All The Things

At a family event a few weeks ago, I stopped paying attention when an aunt said something that immediately stuck with me. Mwanamke hachoki. A woman never tires. This event was to welcome the relatives of my uncle’s girl to the family. It was an event for the women, as said by the current patriarch and first born son of the family. The aunt is the wife of said first born son. This women’s event was staged under a tent, in my uncle’s compound. The men were seated a way off, on the veranda. The only masculine energy that graced the tent was of a probably six year-old kid who came with the relatives, and only because he could not leave his mother’s hem in the way of kids that age.

Hearing “a woman never tires”, when your feet are literally killing you and your brain is foggy from trying to keep everything sane and flowing in the effect of the event is a little stunning. Was I truly tired, I remember asking myself and straightening my back [some say I slouch when my mind wanders]. Two seconds later my posture shifted and resigned that I was, I remained powerless. That I could get tired. It didn’t matter how many things I had done, rounds I went through, backs I straightened. I could get tired, and I am woman.

It is the same with the conversations constantly happening on the Twitter app X. Threads emerge almost on a weekly basis, like of girl math, a harmless way of women expressing little quirks of overspending and overindulging with a limit. Girl math made sense to the girls, till a man pointed out how girls are lacking for not remembering the teacher covered in chalk dust and insisting one plus one was two. It is that Hosseini quote about a finger, to whom it belongs and where it points. It is the rape apologists typing essays about ‘logic’ and sides being taken. Horrible takes where people just say anything and get away with it.

I do get tired. Of hearing the same thing over and over again. The same sentiments that are so repeated that you can say them word for word and they leave their lips. I get tired of saying what I want, even though I know I shouldn’t.

Donald Glover said in an interview that he thinks the meaning of life is to love, and to care for the things that you love.

I don’t think there is an explanation that comes closer to this in the way I have chosen to be this past year. I have taken care of all that I love, that allows me to love, and that definitely loves me back. I have grown in more ways than one and gotten over things that I never thought I could. It puts me in a unique position, that of choosing to be loved in return.

He also said, Glover, that you cannot say ‘the world is shit’ because you are a part of it. Just like you can’t say ‘traffic is horrible’ since you, too, are traffic.

It is a lesson in appreciating all the things. The slim and slim-thick girls posting their photos on X, the nuances, your crush posting on those threads and replies saying they sometimes hate their girlfriend, your loved ones leaving, you getting tired.

You can always pivot. If the world is shit, make sure there is some of your shit existing in the world that you like. Make the tolerable shit.

The discourse over socials is of how men or women can get over the other better, more easily due to the overflowing abundance of the opposite sex. And this may hold truth [I can’t relate because it takes me ages to get over anything], however, I think you will know when you find your person. Not to say there is one person for each, but when you come across the one that jigsaws your soul, you will know. Be it friend or lover, a present spark is unmistakable. And you will fumble [and get fumbled]. Then you will try and replicate it, but a star never burns as bright the second time.

I’m not saying you will be unhappy, but the gnawing feeling of having fumbled a forever sounds crazy to me. A forever after holds you hostage and sucks the breath out of your lungs. Inasmuch as you will be with the next caller and shuffle at will, your person sticks by.

In ‘An Orchestra of Minorities’ Chigozie Obioma writes of a man who falls in love a couple of times, his first love being a bird.

It is a beautiful book, with stunning prose of a man who you actually kinda like because he is funny and is only placed where he is for circumstances. A victim of circumstance.

But he could have saved himself. He has access to a phone. He could have called Ndali, told her what happened. Yet he didn’t. That is the thing that kills her. Not him being angry at her for moving on. Not even the fire at the end. It is because he did not sum up the courage to talk to her. Ndali knew he had a phone. He had access to her but he decided not to. She moved on, and just when she is getting better, here he comes, zero communication skills, blocking her on the street, creepy stalker-y vibes. It’s jail time, for him. But he gets away, which isn’t that surprising.

I went on this tangent to say, we all make our choices. To tire is not one, but to take a much required seat when you are tired, that is entirely up to you.

You Up?

A ‘you up’ text at 2254 hours on a Sunday is reminiscent at best, and desperate on the other side. Sunday evenings, actually, all of Sunday is quite sacred, having been raised in a house where people had to be dragged out of bed for someone with a praise kink. The first day of the week, having spent a considerable amount of my childhood as a seventh day adventurer, has afternoons that spread long and thin, afternoons that force you to examine the difference between being lonely and alone.

A ‘you up’ text on a Sunday, especially when you read it the next day at 10 am, is hilarious, no matter where it comes from. It reminds you of things you never knew you’d think about again. Of trees, and ridges and one of the most beautiful sunsets you ever saw. Images replay in your head, in a blinding coexistence of all other times you waited for texts that are still coming. It’s a battle, up in there. A Barbie vs Oppenheimer of multiverse proportions.

In what is, objectively and totally in my opinion, the best piece of work to come out of the pandemic, Taylor Swift opens her folklore album with the song ‘the 1’. I could probably talk about the entirety of Folklore, but ‘the 1’ as an opener, is the best thing since State of Grace (acoustic version). I will try not to digress, and say, Taylor talks about a connection that she has just accepted to have ended. It is a song about that blissful time after letting go, when everything is light again and you come back to yourself. When everything is different, because what you thought isn’t anymore, and it is all okay. The perfection that is Folklore is nothing compared to the existential angst that ‘the 1’ provides. This song, this perfectly constructed song, makes me wonder if someone who sends a ‘you up’ text on a Sunday has ever reached that sense of release. Utter surrender to the universe and what it brings, despite the plans you had made over periods of time. 

This ‘you up’ text, having been read at 10 am, gave me questions. Were they looking for conversation? Who wants to talk to anyone on Sunday at 2254 hours, when Monday haters just want to get in bed, and I, in turn, was Looking For Alaska? If we had checked the phone, a habit I have rebuked from my sacred Sundays, would we have responded? Would the text have hung till Monday 10 am? Would we have been rude, or understanding of the solo essence that Sundays bring poorer souls?

A separate ‘you up’ text that comes at 10:58 am on a Wednesday is a whole other story. It is hilariously coincidental, especially when you are in the middle of talking about the one that came a few days earlier. It carries with it the  awkwardness of not knowing what else to say, when terms of endearment are no longer on the table. It is a highschool boy talking to a girl for the first time at a funkie because he has been forced by his band of brothers to make the shot. It is a right hand crossed over the body to hold the left elbow, a growing urge to scratch the head, and dry throat and sweat trickling down the arse while staring at a girl you daydreamed of all since the last funkie.

I don’t really know where I was going with this, but the essence of it all, is to look at the casualness that befalls a connection that was once your entire existence. It is a pity, could be a waste of time, and as Ms. Swift says, ‘…never by the same hand twice’.