Youth is hazardous.

You stumble and fall over too many times… bruised and bleeding but still battling until you are selfish enough to admit that you are not prepared for the terrain.

You relentlessly break your own heart into pieces, over and over until you are patient enough to admit that yes!… it is a fragile thing.

Grief is put aside for later, until one day you crash into it in the dark hallways of your sleep, and even then, at 2 a.m., with clammy hands and the weight of the ocean on your chest you refuse to look at it in the eyes and ask it to share your burden.

Youth is really for the young. I cannot imagine an old body suffering through itself to become itself like youth does. Being reborn and dying and being reborn again at least twice a year between the ages of 15 and 32. I cannot imagine what constant birthing would feel like when wearing old bones.

Ask me how many times my gut opened a clear way and I refused; instead choosing the dimly lit, self-destructive path. Ask me again. And ask me how many times I was sure that my feet were firmly grounded on some logical path… only to find myself suddenly wandering in someone else’s senselessness. It’s as though these painful adventures are youth’s compass, it is as though quiet days can only be earned through tears and blood… dreams unsung and silenced wishes.

I regret… Not. One. Thing. But some do.

I see them sometimes trying to walk away from their own shadows. Grinning uneasily… unsure of what to do with their own survival. I walk past and I sense some of their burdens still with them.

Childhood burdens… those are the toughest to let go of. The bundles of pain you collected while exploring at the back of your house when your parents thought you were not hearing them. The promises they made to you at 5, 8, 13 and 16 that remain unfulfilled. The promises that you made to yourself at 14 to not be like them. The numerous small, hurtful words and deeds inflicted upon you like tiny cuts from those who were open wounds themselves. The many fears that you were forced to swallow whole because young mouths were made to bite but never chew. The awkward moments that you believed defined who you were. Those are the toughest.

When I was a child the world was quite bewildering save the few moments when I received gentle kisses from the sun who found me through the leaves of tall trees. Happiness was the silly faces that my grandfather made that reminded me to smile. Hope and despair felt like one emotion, and it remained ripe and throbbing in my throat until I figured out that screaming into pillows released the pressure. And there was a lot more that I had to figure out on my own. Like:

1. How to let go of promises and fall without breaking
2. That I could not fix every hurting thing
3. That it was okay to be… that it was okay that I existed

But youth is also beautiful.

There is grace in the way your heart crashes onto every shore with the hope that it has found home. There is a divinity in the way that every smile is trusted until they can’t be trusted anymore and in the way that every touch is believed to be that of God’s.

Youth is a moment. But so intense is this moment, that until we die, we cannot truly vibrate much higher than youth’s memories would allow. So remarkable are the effects of our early experiences that we are seldom able to divert the courses of the rivers that would take us into our futures.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was a time when every Saturday morning my grandparents would pick us up and take us to the beach or river. Granny always made pelau for lunch and cheese paste sandwiches for snacking in the car. This was a ritual that my siblings and I looked forward to. Somehow, my grandparents knew about our burdens and acknowledged them by taking us to the water.

We seldom acknowledge the pain of youth. We fail to inquire about young hearts while they are young, yet we have developed all kinds of contraptions to try to pick up the pieces when they are older and broken.

There was another time when we looked forward to Sunday mornings. My grandfather would drive from Belmont to Charlieville, with granny’s hot roast bake, salt fish sometimes sausage and eggs. We ate on the veranda with him and his silly faces. I spoke loudly, ashamed that he would hear their splintered voices coming from inside. So for many Sundays, I had broken glass and words shaped like bullets with my breakfast until I figured out that:

4) My grandfather came to be our shield

5) People say “I love you” in many different ways

I miss him.

I wish he were here to make those silly faces with my children. I try but I am not as good as he was. I wish he were here so I could say thank you. His memories are everywhere on this island. I travel with the children to the places that he took me, I tell them about his generosity and his innocence and about all the ways they can express and receive love.

I wish he were here so he could see how I have learnt to be a shield for them. And how I swallowed bullets so that they wouldn’t have to eat them for breakfast.

I wish he were here to see my mistakes; the ones I carry around like green mangoes in my pockets. I am sure he would crack some joke about how I look like a clown with bulging pants and that I should put them down for good.

I wish he were here to see how even as I am a witness to the dying embers of my youth, I am willing to trust someone with my heart again. And how I have learnt to separate hope from despair. And no longer scream into my pillows.

And though youth may have been painful at times, life has still become a constant seeking out and discovering of former landscapes. Only now, I face them with a fuller understanding of who I am.

Nimah Muwakil… sun kissed.