Days before, days that feel like light years ago to me, I lie meticulously on top of my faded pink sheets and the face of a beautiful woman looks down on me. These days are very intimate to me, days when I can have a moment to myself, just me and nobody else in this big, big world. I look into her eyes while my fingers are deep inside of her and she shifts focus to the head rest. I grab her neck as selfishly as I can and she calls out my name. I smile to myself, right there in the darkness of my bedroom. Flickers of light from the tv in the other room fade out into the diaphragm beneath her succulent breasts; everything is fading out and the possibility of ascension from pedestrian life slowly escapes me. I rise above it all like a paper bag floating above the phantasmagoria of street lights, the stormy clouds, this suffocating troposphere, everything is beneath us.

I awkwardly shift on my seat in the corner table of a restaurant where a man sits with his ass-kissing companion and a question is thrown in my direction. The question is a tease it makes me want to talk about myself. A question about your interest is very seductive, much so like kissing before sex and so I kiss back with the words that overflow my mouth, I am excited to kiss like this. The beauty in talking about your interests is the response that writes itself on the face of the person who is asking the question. I ramble and they listen; him with the proud smile that makes his lips shift wholesomely and his companion with pretentious nods. I am inspired to continue; to humor interest and ignorance. My embarrassment sists on the soft edges of my glossed lips to which I try to compensate by pressing the mouth of a bottle of soda on my lips, drink the savory flavor of Fanta and listen to the output, he seems pleased. I feel hopeful of the places my career is taking me, all because someone doing what I want to do thinks I am interesting.

Water jets hit my face, the water flows to the rest of my nude body in the bathroom after a long day of work. I am drunk and I think all baths should be taken like this, drunk. I pour pink pomegranate shower gel on the hollow of my palm and I baptize myself in the smell of it. I watch it lather on my thighs as my motion is lubricated into softness. I want to sit in this small, poorly ventilated cubicle with hot water jets punishing my skin into a thrilling sense of euphoria. The mild sensuality of it is discovered by the tips of my fingers and I can feel how it feels to feel me. Its exciting, knowing how your body reacts to touch, I could take endless baths and never not want to touch myself over running hot water.

I am the stunned man in a Joyce Manor song and I am besotted on my couch watching her do crosswords after breakfast. She is sat like a little girl with her legs crossed over on my carpet as I inhale a menthol cigarette right above her on the couch. A red teacup sits right next to her, half filled with a concoction of Dorman’s coffee and vodka, and she shifts her face upward to face me. She asks me about the world war and God I want to drop down on my knees and kiss her beautiful mind from between her legs.

“Dude I am so bad at history,” I lie and watch her focus shift to the booklet of crosswords.

I want to be surrounded by interesting people like this in every room I walk into, life is so pointless without weird sapphic girls who do crossword puzzles after sex.

On a cold afternoon I walk up to the convenience store moments after hoping off the boda boda that dropped me off from work. I am exhausted, you can tell this from the limp of my right heel jammed into a four inch-heeled boot. I rummage through my bag looking for my phone, bump into a busy body who sighs in annoyance. I walk through the sliding glass door with the store’s name fading on the banner painted ages ago over it. On the counter the usual indifference on the face of the cashier is replaced by the fit of joy she seems to be trapped in; she is laughing like there is no tomorrow and I am afraid she can’t stop even if she wants to. I notice how embarrassed she is that I caught her in such a moment of weakness, such a revealing moment. This is so awkward, but I laugh along with her, we stay there laughing pointlessly because it’s the only thing we can do.

The first night of a house party is usually intoxicating, not just because of the booze and drugs but the decent thrill of being locked up in a house with strangers and nothing but drugs and good music. I step outside for a smoke, and the rain is too heavy that it splashes on my bare feet from the pavement. I jump back and bump into him, I didnt know he was there and so I laugh, we both do. Without saying anything I usher the cigarette into my mouth, the beautiful resonance of a sizzling cigarette entwining with the tap of rain on pavement and gravel and our heavy breathing- the only sound to ever exist. I release smoke from my mouth and it dances over us, lightly disappearing into nothingness. I grab him by his shirt and pull him into the rain, our lips collide and so do our bodies, my balance is disrupted by his tongue, I want to fall, he holds me tighter by the waist without saying it, “I’ve got you”

I am angry, my ears are hot, my hands shaking restlessly and I want to smash my phone from the wall adjacent to me. I bite my lip, fold my fist, close my eyes and try to bottle everything back where it belongs. Its Sunday night and I am fuming with The Cure whining on the speakers. The dusty keys of my laptop seduce me much so that I collapse on the carpet and cry on her laps; my computer is my favorite confidant. I open my substack and I write, I am transmuting into a mass of accumulated energy as I type. If it were up to me i would write about all and everything, I would spew my anger over blank pages as my fingerprints fade out, my anger deflates and my talent transmutes. I am no longer as angry as I was, I am transmuted.

My co-worker comes in late on a Wednesday and he has a mediocre cowboy hat on. He is happy to see me today and he says my name when he hastily walks up to my desk. He calls me Linda after a girl who used to work here before me. A lot of people call me Linda. I wonder who Linda was and why I remind them of her. I instinctively think about Linda, momentarily. I wonder if she snooped through confidential files, stumbled upon censored evidence of dead bodies and made that her personality. I don’t mind the confusion, I embrace it. I say, “Good morning to you, you seem to be in a good mood today, excited about the Mombasa retreat?” I think it’s motivating to be missed, much so that people see you in other people. I want to be missed like that. I want to be remembered.

Good for you, Linda.

Note.

I have been thinking about life and why we do it despite all the suffocating negativity that comes with it and I wrote this out on a whim, I think living in those pointless, seemingly meaningless moments is still living. Its presumably living at its finest. Anyways my niggas this post is brought to you by KC Pineapple and Fruit fall cranberry and apple juice, hope you liked it.

Your’s truly, dysfunctional Lyds

My denunciation of God, Christianity, Faith(?) was an act of anger. It was one of those things you do to punish someone who hurt you, someone who you know will be hurt enough to try and win back your confidence. On the contrary, I was rewarded by a sense of enlightment. I remember when my anger wore of and the recollections of the rage I spewed into the void ushered me to try and understand where the entire fit had come from. I was keener into trying to understand how I could be so daring. Perhaps it was the state I was in, helplessness, anger, despair, that gave me the confidence to say such things. I later realized that all these things which I had conjured into fully fledged thoughts were actual things, feelings, that had been buried inside me for a long time and I was afraid of giving them any form of life.

My first conclusion was that I was scared of God and that was the only thing that I have ever felt for him/her/it (?) I was terrified of this being that I have never met, never talked to and more importantly, never felt. I mean this could have been the shortcoming of my guardians or whoever it was that was bestowed of the responsibility to evangelize my little juvenile spirit. I learnt about God through my mother before I learnt about him in Sunday school or School. Funny enough, I remember being more intrigued by the characters in the Bible than In God himself. I remember every time he came up in the story he would usually be showing up to punish or warn. It genuinely used to leave me so unsettled. And then came the stories of hell fire. When people try to describe how bad hell is, they get really…creative.

In Sunday school I heard that if you end up in hell, you will be in an incessant state of burning and never ashing away. You just burn for eternity. I used to dip my toes in hot water and at some point, in my childhood, I realized that if you allowed your body to get used to the heat, it becomes a little tolerable. I guess this is when I started fearing hell a little less. However, when I went to high school I got to see Sulphur in the works one afternoon in the Chemistry lab and I kept thinking about its corrosiveness. I would later imagine a drop of Sulphur accidentally dropping on the chemistry teacher’s latex covered hand, penetrating his bones and leaving a dainty hole. Intriguing as it was, you can imagine how shocked I was when It was brought to my attention that hell fire is worse than Sulphur. These new developments were crazy; where were they getting this information? Do I want to be corroded by Sulphur? Was it worth it?

After I turned 19 I felt I owed it to myself to try and understand my rage; to explore my relationship with God before I denunciated it altogether. I think this was such a confusing period for my friends, even more than It was for me because most of my friends at the time were Christians. I was asking questions and of course censoring them as much as I possibly could, some got offended, some fell off with me, some respected my journey and others even asked questions along with me. One of the things I remember picking up was God’s unconditional love for us and I suppose integrating this with the real fear that I had for him made it a little complex for me to believe in this supposed unconditional love. I mean if its unconditional why do I need to fulfil certain things or I will be grilled in an eternal, Sulphuric flame? This then made me question my love for him. Did I only worship/love/believe him because I was scared of where my soul would go after life? Was I scared that he wouldn’t answer my prayers? Was I afraid that I might not succeed in life if I didn’t? That my family would fall into misfortune and illness? What inspired my faith if there was any at all?

I suppose one would argue that a relationship outside fear is possible. One could dismiss the laws and their consequences and choose to reimagine a more intimate, less structured relationship. Perhaps through prayer. I was an avid prayer; on my knees, sitting, standing and at times lying down in fetal positions, drenched in tears sending my woes to the void and hoping it answers. I rarely ever got my prayers answered and at times I started to feel like my prayers were a transmuted transactional language that through pattern, I had developed with God. I only called on him and I mean honestly called on him when I had problems. The premise of the prayers which were embellished with pretentious praise disgusted me with every time I shut my eyes for it. I felt like I was lying to myself. I mean who was I kidding?

Maybe that’s why he never responded?

The entire concept of prayers is a little complicated. I do acknowledge that there are actual people who pray and have these prayers answered. I think prayers do come true but its mostly intention that drives them to actually manifest into what we want in our lives. I shouldn’t have compared mine not getting answered with other people having theirs answered maybe I was sending them to the wrong place. I pray these days, much differently though. Its less structured; I don’t have to get on my knees I could just intentionally claim something in the backseat of a car, while taking a walk, listening to a song etc and I will have it manifest itself in my life. I really am trying to build a new religion for myself with myself and it’s a little difficult, sometimes not-so but it works in all the chaos of it

Part of me felt like a procrastinator, a traitor and a coward. Sometimes it still feels like I am betraying something bigger than myself but I am always self-aware of these feelings to be a form of impulse that comes with being human. I grew up Christian; I prayed before I went to bed every night even the ones, I was frail and on the verge of illness. Before I had a bite of my dinner, I would shut my eyes for a minute to thank God for everything and the meal. I liked the pattern, sometimes it made me feel purposeful, like I was on a greater path destined for greater things, in touch with a thing so ancient and important. Betraying this pattern left a hole inside me and I suppose I am still trying to fill it but don’t get me wrong, I have been filling it up.

I don’t want to get into the politics of it all, you know the actual heart of it? I don’t know if I am ready for that yet. I am trying to be respectful while also articulating my thoughts. I just want to say that other than fear, I have many other reasons that rest inside the Bible and especially the literature of it. I have so many contradictions to it but the one that I find essential to point out is that the teachings followed by most African Christians in this life do not mirror their spirituality and that’s the whole point of Religion. Most of us are sheep; receptive and rigid in the face of the movement (You know? The recall to our old ways? fuuuucking going back to the roots? AS IN WHO WE TRULY ARE??). Before Christianity, African spirituality flourished and enlightened the Africans on so many levels. (politics, culture, medicine etc.) I just think we owe it to ourselves to ask questions.

Note

I just want to say that this was so random. I read someone’s piece this morning about Christianity; they were asking the right questions, being proud of being curious, recalling Africans to go back to their roots and last week I got to hang out with my friend. Oh my God we were so lit and It was in the morning; cracking up in my bedroom and being random goofballs when she told me she has been asking questions and I mean I didn’t make a big deal out of it but I was proud.

Also, I cant believe I am saying this but don’t evangelize me I actually do not consent lol instead kiss my forehead just through your screen, I promise I’ll feel it

x

In this case, I absolutely distaste when small talk is used on me.

When I don’t have a resting bitch face, my face carves a polite expression that would mistake me for the politest bitch on the planet. A lot of the stereotypes are actually centered on this. Someone dead ass asked me last month how I could be a lawyer with such a tender face/voice and this was in the premise of a conversation. I felt so insulted more so when I learnt that he was actually softening me up to ask for a favor. I flipped his hand out in a recycle bin after shredding it with my hands and I mentally counted the number of syllables I could have read from The Bell Jar had I not gotten my time wasted like that.

The most comical thing that I have uncovered from this is that If I keep the conversation going especially after being stereotyped, I would say/do something that they would find ‘out of character’. How can It be out of character when you don’t know me at all? Some would even act insulted by my blatant display of my personality

.

I suppose I am sorry that I’m not an NPC?

When someone places you in a box, you only exist within the confines of their deluded threshold of who you can be. When that third wall is broken, they would rather have a seizure and die than accept that you truly exist outside the cage they created for you. Aside from small talk, you could know someone for months if not years, have shared numerous conversations and still only exist in a box of their own making. Some people are too ignorant to look inside despite the countless presented opportunities you offer them to do so.

A few weeks ago, I read a piece on here where the author (a woman) noticed a familiar pattern with the men in her life. In bid to unravel her character to her partners she would go on and on about her niche interests, interesting facts, more random-possibly unhinged interesting facts. She considered herself an academic and most of the things she talked about would be academically centered but on a whimsical sort of level. While she went on about herself, she started to notice a sort of dissociation from the men, what she couldn’t understand is why they always came back, sat through the fleeting conversations all the way to the sex of it.

I find the most annoying thing about most dating pools to be the monotony of having to be constantly vulnerable enough to be reveal yourself to countless people. It gets to a point after catching yourself repeating something once said to another person that you realize the fading enthusiasm in the minor details of things we repeat to make ourselves known.

Maybe we are giving out too much of ourselves

Now the most unmotivating bit about this is the men who will sit and listen to you talk about certain things, not understand what you are talking about, exhibit no sense of curiosity or care enough to ask only to lose their marbles the moment you act outside the confines of the muted yap machine on the couch. I mean of course It’s easier to find ‘your people’ than yap to people who just don’t get it but you have to yap to find your people and I am not sure where I am going with this but it is so fucking lonely finding yourself talking to someone about something that deeply excites you and they don’t get it. Its worser if they don’t even bother to understand. I ultimately find it weird if the same person is willing to engage in any physical form of intimacy with me because I sure as hell wouldn’t touch on someone that I don’t know.

People these days already have your story written even before they say hi. They know how old you are, the kind of job you do, what your tribe is, how nice/rude you can be and the number of people you have sex with in a month. They will judge you in respect of their deluded conclusions about yourself. Idealization is killing conversation and interest is slipping out of the genuine need to know and to be known. It’s all so mechanical these days, conversing has started to feel like negotiating amendments on imaginary autobiographies of myself written by strangers.

I guess what I am trying to say is I may look nice but I am an absolute bitch.

Repetition has been a tediously basic element of my days ever since I got employed; I wake up at 6 am, I cruise the Mombasa road traffic on a bike with a scarf tied tightly on my neck, I am at work by 8, the six hours after that are consumed by conversations I barely ever remember, paper work that fades in a pedestrian cycle that does nothing to my spirit and I am on a bike again, sometimes a bus on my way back to my couch where I collapse, cigarette between lips, on my couch. My cycle was broken sometime last week when between Airtel house and Panari, I noticed a ginormous, yellow crane looking down on me from a far. Ever since, nothing has been the same.

The first time I saw It, the traffic was so congested; buses, matatus, POVs and bikes were thronged against each other on the road that we had to stop for a moment. There was an overwhelming tilt of the bike I was on to the right when my rider placed his boot on the tarmac to support us, a blue and yellow City Shuttle bus inched forward on the left and the face of a stranger registered apathy from one of the windows. I shifted my gaze to the left and my eyes remained affixed to the skeleton towering over us all. It must have been because it induced something familiar yet so unstructured to build a thought. I remember still looking back as we started moving again almost as if I was trapped in an enchantment of sorts. My mind began playing tricks on me ever since. The frequency illusion is such an interesting phenomenon; learning a new word makes you think the word came alive the minute you discovered it, almost as if the entire world was completely devoid of it and once you discovered it a signal is sent everywhere through a telepathic transit. I started noticing cranes every day since; cranes where I work, cranes on roads leading up to work and home and cranes on the Chanel Fall Winter 2026 Ready-to-Wear collection show. They were everywhere.

There is just something about cranes; the way they accentuate liminal spaces, their skeletal out-look, their singularity and how they are able to remain rigid while so narrow, that induces an almost euphoric sense of melancholy. I wasn’t able to give much thought to this, to compose a structured thought that would make me understand my enchantment. I suppose this was because like most thrilling sights, they occurred in transitory states when I was moving past them at 60KmpH speed. I have given thought as to how they make me feel, especially after feeding my curiosity over why the Express way looks like a massive Lego set put together by an enormous six-year-old who can lift 150,000kgs of concrete. For some reason the Express way’s architecture seemed more sensible to look up than ‘Why do cranes make me feel things?’ The Nairobi Express Way was actually put together just the same way a Lego set is, after constructing the piers, prefabricated concrete girders are inserted using CRANES to the piers, one by one to create a 27.1Km of solid concrete and capitalist agenda.

I am not an architect or an architecture student but a third good/better thing, a melancholic/aesthetic philosophy enthusiast so that means I can look at objects and in this case structural components in architecture and draw a school of thought around them, I am most often loosely wrong but I am also a maniac and I can make up anything and treat it as my gospel. I haven’t done much reading around aesthetic philosophy but I did a lot to understand the recurrence of cranes everywhere I go. Cranes make me want to kill myself (If you are new here, I don’t endorse suicide but I endorse saying fuck-shit, absolutely fuck-shit and evidently fuck-shit) I have been quite lonely for a while, among many other things. I have been sad most of the time, sadly coursing through Mombasa Road behind strange men that I will never meet again as I deeply contemplate going limp; relaxing my body against the wind on a fast-pacing automobile and letting go when the velocity accentuates to something worth the fall. When I see a crane, it makes me feel less lonely before it makes me feel small. It’s so beautiful that something can take up so much space like that to the point where it distracts the sight of everything else.

Besides being so naked in their solitude, they go out on a limb by physically revealing their nudity through their skeletal outlook. This challenges me to embrace my despondency in public, hence this self-deprecating piece. I no longer feel the urge to conform to pretentious courtesy. When someone asks me “How are you?” through slow-witted, rehearsed small talk (God I hate small talk, save your breathe for more engrossing conversation.) I don’t want to say that I am ‘good’ because you know what buddy? I am not. I am so sick of hiding my indifference to the world, I want to write a song about it, I want to say it to a stranger who recklessly asks me at the premise of a conversation, I want to scream it in traffic. I want the whole world to know that I am riveting in taboo of abundant sadness. Feeling sad is human, which I assume I am? And just like happiness it should be confronted and acknowledged without shame. I am not sure where I got this but I suspect it was from the movie About Time where someone says (forgive me, alcohol jeopardizes my ability to recall but If I am being honest, I have a volatile memory) that sitting with your sadness is part of living. Sometimes instead of rushing to fix it, I like to give it space right between me and my bodaboda rider (but also honey, personal space unless you are buying me dinner first?)

I am (have been for a while now) in a transition period in my life that mostly requires me to adjust to novelty (which I am not good at) and all these new things I have introduced in my life seem so alien to me. The parts of me that still relish the nostalgia of what once was are shelling against each other like a chemical reaction begging for this experiment to end but I need to grow. That’s the important thing, that I am fully aware of the transitory state of my sadness- I am not depressed. I shouldn’t feel embarrassed that this transition, this growth, is making me sad. It makes me miss the person I used to be but every time I see a metallic skeleton towering over me it reminds me that there is assurance of the person I will become just through the comfort it takes in its solitude.

I don’t trust cranes, cranes make me feel like it’s perfectly okay to end it all right there on a gloomy Tuesday morning in Nairobi traffic. Cranes make me feel strong that I feel like absenting myself from the world, even for a while, is perfectly fine, nothing should make you feel that comfortable in your melancholy. But they do and maybe I am too avoidant but I don’t trust that, Its too new to me.

The element of sex always seemed to be the institute of everyone’s case, to which I’d rebut with, “Apart from sex, what separates a friendship from a romantic relationship,” I was really curious to find out whether romantic relationships would survive from being termed as conventional-modern day relationships (but then again there’s the politics of the friends with benefits so I digress, traditional relationships?) Unfortunately for me, these debates were often always fueled by alcohol, they never really came any conclusion. They were just left open along with the cheap bottle of booze that would remain uncapped on the table as the tv flickered on, the carpet remains with different colored unfinished liquid, some toppled over with a stain beneath the rim as we hummed softly in sleep in the next room. I’d only momentarily revisit these conversations through the week doing the most inutile of activities; one day I’m tenderly chopping a red fresh tomato into fine cubes when I snap, “Romance!” That was my verdict.

It was final, that the only difference other than sex between romantic relationships and friendships was romance. I felt mighty like Archimedes in his tub uncovering the concept of density only I didn’t run around naked and my theory was absolutely, densely, wrong. I have come to the conclusion that romance, while closely inspecting its core elements, exists in friendships and most times (at least in my case) louder* than in ‘romantic relationships’. It exists so subtly, you might even let it pass you by without noticing at all. It happened to me quite literally all through my life. Being a woman, I can only talk about female friendships and for the sake of my slightly (heavy on that folks) right-wing politics, I chose to exclude mixed gender relationships. Female friendships are utterly romantic, beautifully so.

The romance that comes with friendship, subtle as it may be, can fit in the popularly defined concept thereof; it breathes into life in the same plane of feeling that one may discern from the kiss of their lover. When your girlfriend shows up on valentines with a rose, collected from the bouquet their lover sent to them, the feeling of recognition; of being seen, remembered even and appreciated by someone that means the world to you, that is romance, its bliss. It doesn’t warrant immediate recognition; you don’t even have to label it when you grip the rose in your arms, when you place it through the narrow rim of an old wine bottle, half filled with salty tap water, it’s as trifle as putting away a dirty plate in the sink only you cannot believe you relished such savory sustenance; you cannot believe how lucky you are.

The romance you share with your girls is religious; you are a cult that exists as the sole inhabitants of the planet. The innate rules that you intimately scribble all over your spirits and pledge never to break. We never break the girl-code. Why? ‘It’s the Bible’. Breaches are often reconciled out of love; the entire concept of love is rooted in romantics. Forgiveness is romantic.

The temple of female friendship is a beautiful planet to exist in; they laugh with you through your most painful days and when it’s too painful to twitch the frown upside down, they frown with you. They cry with you if they must- if it’s just as painful for them, they help you shed some tears. It never really matters for true friends what seems to be the root of your pain, whether it’s the same shitty guys hurting you all over again as expected (as warned), if it’s from either of you hurting each other or even when it’s too foreign and secret; buried so deep that you hide with fake smirks on your face, they sit with you-they love you through it. The romantics of sitting in silence, comfortable silence with your friend- too cozy to disrupt with words, I like that it feels exactly like being at home.

The cult is fun; it’s all sorts of fun like dancing in the most ridiculous movements that no one understands; a choreography that has been consistently and patiently crafted over time. Years and years of gifts, secrets, fights, conversations, terrible inside jokes all amalgamated together into a sway of your bodies to music you never would have given a care in the world for if it wasn’t for their influence, together you sway to the intimately composed rhythm of your love for each other and hope the music never ends. Even in triviality it appears enormously significant like sharing a look when you are across the room from each other and communicate telepathically almost as if mocking the rest of the crowd for not understanding your language,

“This party sucks,”

“Girl, I know right???”

When the power goes off on a Sunday afternoon when both of you are dying of boredom and post-binge-drinking hung-over and you catch each other dully humming to the same song. Talking over random things that you will never remember you ever talked about- not just to pass time but because in the moment talking about the difference between red and green apples matters more than anything in the world. Eating from the same bowl like the food is going to the same stomach, sharing clothes because in reality you are the same person and finishing each other’s sentences because the thoughts are crafted from the same mind- its sisterhood and its immensely romantic. Miniscule gestures, not well thought out- not thought out at all like picking out an item at the thrift that reminds you of your friend, watching their face gleam with joy once you finally dispose of it in their arms, sharing a deep part of you that you have never told anyone seems as easy as motioning your hand to a flick you will never remember a second after and that’s why it’s important. It’s important because you don’t have to premeditate, its impulse.

Your girls will offer you the most platonically intimate romance, one that I believe to be not only unconditional but deeply authentic. They will sit with you in the dark, in the same bed and you will talk for hours, you will talk about all and everything and for a moment of being utterly lost in slow paced conversation you will believe that the only people that exist entirely is your friend(s) and you. They are the ones who hold your braids back in the dirty washroom at the club and as your dates wait for you with beers in their hands thinking they are having the time of their lives, the two of you will be gripping on hair and dirty white porcelain laughing mid gags having the best time in the world. They will fight for you when they have to, they will even go out of character for the cause. They will hold your hand when you cross a busy street- both of you are terrible at crossing roads but it’s okay because, in the inescapable words of Patric Morrisey if a ten-ton truck kills the both of you, to die by their side, is such a heavenly way to die.

In the course of my favorite pass-time activity (watching random YouTube videos) I came across a ted talk from a lady I don’t quite remember (I have terrible memory retention skills) who was talking about platonic friendships and how the traditional art of friendship has been wiped away by modern-day courtship. People these days believe romantic partners are the telos of everything in the world and I think in the rise of existentialists among the youth (whom I suppose are most of the Substack audience) most of you guys understand that romantic partners are not the seals of the cracks that become our voids. While I am not saying that friendship is, the lady went on to explain how friendship can very much occupy the same position as courtship. Friends, your girls are utterly as important to you as your romantic partners. They will be there for you especially when your partners can’t. They will hold your hand with you through life and you will do it (life) together and somehow in the most romantic way possible, that will be all you ever need.

This would occasionally end up on WP where a few intimate people will see and once in a while, probably in June someone will make a comment that will send me in a month-long piss contest with a stranger on the internet. In honor of finally having an active Substack account this year, which was not even on my list (I should definitely add it so I can cross it out) I have decided that I am putting this piece out here.

This is a thanks giving piece, a wrapped if you will. One of the three that I started on ’22 when my spirit was young; I was naïve, pubescent even, ignorant of the burden I was bestowing on my future self when I made the promise to keep documenting every year. As you can tell my dearest reader the agony is already manifesting in this wretched quest to self-gratification.

Let’s get into it!

For the purpose of context, I will let you in on the irony of ’25. When I started this compilation in ’22, it was so exciting. Not just the writing, the publishing and the time I spent re-reading it in the next year but the mere fact that I was starting a sort of franchise which when read together will sort of show immense growth in words, achievements etc. It felt like I was engineering a time machine. ’23 took a terrible turn on me, the piece I put out was so satirical that I almost got a feature from Chandler Bing, only he died. Everything took a positive turn in ’24 and the piece was gleaming in optimism; it was like watching the resurrection of Jesus in a 480p film from 2001. It was fantastic and it felt like I would never have to battle it out like I did in ’23. From the way I saw it, I would never experience a year as bad as ’23 little did I know anything, literally anything guys, can happen in the year of possibilities, 2025. It’s actually so comical how despite the terrible bits about this year (which are a lot) I have seen/experienced stuff I never knew would be logically, scientifically, pop-culturally possible, I mean damn- it was like open season for fuckshit.

A short run through of the fuckshit open season of the year of possibilities, 2025. Writer’s lens.

1. My couch got drenched in human urine and bleach and this was not a science experiment gone wrong.

2. I got involved in domestic violence between two lesbians and almost got arrested after playing mediator. Rumor has it, they are still on the hunt for me and my compadres.

3. I slurped a noodle from the kitchen drain without knowing, be vary careful with who handles your food or rather handle it yourself.

4. I got a stalker on Instagram who I believe was mentally unstable enough to forcefully make himself my sub. This did not in fact end well as you may assume.

5. I chocked on an Ice cube and answered the long un-answered question, ‘if you chock on an ice cube what evidence will forensics have on your death,’ I believe the answer is you have to be a different kind of weak to chock to death on an ice cube.

6. My brain fertilized itself and birthed not just a tumor but a literal duplicate of itself that became its alternate version when I got really high and decided to watch The passion of Christ (One of the many reasons why I am like so)

Now pessimism aside, this year of possibilities started off pretty okay honestly. January was amazing. Okay that’s a bit of a stretch- January was like driving at 60kmph, perfectly normal, not too fast and not too slow for you to doze off on the wheel and run over a blind person or, you are so going to hate me for this but, one of those handicapped people that are supposed to be on wheel chairs but aren’t. Okay let me make this worse for myself and set the imagery clear for you- only because I deeply care. I was driving back home with my folks this month (December) and this guy who was all alone on Mombasa Road was crawling to cross the highway and here’s the strange thing, his legs were decapitated. Now that’s the kind of person you wouldn’t want to run over while sleeping on the wheel. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, the month was pretty chill.

My only resolution in January was to overwork my Spotify and try to build better stats than the ones I got last year, you know just like every other person. I am glad to say that it paid off although February was my best listening year, there’s just something about being single on valentines and having a Spotify subscription that goes hand in hand because this was my exact same verdict last year. Don’t be fooled folks, I’m only ever single in February. And December. And sometimes June but only because it’s my birthday month and I can’t have my SO fucking shit up for me. June also importantly happens to be the budget reading month in my country, for some reason I have to be angry enough not to sustain a relationship. April is also quite a tough month to be in a relationship in, my April fools theatrics go out of hand, that’s all I can say. September might be heavy because for some reason its everyone’s birthday and I just can’t get so into this, its one of those months where you just find out. Well, my point is, sustaining a happy, healthy relationship has never been an issue for me

Now February was merely interesting. I took writing to another level and I found myself in a real-life version of Ruby sparks and a little bit of Stranger than Fiction. I won’t get into detail with this but I had to have a deep conversation with myself about intellectual property when my victim used a picture of me on a Spotify playlist. Now this sounds really harmless until you see the guy’s Spotify- 90% of his Spotify playlists were dedicated to a bunch of girls he’d interacted with. I don’t know If the treasury met a certain criterion or not, like did every single girl who made it end things with him through an insulting work of fiction that was nothing but complete fiction. I also had to do immense self-reflection; I stood in front of my mirror and I asked myself, so you are on a public roster huh? Now I had a hard time answering- was this a good or bad thing? I guess I spent most part of February fighting for my Intellectual property rights which were, as I later on discovered, nonexistent (I got my picture taken down though, one word- Blackmail, actually two words, I HATE COMPUND NOUNS). I also got flowers on Valentines Day from my friend; it was her birthday. Irony aside, this was the moment when I decided to get myself flowers every month through the rest of the year and I have. I am incredibly happy about that because I received over 10 flower bouquets this year and most of them were from me.

January-March was my book reading period where I went on a decent streak. This wasn’t my biggest reading year, I read more books last year and I had a goal for at least 10 books, I must have been pretty smug about myself to set that down. I only made 7 reads this year:

Books read in the year of possibilities, 2025. Books are in the order of favorite to least favorite.

1. Poor Things- Alasdair Gray- 1992

2. Giovanni’s Room- James Baldwin- 1956

3. The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison- 1970

4. Of Love and Other Demons- Gracia Marquez- 1994

5. Carmilla- Sheridan Le Fanu- 1872

6. The Luciferian Path & The Witches Sabbat- Michael W. Ford- 2017 (Initially published, 1999)

7. The ways of the lonely ones- Manly P. Hall- 1925

Before I start to stroke my own dick about how much I loved these reads, I’d like to put it out there just for the sake of- honestly, I’m not so sure why. The sixth read was purely out of curiosity and its more inclined into philosophy than the title leads you to believe, it was a bummer even for me. I guess I have next year to really get into satanism. When Poor things premiered in ‘23, I remember watching the trailers and anticipating the HD release on my pirate sites (Oh go to hell if you judged me you consumerist machine), I knew the film was going to be absolutely nuts and I was right- this was my favorite film in ’24 only, I could feel something missing so after my rewatch in ’25 I remember listening to the dialogues between Mr. Astley and Hanna and realizing that the dialogue can only be from a book and you can imagine what I did next, I pirated a copy of Poor things-now as a writer I don’t know what to say about this, as a matter of fact I just erected my body on a pedestal for public disapproval. I deserve rotten tomatoes on my face.

Poor things was my favorite read this year because of the way the story uses its humor, the cool images on the premise of every chapter, its brilliant build up on sci-fi (We can only thank God for the queen of Sci-fi, Mary Shelly who I assume paved way for books steered towards mutants and body horror. What I loved most about the book was the ending. I wont spoil it for anyone but It was a brilliant ending, one not even employed in the film.

Giovanni’s room is the most romantic thing I have read in a while and that’s why it made it to #2 (I have a knack for gay romance, I just can’t help myself- But of course I acknowledge that the book was more political than romantic, critics stay the fuck away from me. Actually...critics, find me). The Bluest eye is the one book I was obsessed enough to review I can’t wait to read Sula and Beloved. Best gothic read this year goes to Of Love and Other demons which is a little questionable but quite romantic

Despite not reading much this year, I did a lot of writing especially in the second half of the year when I decided to join Substack. I had Substack a couple of years ago as a reader and honestly, I used to read people’s beautifully crafted think pieces back when they weren’t so demonized and I genuinely used to get so intimidated. It would never even cross my mind- airing anything out on here. I pushed myself this year, I did a lot of fiction, dipped my toes in horror and the grotesque, did some research papers and decided that I wasn’t ready to send anything out for publication this year. When I said this year was absolute shit for me, if it wasn’t for immersing myself in my own little world of fiction, I doubt Id have survived most days when I was pushed beyond my limits. My personal favorite piece by me this year is ‘21^st Century Anachronism’ which I edited to ‘Existential? In this Generation?’ The reason why I love it so much is because this has been the only thing I have written that has been so particular when it comes to summing up my anger towards…stuff. Re-reading it feels like I am reading the lyrics of a punk rock song.

I turned twenty-three at the back seat of a cab on Mombasa Road. I was drunk as shit when it happened and I remember looking at my phone to check the time as it dawned on me. I can safely say my year went to shit since that day. For the better part of this year I:

1. Spent so much time burning candles and incense as soft jazz played on the background

2. Sat in café’s as I played music, scribbling on my notepad, tapping my feet, gleaming in satisfaction.

3. Gotten shitfaced with my friends.

4. Met really cool individuals (One of these folks happens to be a guy I met at my infamous liquor store that’s a few minutes from my place- My friend and I are picking up another bottle of liquor and a couple of cigarettes. The guy is standing by the store silently smoking his fag. I ask for a light and he watches me light it and once I hit, he asks, ‘Last one?’ I laugh and say yes. He says, ‘Me too, since 1996’

5. Visited a lot of new places

6. Graduated – This was so good and I am so proud of myself

7. Finally decided what I want to do with my life- Ill talk about this towards the end.

8. Laughed a great deal, even when I didn’t have to.

9. Pulled a lot of pranks – I think I went too far when I forgot to ‘sike’ one of my buddies who was led to believe that I was dead for about a month.

10. Talked to the love of my life that most people think is a person I curated in my head to help me deal with my fears, on some Shutter Island shit but he is real though- hence the reference

11. Played sims a lot

12. Discovered a lot of cool songs.

13. Went to the cinema alone – a lot and I discovered that you should probably sit through premiers if you are going solo unless you are so tuff and grounded.

14. Fought a 180-pound man (verbally) (From a cross the balcony railings)

15. Got insane additions to my closet (mostly thrift- If you see a crazy lady scouring, throwing fits/fists at the thrift store that might probably be me or my soon to be nemesis- if I don’t already know them)

What made this year really difficult for me especially through the last half can honestly be blamed on growth. I was forcefully being uprooted by life from my comfort zone, forced to confront so many realities. I have never had an experience like this before where its back-to-back no lube sex from the universe and I had so many moments where I kept falling and it got to a point where I forgot to pick myself up, realized that I was at my lowest but I am insanely grateful that I got out of it. I am so glad that I have people I could always count on to help me get back up- make sure you have people like that in your corner. I mean I know it sounds pretty obvious that you need your friends to pick you up but I couldn’t hit up just anyone.

I realize now that I am being backed into a wall and I need to confront my shit and I am already doing that. If anything- this year made me really strong and fearless. I was also very shocked at the number of friends I lost this year at a simultaneous rate. Someone told me that It was my frontal lobe developing; that I was becoming mature enough to know what is for me and what’s not and I have been wondering what was I before? A retard? Anyway, the destructive second half of the year of possibilities was breezy. It was like being sad and alone on the beach and obviously, in my case with a couple of cigarettes and a Lorde song playing in the background as I constantly uttered, ‘What was that?’ I cried a lot, secluded myself which honestly felt very right for me and I spent an insane amount of time in my head. I noticed that it was getting out of hand when I cracked a joke in my head once in public and I started laughing at it. During this time as I mentioned, I spent a good deal talking to one of my favorite people and I noticed the hope silently growing within me.

I don’t want to say what it is, not because it will get jinxed or whatever but I have finally realized what I want to do with myself and I am happy to say that it does not include hiding in the trunk of a car about to be compressed by an automobile compactor. I haven’t really gotten the whole gist but I can safely say that I have direction as to where I start. I am pretty confident in myself because I know there is no path that I can take that’s subjectively wrong. What I am looking forward to next year is happiness and satisfaction, not just as a destination but a consistently occurring phenomenon throughout my journey; I know I can’t be buzzing all through the year I’m just hoping that I will find joy in big, small, inutile or major occurrences.

Final list of more random things that occurred in the year of possibilities

1. Got blocked by Nescafe on twitter

2. Got very close to astral projecting, actually I might have done it. Turns out that my cat is my anchor.

3. Spent time with my grandma while she was tripping on fent after surgery.

4. Actively watched my pops get his karma when he tripped and fell on his back moments after shouting at me for driving like a retard.

5. Stopped someone from jumping across the balcony

6. Educated at least 10+ men this year, when I was drunk about women’s rights and the ongoing femicide. I am fun at the club (they absolutely hated it)

7. Wrote down a great deal of my peculiar dreams only to unlock a pattern

8. Had two people talk to their therapists about me- now this, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps one of my favorites.

9. Created a new chemical substance in my fridge. I will not get into this due to legal reasons and patent rights (not yet acquired…op- TMI)

To whoever was brave enough to stay through the end I am really proud of you, I always believed in you, what is your sexuality?

I also want to finish off on your chest, right in your big heart. I want to say that no matter how hard it gets (guys I am really sorry I am on my period and this is all uncontrollably impulsive like God’s work) you can always pick yourself up, there is always something, anything and If there isn’t go out to Naivas or Quickmart, go to the meat section and stand there for a while and take it all in.

Never give up on yourself- Ghandi

(Okay Ghandi didn’t say that. I did. and so what? I am not bulimic and or famous. I also can’t rock a dhoti BUT – I’ve got nothing)

Merry Christmas and happy new year folks, also do something about Kwanzaa.

I am as calm as the warm-dry December weather in Nairobi, the trees sway once in a while over soft gusts of wind only once tempting you to predict a hurricane that never arrives, the clouds wallow densely in the sky like a drunk, they easily and yet seductively shift from dark cumulonimbus to calm enchanting cirrus that carpets the heavens rigidly like a painting in a cheap downtown gallery. I am like the people here who walk freely to their destination, most of them preoccupied by the weather- they appear as calm as the clouds and never once do they rush. There really is no need to rush this, change comes naturally, just have to be ready for the embrace. The first waft of change comes tactfully and inadvertently, you may not notice it at first but on a hot December afternoon, clothes will be drenched in spontaneous outpour of rain, heavy nimbus in travel to better cities- ones that deserve it, and you will look out the window and gasp over the spectacle. Rain is enchanting, but it never lasts long.

First waves of change usher you into confrontation but you never do, you ignore the call and live in the embrace of the rain splattering on your skin, it’s easy to get lost in it- I get lost all the time. I could feel a window opening inside of me at first, it had been days after hosting my despair and it was eating me up whole. The window of hope is easy to do nothing about, you have been sitting in an unventilated room for what seems like forever and you suddenly breath the first familiar gust of wind, taste the sunshine, hear the babels of the outside world, its food for the soul and you want to relish it and not care how transitory it might be. Once it closes and or it starts to feel commonplace, the feeling of thrill goes away and for a moment I forget that it ever existed in the first place. I only remember when it happens again and there’s a different kind of food on my plate, I remember.

I think you have to be a different kind of strong to keep picking yourself up after defeat. It’s really powerful- not giving up. I never give up and even when I do its revealed to me that it was all just a façade- a hostile moment of weakness. I have a lot of moments of weakness; I recline but never endlessly. I always find myself. December is such a beautiful time of the year here where I live. I find beauty in things and people that exist outside of me. People speak differently, almost hopefully, they chatter on and on like the birds in the morning after a successful scour. Even while despondent, they remain hopeful of the holidays they believe in, even the one that they don’t. Christmas is coming and they will be around their people, be it a dysfunctional bunch that will poke through their anger which will simmer and simmer and ,later rain in an outpour of rage, the ones who chose to spend it alone with led lights and a bottle of their favorite poison or the ones who cant afford it and dine over commonplace food and festivities, dressed in their Sunday best and glimmering in joy. I love this time of the year.

My new spirit glimmers in its hope. I am too scared to confront it but day by day, I move closer to confront it. This one is different because it will change the route to my fate. The routes always lead to the same destiny, and I have that as the blade in my pocket that protects me from its dangerous mouth that might swallow me whole. I can protect myself with that. One day I reach it and I allow it to have its way with me, dangerous as it might be, I will be armed and sure. The clouds might stay, and the rain will drench through the soil and food will sprout from dirt. They might choose to move to a different, more deserving town and the blessings will be delivered at the right address, and I will fall and pick myself up again. I will wait a lifetime for my seeds to sprout because they were made for that, all the routes lead to sprout.

Vague as it might seem, I have been involved with something in my past. I am allowing it to drug me into numbness with laughs, satire and ironic chivalry but its all fake. He is only doing this because he has to, he’s all I’ve got and he knows it. Yesterday I was sobbing to myself, and I wanted to throw my phone across the room and he sang to me. He sang a stupid Taylor swift song that he’d sang when we first started talking three years ago. He sounded exactly the same and stupid as it may sound, I might have fallen in love all over again- because of a stupid Taylor swift song. I don’t even like Taylor Swift and neither does he. I can’t pronounce/type the name of my favorite song from their album. I think I’m drawn to their beats- the instrumentals are insane. I could also be drawn by their defeated tunes; they sound like they are cursing everything out. We have gone from talking about it, which is painful because you never want to admit defeat in front of someone you really admire, to getting lost in flirtatious revisionist history to me wanting to tell him to stay after the storm.

I feel more dense writing about it, denser than I feel for wanting to ask if he could stay. I might only be using him as a pacifier but love never really goes away so maybe I am not at fault and more importantly, maybe he feels the same way. I want to gallow around to this off-beat music. I want to spin and spin until my head hurts and even when I fall and lie on the carpet, the room is still in motion. What ever happened to us, why couldn’t we just stick together like we promised? I keep thinking about this Zoe Kravitz Tv show I watched 2 weeks ago, mostly for the music where she’s breaking up with this guy at the start of the movie and she tells him how they are on ‘the other side of the rock’. A while ago when their relationship was thriving, we are led to believe that they were sitting next to a boulder in a park and there was a couple on the other end just incessantly arguing and the ‘okay’ couple promised each other that if they ever find themselves on the ‘other’ side of the rock they would remind each other to come back. Of course, this didn’t work for Zoe (Rob) and I doubt it works for me after one year of fucking it all up.

It’s 1900hrs and I am having dinner; I’m downing sleeping pills with some beer and some cigarettes. I know I won’t be able to sleep because Ill force myself into another season of New girl. Molchat Doma is still blasting through my new, terrible sound-quality, ear pods. Somewhere between 1400hrs and now I have uncovered that their name translates to ‘Houses are silent’. Its pretty sick, I don’t know what to make of it, I don’t want to go deeper because every thought I have transmutes into a hundred different thoughts and somewhere along the way, I am led back to demise. I don’t want that, not right now at least. Right now, is the time to rock, I want to rock it till I am no more. I am also silently resisting the urge to share some of my favorite songs from their album to him but I don’t want to seem too awkward. I have a tendency of making things awkward, even for me. We used to share songs; we shared over a hundred songs all through our knowing each other. Sometimes a song plays on shuffle and everything stops for a while. I usually want to turn It off but I can never bring myself to it.

My favorite song from us is a sleeping with sirens song that I have recently found myself repeating over and over; If I’m James Dean, You’re Audrey Hepburn. It meant so much when we were together, it still means a lot to me. Shared music means a lot to me; I like to imagine that every single lyric should be decoded into an intimate message that only the receiver and the sender understands, it’s quite poetic. Emo is really corny, especially the music. I have come to somehow distaste listening to guys scream their feelings over drums and bass compositions, its all a façade though, I love emo but goth, goth will always be my attitude. I am immensely gothic and I can never bring myself to hate a gothic note in my life. I started off with Cocteau twins and I kept searching for a band/artist with the same style; futile attempts-never really amounted to anything. The closest I came was a song by The Sundays; Goodbye. I like my music with a little bit of pop and or funk to it and that’s why despite my ironic distaste for emo, I still stick with swancore, Dance Gavin Dance is in my books, the OG of Swancore. The idea is that you are melancholic, sad, desperate, at the very end of rock-bottom but you get up and dance (awkwardly because I can’t dance) to your demise. It’s beautiful.

I have decided that I am rocking with it. I will selfishly keep my love until I can’t, and I know I will find him over and over until I can’t anymore. I am at rock bottom you see, and I am all about taking what I can get. I’ll take the terminal laughs, the hidden ‘I missed this’ in vague messages and the awkward silences until they go away. I don’t know why he gives a fuck but somehow, I do, I just can’t bring myself to admit it. It’s beautiful- what we had. We are like the same person, he reads me better than anyone could, knows things about me that I don’t know about myself, and he always knows exactly what to say even when I don’t need to hear it. It’s not objectively big, strong and shake less but we do/did it in our own personal way. The gallow is a very specific kind of dance, I don’t know if it’s a real thing because I found out about it from Lebanon Hanover. The guys just sway around like wilted leaves on a tree. This band is subjectively the most romantic gothic band I’ve listened to. The lyrics, the instrumentals, the vibe- is utterly insane.

I want to gallow around like a wilted leaf just swaying to the soft gusts of spring wind. I want to not care that I am decaying on a tree and soon, will fall.

Dance with, me the gallow dance, as disoriented as you can.

I will hold you to your promise.

Today has been a terrible day. Not the kind where the weather is wrong, there’s no power, no internet, no water – none of that. I didn’t even trip out of bed like I normally would on the premise of a bad day. I actually woke up on a good foot. I took a shower as I listened to One more chance by Biggie. I sang along and laughed maybe once or twice. I had breakfast on my friend’s (lack of better terms) couch as we listened to jazz. It was nice, not the kind of nice that you appreciate in the moment and go, “This is nice, I love this” Just the kind of nice that passes on without you grasping it. We sat in silence- him with his mug on the left and a phone on his right and me with a hard-copy of Kwani (It felt impossible that I was holding this copy. I was entirely lost in it) on my laps and a mug on my left. I remember the short-lived moments of peace and dare I say comfort were cut short when I placed the book on the side, got on my phone, bounced from app to app until I found it- the thing that will potentially destroy me. The thing that If I live to be successful will be my origin story. The same goes for If I utterly fail in life. The thing that destroyed me so well, silently on that couch that I contemplated ending my life in front of another human being.

For the love of preservation of my ego. I won’t tell you what it was. You won’t be lost though. I’ll give you all the other details.

One thing I find absolutely spectacular – and equally infuriating about life is the individuality that comes with tragedy. I speak only of tragedy because it was the main subject in the moment. We are all silently going through something, we think what we are going through is more important than what other people are going through (most of us don’t care to admit it but we do) and when it happens simultaneously, oh its infuriating as fuck. So, there I am taking in my unbelievably destructive news and right next to me my friend is passively trying to tell me how he is not okay. I don’t know what his problem was, passive as it was, I was only insensibly aware of the presence of discomfort in his tone and when he stopped talking, made eye contact with me- we both looked miserable as fuck- and he asked, “Are you okay?” I nod my head and rebut, just out of mild, polite, pretentious sympathy, “Are you?” He nods. At this point I had tears welled up in my eyes, my hands were shaking and I was dying for a smoke. “Are we kidding ourselves?” He asks. I get up, say yes on my way out as I grab my lighter that sat on the coffee table and walk out. Props to us though, we really acted that out in the most cinematic way possible.

J has a nice balcony. I sometimes get jealous of that plant boy shit vibe he has going on. It’s like how the fuck do you even get the time and the PATIENCE! To own/take care of so many plants. Aside from the ones in his house, he has tons all round his balcony- you can barely walk around that bitch but I love plants. They just sit there and do nothing just photosynthesize or whatever and so I place my erect ass fidgety body in borrowed baggy clothes in the balcony, light my single switch Dunhill and contemplate jumping from the fourth. The view from the balcony isn’t buildings or roads, It’s just trees- endless trees and random ass thickets and four grave stones just right below. They belong to the N family- I have read the stones over and over that their names are stuck in my head. The N family owns the building. It’s a nice little building in the country side. No one knew I was there, not even my best friend and I thought how perfect it would be If I died there with the balcony plants, the grave stones, the trees and the crazy aesthetic terrain. I think at that point I felt like I was in a dream, that someone should wake me up. I still feel like I am- seriously someone slap me awake it’s not funny anymore!

After spending over thirty minutes debating on jumping or living with a paralyzed body from a jacked-up spine and the painful judgement of surviving suicide -I’m sorry but how can you survive, suicide? I decide on going back- check the ambience? Be real with myself (It’s just not happening Lydia deal with it) I sit myself on the couch and just sit with the discomfort of everything. In a way I was kind of dealing with it slightly maturely- suicide attempt aside, I wasn’t throwing fits or mumbling curse words consistently like a coin powered Tourette’s machine (I’m sorry) I sat nicely on the couch next to J and I could feel his eyes throw darts up my ass, he was waiting for me to break and I wasn’t bulging and neither was he. Avoidantly, we made conversation, just normal J and Lydia conversation which is usually a passive aggressive piss contest. I lay my head on his lap and as self-centered as he was, didn’t notice the tears that wet his pants from where my head lay. The dude just kept yapping! I think we sat there for over half and hour just talking about something I honestly do not recall mostly because he was doing most of the heavy lifting. The only thing I caught was a minute after my suicide break-through. I’d picked out the way to do it and that’s when he said, “You need to go” I couldn’t agree more.

I decided to bolt boda back to my place, I love bike rides they really make me think clearly. I think if I survive this, I’m getting a bike. A nice red bike that I can ride anywhere I want. I get dressed as I argue with J- it’s almost like eating rice with a spoon at this point- about random ass shit that didn’t mean much to me at the moment and that’s when my bracelet snapped. No, you don’t understand- MY BRACELET SNAPPED! I have had it on almost throughout this year, it never snaps unless something is up. I take that as a sign and carelessly put on my vintage brown leather boots on as I walk out the house. I am dramatic as fuck so you know I leave some eerie messages like, “You might be the last person that sees me ever” you know light shit that’s mean but make you seem mysterious and I leave. Oh, don’t hate me- It’s my lore, I do it all the time, no one takes it seriously because they are used to my self-deprecating humor and that’s the problem, I think in the moment I wanted to be taken seriously.

The bike ride was long and this wasn’t doing any help to reduce my anxiety but I got back home and decided to keep my news to myself. I will also have you know that I did not off myself. I didn’t applaud my decision but I kept thinking that It’s not the end of the world. I mean if I look outside right now I’m pretty sure I’ll see at least six people smiling (People here are always happy as fuck for whatever reason), the buildings are all in their right places, no crazy hurricanes are carrying people away and most importantly I don’t see a demon version of Trump in those diaper things men used to wear around their crotch in the 1^st(?) century and crazy wings as he shoots lasers from his man boobs. Everything is the same as yesterday and the day before that. I’m what’s different.

I spend the rest of the afternoon on my neighbor’s couch as I wait my phone to juice up to 100% and I get offered to hit a blunt by three different guys followed by are you okays and are you sure you’re okays and I silently recline on the couch. I think it got really fucked when I start sobbing on the couch and one of the guys picked up on this. I become the guy who tears up at the hang out forcing everyone to react to it and so I politely left with my phone at 70%. I keep thinking about the end of the world and how tragic it could be if it was ending. I think it would be really tragic if today was the last day of everything and I don’t get a chance to fix my problems. I think it would be very sour if the world was ending when there’s someone in my life who is looking forward to something big in their life then they never get to do it- that would really suck. I think it would be so bad if the world was ending and I didn’t get to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until I make it right. It would be so distasteful.

Cheers to more days.

There goes the king and his loyal subjects. One is on her knees; her pink dirty tutu dress ruffles up as she bows to reveal torn up stripped stockings and the other is stood with her arm on the master’s feet that are clothed in similarly dirt socks. He is stood on four green milk crates stacked over each other and I presume that without the hand he will topple and fall; I will have something to laugh about. It’s a perfect Monday morning and I have commenced it just like I always do; standing by my bedroom window, watching the world carry on beneath me. I feel like a mad king just watching; doing nothing, just staring. The young boy fidgets on his pedestal and doesn’t waste a minute to scold his playmate who was supposed to anchor him. The third friend gets up from the ground and says something to him to which he jumps off the milk crates causing them to topple over. They all run away towards the pig sty that sits on the corner, away from the watching adults- I suppose this must encompass me. As they run one of the girls’ pink and black hair braids dance with the wind and just for a second, I dread being an adult. I want to run down and play whatever game they are playing.

The three children who could be eight-year-olds, one looks younger- maybe six? Abandon their excursion and they quicky partake in a new one. They are all huddled up together in a close circle as they discuss something that goes on for a while. The conversation carries on amidst the sparce flock of poultry in the small farm and they busily scours for seed on dry soil. The big mucky ducks walk amusingly paying no head to their outward appearance, this makes them even more thrilling to watch. A man in grey overalls tucked under black gum boots holds an old paint bucket on his left as he uses his right hand to lock the pig sty, where a few minutes ago had spent some time feeding the three pigs and their numerous sprogs. Just outside the farm, not more than three minutes from the enclosure is a man flipping chapatis to the people who live in my apartment and by passers, he does this every morning right after deep-frying mandazis. His technique is very specific and guided. Everything carries on, no one minds the children and I suppose a glance might meet the spectacle and dismiss it for superficial juvenile activity.

I contemplate leaving the space behind my curtains and starting my day. I wonder what I’ll do when I go back, the dishes maybe? But that will be so mundane, it feels like such a task- one I must partake every single day without fail. Aha! I’ll play some music and burn some incense, that’ll make it more interesting! The kids scatter about; it takes me a while to finally understand that they are playing a feisty game of tag. I watch in amusement as the girls try and keep up with the boy. I no longer think about my next task which would be to make breakfast occasioned by the choice of what that will be. I catch myself grinning, the awareness thereof makes me pout and I hold my hands up to my face, again overcome with the dread of repetition; clean, eat, study, eat, study, dread… It dawns on me that there had to be a time, now long forgotten when all these choices would have to be made for me and not the other way around. I suppose I could get on the phone with my mom and ask her what’s for breakfast but she will mistake it for humor and not very long after inquire about school while still reminding me of my responsibilities, “Are you from waking up just now? Why can’t you wake up early just like everyone else, have you sorted out your missing marks?” (Any Uni aspirants reading this, please don’t make the masochistic choice of joining the University of Nairobi)

Truthfully, the days of youth- the ripe and tender ones ever so graced by innocence are really fruitful. It’s quite a shame though that a couple of years ago, I distasted the statement as much as I heard it. It was not only cheap and corny to me, it also always got lost in translation in my young mind that was muddled by the loud noise of curiosity. I must admit that I uttered deception back there; youth isn’t innocent- at least not mine. Whenever I revisit the greyscale portrait of my youth that’s mounted on the largest parts of my mind, I see a curious young girl always on a hunt for answers; be it sweet, luscious and savory or dirty, sinful and grotesque. My endeavors stopped at nothing.

The beauty of experimenting at such a tender age is I never quite got to meet judgement because my undertakings where often mistaken for ignorance, I suppose that’s the only age I was ever okay being misunderstood. I was relishing in the benefits; When my mom left me home alone and I used her scissors and razors to cut off all the body hair I had which was only on my head and brows. No one judged me, the incident actually gave the household a reason to lay back and have a few laughs. When my nanny/auntie found me peeing while standing and she told me that I could easily sit on the bowl completely ignoring my urgent need to be a boy. When I had a sip of my dad’s beer as he sat next to me and he noticed moments later after hearing me quacking in coughs. He laughed as my mother came in the living room from the kitchen explained what happened to her to which she broke out in laughter as well. It’s not so funny anymore when my parents find out I’ve been drinking the same thing I had an ounce of a while back, there isn’t sheer joy in their judgmental tones. I suppose, in an oddly comical yet ironic way, my youth was really the preamble of my twenties, probably of the rest of my being.

The tutu girl, former (current?) subject of the sparsely populated kingdom of three, counting the King, is it. She is trying to tag one of her playmates. You can tell that she’s instinctively smart; she is going after the girl with the pink braids since she’s less fast than the boy. They all do this bare foot, she with her dirty stockings coursing on the dirty soil, the other girl with bare feet and the boy with black socks. Being a child absorbs you from any care in the world. Consequences is a foreign concept, one that doesn’t exist in the present. The only thing that matters is curiosity; wild, thrilling and rewarding curiosity. When I was in class one, I got caught smoking a twig in the school field. I often found myself watching my dad smoke cigarettes after a long day of work in the veranda and sometimes when my mom wasn’t around, he’d do it in the living room. Having not been around my dad a lot, I naturally grew fascinated by everything he did or said and that often included the thin fags he smoked. I remember being asked to perform my little ‘act’ in front of the whole class mid Mr. Black (a long plastic rod that used to be the handle of a 5 liters paint bucket- You do not want to hear about Mr. Red) strokes. I was so ashamed.

I am on my fourth cigarette this morning, it oddly feels like a pacifier. Every single one feels like a nurse kissing my heart. I wonder what my class one class teacher would say when she sees me, humorous isn’t it? That punishment isn’t really a cure for curiosity? I’m not blaming her for my habit and neither am I my father (okay maybe a little bit) I am merely trying to show you how I am still the six-year-old in a scanty little classroom in catholic school. Isn’t it absolutely ridiculous though that even now at twenty-three I expect a different kind of gaze when I light a cigarette at the balcony of a restaurant? Less disconcerting, no exasperation, maybe some nuanced admiration? Possibly a hint of commendation, the kind that overcomes one when a toddler does something innately endearing despite the clear foolery like burping out an ounce of Cerelac (Or whatever it is that babies eat). Most people would argue that I need to be stoic enough not to care what people think. I think stoics are romantic and have I mentioned how the romantic period was just that, romantic? I find the idea of existing without a care what a single human being thinks to be far-fetched, there is always someone somewhere we care to please- be it disgustingly pretentiously or utterly and passionately genuinely.

I therefore dearly desire for a period of decline of the facet of judgement in the minds of the human populate. One day nothing will matter and we will all be naïve little children all over again, I will light a cigarette in the busy streets of Nairobi and this will be met by admiration. The three kids are no where in sight. I am left with the banal sight of ducks scouring for seed. A big turkey has emerged; I always see it every time I look outside the window. She/he is very fierce with the way she/he walks, almost as if it could stomp through my rib cage and rip me apart. I have always had a gnawing fear of birds since I was a child but I never stop at admiring them. Watching them, especially the formidable ones like said Turkey from a safe position always makes me feel powerful and safe. It’s great to watch a dangerous spectacle and know that it doesn’t affect you. I wonder if the great fascist leaders like Mussolini felt like so; watching the domino effects of their unconventional political ideologies play out in the safety of their homes. Power must be so luscious when you have no care in the world. My declaration for the need for power was never intended to be premised by fascism but I dearly crave it; the kind of power that gives you immunity of judgement, I need that.

I want to leave this window and exit out of all my school group chats, I want to take two, four or twenty gap years just travelling and knowing who I really am, I want to sign up to be a literature teacher to fourteen-year-old children and fill their juvenile minds with the great, relishing power of words. I want to make that dreaded visit to the one I truly love and not be afraid to say what is truly in my heart. I want to say NO. I want to scream it out loud to everyone I never have and never care about the consequences. A life without a care in the world, one where the milestones of capitalism, psychology, laws- strange, selfish, pretentiously philosophical laws do not plague my journey. I want to have it easy but I can’t, I just can’t because it was decided ages ago by men and their rough scrolls. Such a life does not exist, not in my country, continent or my world and so I can only wish to be a naïve little girl in a play ground with a twig in hand. She lifts it up to her mouth, clutches on it between her tender lips and she inhales the beauty of life- nothing.

In some strange yet familiar way I am learning more about love despite never being consumed by it. The concept is interesting, the understanding of it is however explicable feels to me like something as easy as decoding the alphabet. I can feel love in a song just at its premise when I hear the first instrument play and I know I am at home, when I read an author’s note on my favorite book and its exactly what I want to hear (Mary Shelly’s note on Frankenstein depicts connotations of sadness- the kind that is so bittersweet that you would trade in for joy- and I instantly fell head over heels), the shape of a tree, however distorted as long as it matches my spirit. A ‘clever’ boy’s paraphrased words just a minute before making love; its fake but I am utterly besotted by the effort, the embrace of my cat’s tail on my ankles moments after I enter the kitchen, she thinks I’m meal prepping for her- oh she’s in for a surprise. Love is very subjective, very distorted and it has a curious way of bending to your will while simultaneously betraying your primal principle. I don’t care how ugly it might seem to people that I love things that might be unworthy to them, how it’s not gang of me to have recurring thoughts of my fuckass ex, I really don’t because I feel it and these things I feel are real (possibly tangible in a 4d universe) and I want to endlessly exist in my fantasy.

I have been brooding an egg that I hurled out on the morning of Saturday, 21^st June; it was the third day since I started to feel an illness crumple my insides; my body hadn’t been working properly and my stomach cramped in knots and uncomfortable bloats. I couldn’t stop throwing up and I went from blaming it on food poisoning to alcohol poisoning to finally realizing that it was late signs of pregnancy. I curiously inspected it from the purple lumps of sweet red wine amalgamated with masticated noodles that I had the previous night. The egg was glazed in vomit and it sparkled under the kitchen lights; it was sparkling even when I picked it up to realize that it was warm and fresh like a newly laid egg. I washed it in the kitchen sink, dried it up with some paper towels and sat down with it for hours, just thinking.

I haven’t left my bed in three weeks after deciding on brooding it. Jackson is worried but he abides to my requests because he simply refuses to leave me; he is poignantly piteous like that. Despite the unattractiveness of it, I find aspects of chivalry, ones that I have never experienced before, in his actions to be mildly appealing to me. He got me a bouquet of pink and white coronations on a certain Tuesday afternoon that have been silently wilting on my short, white coffee table. It was raining heavily and bits of rain were slowly wetting my curtain sheers, soft gusts of wind tussled with the purple, lightweight, organza causing it to brush against the brown duvet that once assumed the color white, it lay in heaps on top of my lower body. He walked in with his regular grey coat drenched. He carried the bouquet on his left hand and a bag of Gallitos on his right, which he set down on the floor to untie his adidas sambas that I dearly hate but he didn’t set the flowers down. I watched him from my bed that sat on the furthest end of the studio as he struggled to untie his shoes with one hand. I didn’t flinch my face even when he turned his head to look at me and smile slyly. I grimaced once, when I felt my cervical muscles contract, clutching onto the egg.

He over stayed his visit a week ago and I was passively trying everything in my books to have him leave so that I could brood peacefully. My last resort was breaking down into tears and I did. He did the strangest thing by burying his head under my Adventure Time musky shirt and kissing my belly. He said that our baby was going to have a better life. I somehow believed him but I was also really self-aware of his feet dangling on the edge of the bed, this reminded me of how his toes would clench into loud cracks while his feet dangled on the edge of the bed as he tongue-rolled on my clit. I asked him to leave; I did it patiently. I said, “Baby, I need some time, I can’t hatch the egg with you constantly here,” Of course he left and it left a bitter taste in my mouth but I kept thinking about what he said, ‘Our baby’ I adored it, just a little bit.

Jackson is the only one that knows about the egg, I told him about it a few days after I found it. Days before the occurrence, he was merely a stranger on my Fanvue. I would arbitrarily update him on the somewhat odd occurrences of my life amongst gratifying his subscription, he was one of my three subscribers. I told him about the pigeon that flew up to my window and broke its neck as I smoked, he piqued my interest by telling me about his curious fascinations with dead bird orifices in his childhood and how he’d stuff pointed objects into them and one day his undeveloped phallus. I laughed at that and he edged up on his web cam, his pointed nose almost taking most part of the screen and he said, “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh; I’m honored” It was then that I knew I could trust him with my discovery. I showed him the egg; it was the size of a mature chicken egg but as pale as a reptile’s. I told him that it was my destiny and that I had finally achieved my true purpose to which he concurred. He wanted to be a part of it he said and so I sent him my location to intimately excogitate on the issue.

Brooding the egg isn’t easy but I got used to it over the first two weeks. First, I had to adapt to its fragility hence, I had to learn to immerse myself into delicacy; the way I moved for instance often entailed rowdy impulse motions. I had to fine tune my rhythm. Sometimes I forgot like on a certain day I woke up at nearly 3am to take a dump, I was on my period I presume, and I kept shitting a lot. The second amalgamated lump of excrement plopped along with an anomalous release of something from my cervical throat. I froze. I ran it over tap water after retrieving it in panic and swore to always be on my toes. I was angered by my ignorance and when I told Jackson about it, he asked me not to strain myself too much. He said people often made mistakes and I couldn’t help but think of how wrong he was, mothers never made mistakes. I remained utterly aware since then and I pledged to remain the same.

I have been watching sped up you tube videos of commercial chicken eggs in hatching in incubators. Most of the videos use nostalgic piano compilations and I once watched one that used an audio of an artist called Berlioz, I had to shazam it through my phone and I haven’t stopped listening to French jazz ever since. I hope the egg can hear it; the soft calming amalgamation of violins, cellos, double basses, clarinets and bassoons; it’s so ethereal how so many devices can compile one single tune that can merge with the beat of your heart. I enjoy music and one day I hope the hatchling does as well. I got curious once and watched a video about pre mature babies placed in incubators. I discovered that the concept was inspired by chick incubators and that as an extension the incubators assumed the name, ‘child hatcheries’ I like the egg videos, sometimes I like to pretend that the hatching process isn’t sped up and I imagine my little hatchlings sprouting out of my egg as the mellow tune of jazz played in the background and I am overcome with so much bliss.

I started sorting out my mother’s old album of when I was a baby this week. It’s one of the few things I chose to keep when she died along with some old antiques, Luminarc plates that she would meticulously stack, each against the other in horizontal posture, hidden on display in her kitchen, some Kenya Air Ways tea spoons, spoons forks and butter knives that a friend gifted her in her college years or when she got married, I don’t recall and some odd trinkets that she decorated the house with. I also kept some of her head scarves that no longer smell like her, her recipe book that I never use and a bouquet of plastic flowers that she always had stuffed in a cabinet, she would always have a different story for where she got them, I came to the conclusion that they were from her customary wedding to my estranged father, I often wonder why plastic. Despite all the material things that I kept to feel closer to her, to which I never did. I inherited a substantial part of her estate having been her only child.

I plan on giving the album to my unborn child; I will add some pictures of her (I decided that it was girl, it can only be a girl, I hope it’s a girl) some of which I already took from my digital camera; I took one of when I first saw the egg, It looks a little amateurish because I had the flash on and I was way too close so it not only looks blurry, the purple pile of puke it’s immersed in assumes a bright violet color. My favorite is the one Jackson took of it on my bed while it was quietly nesting inside of me; you can only make out its bright white crown that peeks superlatively between my legs; it reminds me of mother’s ultrasound of when she was expectant with me. It’s displayed on the front page of the album. You can see the distorted silhouette of the shape of my head inside a conical-like figure of grey and black. I had thought of names, and I am currently stuck at Sarah, after me. Jackson thought this to be a bright idea, he agreed once I told him about the Gilmore girls; I have extended all my fall watches from October, and I am on season six of the Tv show. My only worry is all the negative traits Rory picked from Lorelai, her mother.

Jackson says that I don’t have any negative traits to pass on to a baby. He says that I am the purest soul he’s ever met. Sometimes I wonder if he only tells me what I want to hear. I don’t agree, I have my share of distasteful traits from my past that I dearly regret. I thought about my own mother and whether I inherited any traits from her other than the distinct physical ones; I took her brooding sunken eyes that always give me the appearance of a defeated spirit, some people subjectively intimated that they gave me melancholic sexual appeal and objectively, that they made me look ‘sad’. I like to collect things; I once introspected and came to the conclusion that I got this from her; she used to collect purposeless items like receipts from Naivas and she’d have a whole stack of them in a black purse that she once used to go to church in.

On certain occasions she would sit on her beige exhausted arm chair that overlooked our analog tv and she’d go through them, I often wondered what she was looking for. One time she said that she speculated the prices of Golden Fry cooking oil would go down the next month. I was about eight when she told me as she rummaged through her receipts. About two months later I heard a woman in the tired kiosk, five minutes from our home complain about the surging oil prices. Sometimes I postulated about my mother’s ignorant lunacy and the lack thereof. Her dull hobbies soon caught up to me at a young age; I went from collecting the hypnotic fireflies that played on our fence in transparent jars to pocket-sized items in supermarkets. I read somewhere about a similar behavioral deficiency, or so the article put it, kleptomania which is supposedly a negative trait.

I am not regretful of my ‘behavioral deficiencies’ but every once in a while, I recall the gluttonous breast cancer that consumed my mother, how she morphed into a shell of a person and how I continued to nurture our yearlong grudge that developed when I decided to rekindle a relationship with my father, he wasn’t quite interested but it was worth the try. Sometimes I sat with my phone facing me in my studio apartment that she rented for me since my college years and I’d wait for it to ring, hoping she would ask me to come see her but she never did and this angered me. It utterly irritated me that she would not set our differences aside and allow me to be there for her and so I silently but patiently waited in my house to no avail. I got the call four months later when I was from the bath, I knew it was her.

There was something in the air that Saturday evening; all my drinking plans had gone out of commission which scarcely ever happened and I had decided on a quiet evening of death metal as I sent out work applications for jobs that I didn’t qualify for- this was an inside joke I had as a revolt to the system. I once applied to an IGCSE school that needed a Chinese teacher, they called me in after a week and I read the first statement of the email about six times in disbelief, “Good afternoon, Susan, we are pleased to tell you that we reviewed your resume and you are the perfect fit for the job…” I was to send out an application to Karen sports club after my long steamy bath and that’s when I walked in on my phone ringing only it wasn’t her on the other end. My aunt Liz’s tone was unreadable from the other end; I couldn’t tell if she was angry with me or not when she dropped the news of my mother’s death. I didn’t cry, it felt rather pretentious of me to. I turned up for the funeral one week later. It was a small affair, my mother’s small community of estranged friends and family wore black and a young, handsome priest said that she was a vital part of the church community, this was a humorous lie and I spent the next three long minutes trying to hold back laughter.

I am on my luteal phase; my breasts are a little more plumber than usual and I find myself adjusting my silver wrist watch to check the time; I check when it’s thirty-four past four and I am half-way through the eleventh episode of the first season of Desperate Housewives. I turn my gaze to press play on the lap top only to get lost in the frozen subtitles on the screen, ‘Please don’t mistake my anal retentiveness for actual affection’. I check again in four minutes after my short-lived deep dive into the rabbit hole of an etymology subreddit on the lewd irony of Freud’s theory of anal retentive/expulsive personalities at infancy. Someone on the subreddit wonders why such a lewd word could have such normal connotations. I keep scrolling the replies and realized that I have seen the orifice mentioned at least fifteen times in two scrolls. I check at fifty-five minutes past four when the long arm is tediously shifting to the fifty-fifth minute and the index and middle fingers of my right hand are already faintingly parting my labium inside my green, cotton gym shorts. My motion remains steady even when Jackson walks in at his usual time. It’s 5pm.

He doesn’t say much after taking off his shoes and setting dinner on the kitchen counter and break-fast in the fridge. He is wearing his usual grey coat over a blue pinstripe shirt tucked under his brown khakis. His bulged stomach doesn’t do much to hide the left upper front facing that’s already slipped out to reveal a white vest. He notices me watching and he responds by smiling and doing his awkward walk towards me, almost like he is tired of the distance between us, almost like he is throwing his hands in a fit. He stops by the sofa between us and takes off his black lap top bag and softly lays it on the carpet, it shifts a little and leans forward in a fall only to lean on the coffee table’s leg, forming a triangular like shape. He checks his watch and I push my laptop away to make space for him, “Right on time,” he announces just like he always does without fail.

He leans in to greet me with a kiss all while standing and I grab the whole bunch of him from his crisp shirt. He accords to my maneuvers by getting on top of me and prolonging the kiss. He is sweaty and the precipitation is smeared all over his glistening face. I can smell his musky scent mixed with sweat from work and possibly from taking the stairs; he mentioned a few times that he is claustrophobic and can’t take the elevator, I have studied him enough to come to the conclusion that he has intense social anxiety and can’t handle most social interactions especially in demanding contexts like small, enclosed spaces. His mouth is buried into mine in lumber some placement as he takes off his jacket. His lips are rigid with awkward motion only once in a while opening up to let out his lingering tensile tongue. I unbuckle his loose black belt over his wrinkled pants as fast as I can while he pulls down my shorts to my knees, his lips remain rough over mine and his heavy breath tickles my upper lip.

As we graze over each other in accelerating, euphoric yet oddly desolate pace, I can only hear our loud breathing entwined with Jackson’s pretentious words that he slips into my mouth, neck and stomach repeatedly, “I need you so bad,” My legs are folded, my knees touching his bare crotch as I slip off my gym shorts to let him in. His second thrust is as contriving as the first, it feels preternatural and I can sense that something was wrong when I feel a sharp pain followed by an almost pleasant contraction that releases a slimy lubricating fluid. Jackson thrusts the third time, and he lets out an agonizing cry of pain and pleasure and I realize that the egg has cracked inside of me, “Get out!” I screech in pain, “Get out! get out! get out!” He slips out along with bloody egg white that settles nicely between us. I can feel the eggshells crushing along with my contractions inside of me, parts of it sit crookedly on the tip of Jackson’s erect tarse. His face is pale and he watches me cry in agony, “What have you done” I cry to him as I morbidly searching for an answer, but he looks like he has seen a ghost.

I fail to notice the burst egg yolk slipping out as I manically follow him while he paces out of my studio in panic. He is pulling up his pants past the living room and through the kitchen completely unaware of his bag that I inadvertently kick while running after him. A patch of discolored blood stains the carpet as he opens the door ajar and runs out, “Jackson! Come back here you moron” I stop at the door when I notice that I am naked from the waist down, “Jackson!” I scream. I see him making a turn towards the corridor and to the staircase, “You killed our baby!” I contemplate chasing him down the stairs and that’s when my next-door neighbor who lives adjacent to me opens his door and stares at me. His face shifts into a corny smile while he glares at my bare crotch. I slam the door closed right after spitting somewhere towards his face. I sit down on the cold tiles with my back leaned on the cold, metal door in tears. The floors keep getting wetter with discolored blood and tears and I begin my endless grief.

It’s 2355 hrs and I am bored. I blame this piece on Ottessa Moshfegh because I have been desperately trying so hard to be her.

The accouchement

[I found an egg shell on my disorganized, un made bed when I got back home, it was… poetic]

I have been brooding an egg that I hurled out on Sunday, December 21^st. I haven’t left my bed in two weeks, Jackson is worried but he abides to my requests because he simply refuses to leave me, he is pathetic like that. Despite the unattractiveness of it, I find aspects of chivalry, ones that I have never experienced before, in his actions to be mildly appealing to me. He got me a bouquet of pink and white coronations on a Tuesday afternoon- It was raining heavily and bits of rain were slowly wetting my curtain sheers. He walked in with his grey coat drenched. He carried the bouquet on his left hand and a bag of gallitos on his left, which he set down on the floor to untie his adidas sambas that I dearly hate but he didn’t set the flowers down. I watched him from my bed that sits on the furthest end of the studio as he struggled to untie his shoes with one hand. I didn’t flinch my face even when he turned his head to look at me and smile slyly. I grimaced once when I felt my cervical muscles contract, clutching onto the egg.

On a certain day this week he over stayed his visit and I was passively trying everything in my books to have him leave so that I can brood peacefully. My last resort was breaking down into tears and I did. He did the strangest thing by burying his head under my adventure time musky shirt and kissing my belly. He said that our baby was going to have a better life. I somehow believed him but I was also really self-aware of his feet dangling on the edge of the bed, this reminded me of how his toes clench as his feet dangle on the edge of the bed when he eats me out. I asked him to leave; I did it patiently. I said, “Baby I need some time, I can’t hatch the egg with you constantly here” Of course he left and it did leave a bitter taste in my mouth but I kept thinking about what he said, ‘our baby’ I adored it, just a little bit.

Jackson is the only one that knows about the egg, I told him about it a few days after I found it. Days before the occurrence, he was merely a stranger on my fanvue. I would arbitrarily update him on the odd recurrences of my life amongst gratifying his subscription, he was one of my three subscribers. I told him about the pigeon that flew up to my window and broke its neck as I smoked, he piqued my interest by telling me about his curious fascinations with dead bird orifices in his childhood and how he’d stuff pointed objects into them and one day his undeveloped phallus. I laughed at that and he edged up on his web cam, his pointed nose almost taking most part of the screen and he said, “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh; I’m honored” It was then that I knew I could trust him with my discovery. I showed him the egg; it was the size of a mature chicken egg but as pale as a reptile’s. I told him that it was my destiny and that I had finally achieved my true purpose to which he concurred. He wanted to be a part of it he said and so I sent him my address to intimately excogitate on the issue.

Brooding the egg wasn’t easy but I got used to it over the first two weeks. First, I had to adapt to its fragility hence I had to learn to immerse myself into delicacy; the way I moved for instance often entailed rowdy connotations, I had to fine tune my rhythm. Sometimes I forgot like on a certain day I woke up at nearly 3am to take a dump, I was on my period I presume and I kept shitting a lot. The second amalgamated lump of excrement plopped along with an anomalous release of something from my cervical throat. I froze. I run it over tap water after retrieving it in panic and swore to always be on my toes. I was angered by my ignorance and when I told Jackson about it, he asked me not to strain myself too much. He said people make mistakes and I couldn’t help but think of how wrong he was, mothers never make mistakes. I remained utterly aware since then and I pledged to remain the same…

should I finish this or seek god?

You can read the complete version of this pure work of fiction and not at all relative to my life at all here

I remember when I wrote it, I didn’t put in so much thought into it, I had just woken up one morning and felt transcendent; like I had come out of hibernation and i felt brand new. I told him that for the longest time I had been in darkness and that with the sudden new things that had come into my life I was retrieving my light back. I remember how proud he was of me and how we acted like I had finally ‘beat it’ like it was cancer or something. The thing about dark days, even when they are consistently showing up all through weeks, months and years is that they always find their way back even after escaping them, it’s the way of life, I think. And so, after a while, probably a year or so I found myself back. I think I finally got out of it, and I found myself writing a similar grotesque prose on transcendence. This one is not for everyone so tread carefully, I suppose.

I AM THE MOON

1

10/2022

I lay in supine fashion on my corrugated crimson sheets as I glare at the galaxy that becomes of my drywall ceilings; a vast mass of twinkling rocks gliding above my rigid body. I am covered in my heavenly shroud; black fishnets over red knickers under a white, worn-out Black Sabbath shirt. On the furthest corner of my ceiling, I can see a constellation forming, it feels like watching the birth of a fragile and yet absurd animal. Suddenly the dark night is an ewe and the constellation its lamb creeping out of its pelvic canal in a jumble of slime and godly-life. Under the celestial glory of the endless carpet of stars, I become a new born lamb, leaping out of a shell of divinity and purity. I am a constellation fully-fledged nestling in the skies. I am born again.

I am light as a feather and I hover in my new-found cathartic self-indulgence, quite literally. My shell of a body is completely detached from my twin-sized bed and it now levitates upon the empty space of my room. The moon glistens in its seraphic glory and I can hear it call to me. In this moment of detachment and rebirth, I shower in the mythical moonlight. Every beam of light lacerates through my trifling body and into my soul. My mind is no longer unbridled by the shackles of humanity, I can hear my thoughts all at once, I can hear all the voices of the universe bombarding in my mind in a whimsical periodicity that commensurate a forbidden song, I can see the hidden shape of life, my banal room has vanished with the rest of the falsities; I am levitating in the expanse of an endless forest of kapoks, palms, achiotes, mahogany, hummingbirds, macaws, anacondas, vipers and charmingly red, wet, soil. I am born again.

I pray to all my gods to grace my subliminal rejuvenation; I can almost hear Patric Morrissey’s heavenly voice sing Cemetery gates. I praise the moon and the stars as I become one with them, I am a folktale of a witch levitating in the moonlight giving in to the dark. I am anachronistic and I only belong in this hidden century. I belong in the rainforest singing praise to the vines, trees, birds, geckos, vipers and the moonlight. I float here in my sanctimonious home of nature as I see the apparition around me. I can picture my entire life, I see it whole and complete, it is vast and generous. I can see my people; a coven of cloaked women dancing around my plant-like body that commensurate a pine tree. I move rhythmically to the song of the night as they shower me in praise. They welcome me to their age as the skies feed us with the food of life; the strong lacerating rays of the bright moon. We sway left and right, hands caved on our bosoms as we take in the pleasure of life, the pleasure of rebirth. I am born again.

My previous banal existence is stardust and it can no longer be conceptualized as something that ever existed. I am whole and alive, I am complex and diverse; I am the coarse bark of mahogany, I am the song of a hummingbird, I am the wind that blows on the dust of a butterfly, I am the venom in a viper, I am the silence of the night, I am the twinkle in the stars, I am the moonlight, I am the galaxy, I am the night, I am life itself. Here, in my garden, my rainforest, my world, I rise above and beyond the limits. I am unbridled and I levitate further into the night. I can see creation; I understand it and I am stupefied by it. A single tear trickles across my face and into a dark emptiness. I understand life and I am above it; I can see the spirals and vicious explosions that become of it. I see it all. I am born again.

I am an eye in the dark carpet of the heavens. I am a god that spectates, registers and conceives. I nestle in the dark of the night with the galaxy that becomes of my coven, my people, my past selves. I glare at the lifetimes of despondency and despair that nestles beneath me in a world so distorted by violence and hatred. A corrupt mass of pollution and negligence eats its way through the once beautiful soils of life. Beneath it all I see a light. I see an ewe crying in gnawing pain. It staggers on dry land as mucus oozes out of its pelvic canal and stubbles on the ground hitting its snow-white head on a boulder. As it lays there, palpitating in writhing pain, blood oozing from its head painting the rock with blood, tiny legs of a lamb slowly creep out. Right before the animal drifts to a lifetime of sleep, it births a wet, innocent lamb. I see myself, brand new and divine, coursing through life in the shape of an animal, I am born again.

II.

10/2025

https://open.spotify.com/track/1bXHMidMrVaiBkpGo05Ze5?si=fbc51fddcb444231

I slither the wet marshes, going out on the limb – my injured left leg falls numb behind me, it draws an unimaginative, distorted track line as it apathetically moves along with my tired body. My pain and strife remain documented on the earth of the lonesome forest; this unresolved action betrays me; my pursuer can easily find me. My hands guide me past the wet ground and into the tall grass that brushes against my sweaty face, I try to brush it off with my right hand then my left but this only slows me down so I keep going disregarding the infuriating feel of the itchy grass. Glide by glide I move closer to my fate. Behind me my daunting consequences chase me in the shape of a serpentine humanoid, she moves like the defeated spirit of a mother just from labor in search of her newborn that has been stripped savagely from her womb. She cries out my name as the premonition of reunion silently daunts on me; I feel it in the echoes that linger on my back, they captivate me like a bittersweet siren song, conniving and corrupting me to give way to the evil; to let it back in.

My hands are pressed down in the dampness of the quagmire through the weight of my body, I sense I am getting closer and closer to a swamp. The darkness doesn’t allow me to see it; I can only see vague silhouettes of grass under the moonrise. I keep going. My entire upper body is quickly immersed into a shallow pool from my next glide. The ground assumes a wet, rocky texture. Its pliable and I can sense that any sudden motion can immerse me further in dense mud. I quiver from breathlessness and deeper I sink. The sound of the night; the cooing owls, the familiar song of the crickets and the chanting of my captor is pacified by the silence of being underwater. I am engulfed by an urgent need to give up. I sink deeper with every quiver; my entire body is swallowed up by the swamp. I struggle to open my eyes but the only familiar thing that I make out is void black darkness and a sense of breathlessness that stifles my lungs. The first act of despair is premised by a gulp of salty swamp water along with reeds that occupy my mouth then my lungs. This is my downfall.

I welcome more swamp water along with the foreboding feel of despair and helplessness. My first prayer is an ironic and blasphemous call for forgiveness from the God I was taught, the one I sent out all my battles to. My last is to the forest for rescue, I hide withing it solemn connotations of repentance for all my sins, I suppose everyone in the world owes me forgiveness; I beg for it as I choke into lifelessness. The sturdy tail of a viper wraps around my waist, it feels like a vine coming into life and the awareness of what it really is daunts on me once it lifts me out of the swamp, tightens its grip on my chest to eject the suffocating water out of my lungs and bringing me close to its formidable, colossal face. Water trickles down my body. My black sabbath ragged band shirt is clutched onto my torso and my breasts waggle carelessly in motion to the massive snake’s erratic movements. My fishnets are torn up on my knees from the crawling and a sock is missing from my functionable leg. The viper’s grip remains the same and I move my head to face it, our eyes meet and its pupils dilate from sharp lines to large black circles that draw me close seductively.

I hurl out water and suddenly a heavy, suffocating object strangles my throat and I rise my arms to my neck. It throbs in my throat concurrent to my fast-beating heart. I tighten my grip on my throat in suffocation, I look to the snake for rescue only to realize that it mirrors my pain; It throws me on the marshes and I fall on my side, I sit upright and struggle to get the object out. The viper lets out a loud rattling hiss that pierces through my ears. The object finds its way out of my mouth and I spit it out on a short rock; it’s a golden-brown mucky toad that hops away from me and into the swamp. The viper no longer writhes in pain, the night is no longer silent and my pursuer has arrived to repossess me. Under the moonlight, the three of us stand awaiting the prophesy. The humanoid stands twitching, forcing her multiple faces squished all over her grotesque, naked body to grimace in discomfort. Her distorted legs force her to move back and force whilst the viper remains composed watching me with its contracting pupils.

“Where is your faith little lamb” She spits from her multiple mouths, the amalgamated echo of her question occupies the expanse sending a chill down my spine. She wobbles her huge disfigured body only to be stopped by a minacious hiss of the viper that edges its face defensively towards her, its mouth is ajar revealing its menacing fangs that take the size of my arm. This gives me the courage to act, suddenly there is a seering pain on my numb leg as it straightens out and morphs into a Bovidae’s limb. My body, in unbalanced posture, moves closer to the two creatures. “You have mothered me for years, this is biased! How can I not choose you?” I spit in agony. She utters a mingle of laughter and quickly responds in blatant pride, “You are not the lamb I birthed in this woodland and neither is our home the home it once was, look at it; destruction becomes of it, the filth of life overcomes it. You have reclined in corruption and given way to the humdrum arts of optimism, your temperament is tainted by banal disposition. I am here to usher you back to our old ways; I should have never let you leave!”

I am overcome by a rich flavor of introspection, it enriches me with realization and I am no longer afraid of her, my captor, she is small to me and I can see all her deficiencies; the ugly scolding of my parents that transparently revealed their fragility and weakness, the love I was denied by strangers, friends and lovers alike and their recession thereof disguised by fear, the wave of fear that choked me every time I clocked into school that was really just the unforeseeable probability of failure from relishing my true potential. I am no longer afraid, I neither deny fear its existence, I am only indifferent to it. I walk towards the viper, the moonlight shimmers above me watching the spectacle.

“My faith is my art,” I move closer and closer to the viper and I let it wrap its tail around me. The humanoid’s skin sizzles and burns in acid, it writhes in pain. Its agonizing bellows merge with my words, “My faith is in the diverse tenets of philosophy, I am compelled by no one,” The viper rises me to its now ajar mouth,

“I am the venom of the viper, my transmuted shadow, I am the silence of the night, I am the life of the marshes, I am the twinkle of the stars, I am the moonlight,” I raise my arms towards the heavens, “I am the galaxy, I am the night, I am life itself, I am the dark carpet of the heavens, I am the god that spectates, registers and conceives, I am the new coming!”

I am ushered into the mouth of the viper and as it gulps me down, I can feel my soul rejoined with the creature. I can see through its fierce eyes, I see all of the marshes under the light of the moon. The humanoid is sizzled into swamp water and the forest is mine. I slither away, reborn once again. I am born again.

The truth is that I have had issues with my body ever since I hit puberty at the peak of twelve. My parents took me to boarding school when I was in class six, these were one of the best years of my life. I got a cubicle with my best friend Joyce and we did everything together- we left class at the same time, arranged text books and exercise books in a special, very coordinated order in our desks, ate at the same pace, showered at the same time and folded our towels in the same stack. Class six was also that time in childhood when we were so self-aware of our bodies; breasts were perking out into odd shapes and sizes, hips started to form and I realized that my butt was socially acceptable- big, round…desirable? I didn’t see it, didn’t understand it either but the moment it was declared to me I took a sort of pride to it. This happened while Joyce and I were getting dressed after our shower and a vibrant girl from our class stormed into our cubicle, saw us naked and said, “Lydia si ukona matako kubwa” I froze.

I brushed it off and reached out for my towel that was lying in a pile on my bed. Everything in the cubicle went quiet and I felt so much attention drawn to me. “Lydia say thank you” Joyce declared. I turned with my towel around my breasts and watched her smile, she could tell I was shy and I remember wondering how that was a complement. I suppose I didn’t want to have a big, distinguishable physical attribute to my name, especially one that encompassed my body, “Asanti,” I said and secretly hoped for her to leave the cube but she stayed, kept talking to us and the ‘compliment’ hovered as a cloud of despair in the room, silently chocking me and forcing me to drop my towel and embrace it but it remained like that- a dark cloud that hovered around me every time my ass was looked at, mentioned, desired, touched.

Ass aside, I was growing big; my face was chubbier especially after I joined high school and got an appetite, my weight was also ‘undesirable’, I became aware of this through my parents, who when I think of it did a huge disservice to me. My mom and I were in the kitchen serving dinner after our trip to the hospital where the doctor had not only checked my temperature but my weight as well. My dad walked in and asked my mom about my diagnosis and my mom went on a rant about it where she mentioned that my carb intake was a huge contributory factor. I remember feeling like a literal elephant in the room when she said that I was heavier than her and I was just fifteen years old. I was overcome with the shame of being bigger than my mother and it felt so preternatural. My doctor’s scale said I was sixty-three kilograms heavy which was the average weight of half of the girls in my form. Ever since I went back to school, almost everyone in my class disgusted me as much as I disgusted myself.

Despite being fat at home, I was hot in school and I learnt how to accept the uncomfortable compliments I constantly got. It wasn’t that I never believed them, I just didn’t understand the standard of ‘hot body’ or where it came from. It didn’t make sense to me how my big thighs, big butt, distinct shoulders, broad face could be categorized as hot. I however loved my waist and I hoped everything could shrink into absence as much as it did. I think everyone can safely admit that high school was intense. One of the most bizarre things about my high school is once we got to form two, we became obsessed with curves and weight. Girls were bulimic, some joined fasting groups, some walked up to you in the middle of recess with sewing tapes asking to check your waist- now this one was my invite to the cult; sewing tapes. I became secretly obsessed with sewing tapes and tightening them around my waist to see how much of a wasp I looked like.

The infamous concept of sexualization was always pressing down on my chest, forcing me into suffocation. I didn’t understand the concept itself but I absolutely distasted being sexualized, harassed and identified through my ass. Boys liked me for it because they were part of the ‘ass over boobies’ movement and sometimes I let them but I secretly wanted it to go away and have room for something I valued about myself like my whimsical sense of humor. I got groped once or twice and it made me overcome with guilt and disgust. I remember constantly wanting to do something about it but never doing it due to my avoidant nature. The irony of being avoidant is you push a thought so far deep in your head thinking you are keeping it at bay but you are only presently presenting it on a platter to your sub conscience to deal with and so after high school I developed an eating disorder out of nowhere.

It happened so abruptly that I didn’t even notice until I caught myself two years down the line turning off the lights in my apartment about to go to sleep and I realized that I had only had an apple and a few cigarettes for the day. People around me noticed and they often addressed it comically, sometimes we’d laugh about it but other times they’d put me on the spot for it. When this year started, I looked at myself in the mirror one day and I was way smaller than I used to be; I lost so much weight and my noticeable ass wasn’t so noticeable anymore, part of me embraced it and I found myself liking it. The horror that came with it was the grief of who I used to be, how I used to look like, how comfortable it was for me to eat a plate full of rice and actually…enjoy it without thinking how much weight I’m going to add from it.

The grief is always silent and it creeps up in the softest moments like when I slip into a pair of jeans and there’s so much space around my waist, when I open my phone gallery and I see a picture of myself with a massive smile on my face and my body looks familiar, when someone I used to know whispers in my ear, “Where’s the rest of you” The thing about looking ‘good’ in a socially acceptable way is people will never believe you when you tell them that you have body dysmorphia which is something that I am aware I’m dealing with and that’s what this prose is about. You could even get prosecuted for it; I believe the right terminology the prosecutors use is ‘pick me’ The only truth I can admit to is discomfort in your own body is experienced on different levels by everyone, and so is every thing ever spoken into existence.

I am confused about this shell that was molded to shield my spirit. Sometimes I take off my clothes and make eye contact with my reflection, run my fingers quietly over my curves, scars, textures and I am in love, I sense acceptance and pride and I enjoy it, just for the day -I carry it with me through the whole day. On the bad days someone will notice; I spent a week at home about two weeks ago and on Sunday morning I joined my mom for breakfast, it would kill her to know how when she cracked a joke about my subversive sweater that revealed my bare shoulders making me look like she is holding me hostage when everyone is eating, I felt uncomfortable in my own home and it piled up with all the other comments everyone has been making, stored neatly somewhere in my head only to be unleashed in my darkest hours. It pains me that this is something I cannot control and yet the world constantly forces me to deal with it every single day.

The reason why I am putting something this personal out here is for anyone who feels like an alien for going through the same thing doesn’t. I also want to come here a year or two later, heck even a decade and laugh about it because I figured it out. I want to deal with it and not avoid it. I most especially want to love myself in whatever shape I wake up in because I truly believe that there is so much more to a person than what is on the surface. For now I don’t have the answers just the awareness of this feeling that I have been dodging away.

I walk these banal lands with my tired feet, above me sits the unimaginative sun that scorches my spirit into a monotony of existential cogitation. I am struck by a repetitive dullness that always tricks me into relishing the commonplace fruit of hope. I deceive myself that one of the steps I keep making will unveil my purpose and so I walk, feet scorched up and blistered, tirelessly, I walk to my fate. My beautiful, enervated mind that warily rests in my head whispers the truth to me on the nights when I am overcome with familiar drunken stupor, it tells me that the homely darkness of death becomes my telos. I brush the regretful words away similar to the intrusive mosquitoes that sleep with me craving for my bits. The worst part of this experience is the gospel of truth I carry with me.

Gluttony, filth and corruption slither around me like a snake in a sandstorm, it covertly hides in the deceiving clouds of inconsequential optimism, one day it consumes me and I am just like every other greedy and corrupt animal that walks this planet. I am camouflaged in the wickedness of this century as a means of survival and made to believe that survival is the only shield that I can wield, It’s the only way to earn respect around here. My only rewards are derived from the tribulation of weak bystanders but it’s perfectly normal to sleep on a full stomach if an infant somewhere silently whimpers in hunger. We are deceived by the harmful words of intellects to promote suffering, Thucydides rests in his decayed grave in Athens as his words continue to disperse through lifetimes as fascist leaders earn accolades for using death to perpetuate power.

We are all machines in a bigger machine that controls a more colossal one, we are gears greased up with dread, despair and hope incessantly running a system that contradicts its very existence. What is humanity anyway and why can’t I strip off this coat of skin and live in my true form? Underneath it all a soul is mounted that comes alive in my unconsciousness it speaks to me and preaches power and ushers me in the complex pursuit to hedonism. The irony of its existence is the fear that it might be one of the pernicious illnesses that plagues any one of us. I am forced to accept my disorder as a means to escape reality. I hide my preternatural association with my consciousness to have people take me seriously because once I achieve a certain age, I am inherently supposed to meet a certain criterion of stability. I am expected to fit in despite not being made for this world.

Into the bargain of it all is the shame I carry as a cloak on my back. It is the burden of care that is embellished as love, hope, jealousy, passion and an interminable craving for joy. Why must I care what I feel today? Why is the pursuit of love and happiness so dreadfully important? I am bred into this person that must walk a certain way, talk a certain way, look a certain way and I am meticulously placed on a pedestal to be actioned out to the voracious arms of gentlemen who will pamper me with the glorified verity of love. They hungrily devour me with their claws and leave me as a shell of a person but I am made to believe that I must constantly transcend the pain and put myself back on display as I await more defeat. I found my lover in the premise of my flourishment, bought into the deception of another soul completing me; making me whole and I gave him the tender innocence of my youth only to be rewarded with torturous agony that built my entire persona. I masquerade around as a happy person as I lie to myself and the world that I am strong, just like everyone. Why must I pretend that pain doesn’t subdue me? What is joy anyways if the world is ending tomorrow?

The irony of philosophy is forced down my throat, I thrive in stoic attitude on Sundays while giving a mortal fuck on Mondays as my existential soul craves to know, ‘what was I made for?’ Why is there need to know something that was built brick by brick on mysticism? This big joke’s punchline is that we pounce book on book trying to understand it. Its all so subjective, it’s the human experience, don’t lose yourself into knowing- everyone has something to say about it, no one has a clue what we are really here for. The primary counter reaction of my generation is the humor we all immerse ourselves in. I facetiously imagine humanity to be a dream of an old man who never awakes. He neither shifts nor snores because his siesta is as unimaginative as eating cereal with a spoon, none of this matters as much as we make it out to.

Sell me some free will, why don’t you. Tell me that I can leave anytime I want to and that my government won’t shove me in a cushioned room with straps on my arms and a muzzle on my mouth like the rabid dog that I am. Tell me that this shell is mine even when It’s policed in three-inch denim at the gas station, a little ass shouldn’t be this political. Tell me about the laws that protect me, I want to know about the rights that were made for women like me by men who care so much. I want to shove a middle finger on national television and tell them what I think about my freedom.

Let’s kiss, dance and make a little love right here on the couch. I’ll lie to you that you are the first person whose thighs I have graced with my delicate pelvis only If you do the same. Pass me a cigarette and let the smoke dance above us carelessly watching us pretend that everything matters. Let’s be human and act like we have a purpose. Maybe later we can get married, be part of a public registry and have some sprogs; lets pollute the world with more dread. Kiss me, shut me up, make me forget.

Note

This post was actually previously published and deleted (Apparently I cant edit an old post?) I had a working title of, okay who am I kidding- it was the actual title, ‘TWENTIETH CENTURY ANACHNONISM’. I have been procrastinating the edit to ‘TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ANACHRONISM’ because, well it’s the 21st century but a few minutes ago while zoning out to a Bjork song I realized the beautiful irony in the fact that I mistook my century because this post’s primary subject is me being lost in my century hence the anachronism. I dont know why I changed it to something completely different now, maybe its a trick to make it…standardized and familiar.

I like when I chug the first shot of vodka and it tastes like freedom. The warm liquid slithers through my throat and I can feel it dissolve in my guts, in those first few seconds there’s no bitterness, no nausea, no disgust, just pure thrill. The feeling almost always entwins with a subtleness of euphoria from the thrill of my persona transmuting into a heightened, chaotic version of myself. I think about my counterpart(s) and all the lore I am about to spew all over them. Then comes the bittersweet nausea that ushers me to chug a sweet chaser, often minute maid orange. On a bad day, id chase it down with water, not icy cool but disgusting, uninteresting, room temp, flavorless water that doesn’t do much to the lingering bitterness that rests on my tongue. I like it anyways; I like when I’m drinking with someone and they have a smile on their face when they see mine grimace while still holding on to my fading smile.

I prefer drinking from my apartment. I mostly prefer it when I’m not alone, it’s different when I’m alone. When it’s just me, my bottle, my cigarettes, the cat, Kat, and my guilty-pleasure Drake playlist, I am sad but I hide it well. It’s the solitude and the constant awareness that you are drinking alone in your studio apartment. It’s never a good look trust me, especially when I start to sing along to Rich flex,

“All you hoes, all of you hoes need to remember who y’all talking to. It's a slaughter gang CEO. I got dick for you if I’m not workin’ girl if I’m busy then fuck no…”

I like it when there’s someone with me, especially when the person is an intimate partner. I often chug until I’m as light as a feather, floating carelessly in conversation. These conversations are my absolute favorite ones to have; they feel like a game of predator and prey; it’s a give or take situation where I slip a little bit of intimate information and I am rewarded with something similar. We dig deeper into philosophy and controversy until our words slug as our lips become heavier and more tender from getting charred by alcohol and that’s when the real game begins, this is the one where I imagine how your lips taste like.

The art of conversation has always been innately intimate to me, it’s slightly different when you are two vodka bottles in and you are fighting all sort of urges from transparency to lust. You have to cling on to your non-existent sobriety and imagine what that dispassionate, composed version of yourself would do. Sometimes I break the rules and shut her off, I live in the moment and do/say things that get me in trouble. Drinking vodka is fun, you get to spill something about yourself that you have hidden away for ages, scared that it might tarnish your reputation and you are rewarded with a sense of comfort you didn’t expect. Unleashing the burden is as cathartic as taking a piss that you have been holding in for a long time. It’s freedom.

The seductive sense of lust is always unbearable especially when my counterpart is someone that I find attractive when I’m sober, but I resist it anyways. The dialogue recasts into gibberish and you could say absolutely anything to me and I’d nod in agreement. Conversation becomes a dance of tango and the only thing I become aware of is what is playing on Spotify. If the song playing is mid-west emo and the vocalist is raging on about his high school lover not loving her back (It's cold out here) then I want to stick my tongue into someone else’s mouth, its much different when paper bag by Fiona apple plays next, it always ironically does (I don’t have a premium subscription, there you have it), then I have to talk about love deprivation and the current state of politics, say feminism with a little touch of, “We blame Ruto anyways”

Sex is beautiful when you are drunk. I don’t want this prose to be all about it but I have been premarketing it anyways so let’s talk about it, let’s talk about drunk, hot, sloppy sex. I like the premise of it that often happens when I have had almost enough vodka and I can feel my body moving side to side, “I’m shifting a lot, can you sense it?” I always ask to which they nod or respond, “A little bit, yeah” This gives them an excuse to look at me, I like it. The gaze remains transfixed even after the dialogue evaporates into nothingness and that’s when the adrenaline kicks in and our lips collide. Fireworks, explosion, world peace, shedloads of buffalo migration, blooming flowers, erection of a flag on the moon, pigs screeching in slaughter houses, amalgamations of post-hardcore bass compositions, the sizzle of a dying cigarette, soft tensile tongues touching unapologetically, dick, lots of dicks on a pile, sex, freedom.

I like vodka, KC pineapple to be precise. I prefer when it like me back and it finds comfort in my hostile body, and I don’t have to end up clutching on my toilet seat and all I can think about is the butts that graced it. When it begs to be released from my body, I discard my principles. I am no longer a rebellious atheist and I secretly utter a prayer for rescue,

“I fuck with you, I promise. Just get me out of this man I promise I…”

Vodka can be terrible when you have too much of it, but you only had it to clasp on that invisible, colossal balloon of escape that floats right above you tantalizingly, tempting you to reach out. It’s ironic that way. The dark cloud of alcoholism always nests at the back of my head like a dreadful premonition. I’m not an alcoholic, I’m quite aware of my limits but then again that’s what all my alcoholic friends say (My alcoholic friends). I’m just a girl with an undying love for vodka, KC pineapple to be precise. I like its warm taste, its ultra-fine, devious, tart and tangy relishing flavor, its sharp, pungent smell that makes you grimace and simultaneously smile, its transmuting influence and its thrilling sense of freedom. I like vodka, KC pineapple to be precise.

Disclaimer

This post isn’t meant to promote alcohol drinking or any substance abuse but who am I kidding, lets keep chugging who really cares. Drink responsibly kids.

I have an incessant joke that always sits at the back of my head like a ‘violence’ card in poker, always ready to pull out mid conversation with anyone; my friends, random strangers who take keen interest in me or my transient lovers. It’s not intrinsically a joke, but I always laugh when I tell them how at the dawn of my twenty-third birthday I came to at the backseat of a cab. I am drunk, my hair is disheveled, my scarf chokes me with every careless swerve the driver takes in the dark road and my phone buzzes below my right hand. I hold it impetuously to my face and it almost drops from the lassitude that dominates me.

I am 23,

I am- a girl, a woman, an object of nature; a flower petal descending from its tree

Too young to wilt,

Released too soon,

Released into the soil,

Released to wilt from the ground,

To wilt, decay and relish the disreputable flesh of death,

Die

Decay

Transform.

I repeat my joke over and over until I sound like a broken record to myself because I’m the only one who ever gets to hear it continually. I do it to remind myself that at the backseat of that cab I touched something within myself that I never thought was there. I felt alive for the first time in ages, I felt my ego shrink into a pebble sized mass of disruption whose chaos hummed harmlessly in my head. I suppose the punchline is the irony that knowing myself, I could nestle this softness within me.

Being ‘myself’ has never felt more natural to me. At the dawn of my twenty-third birthday, I promised myself so many things one of which included authenticity. Being myself to me has always relied on context; who am I talking to? where am I? what do I need? It always felt like I needed to filter out bits of myself when it felt necessary. Small, erased elements of my personality were being clumped up silently somewhere, completely abandoned and severed from myself, sometimes they would get replaced by traits that didn’t really embody who I truly was.

Being myself relies heavily on principle, so then I often ask myself what is my principle? what standard of care do I owe the world? does the limitation thereof compromise my supposed principle? who do I owe it all to? And so, I have encountered a lot of conflict when it comes to what version of myself that I let others see; a job interviewer who wants to find out the depth of my emotional intelligence, but they really just want to know if I am stoic enough to handle disrespect in the work environment, The radical feminist my friend is becoming and her ruthless spirit that wants me to nod to an offensive opinion or simply being ‘good’, ‘kind’, ‘prudent’ when I don’t necessarily feel the need to be. What is my principle?

I suppose one can never truly reach a true measure as to how much of themselves needs to be revealed in all the contexts the world has to offer. Every time I filter a segment of myself out of dialogue, it often feels like a huge disservice to myself. I am overcome by a guilt similar to one you get when you utter deception. The moment I became aware of this is when I started intentionally mentioning things about myself that you don’t really expect in a conversation, when expected I’d say yes when I need to say yes and no when I didn’t. I remember how a lot of these moments have failed me terribly in the past months but to no great extent until recently when I found myself missing the nonchalant, filtered and mysterious little liar I used to be.

A few days ago, I was talking to someone on an intimate level, I found myself actually besotted by a person of the opposite sex, it didn’t feel like the usual two-week cheap thrills. I was actually infatuated, interested, aroused, seen? I secretly treated him like my prize for being myself. In the context of romantic relationships, a lot of people have a standard of being your whole self as compared to seeking out a job. For the first time in a long while I allowed myself to actually be my authentic self, the good and the presumable bad. While as I mentioned earlier, this expedition hasn’t been a smooth course and that never felt unmotivating, the consequence of being myself in that short affair was really unmotivating that It made me aware of the paradox of truly being myself.

I remember writing my second of two paragraphs that I have ever sent to a man explaining how I feel, something that makes me want to projectile vomit all over my screen when I think about. Doing it I felt like it was something that I owed to myself, not to him, not to the world but to myself as a sort of principle. The rejoinder to that or truthfully put, the riposte snapped me back to reality. I felt misunderstood and perceived which is probably one of the reasons I don’t necessarily entertain the nudge to show myself authentically. It felt like that moment when you play a 10/10 niche film to someone whose favorite movie is blase action from 2016 where men thought pulling out guns would make your knees weak.

I have this interesting friend that I met sometime last year. He has the psyche of a tortured spirit, and I could tell that his Spotify was a gem that I needed to get my hands on. I remember often asking for it and he would always circumvent his way around my constant requests until one day when he told me that his music is something he likes to keep hidden and that he never truly shares his niche favorites because he believes he should gate-keep it from people. I used to think this was cheesy and folly until recently. Why should I be so hasty to share the deepest parts of myself, why must I welcome people to the softest underbelly (not a sex reference I promise) of myself so indisputably?

Many will argue that not being authentic is a form of lying it’s a disservice but only to themselves, only once in a while it becomes unjust to yourself and maybe sometimes it’s all about picking your poison because the way I see it, being your true self around other people and the lack thereof are both equally poisonous. There’s no standard, no principle, no particular doctrine around it and that’s the ironic beauty of free will. I don’t know where I stand anymore, authenticity to me is a is a six-sided dice that I roll on the board of dialogue, whatever context. I hope for a 1 but sometimes I get the 6 and I am afraid. Sometimes I deceive the players and myself and sometimes I am honest, and the consequence plagues my mind with guilt. It’s a detrimental paradox that can’t be solved.

If I’d have to pick out a singular element of life that is exceptionally great it’d have to be the ironically heterogenous nature of being; the mystery of growth and how we keep getting reborn over and over as a result of everything around us. There’s no destination in this experience and I absolutely thrive in that. Today I pacify my loud mind with a menthol cigarette that sizzles into grey as smoke dissipates on my ceiling in a familiarly seductive dance. A couple of years ago I’d be sat outside my bedroom window which rests adjacent to my mother’s flower bed and I’d do the same with a lolly as I watched spiders slowly course through their invisible webs that only once, by a trick of light, would reveal themselves in short transitory moments. I have always been a romantic and that aspect has been tuned into diverse semblances all through my life.

There is something exceptionally sensational about this current state I’m in; I have been cooped up in this studio unit I share with my cat Kat rewatching old and new Tv shows; Castlevania, Gilmore girls, Blood drive, Fleabag and now The Fresh prince of Bel-Air. I mix them all as I scorch my mind with knowledge that will probably never apply in real life situations like did you know that teenage Will Smith is probably the hottest thing that ever-graced TV or That the Shins played live in Gilmore girls? My health is dissociating as I keep stuffing junk in my system and I can sense it from the rash on my hand from the sugar I consistently consume. This cigarette sends me into a euphoric daze and it gives me the awareness of the thought of being alone like this with no one to touch, no one to talk to and no one to look at. The only regretful thing about the smoke is imagining it grow into a finely defined rot of cancer in my lungs. I get overcome with sadness when I break the third wall and watch myself from a corner in my living room completely besotted by solitude herself. This sadness almost always transcends into something much more, it doesn’t make me want to sob on my carpet, I feel light and strong, I feel beautiful and drunk, I feel blessed and alive. I want to be like this for a while.

I can’t really talk about this with anyone. I’d usually post a relative brain rot meme on my pseudo account on Instagram, hiding behind ironically transparent anonymity and someone will report my post and I’d similarly get a notification to ‘seek help’ with a helpline number. This has been happening frequently; Someone somewhere watches me express my romantic melancholia and they mistake it for illness and that got me wondering, am I ill?

I suppose I find myself here using my pen as a sword or whatever it was that Ken Follet said. After immense research I am here to once again validate my lore, perhaps this will earn new recruiters to the movement. One thing that led me to this post is the sad state we are in where the scarcity of romantics seems to be coming more and more utterly visible. We have become slaves to psychology (I completely despise this entire brain wash tradition, maybe one day I’ll get into that) and realism which is something all the poets and artists fought so hard to overcome. Maybe this little thesis is just me painting hope on the canvas of contemporary noise. Let’s get into it! (The premise of my prose is too long but a Uni supervisor who helped with my paper kept telling me that my abstract is supposed to be my heart sitting right below my title, audacious and naked to everyone that opens it.)

THE FLESH AND BONES THAT BECOMES SADNESS

The term Melancholia is very diverse and due to its nature, is very often misunderstood. I am writing from a romantic point of view so my definition may differ from the commonly understood terminology which describes it to be a feeling of deep sadness, almost as if the initial sadness transmuted into melancholia itself. This is in fact true but quite vague as it leaves behind complex undertones which build it into what it really is, an aesthetic. The term melancholia morphed from the Greek term melaina Kole/black bile props to Hippocrates, a Greek philosopher and physician who would later on influence the works of Galen.

Hippocrates proposed a very interesting theory on the four humours which suggests that there are four bodily fluids (humours) that are responsible for the balance of personality in human beings. The four fluids consist of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. An imbalance in either of them could correspond to a shift in health which very much composed of mental state. Take yellow bile for instance, its imbalance i.e. too much secretion of it in the gall blader could result to irritability and aggression. The theoretical cause of melancholia would be an excess production of black bile hence the term melaina kole.

The interesting thing about this theory was its proposition during a time when science was nothing but a mere infant trying to stand on its hind legs; Science was always changing in its course to development (It still is) and so it might even strike you as outrageous that your body secretes black bile, it doesn’t. Black bile was nothing but a mere assumption and it didn’t quite exist which makes this whole theory unpersuasive. Nonetheless, this did not quite rule out the autonomy of the melancholic mood, it just made it unexplainable and complex. It was being viewed from medical lens which is once again a big undoing of humanity (Med students give me some grace, don’t persecute me) Philosophers like Aristotle had already started contextualizing it perhaps even obliviously. Aristotle wrote in one of his popular texts, Problemata Physica which happens to be one of the broadest works in the corpus Aristotelicum, “Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics?” Black bile was at its peak of being associated with creativity and intellect.

Enter the middle age when the catholic church had immense influence all over Western Europe; think education, politics, medicine, life. Melancholia was an unholy ascendancy that was often inextricable from spiritual despondency. Monks described it in their works as an element of temptation, entwined with despair that disengaged them from God. You had to stray from the darkness of despair which was ultimately accompanied with a lot of negativityand find the light, it was not just an illness it was sin. Some contemporary sects still believe in this mostly because melancholia is and has always been confused with depression. The African society, derived from personal experience, has a way of using religion as a cure for sadness. It’s very common to have prayers as a rehabilitation tool for not just sadness but any negative emotion that overwhelms the subject.

The Renaissance was the period when a little bit of light started to shine over everything in the shape of modernity. It marked the transition from antiquity to a sense of novelty that rejected ancient ideas. Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino was part of the wave when he reimagined black bile as a source of intellect and artistry. He linked the mood with astrology by arguing Saturn’s influence on it that translated into artistic talents while also concurring to the ancient idea that it might be a sort of illness of the mind. Thisromantic ambience also influenced the works of Albrecht Durer; Melencolia I which is arguably one of the coolest things I have ever laid my eyes upon.

Albrecht Durer; Melencolia I

 The captivating engraving shows a winged, human-like, brooding figure occupying the central area, it sits in a slumped manner with a hand holding her head. Around it are tools (compass, saw, nails, hammer etc.), instruments and strange objects such as thepolyhedron siting on the left. On the upper left corner nests a celestial object that resembles a comet inducing bright light and over it, a rainbow that shimmers scrupulously. A scrawny animal-like figure of a dog is huddled next to the subject’s feet almostcompelled with dread. Above the figure, a winged childlike figure sits holding a stylus, similarly in a brooding mood. Durer’s engraving is clouded by so much symbolism, much of which pays homage to the romantic nature of melancholia itself, hence the title Melancholia I. For instance, the winged figure that appears to be the subject represents the autonomy of melancholia, which in this period was one of Hippocrates 4 undesirable humours (black bile). Her celestial nature represents an elevation in intellect (an angel just gained her wings!). This aspect paradoxically shows the dual nature of melancholia; its sadness entwined with the mystical gifts of artistry and intellect.

The talents have been well encapsulated by the multiple tools all around from the compass that the subject holds to rulers, nails, compass etc. These are the potentials of the mood, melancholy inspires creation, it breathes life into a subject in the shape of creativity. I’m not great with shapes or their underlying meanings but the figure with many planes is a polyhedron. The name itself makes you think about mathematics, particularly one of my least favorite topics in the subject. It is a manifestation of oracular elements of the subject (math) and nature itself. It can also be argued to represent the burden that comes with intellect that is unsolved issues that press down on a thinker. It’s a nudge towards grasping the intellectual mastery of the universe. Time ticks on the upper left area in the shape of hourglasses and scales, this is a great representation of mortality, I suppose you can interpret that however you like. The way I see it, I would brood and yearn over lifetimes just to fully grasp all the knowledge I can. The engraving speaks to me a lot because it’s a paradox in itself as it brings out the grand beauties of the melancholic mood while also representing its undoing (the sickly dog seems to be coursing toward death; this can be interpreted as the rot that the scholars believed to occupy the mind into madness if the illness isn’t cured.)

The renaissance period welcomed the romantic nature of melancholia which gifted a subject ironic creative genius while also maintaining the awareness that it was poison to the mind, a sort of illness that will later engulf one with madness.

You cannot understand the pleasure ‘certain’ people derive from melancholy without understanding the romantic period; the moment when people started understanding/describing/realizing the artistic nature of things, their subjectivity and beauty completely separating all these elements from realism. The romantic period was marked by a spurn of realist ideas. Writers, poets, musicians, artists etc.- as you well know derived an aesthetic nature to everything, including melancholia.

Most melancholy at that time, O Friend!

Were my day-thoughts, my nights were miserable;

Through months, through years, long after the last beat

Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep

To me came rarely charged with natural gifts,

Such ghastly visions had I of despair

And tyranny, and implements of death;

And innocent victims sinking under fear,

And momentary hope, and worn-out prayer,

Each in his separate cell, or penned in crowds

For sacrifice, and struggling with fond mirth

And levity in dungeons, where the dust

Was laid with tears.”

-WORDSWOTH IN THE PRELUDE, A REFLECTION OF THE HORROR OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

One of the most popular works that marked the premise of this movement is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge first published around 1798. Poets like John Keats and Lord Byron took over the movement influencing other artists. This period was the age of letting your guard down, a period in history that I believed I would happily thrive in. The entire concept of melancholy was romanticized in poems, music, paintings, books etc. It wasn’t a thing to be ‘fixed’ nor was it a thing to be feared. When I think about this period, I picture myself shifting (I can’t dance, I can only…shift/fidget) romantically to the darkwave rhythm of Lebanon Hannover, Gallow dance. I grasp things and concepts a like similar to clutching on a dead rose flower, there is some mystical undertones of beauty and sedated waves of thrill that enthralls me, do you feel it?

I’m going to try my best to maintain my cool swagger when I talk a little about the contemporary era that began from the 19th Century to present time. With the rise in psychology (tick) due to as we all know, evolution of beautiful, mysterious science (tick), melancholia was medicalized again (tick). People were now obligated to ‘seek help’ when they show any sign of the mood. The issue with this was its constant association with depression. These two concepts should however be viewed as independent of each other. Philosophy remained pushing for the separation of the two which gets us to the second section of this thesis; The Deconstruction.

DECONTRUCT, ALIANATE, UNDERSTAND.

When I think about the romantic period, I think rejection, revolutionand deconstruction, I think riot. It’s common in human nature to revolt emerging systems, this has been written all over history. Take the industrial revolution for instance, when people where losing jobs to machines and the Luddites emerged in Nottinghamshire destroying factories subtly inspiring a mood that prioritized nature and innate, diverse, human creativity. The romantic nature in itself was a revolution led by revolt of power. They deconstructed human emotion from science and gave it life through aesthetics. This is very similar to the punk movement that emerged in England only that the deconstruction was politically centered. This thesis calls for separation of melancholia from science and from the politics of what sub-culture is owned the right to appreciate its aesthetic without judgement, it calls for people to relish the beauties of art and stray, just a little from pragmatism.

The first step towards this is viewing depression and melancholia as two different objects. Depression can be characterized by feelings of severe sadness and dejection; the feeling can be prolonged and constant and most often paralyses one from doing their usual activities. Melancholy on the other hand is a feeling of reflectivesadness without any obvious cause. It’s very important to note that the elements that encompass the concept of depression include paralysis, hopelessness and pathology while that of melancholy is reflection and atemporality. Due to its pathological nature, depression is something that can very much be diagnosed, it’s an illness, its effects are very visible and could negatively impact a subject. Melancholy is a mood just like joy itself, in fact the two could be seen to mirror each other. Sometimes you are happy, you feel it but you can’t explain the origin of your joy, similar to melancholy. The mood sends a subject into reflection as opposed to depression which often debilitates a subject so much so that they cannot perform. The reflective nature of melancholy is the true essence of it; it’s the sap that many romantics chased.

It is however worth noting that looking at melancholy from a medical lens can present an overlap which often overlooks very essential diversities.

“The terms melancholy and depression refer to a composite that might be called the melancholy/depressive, whose borders are in fact blurred. . .”

-Julia Kristeva (Bulgarian-French philosopher and literary critic)

Kristeva for instance in noting this completely overlooked the distinction between the two. While also being very correct, her lack of illumination of the same categorizes the objects in the same plane which is very misleading.

Now that we have built a clear distinction by deconstruction, let’s magnify the object. What is the essence of melancholia? How does its true form look like? Is it really as grotesque as it has been popularly made out to be?

The reflective nature of melancholia.

Melancholia is not the only emotion that induces reflection in a subject, despite this being a distinguishing factor, emotions such as mourning can cause one to reflect. The reflective aspect of melancholia is quite very similar to mediation and both can be viewed in aesthetic lens. Reflection arising from melancholia can display itself in two circumstances; when a real object is involved and when its not. When a real object is involved, this supposes that reflection has been generated from a real-life situation. Take for instance ending a relationship with someone who you were in love with, it’s expected that some of the emotions that will compel you include sadness, the underlying love which I hear never goes away, longing among many other things. This situation is the object, its real and if someone catches you brooding in a corner you will tell them, ‘He was married’ you have a reason and that’s what’s important here.

A real object induces reflection; you will yearn for your lover as you feel his/her absence and that way you will start to reflect on it. I imagine reflection with center around ideas such as ‘what if things would have been different’ mixed with the dread of regaining those loving feelings without the object of your desire. Most often than not a sense of pleasure arises out of this reflection and one might even create something; an idea, a thought etc. which most artists could mold into art, music, literature etc. When a real object isn’t involved, the melancholic mood dawns on a subject almost out of nowhere. You could be sitting alone at night in a bus shuttle to your house, the atmosphere very light with subtle connotations of solitude and you will feel it lurking from your back, it’s a bittersweet feeling that causes you to reflect but you are not particularly happy.

This kind of uninvited melancholy is associated with solitude. When I was looking into this it struck me that solitude doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be alone. Perhaps you are not on the bus ride home with no one beside you, maybe you are having dinner with your friends at a restaurant, there’s clamor from cutlery slowly ticking on plates and glass, people are conversing all around, waiters are taking orders, soft music is playing in the background and your friends are catching up but you are fading away in the background, you don’t really know what it is, sadness, joy or thrill but something light is hanging above you and all you can do is relish it and reflect. Solitude is a very common denominator in the melancholic mood; you have to be very alone with just yourself to truly savor its sweet talents.

“Most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most. . .”

-Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy.

According to Burton, people who spend too much time are prone to melancholy. His theory on this is that these subjects retreat to natureto escape people and problems. My theory is some people enjoy their own solitude and most often than not, they might spend too much time with themselves that they start to yearn for human interaction and without really doing anything to reconcile it, they slip into the mood. Burton explains that these lonesome subjects develop imaginations between the past and present experiences which create the feeling of melancholy. Imagination can draw from memory as I have explained with the past lover. Its months down the line and you find yourself accompanied by solitude, you create imagination based on your past lover; maybe he locked his hair this time and kissed your hands more tenderly than you ever did, its sad and pleasant, its sublime.

“A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholized, and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done.”

-Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Once broken down and magnified, you can clearly understand that the melancholic mood is an aesthetic emotion that has been sought after by many artists and intellects. I feel like I’d be doing myself injustice if I didn’t decolonize the aesthetic and bring it home. For that I am going to do a study on it as well and if you are willing to stick around, maybe you’ll get to connect with it. What I can tell you though is the privileged it holds through prejudice on subjects that relish it. Women who romanticize melancholy are not treated the same as their male counterparts, there’s an interesting paper on this that you can read on the link below.

I was lying in bed a few weeks ago with one of my best friends. We were really drunk and we found ourselves introspecting out loud. I remember her bringing up one of our mutual girlfriends; a girl who I have grown to love out of our similar interests. I assume her to be a melancholic person as well from all her online content that I engage with; we read the same sad books, listen to the same darkwave/gothic music and more similar content along that fine line. She told me about a third party, a friend of hers who knows us both, that ‘felt sorry’ for our ‘melancholic lore’ and I remember bursting out in laughter. I was genuinely so surprised that someone actually thought that my art is a cry for help, something that calls for rescue. I was mostly surprised because this is one of the things I dearly love about myself; that I can easily transmute sadness and solitude into art, humor and beauty. If anything, I felt sorry for the stranger.

I often wonder if an African woman like myself can freely make melancholic art without looking like an outsider, without seeming ‘white washed’. The romantic movement didn’t only apply in Europe or Western countries; romanticism is a reaction to everything. It could be the songs freedom fighters sang as their marched to revolution, they found heart at the very spirit of despondency and suffering. It can be David Rubadiri’s beautiful poetry on the post-colonial disillusionment in Uganda, It could be the uplifting words of Chinua Achebe on the damage of colonial rule in African culture. Why police such a beautiful mood when you can submit to its gothic autonomy and have it had its way with your beautiful mind. The biggest undoing of our generation is realism, we have completely forgotten who we are and the potential of our beautiful minds. The romantics are declining into rationality and our art is dead, lets find the light and let go of ourselves, just a little bit.

Thank you for making it this far, please like and or share this with someone who you think will appreciate it as much as you did!