Shadow to my light.

Do you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

There comes a point in growing up where you feel like you are no longer good at the things you thought you were good at.

Heart-wrenching.

It has been one year and seven months since I started questioning myself about my purpose. Not a day goes by without me asking myself that question.

Let me take you back a little. In primary school I hated mathematics with every life inside me. My grades in Maths were humiliating. That meant one thing. I had to be good at something. Atleast. Grammar. I lived for English lessons. The teachers adored me. Definitely it had to count for the only one thing I was entirely comfortable with back in the day.

I enjoyed writing essays. Especially the imaginative ones. As a kid my head space was wild. I marvel at the things I used to write about at that age. Tender age.

Fast forward I knew writing was my thing. At that age I don’t think I had an idea about journalism as a career being embedded with grammar. Should I remind you about how scarce resources were back in the day? Sure I’ll spare you the details. I can’t recall a point when I was asked about my dream career and my answer wasn’t “a journalist”. At that age when everyone wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pilot…. I simply wanted to be a journalist and that was that.

Very many years down I was in uni studying my dream. It felt so nice. I still believed so much in my writing. Though somehow some things had taken a dent in my confidence. So I would write, but I would just write to myself. If anything I would rather get run over by a track than admit to my peers that I loved writing. That writing was my goal.

That is pretty much how I started killing my writing confidence. Haha! And the fact that I’m writing about this is insanely funny.

Why am I still writing up to this point you might ask. Let’s blame it on nostalgia. I recalled back in the day, how much I used to take pride in writing. Then here I am today. Doubting. Was I really good at this thing or these few people who I met along the way were only gassing me up. You know attempting not to kill my enthusiasm. My pride.

So yes, I am basically at it. At that peak of doubting every writing I ever put out.

Do I still aspire to write? Of course I do. Pretty much the reason why I am here. I just do not want to find my niche like how I am constantly told by a few individuals.

I want to be authentic with my writing. I do not want to write simply because I want to make a living out of it. I want to write for a deeper purpose. Something more than just money.

I want to hold such conversations with my subconscious. I know in the long run two or three people will find the purpose in my writing. There are those who wouldn’t. That is entirely okay. Alignment.

I am not after finding a niche. I am not after using the most polished grammar. I just want to write. I am human. I thrive best in authenticity. A beautiful mess. I believe something worthy will be born out of the mess. I do not want to box myself up. Boxing myself up was almost Killing my dream. I want to live my childhood dream.

Four months down the line. I want to look back and appreciate my authenticity.

Friendship goes deep. It is not as shallow as we always make it sound or feel. “We went to school together” we are schoolmates, that doesn’t mean that we are friends. “We work together,” we are colleagues, the fact that we are colleagues doesn’t qualify us to be friends and I promise you that’s genuinely okay.

We lose our authenticity trying to feed into friendships that are non existent. We ought to stop living in pretense. Am I a victim? Absolutely yes. I have fallen into patterns where I would refer to everyone I know as a friend.

I will not even try sugar coating this, but having friends is not as easy as we make it sound. It involves a lot of energy, commitment and effort.

Like a romantic relationship. Friendship equally needs to be nurtured.

Saying this out loud will somehow sound awful, but I have struggled when it comes to keeping and maintaining friendships. We all do. Recognizing that is of great essence and I genuinely think that it is still very humane to struggle with finding our way around friendships.

We do not talk often about how it is insanely tough to find people who match our energy. I am intense and deep. I am critical and over analytical. It is tough forming friendships when you are on the sensitive side of the spectrum. Occasionally I come out as awkward, weird, petty and dumb to people who don’t get me. This has been tough for me. It has made me question a lot of things about myself and I think that’s too much a price to pay when it comes to the journey of friendship. When you find yourself questioning your worth, you’d rather keep to yourself.

I feel like I should say this while yelling and standing at the top most floor of a storey building that goes extremely high. When was the last time you were a good friend to yourself? Charity begins at home right? Yes. Go home to yourself and analyze the friendship you have with yourself. Is it good? I do not think it ever works, you trying to be a good friend to everyone else yet you are in an awful conflicting relationship with yourself. It should begin from within.

Talk to yourself with grace. Grace should start from within. Find yourself. It’s okay for you to isolate yourself from the rest of the world and just work on your relationship with yourself. I know doing that might lead into you losing friends. I promise that’s okay. Losing friends could actually mean that you are evolving. Growth.

Being in a space where you are graceful with yourself clearly allows space for you to be self aware.

Self awareness is a road map to a lot of things if not everything. Being in a space where you understand yourself well enough, will outright allow you space to find your clan. To find people you genuinely align with.

It has been said one too many times that no man is an island and that friendship basically forms a greater percentage of being human. My two cents on this is that, not everyone is designed for the realm of friendship. We shouldn’t let social constructs blind us into believing that being a loner is a crime.

Still friendships are beautiful.

Have you fallen prey to this? Absolutely yes. We all have.

I genuinely do not know what to make of it. From a personal perspective, I think seeking external validation can be damaging. It comes from a place of low self esteem, self doubt and lack of confidence.

It’s not everyday that we wake up and we are buzzing with life. It’s human nature to be burned emotionally and I know during those times we might use a word or two to bolster our mood.

That shouldn’t mean that we become all dependent on that.

We should learn to speak to ourselves with confidence. I do not know if you’ll agree with me here but seeking external validation eats into our abilities.

So what happens when everyone around you isn’t clapping for you anymore? Do you stop pushing? Do you stop trying?

All I’m saying is we should learn to appreciate ourselves. We should not wait for external sources to remind us about how great we are.

We should have a solid reflection of ourselves.

It is definitely a Monday and there’s always a certain feel to Monday.

I don’t have much worth saying today.

I have been in my head for the better part of the day. That means I’ve barely been productive.

I’ve questioned a lot of things. You know from my abilities, to my worth and my appearance.

I don’t want to wake up with this energy tomorrow. The goal is to live a calm life. Having all these noises inside my head won’t help a thing about that.

My greatest enemy is this imposter syndrome. I don’t understand why it will just never leave me alone.

I hate it. It is stealing away from me too much. It is stealing all my treasures. It’s taken a great toll on my abilities.

Why am I letting it win though? This is worth pondering over.

I should get over it.

I will wake up tomorrow ready to deal with it.

And we are definitely going to have this conversation about the imposter syndrome some other day. For the purpose of growth.

Cheers.

In a few months, I’ll be celebrating my 27th birthday. It’s quite an astonishing realization when I stop to think about it. The phrase “time flies” is often tossed around casually, but I’m now experiencing its truth in the most profound sense.

Reflecting on my past years stirs up a whirlwind of emotions. Do I find joy in the passing years, the maturing and growth that come with age? Absolutely, I do. It’s an evolution, much like a fine wine maturing in a cellar.

However, one pang of regret tugs at my heartstrings – the feeling that I’ve somehow let my younger self down. The feeling that she’s missed out on truly living, that too many years have been consumed by worry and overthinking. I can’t rewind the clock, but I can reach out to that 17-year-old version of myself, in the hope of offering some wisdom and comfort.

Dear younger me,

Fresh out of high school, you have your entire life laid out in front of you. The boarding school years, which felt more like punishment than opportunity, are behind you. You chose that path, yet you can’t help but regret it.

You’re brimming with potential, with the world at your fingertips. But do you seize the opportunity? You’re an introvert by nature, quiet and reserved. Others label you as ‘timid’, and over time you start to believe that’s all you are.

You yearn to express yourself, to articulate the kaleidoscope of thoughts spinning inside your head, but words elude you. Your mind, though a beautiful maelstrom of creativity and emotion, feels like a heavy burden. Your silent pleas for help go unnoticed, drowned out by the clamor of the adult world.

You’re only 17, but you’ve already faced more than your fair share of hardships. You’ve become adept at concealing your pain, not wanting to burden those around you. On the few occasions you’ve tried to voice your feelings, your cries fell on deaf ears, leading you back to your world of silence.

You’re different from the typical rebellious teenager; you adhere to rules, finding solace in the predictable world of soap operas. They become your roadmap to romance, shaping your understanding of love and relationships.

Over time, you lose sight of your self-worth. You wish you could mirror your siblings or friends, and in doing so, you lose your unique identity. Unbeknownst to you, such thoughts slowly chip away at your confidence, leading you down a path of people-pleasing and self-doubt.

My dear younger self, I, your future 27-year-old self, am reaching out to ask for your forgiveness. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you made when you were still learning about the world and yourself. I’m here to reassure you that you are now safe, and that your worth was never up for debate. You matter.

I regret the times you spent wallowing in sadness, wishing you could be someone else. Let me remind you: you are a unique masterpiece. Your introverted nature is not a flaw, but a strength. Your silence can be powerful, but remember that you now have a voice.

I apologize for the hardships you had to face at such a young age, but let me reassure you once again: you are safe. It’s time to shed that victim mentality and embrace the resilience that lies within you.

Now, I invite you to join me on this journey of self-discovery and growth. Let’s live our life to the fullest, with the wisdom of our past guiding us to a brighterfuture.

Sending you love and light,
Your Future Self.

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.