By Samuel James
Okiki had just concluded his exam and it happened to be on a Friday. His heart leaped like a caged bird set free. He felt this freedom to do all his heart’s bidding now that it was over with; all the late night’s grinding. He instantly embarked on a trip back home at dusk, listening to feel-good songs on his phone on the bike. Arriving at home safely, he began to feel uneasy again. The lightness of his youth that had awakened after submitting his answer booklet, that heavy afternoon yielded to the intimidating sight of blackout, which had heralded his homecoming. He soon sat in the breeze outside since nobody was home and there was much heat indoors. He began to fondle with his phone. Eventually finding that he still had Facebook lite, he logged in for the first time in a long time.
His dour disposition turned gay instantly: lucky for him, some friends were online. He could forget himself and his lonely feelings by starting a conversation. Poor Okiki. Most of them were girl friends he had always avoided for unknown reasons, perhaps out of the sheer fear of offending the opposite sex. A long stare at the screen on his phone made loneliness grip him even harder. He forced himself to broach a crucial subject with Ayo, one of those light-hearted, wild girls we both knew back in college.
Although Okiki had not told me what the crucial subject was that he and Ayo chatted about till today, I understood that my friend had a sensitive personality yet inquisitive attitude to life. I knew Okiki too well; he could not endure the implications of his inactions on others for fear of hurting them unknowingly.
And so, after that fateful online conversation which ensued between Ayo and my friend, he had to unfriend me that very night before calling to tell me he had resolved to quit the social media. Okiki confided in me that he had become the more afraid, at least since that chat, of what his presence on the social media could do to his peers, and how it made his contemporaries feel about it. Poor Okiki. He had never stopped being the sensitive yet inquisitive introvert that he always was since college. He shared his burden of trying to become a better person by being outgoing. And his fear of extremes. Of hurting the feelings of others by his rather intimidating reputation offline. After he gave all the personal reasons he wanted to delete his account, I had become dumb and could hardly tell him to stay for a while, whether or not the dark hours would pass.
That was how Okiki, who doubled as my alter ego, left and never came back.
