My Death Sentence | POB-WOTW

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I woke up with a certain uneasiness in my chest, yesterday had been one of the worst nights of my life. Not like it was that bad, but it was the worst nights I had ever experienced. Everything just turned out wrongly no matter how I tried to put everything in place.

"Beep, beep", I rushed to my phone to see DAD on the receiving end. It was around 7am in the morning, "what does Dad want with me by this time?" I asked myself. Sighing too, I answered the phone to hear a stiff voice.

How are you?

He asked me, and I could feel the concern in his voice. My dad wasn't one to just begin the conversation with such a sentence. I told him I was doing fine and there was nothing to worry about. After a little space of silence, he finally opened up.

I had a dream, and in it you died

For a split second there, I could feel the whole air in my lungs leave me. Those weren't the kind of words I was expecting to hear so early in the morning. Besides, dad was well known for his recurring dreams and one thing of concern for him was the ability for his dreams to always come to pass. You could call him the Joseph of our time.

The conversation that followed was just quiet ramblings, both of us had each secretly hidden our fears. His was the fear of loosing a son(his only son) which he'd laboured tirelessly to see succeed and achieve the things he couldn't achieve. My fear was the fear of loosing my own life, it was the worse kind of fear and each of us goes through that fear one time in our lives or maybe not.

It isn't the best kind of fear, nobody loves to be given a ticket to face death. It would have been easier to just face him once and for all and not have any weird conversations like how many goals chelsea scored in their last game. The uneasy feeling I had felt before was now worse, I don't know if I could feel anymore.

After a heartful prayer, I was given scriptures of the bible to drown myself in. There were mostly from one who had been truely Invictus and had faced death more than once and escaped. If you're confused about who I'm referring to, check out the psalms sometimes.

I could hear my mom respond with agreement to everything my dad said and finally she gave me words of comfort, I couldn't feel fear in her voice, it was one of part grief and part determination. Something like "devil, you aren't taking my son so easily".

I guess I felt a lot of courage from her voice and words of encouragement but finally, the call ended at around 7:30am. Then I was left with my demons, I don't know if they actually felt pity for me or they were actually thinking of the memories we shared together, or they finally had that laugh they always did in movies whenever they got the soul they had always craved.

Whatever the case may be, their presence felt good, atleast I didn't feel entirely alone.

What do you do when you've been given a death sentence at the start of a new day?

I'll love to hear your answers, or read them all, maybe I'll be able to learn a thing or two from those answers,lol, if I'll be alive to read them.
I tried going through those scriptures I was told to read but I kept hearing a soft whisper, I can't tell you what it is because it was my own voice telling me it was the end.

Then I tried praying but no words could come out, so I just lay there on the bed like a dead man. The use of "like" feels funny because I am already a dead man. Every breath I took now would be so priceless and cherished like the collections King Solomon had in his golden palace.

After enough fake sleeping, I couldn't actually sleep, I woke up and went about my usual actually, it still felt like I now had a tag on my forehead. At around 12, reluctantly I went for the shoot I had arranged that day. It was supposed to start by 11am but with the way I was feeling, I didn't think I was going to go.

But I went eventually, and to cut the long story short, I can't cut this long story short. I went there and there were already a bunch of people there, some were already angry at me for coming for my own shoot late, others where less concerned, they were just happy to be there in the first place.

After a sigh, I finally went to work, we chose a certain spot to set up, rehearsed through the song for a while then went on to get in our custume. Following a series of shouts and disagreements, we were able to finish the first take. Felt like ages but conducting a large number of young people wasn't an easy matter.

What followed was a series of vibe and funny moments, we laughed, sincerely from our hearts, we argued the more and then we drank water (very essential). I looked Mandy straight in the eye while she drank her own water and she immediately caught my eye. She smiled sheepishly and asked me why I was starring.

I didn't even have a tangible answer, but told her that I loved the way she smiled and was always joyful about everything. She looked at me straight in the eye and said,

There's a lot of things to be happy about Chinco, you should try smiling once and see how much good it would do you.

She was right, I was one who rarely smiled, I always kept a straight nearly drunk face. It was because I actually felt like I had a very horrible smile or I just didn't know how to smile. But that wasn't the case, what caught my attention was the fact that there was a lot of things that I should be happy about.

Words like that feels really simple and unmoving because anyone could say same. But coming from her I could really believe everything she said, and I did. There really was a lot to be happy about, then I remembered last week's WOTW and recalled a lot of stories I'd read and how amazing it felt to have something that keeps you going everyday.

I can't say I felt Invictus or not ( I dunno if I'm using the word correctly, haha), but I did feel Invictus because I'd actually won a battle. It sounds confusing but I'd been fighting a battle from the moment my dad said those words and it was a really unfair fight, I felt like Goliath fighting David because I was always destined to loose no matter how sized up I was.

I'm glad for one thing though, I'm happy I had Mandy and I'm glad I stared at her while she drank that water. I keep stressing that water is life and I guess she brought life to me, lol, I don't mean Mandy, I mean the water. How do I explain this?

The water helped Mandy stay strong enough to utter those words she just did, and in return it gave me life. So you get, water is indeed life, lol. But notwithstanding everything, I'm glad to be Alive, I don't know how much I can stress that. You should be glad too, because every breath you take is priceless, it can never be paid for, and it'll never be paid for.

So go about living your life like you deserve it, make beautiful memories, be happy, cherish relationships, fight for love(I'm not asking you to be Romeo) but do what you can to experience love and show love to others. Let your life be one that'll put smiles on the faces of others.

This is my entry for the POB-WOTW INVICTUS , Thank you for reading ❤️❤️❤️