'BORROW THIS, BORROW THAT' by Chioma M.

I hid under my bed sheet and hugged what was left of my dignity. I allowed the tears to flow like the fountain I had seen in a documentary, and wished they could soothe my shattered heart or wash down the shame that had choked my throat and blackened my face like the witches from the children’s drama in church. I could still hear the noise outside my circus of shame; girls hauling abuses at me, ‘wannabe oshi,’ ‘jenifa,’ and all the names their heads could think of to represent my shameful act. I had watched myself fall from my supposed famous ‘big girl’ status to a wannabe...

I had always wanted to be a big girl in school; to be known among the fashionistas that rocked the campus and painted it black and blue. So when Yinkus offered to give me her clothes and also connect me to some of her friends that would do the same, I damned the ‘be yourself’ cliché and grabbed her offer. I started rolling with the big babes and felt my life-long dream come to fruition. I rocked campus parties and attended lectures with nothing of my own except myself; for two years I had maintained my new look and deceived my parents at home, until this morning. On my way back from my department, I was stopped at the entrance of the hostel by Yinkus. She had dragged me just before I could apologize for our misunderstanding the previous night. I tried to wriggle myself out of her hold but she seemed to have come prepared and all my pleading seemed like water poured in a basket.

In less than ten minutes, all the girls in the hostel had surrounded us to listen to my two-year charade. Yinkus didn’t spare a word of everything I had done for the past two years. I didn’t know what to do, and how I got into my bed remained a mystery to me. As I listened to the voices outside my room, I was left with just one wish, Death!

Walk into any uni campus today and you will find the girl in the story above. Girls like her are everywhere, living under the wrong light and they are scared of 12am; that awkward moment when the fairy godmother withdraws all her borrowed possession and she falls back to square one. My question is: What shall it profit you if you borrow all the clothes to look good and at the end of the day you are still a nobody? If your borrower coughs, you shiver for fear of being revealed; for how long, really? If anyone is going to define you, trust me, it is never going to start from the outside. What you show off with only lasts the moment you are seen and then like the wind, everything blows away. What stands for you when you are not there; when you are in the bathroom and your name is mentioned, when you are absent from the class, when you leave one company to another and when you are no more, is what is in you not what is outside— no one remembers what you wore the day before, you can try it (except your friends who do that for friendship sake). The more you borrow, the more you lose your essence: you forget who you are and continue to roam about someone else’s shadow, while your true self sinks into oblivion.

Imagine a guy walks up to you and after admiring the ‘borrowing’ damsel he finds out that your true self is locked somewhere in a closet, neatly tucked and wasting away, you think he would stay? In case you are wondering what the answer is, it’s NO! He won’t. Nobody wants to get married to a false woman, an alien.

Dear girl, you can look good wearing what you have. If a friend judges you by what you wear then that ‘friend’ is not a friend. Concentrate on who you are and where you are headed because that is what is important; be content with what you have. You know what: I always think that what is inside you is greater than what is outside…Go girl!