We’re not the same. Okay?
I’ve stalled for far too long, so this might be a long read.
It’s two days before 2022 ends and I’ve picked up this piece again. I really really just want to get it over with. Still, I don’t guarantee you’ll see it before the year ends. But maybe you will, or maybe not—I’m not even certain. When am I ever certain of anything anyway? You should be used to it by now!
Alright! Now it’s January 25th — you didn’t read this piece before the year ended and I’m just about five lines into it. I’d ask for you to go easy on me, but I’ve been writing this piece since October ’22. Lmaooo. See ehn, you should probably stop reading if you expect it to be extraordinary since I’ve been writing for months. It’s really not. It’s a very basic piece of work and that’s why I’m even more pissed.
But let’s talk about birthdays
I have to tell you - I am way too vainglorious on most days. So, the subsequent paragraphs shouldn’t take you by surprise.
Here’s the thing - I like my birthday way too much, and if I had the power to change things, it’d be a more extravagant affair. Like, it’d probably be a public holiday or something. I want to wake up to an epistle in my DM, mail or you can send a dove or something. What do you mean, “You know how I feel about you,”? Tell me! Write about it! Go to the mountain tops and scream your lungs out. Rally around me and wash my feet or do anything grand. In fact, you should cancel all the plans you’ve made because it’s my birthday. Yes, I’m very self-absorbed, but I like what I like.
I like my birthday even more because it sits so close to the end of the year. And every time I write about it, I get the opportunity to reminisce about my year. But ’22 was different. I wrote a lot. But I didn’t write enough about myself.
Bruh, give me some credit. I had an amazingly magnificent year, but now that I want to write about the intricacies of it, I think it wasn’t that much of a great year. Maybe it was just mediocre. Or maybe I can’t weave my words into magic because I’m overthinking the kind of year ’22 was for me.
By all accounts, I should probably just write something new. But I’m not doing that. I don’t want to do that. You have to hear what I had to say. What I have to say. So, let’s just get right into it!
I’m built differently
In ’22, I had an epiphany. Okay, I’ll be honest—I had more than a few epiphanies in that year.
One, I’ll never see the cute boy I met at Wema Bank on a random Friday in September 2019 again. He had the cleanest haircut, the prettiest smile, and the laziest eyes that were super-duper cute. Two, I’ll never know what the h-factor sounds like. I can’t hear it and I don’t know if I suffer from the malady. (But who cares if I do? I’m still the shit!) Three, going astray is annoyingly exorbitant. Do you know how much tattoos cost? piercings? waist beads?. Lmaooo. Just dey as you dey, my man.
And finally, I realized I was built differently from everyone around me. And not in an obnoxious or morbidly worrisome way—just different. The Damascus effect of this realization hit in many indescribable ways and on different days. It hit me that I would have to struggle to get the basic things that are easily handed to people. And I’ll have to go the extra mile to even get the most out of these things.
Wait! I’m not spewing balderdash, I swear. Hear me out.
All my life, I thought I had everything easy but my latest epiphany made things even clearer. It made me realize I had never chased anything as much as I did in ’22. To be fair, I looked back on my childhood and realized it was not exactly much of a contrast to now — I didn’t particularly have anything to my name. But unlike this 22-year-old that has to go after everything she wants to get them, I didn’t chase anything. I let things slip away. I watched things pass me by and I gave up far too many times.
In my defense, some things were out of my control. And my hands were too small to hold on to some dreams and aspirations. In fact, they never even seemed like they were mine to begin with sometimes.
Like that one time in primary 6, I wrote this bougie entrance exam with some bougie kids at this bougie school—too much bougieness, my broke-ass self could never relate. I was certain I was going to ace the exam, but tell me why I thought I was going to go to that school after passing the exams. Who exactly did I think I was? What property in the tiny rooms we lived in did I expect my parents to sell to afford the fees? But I wrote the exams regardless and I passed - I’ve always been that girl mahn!
In the years that followed, I watched the school bus pick up children going to that school and I was mad my mum made me write the exam in the first place. She knew I was never going to go there, so why did she make me write the exammmm. That was my villain origin story, I fear.
See - sometimes, you just know when something doesn’t belong to you. I knew this one was worse than a pipe dream. There was nothing to chase.
But last year?
My good gracious Jehovah! I chased so many things! Working two jobs might not be much of a big deal to you, but it was for me. Who could have thought that I could do that? Certainly not me!
I stretched myself thin—that’s what you do when you’re thrown into independence without caution. I sent far too many cold emails and messages on LinkedIn to get my foot in the door. I was on a roll, and absolutely nothing could stop me.
Not Lagos traffic. And definitely not that silly stranger that told me I wasn’t fine with my hair wrapped up in a bun. And that weird man that said I was too quiet for a Yoruba babe, and that I was too young to be working on the Island.
But as a size 6 woman living in Lagos, you learn to fight. You learn the fierceness of a black American woman with her cash app on her Twitter bio, sporting a BLM hashtag. Her retort to "what do you bring the table" is usually I am the table — you know what I mean.
What your body doesn’t have, you make up for it with your sharp mouth and sullen facial expressions. But you don’t overdo it because this clime isn’t sane. You tell men off, but with a pretty smile. You can say NO but not without reciting Psalm 23 in your head because only God can save you from what might come after. Again, you know what I’m talking about! But I digress…
You see, I know just how much of myself I gave to get that job. My job. And it was necessary to jump hurdles to keep it. There was no way in hell I was going to let a nigga from Lagos, Nigeria take that from me by probably murdering me because he doesn’t think I’m pretty. You get my point?
This is where I must be honest with you. I don’t want to have to chase anything. Not anymore.
I want the audacity of a Nigerian man. I want to sit in the corner of my room and let the work come to me—because have you met me?! I don’t want to give a fuck about the candy being in my face. I want to slap the candy away and just fuck it.
I want to wake up every morning, sit at my table, read a book, and just go back to bed. I don’t want to make a ritual out of opening my mail. I don’t want to write a cover letter. I want you to believe me if I tell you I have 10 years of experience.
Why do I have to prove my competence to you?
I don’t want to inspire people and posture on LinkedIn. Recruiter what? I don’t know you like that, mahn. I don’t want to resign from my job because it poses a distraction to school work—and then go ahead to not do well in school. I don’t want to bury myself in those books all semester only to fade out when I see my question paper. Or even worse, come out of the exam hall shining my teeth but eventually see a “C” on my portal.
My friends say it’s too early to know I won’t be graduating with a good grade, but I know. I know like I knew that thing in primary 6. I know this one too. So, I don’t want to sit on my bathroom floor with crippling anxiety because the semester is so bleak.
You think I don’t want to work hard? Yes, you are right. I’m not even trying to disagree with you. I told you already — we’re not the same.
So, what do I want? I want to find catharsis. I want to breathe. I want ease. I want to be lucid. I want to touch the bottom of the sea without taking the plunge. I just want to be on my fucking bed!
