This My Story
Chapter 1- Meet my Family
Everyone wants to be famous. We all want to live the good life someday, date the hottest celebrity crushes we have, and hang out with the rich and famous. If you can sing, you imagine yourself doing duets with your favourite musicians and idols. When you can't sing because its night time and the whole house is asleep, yet you are having a jam session in your room, you lip-synch and pretend to be running along an imaginary runway, waving at fans and blowing kisses at your best friends.
For as long as I can remember, this has always been my life. I have lain awake at night, imagining and fantasizing about how my life would be if I got famous. All the people I would meet, all the songs I would sing, and the amazing things my fans would do. I had spent many times thinking about how awesome this life would be, that sometimes I spaced out for a short while in class. Hey, I was an average student, with a passion for Chemistry and English. That I said just before you guys started to criticize me on not paying attention in class.
In my entire life, I had always been afraid to take a step towards unfamiliar territories. Since my parents found out I was talented at singing, they tried to push me in that direction when slight prodding didn't work. They even bought a karaoke machine which kind of ended up in my room because I was a little too shy to keep it in the living room. They had tried to get me to do music as a subject but I had chickened out and had picked Agriculture instead. My parents had eventually left me alone to my devices, because so far, I had been such a wet blanket to their suggestions. They knew that forcing me had never really yielded any positive results so they let me be.
I, however, managed to amuse them every week when we had a talent show. A family talent show. I know you are smirking right now, wipe it off. My family can be kind of. . . cheesy? Okay, my mum and dad came up with a way to make me explore my talent when I was nine. They started "Talent Night" which was a weekly thing. Each of us had to come up with something new to present when we met. My mum would make something special sometimes, my dad would sketch something (he was a part-time sketch artist) and my siblings would do something crazy. My sister was really good at public speaking while my brother was multi-talented. Talking about multi-talented, I mean he could rap, sing, act, and was athletic. He was probably the one who could be famous before me. He always had a new thing for us.
When he started taking Music classes, everyone knew he'd be awesome. And he proved them right. He played almost every instrument in our school's music room, including the "nyatiti" which was basically in the league of stringed instruments. He was the eldest kid and had so far been successful in school. He always automatically ended up in the Popular Guys group anywhere he went. He never liked to try to fit, because to him, it was always about having fun. My sister had also been pretty popular and every guy wanted to be friends with her. She was my exact opposite. Where I was tall, she was short. She had a fit body frame, was tone-deaf and was very confident in herself. Both of us had long hair, but hers was more manageable and dark, while mine was so thick it looked like a broom sometimes. However, I loved it, and probably wouldn't have had it any other way.
I was the last one, the youngest in the family. My parents hadn't planned on having me, but when they realized, they did their best and took care of me. I was born two weeks before I was due, and with a multitude of allergies. I wasn't kind on my mother during the pregnancy. She had to get Maternity Leave at around seven months, my parents thought I would be a boy and my mother gained a lot of weight before I was born. However, they never made me feel like I was a burden. Truth be told, sometimes they let me get away with some mistakes they probably punished my siblings for. Either way, they never let me enjoy too much freedom as most last-born kids do. I was taught how to be a normal kid. My brother was six years older than me, and my sister was three at my time of birth.
As I grew up and watched my siblings take on the world, I realized I was too scared to try being anything more than their small sister. I was always too clumsy because I was plump. I had never been underweight, and I was always too big for my age, despite the fact that I was kind of a poor feeder. People always teased me for being fat and I just kind of closed up. I was not popular at all, and was the kid no one invited to their birthday party. When I turned thirteen, I had a big zit right on the middle of my forehead. People called me a weirdo and pointed fingers at me. I hated school, but knew that my parents couldn't afford to home school me. In fact, at that time, homeschooling was a foreign thing, considering the fact that most kids were either in day schools or boarding schools.
My parents were amazing, so were my siblings. Home was my happy zone, where I would find refuge from the world. When I was fourteen, my elder brother Eddie wrote a song for me for my birthday, and my sister wrote a poem for me. Eventually, my brother made it into a song. It was freaking awesome! Soon, my siblings left to go to college and left me alone. My brother got a scholarship to go study to be a pilot. My sister passed and went to medical school at Nairobi. So, I was left at home alone, with my parents, in our small town. I went through my first two years in high school in a trance.
I was really lucky to have grown up with my parents. They listened to me most of the time. I had attended day school most of my life, and perhaps it was for the best.
My humdrum life went on in a similar fashion till my December Holiday at the end of my Form Two class. That is when everything changed.