ACX's Blog

“We are losing in this game; both sides are losing. You made us your friends and now we both don’t get to go any further. You keep us too close to be a friend and too distant to be a lover” said one of my friends one fine day while dozens of us in our late twenties and early thirties were having coffee.

“You can’t because you are a girl!” I cannot recall an incident when I was told I can not perform a specific task only because I was a female. I heard other people giving testimony on getting prevented to do something only because of their gender. As I am aware of such prejudiced comments and opinions which belittle women, I always thought I would not be surprised if someone said it to me. However, when I was told, for the very first time in my life, “You can’t because you are a girl”, I was just shocked. I was caught off guard not only because I got the comment but also because it came from the people I least expected.

Be’qum kafeqershign

Simot indatreshign

(If you love me when I’m alive,

Don’t forget me when I die.)

 

How many times do we fall in love in our life?  None? Once? Twice? Or as many times as possible? I wonder how it really works on us regarding falling in love and how we perceive it. I have my own way of understanding and entertaining it in my life but what interests me is to know how others think about love and the number of times a person would feel it. So I try to raise the issue while discussing with friends. As I supposed peoples’ outlook is as many – if not more, as the number of individuals I talk to. 

I have always been wanting to keep a journal and to share it, of course with a few secrets unrevealed (after all I’m still a girl). Since junior high, I don’t remember an Enqutatash (Ethiopian New Year) passing without starting to write a diary. Every night for the first few weeks, I religiously used to write my typical school days, the girlish gossips we had with friends, the hatred and love of our teachers (I won’t mention names here), and my teenage emotional turmoils. At the beginning, I could write pages every night which would gradually decline to a page then to barley few lines. That was of course before missing a day’s journal, for which I would excuse myself that I could make it up the following night. If I got tired the next day, I would skip a page, just like we did to copy notes from our bookish classmates while missing classes. The excitement of keeping my day-to-day activities could only get me through the month of Meskerem*, half way to Tiqimt** and gradually fades away in Hidar***. Back in the days, someone I don’t remember has told me that keeping a journal should be a daily routine. That’s why I would get frustrated when I missed few days and finally I would give up until the next New Year arrives.