ROOFTOP

After exactly 3 months and 11 days, today I went back up the stairs to the rooftop of the apartment we stay at. Trembling and shaking, I kept taking a step after the next hoping to get to the top. Several times I kept thinking, …why go? …but kept at it regardless.

On this rooftop, I had set a very calm meeting place with my Father. For about 3 months leading to the delivery of my darling baby girl, I'd come up here, do some simple workouts but most importantly have a daily tete-a-tete with Him. I couldn't and still can't wrap my head around the fatigue that comes with the 3rd trimester and rightly so, many times I contemplated not going up there. What made me keep up with the routine was the fact that I knew He was waiting for me and was eager to talk about how far and smooth my pregnancy journey was.

 

We'd talk about my hopes, dreams and plans for baby in my tummy. We'd discuss my maternity leave plans and among other things mostly just sit in the silence of dawn and namaste our session away. This was our place, our special pavilion, my safe haven...which I grew to love until I didn't - for a while.

When baby girl tumultuously landed and was placed on my clueless new mom arms after the C-Section, I silently looked up to the heavens and softly said "I know you already know her but I can't wait to come up to our space and show you how beautiful she is!"

 

A day into her being here she got some complications and had to be put in intensive care and out to recuperate for 18 days. Yes, I counted days and each seemed to hold more hours than usual. From this point my world started crumbling one by one or so it seemed in my head. I have never cried so much in my life. The numbing pain I would feel made my sole ache when I stepped down. I crode tears I didn't think my tear glands had. I really crode.

 

I went straight into post-partum depression that hit me like a detested flu, wueeh. It's kinda funny now and would make someone think....aaaiyaya? Wewe Mercy? Depressed? Aje sasa? I also couldn't believe that the 'ever smiling, ever jovial, ever social and active girl' could be pressed that much. So much of what I loved doing just left a bad taste in my mouth. Being in social spaces, something I would typically whole-heartedly embrace I wanted nothing to do with. The world was a desert and I was standing in the middle of it seeking a well ....just one well, or a water puddle to quench my dying thirst; my hope, my reason to wake up and keep moving. My mental health was in shambles. Re-grouping the entity that is MERCY seemed impossible.

 

October & November 2023 wewe!!!!

 

In several of those visits to the hospital as I held my newborn girl in tubes, or while expressing milk next to other mums waiting for their babies recuperating in the New Born Unit, I kept asking my father why he let things happen the way he did. "I thought we had a plaaaaaan manze. Did those early morning meetings mean anything to you? I thought our fist-bumps were a confirmation that you and I were set to celebrate good news?? I thought we signed and sealed her delivery? Yaani uliamua uniruke tu live live?" I was a child feeling betrayed by her father. His Will didn't make sense to me one bit.

Albeit hard, I still chose an afternoon as bright as this to come to this place to tell him how angry I have been at Him, the resentment I held onto for the things I have had to endure in the last quarter of 2023 but most of all to tell him that I am grateful for the insurmountable strength that He gave me through this period, the love he surrounded me with in the form of my husband, my sister, my best couple, sisters-in-law, my family, friends and friends who became family. I know too well how hard it was for them to 'handle me' in this period but they chose to do it anyway - THANK YOU. Through you, I experienced my Father in totality.

 

...so where'd we leave things Father? I'm here at the rooftop. I'd have brought baby girl here too but she's sound asleep. She'll tag along tomorrow. 2024 plans? I'm ready. Use me. 

#MamaZahara