Shadow to my light.

Being stuck in auto-pilot and wanting to work on becoming a better person is genuinely the most awkward phase in adulting. The confusion is unmatched. One minute you are on your yoga mat thinking you have it all figured out and the next minute one glance at your bank account sends you crushing ( look at what I just did there, almost all our troubles always lead back to finances).

So at this point you are juggling between being a better human all around and becoming financially stable.  Your thoughts lead back to the same spot. You even amaze yourself by how you keep going round in circles haaha! It’s crazy, it’s a whole circus and your clown outfit is out of this world.

Most of the time it gets so heavy on you. Those are the times you feel the harsh reality of being stuck. (Occasionally when you can make light out of your troubles you will joke about what was entirely wrong with just hunting and gathering and chilling, because the civilization pace and madness is just too intense for you). But now you are here at this point and time and bold of you to think that civilization will stop just for you. You are also pretty much aware that time never stops for anyone, yeah because that’s another over used phrase.

You are genuinely aware of your major goal but you just do not know how to walk towards that. (Because apparently that ought to be the gate pass to success so they said).

You look around you and everyone else seems to be doing great (even “these kids” like how you always refer to everyone younger than you) but you…. Dammit!!! You cannot escape from the phase of the earth and you cannot even dare let your mind wonder towards suicide because “mama didn’t raise a quitter” haha you laugh at that irony.

At this point you decide to sit down with yourself and architect ways and means of getting yourself out of that s***t show. We all get to this phase don’t we? YES SURE I bet. Honestly even the most actualized have their moments.  (Now your mind has shifted to Nicki Minaj’s song moment for life.)

You catch yourself in the midst and you realize it’s such a high time you stopped living in your head. You make out two wild discoveries which include:

1. We do not have the monopoly on toxic destructive traits. In as much as it is hard for you to admit this, you do anyway, it is not always about other people. You have personally been killing yourself with all the toxicity you harbor towards yourself. The world and people around you have entirely nothing (well maybe just partially, rather a tiny bit) to do with your downfall or if you’ll be a little rude, your misfortunes. It lies within you. Your first assignment is working on your destructive traits. You put your all into it. You work on your bad bits. You deliberately try so hard to fix your view about yourself and the larger world. At this point you are pretty much aware of the fact that “every one of us is the sum total of what we think about” (Yeah you have done a good job of listening to motivational speakers and you’ve come to a realization that not all of them are as twisted and lame as you always thought). And so with that you start fixing your thoughts and how you view your own self.  Also from the same inspiration you realize that “you ought to raise above narrow minded pettiness” (Boy!! Today you decided to go hard on yourself). But damn! Have you been petty and narrow. The most pathetic reflection of that is, you have been playing victim and blaming external factors yet all along you’ve been the enemy.
2. Your second discovery is pretty much cliché “It is never that serious” hell yeah! You have been carrying so much weight on you, moving around with loads of bitterness, cursing the hell out of the world, yet the hack was just so simple. Working on your mindset. Get hold of the direction your thoughts lead you to. The mind. You notice that in a long time you have tried running away from the fact that, “Your mind can be your greatest enemy.” It has taken a lot of things falling apart for you to just come back home to your truth. Lol! You forgive yourself because anyways everything happens for a reason ( you laugh at that thought because you most often than not use that phrase to justify a lot of awful things you have allowed) But now you are ready, pretty much ready to conquer your mind ( you almost said the world right? Right).

You ruffle your feathers and challenge your mind’s status quo. You “you let them soar” and so you fly. At this point you are in control and they are soaring without limits and in all the directions that lead to positivity. That’s pretty much how you manage to fly yourself out of confusion and negativity. You have mastered the prowess and the power is within you. Viva.

Keep your mind where your body is.

Sounds so cliché right? Yeaaah I know. Only that lately I’m loving these cliché phrases. I’ve learnt to pay attention to them. Okay enough of wondering around can I have your attention for a minute. Thank you.

I am aware that we are all battling something at the end of the day. I mean no one has this life thing all figured out. It comes in waves. I have had the worst four days, I mean since the beginning of the year. It almost felt like I was having an out of body experience. Watching things unfold. Helpless. Trust me it wasn’t a beautiful sight to see.

First forward today being a Tuesday I am not at work. I didn’t have the bandwidth to just step out of bed and do what every adult does (getting up and showing up and faking smiles even when everything else is a shit show). I am grateful, I most definitely needed this.

I can’t quite recall when I lost touch with myself. I can shamelessly confess that I have only been floating through life. Either that’s another level to cowardice or maybe I’ve dealt with so much pain and I decided to just exist. I don’t know.

It took me going back home to myself to just realize how messed up things are. I won’t pull your leg here, it has been the most unsettling feeling.

I think my survival trick has been basically sweeping things under the rug but LOL, the joke is on me. Take it from me, never try that, why? Because at the end of the day all that dirty trash accumulates, it turns into bad filth and it begins to stink and you eventually must deal with it.

I honestly have no glimpse of how in this world I turned into this person. No idea how long it has been with me turning a blind eye to the things that I was supposed to be dealing with head on.

But out of all that introspection I came to one important realization. Being present is gold. It is one important thing you can ever want to be if you want to truly deal with this mystery of life. I promise you life is fleeting you might as well try living it and not just existing.

Even now at my big age, I am still learning and unlearning a lot of habits. It is a never ending process. Absolutely a million reasons why the idea of life is just beautiful. The daily unlocking of habits and things. Magnificent. So here goes my hacks,

Letting the rational side of my brain be in control. The complexity of the brain is unmatched. I know this might sound somewhat crazy but I am yet to wrap my mind around all that complexity. How it is in control of our thoughts, memory, emotions, touch I mean the list is endless. Okay now my hack comes in here where I am slowly teaching myself how to let my rationale side of the brain be in control. I would describe myself as a highly sensitive human. Those who are with me on this can pretty much relate with how being extremely sensitive can be damaging at times. I know this is going to sound cliche because it has been said one too many times but I can’t emphasize it enough “honey not everything deserves your emotional reaction.” Imagine how much drama you can avoid by slowly learning how to be rational. Patiently teaching yourself how to take everything in before responding and reacting. Simply letting your logical side win.

The art of silence. I am teaching ” myself” how to sit calmly with “myself”. Sit through my thoughts and just let them pass as I calmly sieve them. By doing so I am able to separate my thoughts. I know what to really pay attention to and I know what to let go. Trust me this is another high form of self care. The art of silence is equally coming in handy with my communication and how I respond to situations. It has helped me big-time with being intentional with how I listen and hear people. I no longer listen to just respond. I am more present and calm all standing ovations go to mastering the art of silence.

The art of patience. I cannot stress this enough but patience is compounding. Patience is rewarding. I feel like that pretty much sums it all up LOL! A lot of beautiful things bloom in the realm of patience. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t mean that now you’re supposed to sit around and wait on time. No. Do the work, do your best. Do not rush the process. Let things unfold. The beauty that comes out of it is mind-blowing and it never stops that’s why I emphasized on patience being compounding.

Respecting nature. Damn! Heaven knows I adore nature. My therapy comes from the woods. The words simply bring out the child in me. It has taken me being in an environment with harsh climatic conditions for me to learn that nature deserves respect. I promise you I am never going to take anything to do with nature for granted. I just read somewhere that “water has a memory and trees hold the wisdom to the universe.” That is the most transforming phrase I’ve come across today. The sunsets, sunrise, the beaches, the woods…. they are here to glam and bless us. If you can be delusional enough to start having conversations with the ocean or trees or the sunset you’ll come back and tell me how much therapy can be drawn from such madness. All I’m trying to say is that nature cleanses us. For that reason I am currently in a space where I am adorning nature with all the respect it deserves. Can I start explaining about the amount of calmness that comes with that? No let me not because it’s endless.

I am very deliberate about creating a healthy mental space. A healthy mental space is a gate pass to all the good things. I’m not even being dramatic here. I just want to effortlessly embody all the aspects that will elevate me as a woman of valor haha! Okay seriously yes. That explains my reasons for diving into those amazing discoveries of learning and unlearning a bunch of habits.

First and foremost she forgives herself that it is only now at her big age that she is finding out about the sexual assault awareness month. She has honestly not been on the radar about the existence of it. Forgive her ignorance. Now that she did, she is glad that someone took their precious time to acknowledge that.  Before she continues, she is sending hugs to the boys and girls out there who have had to go through sexual abuse. She understands the pain and trauma.

Sexual assault is next level inhumane. Abusers are monsters. At this point monster is a better word to describe them. There should be a worse term out there for them. Because she does not see any better explanation that would make any sense as to why someone and in this case a full grown human would go ahead and say for instance assault a six year old. It is simply insane. The animosity is unmatched.

She herself is a survivor. She has some vivid memory of the events that took place when she was around six years. The events of that particular day are somewhat blurry in her memory. Though the one’s she can somewhat recall clearly are buried deep in her memory. She recalls the silly monster locking her in a room and holding a knife to her throat warning her not to dare make any sounds. She recalls all that with so much pain. Things like those never escape your mind. So try imagining carrying such a heavy load from such a tender age.

I think most people in her life imagine that her memory does not go back that long. No one has ever bothered talking to her about it. Whether it is out of concern or sheer ignorance she will never know. She has lived through it. She has lived through harsh comments like the boys in her village telling her stuff like “We want to do to you what Kennedy did to you” She could barely defend herself from such bullies. No one gave her a safe space to.

Sex assault is damaging.  Most survivors carry shame for a better part of their lives. Sadly, such issues are mostly not addressed appropriately.  She loves being African. She is proudly African, everyone who truly knows her, knows that important fact about her. One thing she is not proud about being African is about how lightly issues touching on sex and sex assault are handled. “Why is it still considered shameful and improper to talk about that?”  She wonders “if it is super shameful and improper why would an abuser even take that step of assaulting someone in the first place.”

When she was around ten, she met another monster. She dealt with the monster on her own for so long. One thing about abusers most of them do not come from far. They are always within our proximity. Some of them are respectable people within the society. People you cannot imagine carry around rotten morals. She has carried her trauma and she has carried it so well. It breaks her hear to imagine there are girls and boys out here who live through that.

At this point she hopes that things will get better. That issues like these ones are going to be granted the serious attention they deserve. We all deserve a safe space. It sucks that the madness never stops. In our workplaces, in matatus, in social joints. I mean what is honestly wrong with humans. We need to get our moral codes together. We simply need to carry around some respect and drop the audacity. Hoping that animosity of sexual assault will die someday. No one deserves to carry all that damage and trauma from selfish monsters.

And shame on the selfish human beings who slut shame sexual assault victims.

We barely have any trees here, birds are chirping from a distance I bet they seek refuge from the scattered shrubs. (She doesn’t really know if birds can survive on shrubs though, after she’s done here she’ll go do her research or she bets they do, okay its not a good thing that she’s exposing her dumbness this much.) It’s a calm evening. From another far end vehicles and motorcycles are moving past densely. Nothing of the evening wind can be heard blowing. (Okay please stop, yes we barely have any trees here dummy.)

It is so hot. She thinks to herself “How did I get so comfortable being alone?” Her mind immediately shifts from that thought. She thinks about home. She thinks about home a whole lot, today she’s comparing the two places. They almost feel like two different worlds. Back at home at this time of the evening it’s eventful. Birds always chirp, unlike here not from a distance. The dense sound of vehicles is replaced by a calming dance of tress majestically with a whole lot of pride swaying their beautiful succulent leaves.

Back at home you do not breath in dust, you breath in the scent of fresh air. At this time of the evening home buzzes with life. Cows are mowing their way calmly back from the grazing fields. Satisfied, because at home they have grass, they have beautiful grass. (Unlike here where you almost forget the feel of actual grass because dust is everywhere, here if she’s lucky enough to spot any grass she stops and marvels at the grass. Three months down the line she has barely seen any grass and trust me she ain’t pulling your leg here.) Mother hens and baby hens can be heard running all over and joyfully scratching in the ground for God knows what.

Children can be heard from a distance. The older ones getting back from school and the younger ones playing cheerful into the dark as they await to be summoned by their strict mothers over either forgetting to bath or getting back home late covered in dirt. Here she barely hears any children. Back at home if you step outside in the evening, you will notice smoke coming out from a few houses as most of the households have decided to kill this beautiful scene of art by adopting modern ways of cooking.

It is not scary bein home unlike here where she can’t help but feel a weird scare occasionally. But still it is just astounding how she has grown comfortable being in this weird place. A strange place where it rains for not more than five days the entire year, in fact the other day she witnessed something so weird, she kids you not it rained dust. The entire place was covered in dust you’d almost mistake that for rain. (She aware theirs an English term for that but today she’s decided to proudly expose her dumbness. wait is it an English term or a geographical term or a meteorological term. Shut up)

No evening wind. Dust all over the place. Goodness it is hot, the place is super hot. Surprisingly it gets even hotter in the evenings. Three years before today, she would swear with all her ancestors that not even in her next life would she consider staying in a place where temperatures fly off the roof like that even when it’s raining. JAMANI!. It’s crazy what adulting does to us.

No sunset to marvel at. Just a strange land. Somehow, over the time she has managed to feel at home here. How did this even happen? She doesn’t wash her curtains though ask her the reason and I promise you, you’ll giggle to death.

With all the calmness she could afford, she picked up the pace. She made sure that she mastered enough calmness she needed for her to stay on truck. All that was streaming from the realization she had made. As a result it paved way to the trajectory that she had long strayed away from. The whole time she was so lost, she had been approaching it from the wrong direction. It was a daunting hell and now she gave a sigh of relief.

It was during an era where almost every human had surprisingly been taken over with an obsession of healing and curbing anxiety. Healing and curbing anxiety was honestly a good spot worth obsessing over. It was a beautiful sight to see, the shift.

Well she had experienced her fair deal of anxiety and depression. Mostly, her episodes sprung from the wounds that lay deep inside her unattended. Inadvertently she would constantly prick them, enhancing the depth and intensifying the pain. Worse off she would nudge at her traumas, unaware she even had them.

She would constantly say to herself, “probably death will be more calming,” but really how was that even going to be possible with all the waves and noises she was yet to silence. Woefully, she had long given up.

It was time to put in the work. The world wasn’t going to stop for her. Whether she chose to frown at everything the world shoved her way, whether she chose to fight or whether she chose the slow death she was on, the world simply did not give any hoots. This was that sort of journey one decided on their own the manner they wanted the ride to go. And so she set on.

She embarked on it with all her might. Aware that it was going to be one bumpy rough ride. A journey that simply started with acceptance that there were aspects in her beautiful mess she needed to work on. She also was pretty much aware that financially she was at a worse place so therapy was nowhere close to being part of her cruise. The big ball with all it’s might was entirely in her court.

She deserved a calm mind. She deserved a life worth reminiscing over. She wanted to raise a generation that will be rooted in love because she was family oriented. At the end of it all when she had finally served her purpose and ready to cross over to the next world, she deserved heading their in peace confident that she had truly lived.

Currently she is moving and marveling at all the good things that path has to offer. She’s mastered to float pretty much okay when the waves come raging.

Well, it is pretty much okay and humane to be stuck in a dark place, just do not get comfortable renting that bad space, put in the work and move.

I looked at her, elated. I guess it was pure admiration I had for her. She had so much love to give. Her gaze told it all, behind those eyes there was a burning and a yearning I couldn’t fathom. It was a brave yet delicate gaze.

Clearly those beautiful hazel eyes had cried the most tears. Was it really worth it? I asked her… She pauses for a minute and then continues, “I honestly dislike that question,” haha! her honesty was so pure..and I was also counting the number of times she had used the word “honestly” since we started that conversation. She says she disliked that question because, she couldn’t help but get agitated at how people viewed being selfless as being stupid. ” and yes it was all worth it, every other time I sit down with myself, looking back I appreciate that at the end of the day I never made any heart bleed, I gave the best I could. It’s about my conscience, it’s about me. I wasn’t dumb.”

“If love ever crosses your path again would you still go for it?” She gave a stern yes. “I would still, fortunately and unfortunately people like us still exist.” I dug deeper for me to understand what she entirely meant with ‘people like us’. Boy!! This girl had been through it all. It’s always the pure ones that go through the most pain. I thought to myself as she continued with her narration.

She had other amazing ambitions. But somehow she had to pause a little on her journey, she needed to heal the wounds and patch back her broken pieces. Now she has beautiful scars. The scars she has, and trust me others are physical scars, they all have a deep story behind them. She is family oriented. It has been her childhood dream to one day have a beautiful family. She has her reasons why. Very valid and deep reasons.

She was a pure soul. Too real to be in this ruthless world. The cruelty she had endured, I went numb just listening to her. And for a minute I appreciated the heavens that I wasn’t like her. Though I honestly admired how she stripped naked when it came to her emotions. She expressed them with a genuineness that I’ve never heard of before.

Her vulnerability was powerful. I envied her here. That is something most of us will never have the courage to try. “But I guess I scare them away” She thought loudly to herself and I joined her in those thoughts, probably that was true, like how I would never want to go deep with my emotions, like how I preferred just being on the surface, maybe that’s how everyone else she had met on her journey was. Scared.

“But I am tired, my heart is weary now” she said as she moved from the spot we had been sitting on for what felt like an eternity, the wind was now becoming too massive.

She would chew in her sleep. I found that insanely hilarious. Even when she chewed in her sleep, she would still do it with modesty.

Occasionally when I was young, she would snap at me one too many times. No, do not get that wrong, she loved me so much. I learnt almost everything from her. I do not toss and turn when I’m asleep, I sleep so carefully. If I was to share a bed with you, trust me you’d wake up to confirm my presence. I promise you it wasn’t always like that. She instilled that in me, haha impolitely. As a kid I would wrestle in my sleep. Sleeping on one end of the bed and waking up on the other end. Holy molly if you happened to share the bed with me, your first stop in the morning would be the hospital. I was extra. Dear future husband you have her to thank for that. Several pinches here and there from her day in day out and I got back on track.

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into my room is how carefully I fold my clothes, I kid you not. That’s still her. This one wasn’t a tough one for her to achieve, lol no! I’ll spare you the nitty grities on this one.

My early memory with her only goes back to when I was six. I do not recall much either. I later learnt that before that she was in and out of the hospital. She was a fighter. All the days leading from there I would spend every minute I could afford by her side. Trust me it’s not every day that she would enjoy my annoying presence. It’s only now that I’m realizing how much I was in her space. I can be clingy at times. I adored her. Most of the time I would do things just to win her acknowledgement.

She was a natural. The minute she walked into a room with her sparkly beautiful smile, people would just be drawn to her.She had a golden heart. Let me not start describing her smile because we might camp here for eternity.

I kid you not here, I’m yet to meet anyone who has a soft skin like she did. Her completion was a beautiful shade of caramel. Trust me I would give the world to have one of my daughters bearing that shade of dark ..dear future daughter haha okay don’t always take me seriously but I’m also not kidding. 😸😅

At one point when I was a teenager in form two (there’s something about form two that we are yet to discover). I could swear with my breath that I thought she hated me. No, she wanted the best for me and I am glad I learnt that early enough. And when I did, like a typical teenager, I bought a card. On the front it was written with a very beautiful font in blue and the words read, “Dear sister“. Inside I wrote “You are the best sister God ever gave me (attention please, I love all my sisters) you are my role model in almost everything and I know I haven’t been the best and for that I am writing this to apologize for all the times that I have disappointed you, ps: I love you to the moon and back.” I think down there somewhere I dedicated Justin Timberlake’s song “Mirrors” ..haha still a typical teenager of my days.

I thought the card probably meant nothing. A few months after her burial ceremony, when I’d at least mastered some capacity of going through her things without breaking down, I found the card.

She had kept it so well. Even the white envelope I had it in. Still with the funny graphics in touch. The card mattered to her. Probably the words in it meant something to her like they did to me. I held the card to my chest and I started grieving anew. I had so much love still towards her that I wanted to shower her with.

She was an angel this one. She treasured any little thing someone would give her. That is something worth taking home.

Up to now we are still clearing her things. Most of which, gifts she would receive from people. Gifts that I am aware that the people who gave her, never imagined she would hold them that dearly. Hey dear I hope you kept that sparkly beautiful smile, for me I am still trying to match your modesty. Still trying to ditch the rugged trousers that you hated, still trying to be a lady, hang on I’ll tell you more about me later. Adios.

Hey, so here we go again, happy new year 2023. Trust me I am not mocking you here. I am being brutally genuine. It just came to my realization that, I spent the better part of this month focusing all my energy and thoughts on how much I want to ensure my mental health is healthy (trust me I am aware of what I’ve done there). So to everyone I wished a happy new year at the start of January, trust me I just did it out of the modesty of replying back…no trust me that is not supposed to be as rude as it sounds.

Give a girl a break, on 31st December I had a bad melt down. I fell in tears. For a million reasons I was really scared of stepping into 2023 with all my mess. I said a small prayer amidst my tears, then I slept. The previous year was quite a rollercoaster. I do not know whether everyone else is being utterly honest about this, just a weird coincidence that everyone I interact with has something to say about how their mental health was rudely tested in 2022. Well okay, let me grant you all the benefit of doubt peeps. Let me assume that it was a wave that everyone was supposedly meant to go through. Luckily we survived the wave, just like how we survived COVID.

So yes I noticed all my energy has been entirely focused on making sure that I keep my mental health in check. It’s only now that I’m diving into 2023. I’m not the kind who comes up with resolutions. My anxiety cannot handle all the pressure that comes with working on resolutions. But this one has to be quite different, that’s why I am focusing almost all my energy on mental wellness. That’s my goal. Heaven knows how much I was in survival mode last year. That’s a pretty much ugly place to be stuck at. You just live. No motives. I honestly never got anything good done in 2022. I’m not here to boast about how much unproductive my year was. I’m just here to remind myself that I should learn from it. I’m getting the hang of being self aware and catching myself every other time I am about to fall into old bad habits. Clap for a girl. Follow suit!! don’t just clap. Let this be a year that we do not go about teaching people about mental wellness. We are informed enough up to this point. So yes, I think my reasons for bringing my wishes late are validated. Cheers.