I read this poem sometime last week—if you’re sick and twisted and believe Sunday’s starting the week makes sense—And i responded immediately by typing into my notes “I tried to bury myself in work and work went on pause so I tried to read but it made me tired and I tried to watch more films but my eyes were too heavy and I tried to listen to music and it made me feel like I was carrying a cross to Golgotha and so I've had to feel everything. I've had to feel everything. That’s how I am.”
When Christine and the Queens said “People I’ve been sad” that wasn’t correct because I’ve be unable to understand what is happening inside me let alone bottle up enough of it to use the word “sad” and yet in the midst of it, I find myself repeating, “You want to be here, you want to be here. It’s a lot right now but you want to be here.” and I don’t know if i’m saying it as a reminder, reassurance or motivation (Sorry, I couldn’t find a fitting R) word. He was right though I’ve been missing out and trying to comfort.
I’ve not been sad, I’ve been trying to self soothe (all my life at this point). I’ve not been sad, I’ve going back to places where I know how they end, even when they sucked so much I thought I would die, sorry for being dramatic, I’m a libra.
At first it meant listening to Efe Oraka’s Comfort Food an unreasonable amount of times, even when something is magic. Then there was Ignis Brother’s Sand and Shells, Dear Luca by ayokay, the entire Punisher album 6 times, Tuj Mein Rab Dikhta Hai from my favourite indian movie (that’s a comfort thing for me btw, rewatching Indian movies like I used to with my aunties), then there was City on a Hill because the longing and grief is an extra sibling in my house, Laufey, Monster from Adventure Time, Khald’s Suncity album and then finally Wrabel singing beautiful day.
Then I had the bright idea to read my journals, to see if this feeling was old, if i had answers.Let me tell you, the worst part about being a person with a bad memory who comforts by journalling is that you can go back. You can travel in time and see when you were creating a character whose story never went up in 2020. She’s ace and prouder than you, runs a bakery, and her granddaughter’s husband will come out as a woman. She will be the one to convince her to support her. On the last page, you write, “preferred therapy session: online, 12 pm”, you wonder how that went.
In another journal, you love the smell of wet sand, which you now hate, but just like now, you “like being able to completely immerse in beautiful art” your being alive seems beautiful.
In another you design the quote “It’s the beautiful longing, embrace the unknown, that’s the mystery of your gift” and you remember that it’s a song, so you listen and you remember how you watched Boy Choir alone in the cinema in Uyo on your 16th birthday. It was a Sunday, and after church, you walked from your aunty’s house because you didn’t want to ask anyone to take you. It was a short walk but you would have entered a keke if you weren’t overthinking how many thousand ways you would get laughed at if you said “Owa” instead of whatever they say in Ibibio. You remember the walk back, another music film that touched you, another talented kid and you wonder if Julliard is possible, it wasn’t a far-out dream. You play six musical instruments, by ear, you have an okay voice, you write sheet music but somehow, you’re not good enough. You won’t think about that dream again until the world stops in 2020.
In the one that started as a “Broadcasting and something” note, you talk about how the world doesn’t need any more cancer stories, you write about how not all patients get to live during their numbered days, How some of them can’t make their pain seem less for a self-absorbed mum, how they can’t go missing for days without consequences in the first hour, how most don’t get to say all their goodbyes, how there’s nothing magical about it. In that one, there are many torn pages.
In the one they gave you at a church, you rewrite a poem written to you by a boy who seemed like a man, and you say things like “scintilla of colors” in reference to him. In there you’re right. It’s harder to write to someone when you’re an “us”. Your handwriting is beautiful and legible in it like you hoped someone would pick it up.
In the long black one, you don’t write a single thing for yourself that year. There’s a guide to Nigerian restaurants, 5 types of people you shouldn’t date, how to make a sex playlist, how to know you have a spirit husband, a guide to dating a co-worker and so much more. At the back, Ibukun writes her name multiple times, while you calculate your expenses. You should have spent that money then, you should have gone out more, you should have been a teenager at 21.
You start the white one with a story written backward. You write the first draft of a letter to your manager who is leaving and tell her she’s a star, you mean it too. You promise to disturb her, you never do. You’re doodling a lot, you write ‘“Kai is a fool” 7 times, and you plan an anniversary gift. You go without now than you ever could back then. This one is written in ink you have to squint even with glasses to read. So you don’t, and then you do. You promise to never beg anyone to stay. You’re 19. You’re 20. You’re 22. You go back to this one a lot. You tick off a to-do list 4 years later. You rewrite the first page of the death of Vivek Oji. You find a folded letter addressed to you, from you. You read it and leave it there.
In the pink one, you ask yourself when it became so cool to be unfeeling. Everything in this one is fresh, it’s from 2022. You stop there.
See, I’m actually very bad at self soothing. All the things that soothe me have hurt me once. All my shows are painful, all the books are too much. I wish I knew what was wrong. I thought it was the not eating but I started again and nothing changed. I thought it was the no exercising but I just felt more exhausted. I thought it was the lack of sunshine, but I sat outside and still wanted to die, outside and Julia Jackson is singing about how everything is changing.
I feel like a cardboard cutout in a Wes Anderson movie. The camera moves but I’m stuck in one place. I don’t love anyone right now, nothing means anything. I’m not mad, no feeling lasts long enough for it to matter. The food tastes sad. Everything tastes sad. I watch Grey’s Anatomy before I go to bed. If you need me, I’m always one episode away from going to bed.
Or that was how I’d ended it until I went out of my street, bus stop and LGA to hang out with my closest friend on Thursday. I didn’t feel better one bit. but that day I got work done and smiled and laughed with my mum on the way home, experiencing her commute for the first time since 2018 and when I got home I ate abacha and slept without the dreams.
Then I saw my friend and my best friend and we went devil veggie hunting and laughed some and I’m still not better but I’m not worse. So maybe that’s something.
Kai oversharing x2
I came to a conclusion recently while reading Love in Colour, there’s four Nigerian authors that actually mean something special to me right now. There’s Akwaeke, Eloghosa, Chimeka and then Bolu. And at first with my fiction, which is good, could be better and will be better, I thought I had to pick one of them to be, even though their whole thing is to be yourself btw, but I didn’t quite know who I am as a writer, I at least know who I wanted to be like. I keep reading their work because I feel like they say things the way I would like to say them and they could get me there. I’m not tired of the rewriting anymore, I think I can see what I want to read finally. It doesn’t sound like them, of course not. It just sounds like me right now. That’s something I’m very proud of .
As usual, “ It's your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours.”
Disclaimer: Mistakes are all mine, but I’m also dyslexic, so pardon the typos.