Category: Recountals

I am bawling my eyes out.

I wanted to write a diary entry so that I could cry really well.

I have been extremely excited about December. But I have not really gotten into hyping my birthday. I think I start now.

When I say this year did rounds on me, it genuinely did. I was telling a friend earlier that I’ve had very intimate time with God, and now I just need time to party. I said something like, “nataka sasa nipige sherehe moja ama mbili safi.” I was yelling on the voice note because my mom wasn’t around. I even told her, “I’m yelling because wenye nyumba hawako.”

When I tell you everything I envisioned for myself this year, I didn’t get any of it. As in any. Nothing. Zero. And yet, I also had this vision board that I unintentionally got printed out, and as I was looking at it this morning, I smiled. I’m trying to understand the disconnect between what I truly wanted deep within me… and how I can still look at my vision board and smile.

A lot of things went south. A lot of pain was felt. And I’ve grown an entirely thicker skin a very thick skin, honestly.

My birthday is coming on the 26th. I know I’ll write something then. I just want it to be calm and peaceful. Calm. Peaceful.

There has been so much beauty born out of pain this year. I have experienced extreme pain. I thought I knew pain, until I came face to face with it. I lived through it. I came out better.

I have pent-up emotions that I really need to release. I know it will happen whether I like it or not. Just like how I want to party hard I have no idea how this will happen, but it’s got to happen.

Last year I said, “This year didn’t turn out to be what I expected, but it turned out to be exactly what it should have been.” I maintain the same sentiments this year.

I’m turning a big girl’s age, and I promise I’m going to be the most childish adult because yes! I am the adult in my life right now. And so I want to excite the child inside me as she gets to explore the flowers growing in my chest for the first time. I want to live now. I recognize I have just been existing. I want to live, and I want to live out loud. In fact, I just might dye my hair a bright shade of re… crimson, maybe. I bet.

So technically, adulting is closed. I am about to celebrate my inner child for a very long time. A very long time.

And the number of times I’ve repeated this to myself is insane….
“Honestly, if I didn’t have to go through that, I wouldn’t be the person I am now. And I love the person I am now.”

Okay, I’m done bawling. I guess I’ll continue tomorrow… or maybe today marks the end of my meltdown for this year I don’t know.

Either way, my heart is just so full of gratitude. Despite everything, I love the version of myself I’ve met this year, and probably that is my biggest win of the year.

Cheers loves

Before I jump into this writeup, I think it’s important for me to say this first… a person’s background has never been a big deal to me. It’s just… whatever. I consider it surface-level. I genuinely believe that with the right mindset and alignment, no one is ever out of anyone’s league.

That said, I think it’s safe to jump straight into my yapping. I’ll be writing as I go, so this might be a little messy but it will be entirely authentic, based on my POVs, sprinkled with my traumas and personal experiences. Haaaaaah!

This might come off a little superficial. It was inspired by a conversation on my favourite podcast, The Joyride. The episode was titled “We Don’t Talk About Class” (https://youtu.be/RptE32B0KcU?si=_DmgUUocc2-O-53J). Great insights. Great POVs.

The conversation mainly revolved around “dating up,” but from a male perspective and some of the things discussed stuck with me.

Classism and dating.

At some point, Wanjiru asks Ben, “Does it excite guys dating girls who are out of their league?” Just the question alone stirred something in me, and I was curious to hear his response. He answered with a very blunt, solid yes.

That sent me into my head, sorting through my own dating experiences.

I have been accused of being a “gold digger” not by the men I’ve dated, but by busybodies who thought they knew me better. Back in the day, that used to bother me a lot. In one or two situations, I even found myself trying to explain just how not a gold digger I was. But once I realized that people judge others based on their own traumas, I stopped. Truly whatever floats their boat.

For context, I get terrified asking or borrowing money from people. Most of the time, I just make do with what I have. Contentment.

Anyway, that wasn’t even my main point.
Growing up, I used to feel embarrassed about saying I was raised in the countryside. I associated it with naivety and all the negative stereotypes people love to attach to it. Slowly, I made peace with it. Then I accepted it. Eventually, I embodied it which explains why I’m now so loud about how much I love the countryside.

In many situations, I’m received very well… until someone asks, “So where did you go to primary?” and “High school?” And then, little by little, I see it in their faces. The judgment. The classism. How they start placing me just based on where I grew up.

About a year ago, someone asked me, “How do you manage to talk the way you do, yet you grew up in the village?” I didn’t even gasp. My brain literally stopped for a minute.

First of all how was I supposed to respond to that? And secondly how exactly are people raised in the village expected to talk or behave?

What I heard was…. “The audacity you have to be civilized, yet you are a villager.” And just like that, I was almost triggered back into the humiliation I once carried about my background.

So sometimes I find myself wondering “kwani, how are people from the village expected to behave? Can nothing good come out of the village?”

I’m not ignorant to the fact that many people in the countryside don’t have access to the kind of exposure others idolize. But that does not mean nothing good can come from there.

I digress.

I see the excitement men have when they “date up,” and I can almost understand it. Maybe if I were a guy, I’d understand it better. But as a woman, I know my deal breakers and they have nothing to do with someone’s background.

Have I been discarded before because of financial status or my approach to life? I genuinely think I have. Not because I was dependent, I wasn’t. But I think the guy wanted “status.” Someone to flaunt. Someone who drove a big car, made at least six figures, and maybe wasn’t obsessed with the countryside. I imagine my love for that life didn’t fit the image he wanted.

So maybe he just thought, “ebu niwache haka kaendelee kufigure out her shit.”

Still on the countryside… I’m loud about preferring it over the city, but I’m not closed minded. I’m open to wherever this beautiful life leads me.

As for men and classism, I think many men genuinely get excited about “dating up.” I think it does something to their esteem.

Making peace with this realization has brought me a lot of peace. I flow with whatever flows.

Side note…. I’ve never been a gold digger. But if I ever were, I’d make sure I was really good at it.

Cheers, loves.

I have made peace with my own death.

I’ve been thinking a lot about life and mortality lately. Not in a fearful way, but in a reflective one. I’ve realised I’m strangely at peace with the idea of my own death. What I’m not at peace with and maybe never will be is the thought of losing the people I love. Watching someone you care about walk through grief is one of the sharpest pains life can hand you. A part of you goes with the person you lose, and somehow life reshapes you in ways you never asked for.

This week, those thoughts have sat with me more than usual. Not in a dark way just present. I keep thinking about how heavy grief is for the ones left behind. That part hurts the most.

This year alone, I’ve stood beside people mourning people they loved deeply. I’ve been in cold, quiet hospital corridors. I’ve gone to the mortuary in the middle of the night. I’ve cried over someone I never met simply because I could feel the ache of those who loved them. It reminded me again how fragile and sacred life really is.

As a child, I used to think it would be easier if I were the first one to go. Then life happened. Grief showed me its teeth. I watched each one of us shatter when my sister died, and I realised nothing about loss is ever simple.

And yet still every morning..I wake up and thank God for breath, for life, for one more day.

Love and light.

Cheers

Somewhere in the middle of the year, I read a quote that said, “There are flowers growing in my chest again.” I saved it. Somehow it made sense, but I thought it didn’t make sense in that moment not in the phase I was in.

Then on Saturday, 22nd November at 8:17 a.m., I got out of bed and the first thought that came to mind was, “There are flowers in my chest again.” I can’t tell why that was the very first thought, but I gently got up, headed to the living room to take my pen because I wanted to journal, and as I was walking, another thought struck me….“There are flowers in my chest.”
Not again. Because genuinely, I didn’t have an “again.” It was the first time I was truly feeling flowers growing in my chest.

For the first time, I felt so alive in my last stretch of 28 years of being alive.

I didn’t cry. I sat with the feeling. I felt it. Then I took my pen and I wrote… and I kept writing. And then I prayed.

The last paragraph of that journal entry read…
“28 years could be late. But it is not late for me. It is sacred. It has happened exactly how and when it was supposed to happen. Above everything, I am so grateful it has happened either way. I am so happy to experience flowers growing in my chest. I am so grateful to experience life within me. Love and light.”

Chapter 11 of 12 has been a mix of many things. On the first day of November I said,
“I’m walking into Chapter 11 with gratitude and love.”

And every day of it, I reminded myself to be grateful… even at one point when I almost lost my job, I still sat in the moment with gratitude. And that feeling has taught me just how much beauty there is in contentment.

I wake up every day to chase the life I desire, but layered within those beautiful ambitions, there’s a solid form of contentment that I’m still figuring out how to express. Honestly, I’ve been wanting to write about contentment, but I’m still feeling it.. still enjoying the beauty of it.

Taking every day with so much grace and gratitude. I have appreciated every day in this month of November.

Yesterday on Pinterest, I bumped into a quote by L. M. Montgomery that read…
“It was November, the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines.”

Something so simple, easy to ignore and read like it’s nothing… but it left such a profound emotion in my heart. I smiled. And then I thought, honestly, that’s basically been November for me.
I have cried.
I have laughed.
I have gone off on people who tried to cross my boundaries. (I no longer play about my boundaries)
I have grown.
I have mastered contentment.
I have listened to beautiful music.
I have listened to lovely sounds on YouTube.
I have danced so much in my room.
I have been tired.
I have been full of life.
I have made beautiful memories.
I have been met by the most amazing surprises.
I have learnt to pause before responding.
I have learnt not to take other people’s actions personally.
I have lived.
I have fallen in love with myself so hard.
I have found life within me.
This has been November for me.. layered with truly living.

I’ve been excited about Decembers since I was a kid, as far as my memory goes. But I have never been this honestly excited.. with the life inside me, with the flowers growing within me. This one is a different one.

Just like Chapter 11, I am walking into Chapter 12 of 12 with a heart full of gratitude. Praying that God sees us through the end of the year with His protection and grace.

Wishing every soul that will bump into this an amazing month ahead. Live a little. Party hard if that’s your thing, okaaay play haaaard, and take good care of yourself.

Love and light.

Cheers.

It’s raining. I have started writing this at exactly 4:37pm. I’ve been wanting to write all day, but my creativity has felt scattered lately. And I’ve been a bit scared of disappointing myself, because writing is one of the things I enjoy most… well, alongside the sketching habit I’ve recently picked up. (I sketch like a two-year-old, but I love it anyway.)

Sunsets. Golden hour. Evenings softened by people who make our hearts melt. Witty banter. Shots of good tequila. Then that strange cocktail that started as a joke and somehow worked. I’m surrounded by delightful weirdos…people who take tea right before a bender, people who surprise me every other minute. Some weeks..like this one.. carry these small, unexpected joys. And the “cocktail” that wasn’t really a cocktail? Water. Ice. Tequila. Whiskey. Delmonte. Lemon. Chaos. Magic.

Then the photographer arrives. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like having my pictures taken but I love taking pictures of other people. He has these interesting dreadlocks. He takes beautiful silhouettes of the sweet souls I am with, then I’m asked to go try one. I stand up (miraculously not staggering) and tell him I want a shot where I’m gently holding the sunset. He says, “Say no more.”

The lake is beautiful. The sunset is breathtaking. 

But I doubt he’ll capture it well.

His battery dies. He assures me he “already got a hot one.” I laugh because.. yeah, right.

He disappears, comes back, shows the picture to the soul beside me. They go, “daaamn, hi ni kali.” I stay unimpressed. I keep staring at the lake. Then he shows me the photo… and I’m like, “daaamn! it’s actually good.”

The evening unfolds. Live band, then the DJ.

The lake shimmering under the night.

And I keep watching people my favorite habit. Quietly, without making it awkward. 

The tiny, strange things you notice about strangers? Fascinating.

Then I get into a conversation, of course I love a good conversation. Then back to silence. Then a lot of trips to the washroom.

My toes feel weird. Wrong shoes. Feels like stepping on sand over and over. Not the grounding I had in mind. Mental note…. wear better shoes next time. And I do want a next time…to feel everything I felt, to listen to the lake more intentionally.

These are the moments I treasure.

The evening disappears quickly, the way all good things do. Darkness wraps around us. I barely touched my phone. I just existed. I took it all in the softness of the moment, the music, the laughter, the lake, the warmth.

To more days of chasing sunsets.

It’s now 4:58pm. The rain stopped without me noticing. I was too lost in this.

Today, I slowed down. I feel calm. Peaceful.

It’s not too late to wish you sweet souls a beautiful weekend.

Cheers.