Ara adugbo! I have been seeing small shege here and there, na why una no see me o. No vess abeg. Jumping straight to why we’re here, I have a rant I spent the past 3 months ruminating over and it just clicked in a random conversation I had with a friend.
I HATE nonsense. Now there’s a lot of people out there who have been saying this in different variations but when it’s just them in the privacy of their rooms or no one else has the potential to know their thoughts, they don’t mean it. While that is not bad, it makes people with healthy boundaries look like crazies when they refuse to participate.
Why is this important to me now? It is because I’m living in a world where adults are refusing to be accountable for their actions and they need co-signs to feel better about themselves. Social media definitely made this worse but let’s break it down to everyday examples okay; managers who expect great performance on the job but refuse to give their subordinates the resources to excel, parents who refuse to teach their children real-life skills and courtesy but act surprised when they grow up to be entitled with maladaptive disorders, oh I have a better one! people entering partnerships with zero plans to be ‘partners’. As someone who likes to live life as authentically as I can manage, I keep getting burned by the actions of people who don’t and that made me resentful for a short while. The kind of resentment that makes you lose sleep, that wraps itself around your consciousness to squeeze out a barrage of negativity. The resentment sat me down, held a switch to my bare back and whipped it until I confessed the reason… men!
My time away has made me so hyperaware of my existence as a woman living in a very patriarchal ‘Nigeria’ as the world reverts to a more suppressive existence that’s only enforced when women decide to exercise choice. Microaggressions at work, macroaggressions at home because you want to exercise your choice. I’m exhausted from fighting for my right to express myself, shrinking to keep the peace, and overexplaining my decisions because it is so hard for people to unanimously agree that a clear wrong is being done to their loved ones. So yes, there’s milk on the floor and I’m tired of crying over it, somebody (not me) needs to clean it up or this place will stink.
It might sound like I’m speaking in circles because I am. I haven’t had the best experience sharing my unfiltered thoughts to a public without context and I simply don’t care enough to provide it. Meanwhile, I need people to stop saying “God will do your own” to loved ones who never expressed a desire for what they have. There’s a 25-year gap between you and your husband but you called your single friends up at your wedding reception for a pastor to “lay hands on them” for their own husbands who asked for this?. ‘God will do your own’ is one of those “nice gestures” rooted in bad intentions, you assume you’re better off than the recipient hence the “your own” what’s even worse is the assumption that what you have is what they want. Just stop it, please.
In other positive news, I had an amazing opportunity to visit a breathtaking island in Portugal called Estoril. My preparations for the trip were so tumultuous I completely gave up on going until my women got me off my wallowing ass to pursue my visa. My most rewarding feat yet because! a time was had in cascais (kas-kaish). I want to write a blog about my experience but I need a second trip that includes Lisbon to make it happen. May the universe do its thing because Portugal is my 2nd most loved European country so far, hopefully, an opportunity will take me there for a year or so. Should be fun.
Things I enjoyed so far…
When I tell you guys that I have been enjoying, I mean that shit! Between my last blog and now, I have read at least 10 books, watched a few shows, taken a personality test, and tried romance with an unwilling participant.
Books
Daughter in Exile - Bisi Adjapon
Parlour Wife - Foluso Agbaje (Fave)
Ghostroots - Pemi Aguda
Broken (Not a Halal Love Story) - Fatima Bala
Maitama Linen - Shehu Usman Yakubu
3 Bridgeton books that I don’t remember (Benedict, Eloise and Daphne)
The Girl with the Lounding Voice || And so I roar
Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions - Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
Other Media You Might Like
Fireboy’s Obaa Sima
The Later Daters (Netflix)
Love Never Lies South Africa (Netflix)
Nobody Wants This duhhh! (Netflix)
Umjolo Gone Girl (Netflix)
Salif Keita’s Essentials (Apple Music)
This blog took almost 4 months to write… I promise to drop one more before the year ends.
Stay jiggy Folks!