Winning with him by my side

It was my first time. I had spent time writing rhyming words for years without knowing what to do with them. It wasn't necessarily because I couldn't brand myself a poet, or a spoken word artist, it was because there had never been an opportunity to see if I was just good at writing those words or if I could actually perform them.

Source
It was almost 9 pm. I was curled up in a corner of my bed chatting away happily with my boyfriend, Wisdom, when an image dropped from my mom. I told him to excuse me so I could read the tiny details written on the flier she sent. It was about a talent hunt that promised to feature various performances. I forwarded it to Wisdom and asked what he thought.

"You're going," he said matter-of-factly. I knew he loved to make jokes so I ignored what he said until three days later when we were having our night call session.

"Babe, can I see the words you've jotted down for the entry of the Allrise competition?"

"I haven't jotted any words," I said it as casually as it sounded because it wasn't a big deal to me. I heard him gasp over the phone.

"But why not?"

"Why not how?" I was trying hard not to laugh "Please let's talk about something else…."

"No babe, I'm actually serious….." and that was how it all began. The theme for the competition was 'Arise, Shine' but even before a participant could be allowed to perform in the main event, he or she had to submit a short video clip of whatever he could do best. It was after the online approval that he would be granted access to the main event.

I spent a great part of the next day trying to come up with something in relation to the theme but Wisdom asked me to do a freestyle and submit it as my entry first in order not to spend time preparing for the competition and didn't get picked eventually.

I had to see some YouTube videos on how to do a demo, spent time creating a different writeup, and then recorded it. Wisdom approved it but after a lot of corrections. I was emailed a week later that I had been selected to engage in the competition so I continued with the writeup for the main event.

I had never stood on a stage to say any of the words I had written down as a poem before so as D-Day grew closer, I began to suffer from anxiety pangs; little or no sleep, a pounding heartbeat, and restlessness.

I couldn't even remember most of my lines about two days before the event. Wisdom lulled me to sleep on one of those days after giving me a healthy dose of milk to drink and reading my lines to me so I could say them in my mind as he read aloud.

When I woke up from my three-hour-long slumber, Wisdom told me that he wasn't going to make it to the event because he got a call for a job in another state the day after my event.