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28, Her Version of Events, Reflections,

on Unloving

I keep thinking about unloving. I know it isn’t a real word but I believe it should be. In the spirit of that, I will be giving it a definition

Unloving (verb): the process of becoming whole within your self after sharing it with another.
Alternate definition: the process of embracing a different path.

I am thinking about ‘unloving’ because I recently told myself the truth that I am in love and I don’t want to be.

I am embarking on a journey to who I was before this warmth filled my heart, back to a time when ‘’I’’ and not ‘’we’’ was the centre of my vocabulary.

Lessons

1. There is no going back to before love because the memories haunt you, they plague your daily activities. The only place you can go is ‘after loving’; a place where you bask in the memories, accept them for what they were and look ahead to what will be. 

2. The future; this is hard because when your heart goes warm, you want it to remain warm forever. All your imagined tomorrows include this feeling, include this person, and it is hard letting go of all the tomorrows you would not be getting. In the moment it is the hardest thing, but you will be fine as you choose a different path and start envisioning new tomorrows

I am not fine today, tomorrow I may okay. Who knows what the day after will bring on this journey of unloving. Choosing patience is the only way to the other side.

February 16, 2021
28, Her Version of Events,

In Loving Memory

I think about things beyond my control, things that I may never have answers to but can’t help questioning. 

Today I said out loud that my Grandma was a complicated woman. She was hard to love because she had one too many mean spirited comments and actions that made every person around her hold on tighter to every act of kindness in an attempt to remind ourselves that she was also a kind person.

But I have all these questions I will love to ask her, questions about her words, actions and the walking contraction she was, blowing hot and cold in the same minute. 

I think what I wonder about the most is who ‘’Oreoluwa’’ is, where she comes from, and the women woven together to make her who she is, becoming and will become. 

I hold my grandma in high esteem; I am proud of her accomplishments. She went into the world and took hold of anything she wanted from asking her husband to marry her, to building successful businesses and running a household of 5 children. I find myself wishing I am as audacious as she was demanding more from life and going in pursuit of all my dreams. I find myself thinking of how she had a whole room enamoured in her presence, everyone hanging on to her every word and looking to her for guidance. 

She was who she was a composition of all her choices, but in the end, she is loved, she is missed in the sea of brokenness she is left her lineage to work through, a brokenness I can only hope we can work through. 

For my last question to her, I imagine asking her this question in her pickup truck while driving home. ‘’Grandma?’’ I am sure she will answer ‘’ Derin Kekere Kin o fe ?’’ with a smile on her as she looks at the road ahead, concentrating on driving and waiting for me to ask my question, I ask. ‘’Grandma, are you proud of your legacy?’’. 

February 7, 2021
28, Beauty, Her Version of Events,

shades of blue

In September of 2020, I went to a paint and sip party to celebrate one of my best friends’ birthday, and this was the only reason to voluntarily go to a place where they were many new people and attempt to socialise, yes there is the occasional wedding here and there, I usually attend those with a fascinating novel that I disappear into. My strength usually is staying in bed and coming up with reasons to get out of existing commitments to go out or small gatherings with my favourite people. 

I hadn’t painted since the days when we were forced to take Fine Arts in secondary school, but here I was replaying all advice I read online to make small talk and meet new people. 

The way the event ran, there was loud music, art supplies at the centre of the room and I will christen the presenter ‘’Paint Maters’’ gave us the theme of our painting for that evening it was going to be ‘’New Beginnings.’’

When I heard ‘’New Beginnings’’ I knew what I needed to paint my name ‘’Ore’’ in the brightest colours.  I always imagine that if my existence will be presented in colour, it will be various blue shades, I am always cold never heating up enough to be red but just enough to be electric blue. 

But at that moment I wanted to be different, I wanted to experience living through different lenses to have the powers to talk freely on the first day of meeting someone and not overthink to just be present. 

In the spirit of New Beginnings, if I wasn’t going to have this different experience, I could live vicariously through the words on the canvas. 

Once my painting was done, I promptly found a place to curly up and continue existing in the comfort of the words the book I was reading provided because blue in its varying shades is also perfect. 

January 17, 2021
2020, 28, Her Version of Events,

Ageing

I have arrived at my late late 20s, my next milestone age is 30 and I find myself terrified of turning the big 30.

Here is why:

I have this mental list of things I want to achieve by 30, and many of the things on my list feel out of reach and this has left me disappointed in myself. Maybe I didn’t put ‘my goals’ first or put in the required work towards achieving them but, I am left with a sense of disappointment and the intense feeling that I have run out of time to do anything truly meaningful.

I went into this deep state of reflection, reliving my actions, beating myself up for not making better decisions and not walking away sooner from certain relationships. Shout out to self-isolation which provided me with so much alone time with my thoughts. Here’s the thing, I know it is a lie and there is still a lot of life that is ahead of me, a lot of time to achieve and do so much but, I need to get my brain to believe that it isn’t all over because I will soon be 30.

In the past month, after spending so much of this year feeling doomed, I decided to try a different approach and make a list of the things I achieved in my 20s, to remind myself of my happiest moments, all the beautiful places I got to see and people I got to share it with and focus on answering the question on why I feel doomed in the first place and get to the root of why I feel like I’ve run out of time. 

I don’t have perfect answers but I kind of worked out a few things: there are things that are expected of me by my parents and society; things that have ingrained themselves so much into my subconscious, things that I am finding hard to unlearn and have gained control on my perception of time. I realise that what I should be focused on is gaining control over my life by letting God have control, allowing my story to play out how God planned it and I should quit focusing on ticking items off an imaginary list. 

I can’t say I have fully let go and embraced where I am today because it is a journey, a gradual one at that, but I don’t feel the sense of defeat anymore. I am having more happy days, I am getting out of bed and just living, which is something I forgot how to do. 

My hope for the future is for a society that constructs better, one that will not mount pressure on how I need to be, who I should be and what I should have achieved by a certain age. I want to celebrate simple things like waking up in the morning and having a cup of mango juice while watching the sunrise through my window because those simple things matter.

I am not sure that there are profound lessons to learn here but if you made it this far, thank you for reading my rant and really listening to the playlist (Never Alone) below, they are songs that give my heart hope and steer my heart toward joy. I hope they do the same for you

Never Alone

Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/637sHdgsiaysiDHCsJWSRQ?si=ZhYKpYtAS6moBV8AV1AC_A

December 28, 2020
2020, 28, Her Version of Events,

Words

P.S. Please listen to Kygo’s album Golden Hour while reading this.

Apple Music

Spotify

Words take up whatever form your mind desires for them to take up; Like when you tell me at the end of a call “I should let you go,” my mind interprets it as a reminder that you will never be mine, and when I type “Thank You,” my mind means ’I love you and I am grateful I can lean on you.‘ Maybe the words left unsaid are the ones I need to say and get everything out in the open. 

This isn’t about talking to just anyone, it is more about talking to you. I am going to make a list of all the random things that happen during the day that I want to text you about. Things that wouldn’t ordinarily be your business but, because I maybe love you, I have the desire/urgency to let you in on all my activities. 

Some days I am scared we will have after-the-fact conversations and say things we wish we had said in the moments when they mattered and we will be left wondering if things could be different had we just used our words. 

15/03/2020

We are constantly reminding ourselves in conversations that we are friends, I think we both need the reminder. We are constantly testing the waters to be sure we both remember. We say things like “you know you are my friend, ” followed by a short pause like we have more to say, “this is why you are my friend,” and then end conversations with open ended sentences like “you know you are important to me,” which can mean anything and nothing at all.  

Maybe, instead of constantly forcing ourselves to fit into the “friendship” box we outgrew many moons ago, we should have a direct and open conversation about where we have progressed to and how to find our way back to where we need to be. Because the reminders and open ended sentences will only lead to a horrible breaking apart. 

03/04/2020 

I can’t remember the last time we didn’t talk in 48 hours. I have convinced myself that if we can successfully not talk, that we have no form of communication, for 72 hours, it means that our hearts are successfully unthreading from each other. Oh, by the way you called, just at the 53rd-hour mark. I was freaking out, thinking you had forgotten all about me already and I was making peace with it, you know. It might seem a tad bit dramatic but my mind loves to make up stories and these made-up stories help me cope. But there are little things you do that my mind has decided are peculiar to you. Like how you say “I miss you”, never in those words but with the urgency in your voice when you say “Still alive and well?” 

05/04/2020 

I love who we are in the moments when we let our guard down and share freely. When we forget all the careful boundaries that are in place. But one of us always remembers and  drags us back to the boundary lines. It was your turn to steer us back last night and now I can’t get the words you said out of my head: “there really is no point to this line of conversation.” My follow up question should have been “So why did you call? Did you have pre-arranged talking points?”, because I was angry, angry at you, angry at the situation. 

I found myself in the last few weeks thinking we should just rip off the bandage and go cold turkey because, really, what is the point? 

08/04/2020 

I think the best part of our friendship (I am calling it this and commanding it into existence) is that you believe in me so much more than I do in myself. You see me and you prop me up to the point where I am convinced I can take over the world. When I lament or feel like I am not good enough, I can be rest assured you will tell me “Hey Ara, you’ve got this.” When I am tired and have worked myself to the ground, you stay with me, pull me back on my feet and help me to the finish line. You never tell me my dreams are too big, you listen, help me fine-tune them and constantly remind me to keep my dreams in focus and set milestones towards achieving them. In the middle of everything I will miss about “this”, what keeps me longing, is that it could have worked, is what stands true at the centre and is hurting like hell is that I’m letting go of someone who completely cheers me on and is always on my side and the sense of complete hopelessness that I will not have this again. I am learning to hope again, to believe that God is definitely going to sort this out for me in His own perfect time. 

9/05/2020 

I woke up this morning with the overwhelming desire to call you, to make sure you are fine and all is well in your world. 

I have used so many tricks to stop myself from calling you; the best trick is telling myself that it isn’t my place to know if all is well in your world and if you need my help you would reach out. But this isn’t stopping my need to talk with you, to just hear your voice and know that all is well with you. I am hoping that I don’t cave in and call or text. I am not feeling as overwhelmed as I did when I got up this morning, fingers crossed to see how the rest of today plays out. I missed your call this afternoon and I called you back. All is definitely well in our world but not in mine, it will not be until I lay “this” to rest 

20/05/2020

There are stages to separation. First, “we” goes out the window closely followed by “us” but because we don’t want to wrap our head around what is happening we start having placeholder positions in our individual futures. We say things like “Oh! I will be your daughter’s godfather” or “I will make sure you dance at your wedding” because, even though the separation is happening you don’t want it to happen all at once, you desire to hold on to whatever you can just a little bit longer.  

31/05/2020 

I think the process of unloving is one that isn’t widely talked about. The process of feeling your heart pull away from another’s, of asking yourself why you thought the moon only shines in the person’s eyes. I know nobody really thinks this but I am sure you understand what I mean.

You start to question if your feelings were real in the first place, you question if you even know the definition of love and can be the right judge of when you next feel it. I believe the hardest thing is how a few of the things you once loved and admired about the person become the very things you can’t stand, the things that help your heart make the decision to walk away. I guess my question is, how do you trust your judgment on your emotions when they seem to always be shifting?

01/06/2020 

All I see are cracks and the endless reasons why this can‘t work and, maybe, never worked. I think the euphoria of whatever I felt blinded me to these cracks but, aren’t we supposed to love regardless of the cracks? 

Maybe the anger that consumes me right now is born out of a place I don’t want to visit anymore. A place where, if I am being honest, I saw all the cracks but chose to love regardless, embraced all of you, cracks and whatnot.

P.S. Please listen to Kygo’s album Golden Hour while reading this.

December 16, 2020
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