I have been away for a while. I was working from home, far away from Lagos, in the warm embrace of my loving mama and daddy; sprawled on the rich green TV-room sofa, surrounded by little sisters and inundated by a host of artery-blocking delights, getting chubbier with each breath.

Joy.

Alas, alas, I am now back in Lagos (boooooo!!) and write you from the perilous position of my office desk (exciting). I sit crouched over MacMilliene my trusty computer, bereft as my 10-year-old self in my first letter writing class in boarding school (yes, we really did have a special letter writing class on Sunday afternoons in JSS 1. A cruel reminder that we were homesick? Or a subtle dig at you if you weren’t?). My current potent longing for home reminds me of my 10-year-old self.

I remember writing with the melodrama of a child that knows that she is loved, “Dear mummy and daddy, I miss you…if you find wet patches on this sheet, do not be afraid, for they are only my tears.”

*Insert long-suffering sigh*. It appears that I have always had a knack for the melodramatic.

Now I think about it, the chronic lack of awareness of children is simply amazing. That feeling that the world revolves around you; the certainty that your sadness must affect the balance of the world, that your all-enveloping sadness over the tiniest thing need not be justified, it just is. I was so bereft at being so far away from the warmth of my home that I couldn’t even see that as scared and sad as I was….my parents probably had it worse. It might have been heartbreaking for them to read , “the wet patches…are but my tears”. Did I care? I was basking in my unstoic, and privileged grief. Lol.

Strange that right now, I feel like that bereft 10 year old again. That same deep gulf of sadness and emptiness resulting from being far away from home, has come to visit. I miss my family. I miss being at home. I feel a little lost like an African Alice in NoMan’s Land. Everyone loves it, but Lagos is not my city at all. I much prefer to quiet warmth of Abuja to the exciting heat of Lagos. And my city? The provincial glow of Port harcourt is incomparable. When I go visit my family in Abuja or Port harcourt, I promise you I can hear my soul let out a silent sigh of relief, as though I did not know I was holding my breath all the while I was battling traffic on the survival course that is Lagos.

When I go home HOME to Port Harcourt where I grew up, it’s even better. Because at home, everything is exactly the same. That’s the magic. I lie on the bed I lay on at 16, I look at the Linkin Park poster I got at 15 from Ijeoma, I bump into one piece of my soul stored in an old album or discover one source of my character locked in some old letter home. It’s as if even the air itself around my home is still; as though I am caught in only that one moment and even nature desires to be miserly with Time and I.

I think that stillness is a reflection of my inside for when I am at home, I am at peace.