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Her Version of Events

2020, Adventure, Her Version of Events,

28/10/2020 – Musings on Graduating

My degree got confirmed today. I am grateful but boy, the year was long and short at the same time. It feels like you can’t pack that amount of living into 12 short months but all the living happened and I experienced it, so it really was long and short at the same time. 

I started my MSc year applying for a study leave from my job and accepting a new role I would function in part-time till I concluded my degree, but part-time quickly turned full-time and I found myself juggling a full-time masters program with a full-time job. 

Here are the things that naturally happened. 

I started sleeping 3 – 4 hours at night because, between essays and project plans for work, this was the only number of hours feasible for sleeping. Also on the subject of sleep, I mastered the art of power napping – it became essential for survival. 

The art of cutting myself some slack. I am hard on myself, I think we all are, and I desire to always operate at a 100%. It has been a learning curve coming to terms with the fact that my output will not always be at a 100% and embracing that as a growth opportunity instead of beating myself down. 

Rest, a very foreign concept to me. I usually push myself till the death, rise and just keep going, but in the last couple of months allowing myself off-days saved me from burning out. Off-days when I just read a good book, binge watch series and not beat myself up because of the work that I could be doing because, in the words of my famous friend, ‘’work no dey finish’’ so you might as well give yourself a day off every now and again. 

Say it with me, ‘your calendar is your friend.’ I learnt to schedule everything, from calls with friends to my classes and work meetings. It helped me stay on top of things an important plus is that I can colour-code all my different activities.

We all need a support system and I think I took mine for granted. I lived at home with my family and that meant, after a day at work, my sister was there to offload on, my mum would have dinner waiting on a few nights and my dad would take playful jabs at me. Overall it was expected. I have come to appreciate them more and I miss them from time to time.

Still, on support systems, I have the best friends in the world. I have earned this degree with all of them; they have listened to my rants about deadlines and feeling inadequate and have supported me at every point, I think the overarching lesson is: you can’t go through life alone. 

I am grateful to have achieved one of my dreams: completing a masters degree. I am excited for what comes next.

2020, Her Version of Events,

01/11/2020 – I Have A Few Questions…

First question.

Where did all the time go? 

I still remember going to see ‘Three Sisters’ at the National Theatre London on the 31st of December and, thereafter, going to a church across the road for a watch night service. 

It was my first New Years without my mum and dad and going to the watch night service was the only family holiday tradition I could keep alive. 

It just feels like not enough time has passed for it to be November 1st already; time to pull out the journals and start planning for 2021. 

Second question. 

Do you feel small, like you are incapable of making a difference in the world? 

The world seems to have toppled on it head this year and seeing a silver lining has been be really difficult. 

Here are the areas I feel small and insignificant and the things I am attempting to do about those things:

Family

I haven’t gone this long without seeing the members of my family and I have this hum of ‘missing’ that won’t leave me alone. If not for the pandemic we would have visited so I have compensated with constant communication and sometimes just leaving a video call running in the background while we go about our day. 

I have come to terms with the humming. I will always miss my family once I am away from them and this is okay. 

Politics

I never paid attention to politics and never cared much about voting. I am ashamed to admit it but all things political just overwhelmed me, so I stayed away. 

In the last few months I have turned a corner and I want to understand everything: how politics works and what goes into governance, but the more I research I can’t help feeling little – feeling that I don’t have the power to change anything. I understand it but how do we go about effecting change in a system with a design flaw? Figuring out how to start has been overwhelming. 

I haven’t figured it out completely, but here is what I am doing: tweeting about the things I am learning and sometimes lashing out at government bodies and agencies. Having an outlet is helping as well as researching into different initiatives from across the world to gain an understanding of how others are going about it. 

Last question. 

How do you spice up your meal prep? 

In the past year, since I started living alone, I have realised that meal prepping is one thing that ensures you don’t go hungry but it has the potential to quickly get boring. I am stumped on this, I don’t have an answer or an approach. Okay, maybe I am not completely stumped. I am trying two new recipes this week as options to add to my roster, but suggestions on how to spice things up are welcomed. 

These are all the things that keep me up at night and then some. 

Here is to a glorious November! 

Happy New Month. 

2020, 27, Her Version of Events, letters, life lessons, Reflections,

8th June 2020

Hello Grandpa, 

I didn’t cry today. I didn’t get sad when I talked about you with mummy or uncle Niyi and, to be honest, I almost forgot the anniversary all together. I remembered after my morning ritual of scrolling through Instagram. 

Let me explain Instagram to you really quickly because it became a thing after you left: it is an application where you can share photos with captions, kind of like how you posted photos on Facebook but this is more addictive. You can be rest assured I would have opened an account for you. 

As I scrolled, I noticed the date in the caption of one of my photos and it hit me that you have been gone 8 years today. I dwelled so much on the passing of time this year that it crippled me and prevented me from moving forward, but you helped me snap out it. 

I remembered a line from your journals. It was an entry for your 50th birthday, the year you retired as a lecturer. You wrote that you would rather spend your days doing the things that brought you joy and in that moment of remembering you, remembering your words, it was easy to realise what I needed to do to keep living, to fill my life with love and happiness and that the passage of time is really out of my control and what matters is what I do with the time I have left. 

For the first time since you left, I believe I have made peace with your leaving. I no longer have the wrenching pain in the pit of my stomach when I celebrate my accomplishments or special occasions. I have come to accept that you are a part of who I am and because I am present in all my moments, you are present too. 

Coming into this place of acceptance doesn’t mean I will stop having conversations with you,  sending you updates in letters or dreaming you up in a crowd but, I believe it is one of the many inevitable things about grief: it starts out all consuming and, for a while, it is the only sound you hear, the only thing you feel at the core of your being but gradually you start to recover, the consuming sound becomes a hum, something you can live with that doesn’t cause you to break down. 

You have become a part of me in this manner. I see you in the things I do everyday, I remember you in the mannerisms of people around me, in my approach to a particular problem and this brings so much light into my life. 

I am glad I didn’t cry today. I am glad I think of you now with a smile on my face. Missing you forever.

Love. 

AraOre.  

2020, 27, Her Version of Events, Reflections,

What Happens Next

I fear that we won’t change after this, that the clear flaws in the ways we choose to live, in how we think about others, that became pronounced in the last few weeks will become lost to our eyes when this ends.

Or will it end?

The earth is resting, it is in a state of non-movement, a state it hasn’t experienced in the last 50 years. It is finding ways to repair and recenter itself. The earth is on leave if you will, maybe a sabbatical at this point, because it hasn’t, in recent history, gone on a pause like it is on at this moment. 

What if this doesn’t end?

Then all our beautiful constructs will die, like the stock markets, the paper monies we carefully keep away in banks, our precious portfolios: from rainy day funds, to school funds to company reserves. Our beautiful terms of liquidity. Insolvency will never be looked at the same way. 

Will we construct differently?

Our track record doesn’t show a people that grow. What it points to is a people that place self above all. We are self-preserving; constantly placing our individual needs above others to the detriment of the earth and its other occupants. 

In the end 

My biggest fear is we will keep moving like nothing changed, we will go back to living just the same. We can’t even band together in this time of crisis. We are stealing resources from one another, we are still building wealth, we are still looking for how this misery favours our individual agendas. 

Will there ever be an alignment? 

My hope is in love, in the utmost display of it that I have seen in the health workers unwavering at the front lines of this, the children who go out of their way to put a smile on their neighbours faces, the adults that are giving their time and energy to preparing meals, making deliveries and providing us with the essentials for life and living.

We may never become a better people, we may never grow and see that a lot of things are more important than our carefully constructed product timelines and sales seasons. We may never see our employees as individuals, just numbers on a sheet. 

But my hope rests still in love, in the acts of kindness that we show to ourselves and that some day, love will find a way to win. 

2020, 27, Her Version of Events,

Books and Books

I happen to have two overachieving younger siblings so by the time I was 6 years old and my brother was 5, he had taught himself to read while I couldn’t read fluently. It then became my mum’s life mission to teach me to read and every evening, by candlelight, she would make me read to her from the King James Version of the Bible. Needless to say, this didn’t end well.

My mum’s sessions with me didn’t end well because I would read with my finger tracing individual lines on the pages of the Bible while she felt I should be reading without the help of my fingers, following the lines with my eyes. Thankfully, my father saved me and employed an independent party to teach me to read.

By the time I turned 7 and my brother 6, he had read through the Bible and after reading the book of Revelations, he was convinced that the beasts were coming for him at night. He would wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and find his way to my parent’s room.

He resorted to reading the Bible because he had finished reading all the books we had at home. This marked the beginning of monthly family trips to Books and Books, a bookshop that had endless shelves whose aisles I would get lost in. At first, I stuck to picture books because they had fewer words in them and I would be done reading faster. Gradually, I lost myself in the sea of Enid Blyton books and soon started having tea parties with my younger sister.

When I turned 11 years old and my brother 10, I went away to boarding school and he stayed at home for his last year of primary school. I started having headaches during classes and I got sent to the Sick Bay where the doctor recommended an eye test. I was excited to get a free pass to go home for the weekend to see my brother and sister. I didn’t give a lot of thought to the eye test.

I remember my mum and I sitting in the reception of the eye clinic. She held my hand in hers while she looked straight ahead and whispered “sorry” to me under her breath. The eye doctor said I had Astigmatism and, apparently from the test results, I’d had it a long time. It explained why I had needed my fingers to guide me when I read. I got my first pair of glasses a week later and they helped me read faster, because everything was clearer and I didn’t need my fingers anymore. When I was 15 and my brother 14, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows was released. My father pre-ordered a copy for both of us. I remember the book was available for pickup at a bookstore called Booksville. On the day of the its global release, he closed early from work to make it in time to the bookstore and deliver the book to us that night. My brother had the first go with the book, stayed awake all night reading and by morning he was finished. I spent the rest of the day in bed with the book and by nightfall, I was finished as well. We discussed the genius that is J.K Rowling and mourned the deaths of our beloved characters. I remember the look on my parents’ faces, they were happy we were happy, with my sister chiming in the background that we were too in love with witchcraft.

My brother moved away for A-Levels and further away for University, but when he was 22 and I was 23, he came home after his degree. I had searched high and low for a particular book. You see, I never quite caught the bug of digital books. I still loved holding my books in my hands and suffering from the occasional paper cut. He suggested we visit Books and Books to find what I was looking for and my mum drove us there that afternoon. When we arrived at the location she was sure the bookstore was at, it was no longer there, and in its place was a large supermarket. My mum asked the staff a few questions to confirm we had come to the right place and indeed we had, we were told it became a supermarket a few years earlier.

It felt like I had dreamed up Books and Books, like the endless aisles of bookshelves that were my home as a child were a figment of my imagination. It was a season where everything was changing and I couldn’t trust the memory of my childhood. I would have loved more than anything to have something, anything, to hold on to from that period of my life.