I love 9PM. The scent is genuinely amazing soft, masculine, comforting. It hurts that I had to part ways with it. I hate that I’d hate it now. If I smelled it on someone today, I could probably puke. And it’s not even about the fragrance itself… it’s beautiful, I promise. It’s the nostalgia that kills me.
Almost everything in my life right now feels nostalgic. Like I’ve smelled it before. Touched it before. Cried these tears before. As if I’m living an afterlife do you hear what I’m saying?
I’ve healed my wounds at least the ones within my control. But there’s one stubborn wound that lingers. An awesome soul told me, “time heals all wounds.” He’s repeated it to me twice this week. It makes perfect sense, until it doesn’t. Still, I’m sitting with it.
My heart is healed. And yet, it’s exhausted.
I love who I’ve become. But I also hate some of the parts that came with becoming her. Everything exists in duality inside me right now. Warm, then cold. Strong, then tired.
And I can’t help but ask, why would someone draw pleasure from breaking another person’s soul? How is this logical. I break you into pieces, then give you hope, then keep toying with your emotions and when I see you growing stronger, it irritates me, so I double down just to crack you again? And after all that, I still say, “Let’s maintain a professional relationship”? Like… really? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing but you keep poking me. My God.
What is wrong with human beings really?
And what is this strange space… feeling healed and broken at the same time? Numb yet manifesting good things? Cold, but hopeful?
Out of everything else I’ll turn into, I don’t ever want to live as someone who inflicts this kind of torment on another soul. I deeply hope that no one will ever sit stuck in life trying to heal from the pain I inflicted in their souls.
It’s confusing, this duality. This warmth and coldness. This healing and exhaustion.
And through it all, I still hate that I love 9PM. The scent.
Wueh!! Last night, just after dinner, I heard wails. I tried to block the voices out because honestly, I didn’t want to hear about more losses. Haven’t we had enough this year?
I thought I had made peace with death, but the truth is… the events of late have been overwhelming.
Then today evening, my friend Lucas calls. “Heeey Lukasi,” I say that nickname stuck ever since a trip he organized to Diani. A girl with a heavy coastal accent baptized him so.
He chuckles, “You sound so jovial.” I say, “Mi hukua hivi kila siku.” He goes, “I know. By the way, send me Natasha’s number.”
Innocently, I promise, “I’ll text it after this call. In fact, via SMS.” He presses, “Are you sure?” I laugh, “Yes.”
Then he drops the bomb, “Val… Natasha is dead.”
I was in my parents’ bedroom looking for something, but suddenly found myself in the kitchen, my tone completely shifted.
And I’m still trying to process it.
My last months in Voi were chaotic, but in those rare magical moments, Natasha brought so much life my way. Every time we hung out, we made sure it was insane fun.
The first time I ever spoke to her, she was rocking her short hair so effortlessly gorgeous. I told her, “If I knew I’d ever look this good with short hair, I’d never have done my hair.” That was my pick-up line into our friendship.
She loved life fiercely. She loved herself loudly. She’d often say “I want to have so much fun, I wanna die fulfilled.”
We joked about growing old. She’d look in the mirror and tease, “Ata Val, si unaona kasura kameanza kukomaa?” and we’d burst out laughing.
She experimented with colors the last time I saw her, she had dyed her hair blue. Otherworldly. Beautiful.
She hated that I had relocated. We promised to meet in Kisumu. The plan was simple. She’d hop on a plane, we’d drink ourselves silly, and she’d head back to Voi.
Our last call was wild too she wanted me to put her on something I won’t even mention here (our wild souls understood each other).
Since then, I’ve been meaning to text her. Just to ask, “Are you really having fun?” But procrastination won. And today, I’m left scrolling through our messages most of them just saying, “I miss you babe.”
This sucks. It really does.
Every time I lose someone, I find myself overcompensating with the people I still have. Hugging tighter. Checking in more. Overloving.
But so is life, in all its sacredness. May her soul rest in eternal peace. 💙
My creativity has been on a bit of a go slow this week.
I’ve been graciously juggling a lot or maybe it’s just that nothing worth yapping about popped up.
The weekend is still young though, and you know I never gatekeep tea. If something juicy comes around, trust me, I’ll be right here in all my glory.
In the meantime, I just picked up “ThingsWe Left Behind” by Lucy Score, and I already know it’s going to bang. Translation? My weekend is set to be epic.
So here’s your little reminder,live a little honey. Like I said last time, we only get to do this life thing once.
Have an awesome weekend ahead, you gorgeous stranger on the other end.
It’s a chilly Saturday morning and I have enough time to walk through my thoughts.
Subconsciously, I always figured I had the powers of picking the most snobby guy the one who was emotionally detached. The kind who took pride in toxic masculinity. The kind that listened to Andrew Kibe, and paid attention to Amerix like his entire livelihood depended on it. And my powers would somehow make them mellow and mushy.
Okay… the one guy that I genuinely fell in love with in my adulthood knew nothing about the two. He had amazing dreads. This man! He had my heart and I swore never to love another as long as I lived. Boy, was I in a fantasy!
He was my gentle giant. In our last conversation that I’d hoped would somehow parch things up I told him I loved how confident he was about me loving him. The conversation went south. He said, “If after all these years you can’t see how much I love you, then I’ve failed more than I thought” Then he ghosted. I don’t think I’m ever gonna hear from him, it stings and it’s cool.
Okay, so he was pretty much white but in a black body, you get what I’m saying. I told him occasionally that he was “too American”. He was so put together on the outside. I loved especially how sensational he’d pronounce the word “horrible.” He always looked at me like I was some delicate flower. Anytime he hugged me I’d always complain, “babe you’re going to break me.” It’s almost like he wanted me to absorb his pain through those hugs. I promise I was pretty much ready to.
Our relationship was only understood by me and him. My friend Maritim thought I imagined him and he didn’t exist. And the people who knew dreads guy thought I was with him only for his money and his rich background. If only they knew.
One day, while in the thick of it, I told him, “it wouldn’t hurt this much if I only loved you for your money and your background.” He barely would show any extreme emotions. He never cared about money. He always said, “money is very basic and the easiest thing to make.” He was a total genius, this one. He always said, “it’s weird that guys always want to pick the prettiest girl in the room, but it hurts them so much when girls love them for their money” His points of view always had me. Always spoke his mind. Never sugarcoated a thing. This was both a good thing and bad thing in our relationship.
It was all weird because even in two years, I still didn’t know a thing about his background, but people around us judged me so harshly. I took it. Humans can be cruel. I made a mental note to always remember that. (It’s interesting people always think I get my men because of money. Honestly, if I was doing that I’d have made sure to do it to the best of my ability. I’m too lovey-dovey for that, guys.)
I saw through my dreads guy’s pain and I knew I could heal each and every part of it. One thing is for sure, he mellowed. In the three years we were together, he softened. I have that effect on people.
Occasionally, we’d talk about moving away and starting over, somewhere in Watamu or Lamu. The idea of starting over where nobody knew of us or about us appealed so much to me. I still think about it. We were so aligned. Timing was the bitch.
Then came the next guy. He once told me that every conversation he had with me always felt like a therapy session, and communication with me always felt like a communications class. That stung. I fought. I humiliated myself. Then I took my power back.
He was/is a good guy. I think his ego steals away from him. Our conversations at first were amazing. We agreed on everything. I was dumb enough to talk about my insecurities and everything. He listened. He made me feel safe. Then he used all that against me.
So take it from me ladies “keep your baggage to yourselves and heal your nervous system on your own.”
I am gonna write about my dread guy someday. He is a beautiful soul. The contrast is, the next guy was bald.
Anyway, somewhere in there, my fantasy of having the most detached guy and turning them into a mushy romantic is dimming. I see how toxic and damaging of me that was.
I appreciate bald guy though he was my nudge into self-love and self-approval. Believe me or not, the guy straight up told me, “it’s hard being with you because of your insecurities and your anxiety.”
I read the text. Then read it again. My friend Essie read it and said, “this guy is a demon.” I was too numb to process a thing. Two weeks later, it hit me. It took me more than three months of pain. Then I processed everything and patched back my pieces.
I appreciate the cruelty of bald guy. It gave me life. It gave me so much life. Now I know better how to entirely be mine.
As old school as this sounds, I’m never moved by the amount of money a man makes, or his surname, or whatever superficial bullshit everyone pays attention to. Most of the time, I’m in my little bubble, thinking about how I am gonna be my own boss babe, how to self-obsess, and how at one point I’ll make a badass wife to an intentional man.
I am a calm person, but my experiences have been nothing short of epic. Well, I still think emotionally detached mysterious guys are hot… but I know better now.
I got myself out of victimhood. I no longer introduce myself with, “I am such an overthinker.” I let my aura lead. I wish I learnt this earlier enough. I am grateful I did learn eventually. And I always say, I am more than proud of the woman I was before. She led me here, to who I am now.
I’ve stopped beating myself up for being a late bloomer. I’ve learnt to acknowledge that our paths are different, we’re just different. And I often say to myself, “I am right where I am supposed to be because my timing is sacred and divine.”
Lol, I know I usually expose myself so much on here, but someday my kids are gonna read these things and they’ll think to themselves, “damn, mom genuinely lived.”
And maybe that’s the beauty of it. That on this chilly Saturday morning, with the ghosts of love behind me and self-love beside me, I can finally say, “I am exactly where I’m meant to be.”
My 19 year old self met me at the threshold just as I was about to step out and greet the morning birds.
She asked, “Did you marry him?”
I shifted awkwardly. “I’m not following.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Val. Stop bullshitting.”
I exhaled. “Fine. I didn’t marry him. Or the one after him the one I swore was ‘the one.’ Or the next. Or the next.”
She squealed.
I smirked. “In the end, I met myself and learned how to be mine.”
She sighed, smiling. “So… you won your own heart. That’s a total win.”
I chuckled. “Doesn’t mean every day’s fireworks. Yesterday was painfully mundane. I almost did something destructive, but I reminded myself who I am. I sat with the boredom. The cold. Until it felt… good. Just being.”
Her eyes glowed with pride.
“I’ve taken a lot of L’s this week,” I went on. “Almost spiraled. But my regulated nervous system held me together. I took the punches without folding. That’s real. I even wrote it in my diary.”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe it’s not so bad you didn’t marry him. You needed to meet this version of you. Maybe you still would have if you had married him… maybe not. Either way, I’m glad you did.”
Then she turned and walked away.
And I sighed.
Photo credits – H7uga – Pinterest This genuinely needs to be here as my trophy
I am currently in Kakamega. A good friend of my friend had lost his dad. We all tried to be there for him, holding space in the quiet ways people do when grief is too heavy for words. I prayed he’d find the strength to carry through.
I’m writing this through ugly sobs, standing outside a gate that reads “Kakamega County Funeral Parlor.” It’s 2:38 a.m. We’re not here for my friend’s friend this time we’re here for my friend.
Some time ago, he took in a young boy, giving him a home, helping with his basic needs, and paying for his high school education. Yesterday, after attending the burial for his friend’s father, we learned the boy’s own father was in the hospital. My friend had been quietly carrying both burdens supporting his grieving friend while worrying about the boy he’d taken in.
We sent the boy some cash for his evening meal and later went to see other friends. When we returned, he seemed okay. I was just about to rush in, grab my allergy meds, and head out again when my friend called from across the house. Everyone was restless even the dog.
When I stepped out, he said: “Denno’s dad just died.”
I watched the weight settle on him. He said, almost to himself, “Now it’s becoming normal.” I couldn’t process it either. The only word that came out of me was “fuck”. I said it again. And again. Until my voice broke.
We rushed to the hospital. It was the first time I saw a body being wheeled to the morgue. The thought that echoed in my head was painfully simple; Life is so fragile.
Plans changed so fast, some of us sobered very fast. We prayed with the family outside the morgue. Then we left. Into the cold night.
I cried so much that I woke up today with a headache.
It’s Saturday now, 1:48 p.m. We went to check on the boy’s family. His sister welcomed us with a quiet grace: “Karibu muone mahali baba yetu alikuwa anaishi.”
We stepped inside. Sat in silence. Watched them tidy up, getting the home ready for what lay ahead.
I am calmer now, mostly marveling at the beauty and brevity of life. Every day, I see more clearly how essential it is to stay present and appreciate each breath.
Life is sacred. Life is fragile. Life is beautiful.
Before I slept, I told my friend, “You’re a good person.” He asked, “How?” I just repeated it and left it at that.
He really is a good person. I could have gone into details anyone who knows me knows I can talk. But I also know Cycus. He has his own way with emotions. He’s not the type to go deep into feelings, but he has a very big heart. A genius also, at his age, it’s impressive the things he’s accomplishing.
This morning, while driving back from the boy’s place, he said, “Hi maisha, ishi tu venye inacome.” He didn’t say anything more. I didn’t probe. I didn’t process. I just left it at that too.
My friend will be moving to Berlin in October and he says, “Na sitarudi” I’m still processing the “na sitarudi” bit.
In the mean time, enjoy your weekend guys. We only get to do this life thing once.
I desperately wanted an awesome weekend. And by awesome, I mean anywhere but home.
Maybe a girls’ trip. Maybe boo’d up at some cozy spot. Maybe a solo escape to some dreamy Island;Takawiri, preferably.
But the truth is, most of the people I’d go off with don’t live anywhere near me. We’re talking about different continents. And I’ve never had a girl group, you know? That “clique” energy? Never been my reality.
As for the boo’d up bit? Well… that was a sweet little “jaba” story in my head coz there’s no boo. And the solo trip that one’s still on the table. I’ve been circling around it in my thoughts. I know I’d thrive on one. Just me, a good book, and my diary. But there’s still a conversation I need to have with myself about what exactly is holding me back.
Anyway I woke up to a beautiful Saturday. Did my cute little morning rituals (minus the workout, I’m on a break). Then drifted into a lazy scroll through LinkedIn… TikTok… answered a few emails. Told myself I’d try to be useful so I opened up some work.
Then I stopped.
Eventually I found myself on the back porch, phone in hand, mind wandering. My niece runs up: “There’s a guy calling you.”
Now, behind my grandma’s house, there’s this huge Java plum tree. That’s where he was.
I was low-key irritated. I’d finally slipped into that “me time” mood. But hey, this is the village. We’re communal. So I shook off the irritation and walked over.
Stranger. Offered me some Java plums. Told me his name. Noticed the guitar tattoo on my hand and goes, “That’s a guitar? Doesn’t look like one.”
I wasn’t about to explain the symbolism, so I just smiled and walked away.
Back in the house, I figured let me just work. My sister-in-law was already in the kitchen making chapatis (way too early, but that’s her thing). My mom was with my little nephew. He got fussy, she looked tired, so I offered to help.
Now, I hate making chapatis. Sorry (not sorry), Kenyan men.
So I took the baby outside. Same guy from earlier shows up again.
And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk. There’s this gig on my mind, sitting heavy, begging for my full attention.
But somehow, he offered to hold the baby and my little nephew just settled in his arms like he belonged there.
Then the conversation started.
He asked about my earliest memory. I said six years old. Anything before that? Blank. He said he remembers stuff from when he was three he’d been burnt. Then he said something that made my ears perk up;
“We remember things based on the intensity they had on our emotions.”
He had my full attention now.
We got into childhood stories. I told him mine was mostly boring except for my love of books. Then this man I kid you not pulls a book out of his pants pocket. Yes. A man who walks around with a book. Yes, please.
“Think and Grow Rich.”
I’ve always been a geek whisperer. I don’t even try they just show up.
Next thing I know, we’re deep in a conversation about the conscious and subconscious mind. He points at our cow and goes;
“This cow is aware that it’s here but it doesn’t know that it’s here.”
I blink. “Okay, you lost me.”
So he explains. Talks about Homo sapien vs. Homo sapien sapien. Thinking man vs. man aware of his thinking.
We talk meditation something I’ve been dying to get into seriously. And he breaks it down like he’s teaching a class, but without sounding preachy.
This guy knows too much, I’m not even kidding.
At some point, he opens the book to a quote that (no joke ) I’d just heard someone mention on TikTok days ago. Something about adversity always happening for our advantage.
“Our thoughts are energy,” he says, “and we attract people who mirror them.”
Then he says;
“You’re very open-minded.”
I smiled. I love when people say that. I told him, “It’s one of my defaults I can interact with anybody, and I’ll make it fun.”
He goes; “People are like cities. Every one of them is new.”
And just like that, everything he was saying started making sense.
We talked about out-of-body experiences.
About The Reachest Man in Babylon. About The Alchemist. About weed. Alcohol. The mindset. Even Chris Brown! Yeeesss, he hit the Breezy button. The quickest way to get to me.
He’s smart. Nerdy. Deep. Reminded me of this one geeky guy I used to love so much. I know how rare this kind of brain can be.
He said so many mind-blowing things that I didn’t even bother memorizing I was too present. Too in the moment.
And just like that In a way I never saw coming I had an awesome Saturday.
My mind feels jumpstarted. My spirit feels challenged in the best way. And I didn’t need a beach, a girl gang, or a plane ticket to feel that.
We talked until sunset, and that was my adventure today.
Shadow to my light. 