I was trying to figure out why my classmate would think I'm seductive! (She used that word!) while the cook would apologize or say 'sina ubaya'
Oh the cook!! We had a rotating duty to go for extra food whenever it wasn't enough. It was my turn to go for extra food. No queue meant the food was either finished or you are the first one there, considering how far from the counter my table was, the latter was highly unlikely, but I went anyway. When I got there with the bowl for stew, I'm not sure what I said to him but I remember he apologized and said 'sina ubaya', took the bowl from me, put more food and then gave it back to me. I didn't get what had just happened because this particular cook was the harshest of them all.
Later on when my teeth started acting up and I had to eat 'soft foods,' I always got to the kitchen counter late after all the potatoes had been served and what was left was soup. The first day I got there late, the cook said 'usiniangalie hivyo nitakuekea chakula' and served me from the food left for supper. After that, every time I went for my potatoes late, I was still served. Courtesy of my eyes!
I later met this man. He was pretty old and also the owner of the art centre my friend and I interned at (it was more of an apprenticeship.) We only met and got to talk to him once, the same time he was telling us about how we should start with what we have around us to reach our dreams. There and then, he said to me, 'like you for example, there is a way that you look at boys, you could use that to your advantage.' (I remember the words because I wrote on my journal on that day!) I was uncomfortable at first. I wasn't sure what this man was getting from my eyes but he was right. I wasn't doing that on purpose and because I couldn't control it, I might as well use it, right?
If there is anything I learnt from my eyes, is that I cannot control what other people think or feel about me or things about me. I was certainly not about to suffocate myself because somebody somewhere will get the wrong idea about me. I was not about to spend my life trying to please anybody at the cost of my peace. It is not worth it.
People will hate you for the same thing others love you for. I have come across people who thought my eyes were rude, disrespectful or arrogant while others thought I was flirting or making passes at them when I wasn't feeling any of those things.
You see, you can't make everyone happy but you owe yourself your happiness. So let's do this, don't let people make you feel insecure about things that are beyond your control. Don't even refer to them as insecurities, they are superpowers!! My superpower is in my eyes, what's yours?
That’s it from me this week.
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//Till next time✌🏽//
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