Dear Diary entry 7

Dear Diary,

It’s been a while I know and while you’ve been sitting here waiting for me, your pages yellowing, I’ve been penning my murderous thoughts into a receipt book (that’s all they had) at an anger management class in a rehab clinic not too far from Mathare mental hospital. I kid you not. Anger management therapy exists round these parts and I, I am supposed to have benefitted from it.

I’m sure you’re wondering how I ended up there. Well, I’ll tell you. Since January, things have been going downhill for me. First I moved into a cheaper house because I couldn’t afford it anymore, haven’t had a show since last year. My pockets aren’t thin; I just had them removed altogether because I had no money to put in them. I nearly got into a fight with my colleague because he wouldn’t pay back the 60 shillings he owes me and I was really hungry that day. It was when I publicly castigated a newbie at the office that my boss was compelled to send me on forced ‘leave’ and even offer to have the company pay for my stay at the Rehab clinic.

It wasn’t too bad in there. I knew no one, so feared no one’s judgment. I told the therapist everything I wanted to do to everyone that pissed me off, including him. He looked genuinely horrified, but I know he did that just for my benefit. He needed to make me feel that I was getting through and being listened to and that my anger was for legitimate reasons. When I was leaving he stressed again and again that I shouldn’t feel so helpless, that I was in charge of my destiny and all that happens to and around me. I realize that’s just a heap of nonsense but it does make one feel a lot better.

No one had their head higher than I as a bunch of us left the clinic after a 2 month stay. I realize now that all I have to do to keep the anger from building up is write about all those people I’d like to punish for things I believe they’ve done wrong to me. For example, in a matatu this morning, a lady sandwiched between me and another passenger kept breathing my way and I could smell the alcohol on her breath.

Worse still, as we neared the globe cinema roundabout she asked me to open the window a little bit which I did, pretending the dust wasn’t getting into my lungs and eyes. Even more horrifying, she gulped down one of those fakely flavoured quencher drinks, then without warning she reached past me and threw the empty bottle out the window, her bony elbow knocking my jaw! I nearly went insane! Not only did she hurt me physically and assault my olfactory senses, she helped pollute a city that many of us are trying so hard to clean.

Now I’m not saying I’m Kim and Aggy, cleaning up the world one home at a time, but seriously, what’s so hard about keeping a bottle in your bag or hand until you reach one of the many bins in town? I’m not sure who deserves the death penalty but this woman and many like her are slowly and surely contributing to the extinction of mankind, along with the Chinese building roads, mono cropping farmers and the entire developed world for coming up with things we don’t need. Canned foods? Who needs that? Clothes? I’m sure in the C12th my ancestors were pretty happy with animal skins and berries that grew wild, without interference. You may say that technology improved our lives and increased population. Again, I ask, how is that a good thing when we’re always fighting because there’s now too many of us, and too little of the things we think we need, but really don’t?

Call me angry like most of my friends do, but there’s really not much to be happy about. Besides, there’s no such thing as a happy Rock Star…or a wannabe.

Yours Truly,
Jeri.