I’ve always wanted to be untouchable, desperately so.

Lately, being untouchable looks like not wanting to be loved in return.

I really wish for a world where I have no desires of my own, no needs for you to meet, no voids for you to fill. I want to be completely capable of “unconditional” love. I want to miss you and not wonder if you miss me too. I want to reach out first, send reels, tell you random things that happen in my day, without wondering why you don’t do the same. I want to be so satisfied in getting to love you that I don’t need you to love me.

I wish modern love were not so hinged on reciprocity.

I am good at playing pretend. I easily convince myself that I want for nothing and have no care. It’s to a point where I completely shut out your own experience of me. I don’t hear you say it back when I tell you that I love you. I decide that the best thing is for me to have absolutely no idea about your feelings towards me. If I’m speculating at all, it will be pessimistic. I will start strong with assumptions like you’re tired of me, you want to be left alone, I’m smothering, I’m annoying, I’m excessive, I’m undesirable…

But amidst all the hard work I put into this game of pretense, I still face reality. Random nights when I’m cozy in bed, hoping sleep will take me so that I can make it through another day of lying to myself, I lie awake instead. A wave of sadness and hunger and strange melancholy washes over me. All that inner suppression finally catches up to me, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth and a sting in my eyes.

Weakly, as one who’s been defeated, I say, “I want to be loved back. I really do.”

I wish I were titanium, but when has metal ever loved someone?

I am human; soft, intricate, tender, and in need of love.

I have to ask questions like, “What are we?” because something in me needs a guarantee that you will participate in this little love fest of mine.

I want you to look for me, to reach for me, to demonstrate that my love is not just welcome but desired.

And sadly, it hurts when I realize that you’re choosing to stay away from me under your misguided notion of “space.”

I want to respect your wishes, but I can’t stop your choices from hurting me

I am so mortal, so human, not steel, certainly not titanium.

I want to be observed, then witnessed, then experienced, and cherished for a lifetime. I want to be held like I’m delicate because I am. I am fragile in ways I am only just starting to learn.

I want to love you so much so that your inability to love me back wouldn’t be a problem, but unfortunately it is. Love was not designed to be one-sided.

And I used to say, “Ugh, I’m so needy, it’s disgusting.” Now I say, “I deserve loving; there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Because who even taught us to be so ashamed?

With love,

Chinelolum.

Let this be a gentle reminder that needing love is part of being human.

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Muahhh ! 💋

It’s an occupational hazard. You don’t just walk into burning buildings expecting to leave untouched. The smoke clings to your clothes. The heat settles into your skin. Sometimes you save the house. Sometimes you don’t. But one thing is certain: you never leave exactly as you arrived.

Somewhere along the way, I became an emotional firefighter.

Not because I like chaos. Not because I romanticize brokenness. Yes, I admit that I enjoy the warmth and the daringness of doing something dangerous. But eventually, I became so familiar with the smell of smoke that I stopped asking why every relationship began with a fire.

There was always something.

A past relationship that hollowed him out.

A version of himself he no longer recognized.

A fear of commitment he couldn’t quite explain.

A wound he was still carrying.

A war with himself that started long before I got there.

And because I have always believed that understanding is one of the purest forms of love, I stayed.

I listened.

I understood.

I softened.

I held space.

I became remarkably good at loving people in the middle of becoming.

Until I realized something humbling: firefighters get burned. Despite their expertise and training.

Not because they don’t know what they’re doing.

But because fire doesn’t care. It is reckless and out to destroy everything it touches.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

I don’t want to keep arriving at burning buildings convinced that if I’m patient enough, kind enough, understanding enough, eventually the fire will go out, and someone will finally have enough of themselves left to choose me.

I’m often too busy clearing the smoke and the ashes, that I forget to ask whether this building could become a home I could actually live in.

You see I’ve started to notice the trend.

Meet a man at war with himself > Feel seen because aren’t I a woman so acquainted with battle > Build emotional intimacy > Become the safe place where he can lay down his armor > Learn: about the woman he loved before me, or the heartbreak that changed him, or the fear that keeps him from trying again > Absorb: tell myself that understanding his reluctance is the kind thing to do > Wait until it hurts incredibly > Leave a little too late > Repeat.

It’s almost mechanical now.

And the most painful part isn’t that they never cared, it’s that they often did.

They laughed with me.

They trusted me.

They let me see parts of themselves they kept hidden from other people.

There was light.

There was laughter.

There was love.

But still not the choosing. That’s the part I’ve never known what to do with.

If they had treated me poorly, I could have left angry.

If they had never cared, I could have dismissed it.

Instead, I am left holding something much heavier: the knowledge that someone can genuinely appreciate your presence while still being incapable of building a life with you. What a devastating thing.

Maybe because it reveals something deeper than the question “Why wasn’t I enough?”

Because much of that question doesn’t belong to the people I’ve loved, but to the little girl who was left wondering why her father didn’t choose her? (here we go again)

For a long time, I thought I just wanted affection. Until I got it and realized, it’s nothing without being chosen.

Affection says, I enjoy you.

Choosing says, I am willing to stay and build with you.

Those are not the same thing.

I’m tired of being useful.

Tired of being the person people heal beside.

Tired of being emotionally safe enough to confess everything to, but never emotionally significant enough to risk something for.

Tired of being worthy of vulnerability but not worthy of commitment.

So, I don’t want to do this anymore

I don’t want to hear how much you loved her.

Or how afraid you are of losing me.

Or how, if only we’d met at a different time, things might have been different.

I don’t want to keep mourning a man who is still alive with all the agency in the world.

I don’t want to be handed the aftermath of someone else’s war and told that love looks like waiting for the dust to settle.

Because maybe it does for some people, but it doesn’t for me. Not anymore.

I wanted to make room and be compassionate.

But that compassion has quietly become self-abandonment—the kind that asks me to survive on potential. Even worse to see myself as potential too; almost but not quite worthy, not quite enough.

I can understand why you’re afraid.

I can understand why you hesitate.

I can understand why your past still follows you.

None of that changes what it feels like to stand in front of someone who looks at you with tenderness and still cannot say yes. Someone who runs around in circles, expecting you stand perfectly still, awaiting their return.

Understanding has never been the problem. Staying has.

I thought because I could see the fire, I ought to stay and fight it.

But maybe I was just supposed to notice that the house was already burning.

I don’t have to become a firefighter standing in the ashes wondering why saving everyone else always seems to cost me pieces of myself.

I’m not saying I need a perfect person, or someone without scars.

I just need someone who isn’t asking me to love him through a battle he’s still choosing over us.

Because firefighters get burned.

I want to hold you with tenderness, but firefighters get burned.

I want to give you all the love I know you deserve, but firefighters get burned.

I want to witness your becoming as you rise from the ashes like a phoenix, but firefighters get burned.

And I am not even a firefighter, just a lover girl.

I can’t keep running into every fire I see.

You shouldn’t either.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Lover girls and boys alike, you have nothing to prove by hurting yourself.

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Muahhh ! 💋

I’m not an artist but I know this much—if you mix red with white, you get pink.

Are you a red flag? No. My flag is pink.

I have red flags, we all do. But then there is my white flag—the flag I fly in surrender.

I’m aware of my red flags so first, I try to save my lover from myself.

They call it sabotage; I call it mercy. You don’t need to come any closer. I know what you see and I can tell you it’s a facade. It’s carefully curated to hide every flaw like a perfectly blended concealer.

I know you see my expressiveness and you expect that to translate to vulnerability, but it doesn’t. I use words to pretend like I’m open, but am I? I simply choose the words that tell you just enough to satisfy you but barely scratches the surface of how I truly feel.

I don’t want to be spoken to half the time, and no I don’t expect you to read my mind. Just read the room and use the door. I’m not hard to impress just very easy to irritate. I don’t know how to show affection nor receive same. Loving is not my comfort zone, isolation is. Participating in the vulnerability of what it takes to love is a task I’ve considered not worth my time nor peace.

I’ll cringe at all your gestures and be embarrassed on your behalf. What are you doing trying to hold me, why are you staring so deep into my eyes? Do you really expect me to let you reach my heart? Do you fancy yourself someone who can walk through walls?

I know these things, but I still want love. So, what do I do? I raise my white flag. I surrender. I suppress myself to make room for you. I am too much, but I am also very good at being less.

I so much long to love that I forget everything that might possibly be wrong with me and make it my one mission to be right for you.

I have so much love to give but what if I don’t know how? What if my deep-seated fear of intimacy will always get in the way? What if my heart will constantly see you as a threat and enlist my body to fight you like a virus?

So, I do the next best thing—raise my white flag.

I watch a YouTube video, I ask ChatGPT. When I remember the One who is love itself, I pray. I educate myself in all the ways possible, just so I can love you.

I practice, I calculate, I figure it out. It’s not automatic, it’s not natural, but hey I’m doing it. I call, I text, I smother. I pour out everything I have until there’s nothing left over.

I am so desperate to deny myself to please you. There’s no such thing as I don’t want to. If I want love, I must want to.

I must be vulnerable—bare my guts out to you. I must listen and hold my sharp tongue. I must let you lead no matter how unwise I think you are. I will be a door mat if I have to. It sounds extreme but I’ll truly be anything you want me to be as long as it proves to me that I love you.

It is I who needs convincing. I need to collect evidence that my abandonment wounds won’t always get in the way. That I am capable of staying, giving and receiving, despite my daddy issues. I need a solid argument when this goes to the court of my history. The defendant is love, the prosecutor is fear, and my case is this: love is not a threat. It never has been.

So, I’m a pink flag, flawed enough to be red, desperate enough to be white but desperation has never been a real fix, so here we are in the in-between.

I want love deeply, but intimacy scares me, so I keep swinging between pushing people away and abandoning myself to keep them.

Pink is the fusion of passion and surrender, for the ones who feel too much and yet struggle to show it authentically. The ones who do not love at all or must erase themselves to even love a little.

But everyone wants green. So how does pink become green?

How does someone driven by both love and self-protection turn into someone capable of a sustainable, reciprocal love? How does one stop running when staying is like self-inflicted torture?

I guess we’ll find out one day. Until then I sway between stubbornness and surrender.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Author’s note: The “white flag” represents the difficult choice to lower one’s emotional defenses and become open to intimacy, which an unhealed heart will likely confuse with abandoning oneself. This is not an endorsement of self-erasure or remaining in an unhealthy relationship. Love should not require anyone to become smaller, silence their instincts, or abandon their boundaries. Surrender can be healthy when it makes room for autonomy, safety, and the needs of both people.

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Muahhh ! 💋

If you see that I’ve started what seems like a series, say a prayer that I stick to it because I almost never do.

Anyway, I’m back with more thoughts.

Honestly, taking my newsletter seriously will often require me to put all my mini paragraphs into one post, instead of waiting for them to become full articles. Sometimes a sentence is all I got and I like to believe it’s still worth sharing.

~ Solitude has always been one of my strong suits.

I am very good at being alone and while it looks effortless, I actually go out of my way to interact with the people in my life, even my own mother. Sometimes it’s because I have nothing to give—no wit, no humor, no story, as is often expected of me. I’d hate to be the girl who’d rather perform for people, chasing the high of their attention, than sit in my room. But in the past couple months, I’ve began to see the beauty in good company. Life is better with people in it and isolation is not the flex I once thought it was. I have powered through hours of cooking, workouts, and errands simply because I had a friend on the phone or right beside me. I also enjoy sitting quietly with a friend or sleeping off on calls because there’s something deeply soothing about shared silence.

I can do it alone, but I’d rather share it with you. Solitude should be an option, not my default setting. I shouldn’t always want to be left alone, but I should be able to enjoy my company if need be.

~ I’m just a tired babe.

It has come to my attention that I am perceived as someone with endless energy. It doesn’t help that I now have a routine of going to the gym after work so of course everyone sees me as super girl. Guys, it has to be God because I don’t know where else the strength could possibly come from.

Weeks like these past few ones subtly remind me that I have sickle cell because my fatigue is through the roof, I’m sleepy no matter how many hours I get at night, and I can’t seem to lift as heavy at the gym. In fact, I can barely walk a long distance. Unfortunately, sickle cell doesn’t have the PR other chronic illnesses have, so it’s hard explaining it to people. When I say I’m tired, I mean it on a very deep level. Will I show up? Yes. Will I go about my day? Absolutely. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that I rarely ever feel truly energized. At least gone are the days when I used to skip meals because how was I even functioning on such low fuel? To finish it all off, I am a woman and apparently, all the talk about hormones and their impact on energy is true. God help me.

~ Hard conversations

I have had a couple hard conversations with a friend, and they’ve made me realize that when they say communication is key, they really meant that it’s the only way to keep your heart open. Open for love to come in and resentment to go out. Said friend definitely made it easier to express myself but I’m still very proud of how accepting I’ve been of my feelings to the point of expressing them unapologetically. And the thing about having hard conversations is how they ease you into grief, if at all you’d have to grieve. There’s a quiet acceptance that comes with knowing you’ve laid it all out in honesty and courage. Whatever they decide to do with what you’ve shared is easier to handle because now you see that ignorance is no longer an excuse for them. Have that hard conversation today. And that’s advice for me given that there is one conversation I’ve been procrastinating for weeks because you can never really go back after expressing yourself.

This update is long overdue, but your girl is busy surviving in the streets of her 9-5 job.

Thank you for reading this log. If this felt like a walk through a friendly hallway, subscribe so you never miss an entry. And I’d love to know — what’s been living rent-free in your head lately? Leave it in the comments.

Muah!! 💋

“I loved you differently because, for the first time, I could love you and me simultaneously.”

In the rare occasion that I ever told someone I loved them, what I was really saying was, I love me.

I loved the version of myself I became around them. I loved what they awakened in me. I loved how someone else’s presence could soften my edges and coax me out of hiding. I loved the freedom of becoming someone less guarded, less cynical, less afraid. I loved meeting a version of myself that I didn’t know existed until they reflected her back to me. I loved the layers of self I got to unravel because of them. It was always more about insight than intimacy.

But then there was you.
You made me feel both things at once.

I love what you did to me.
The way you stilled me. The way you taught me safety without ever trying to. The way you made authenticity feel less like something I was trying to become and more like who I already am. The way the voices in my head that constantly questioned whether I was too much, too intense, too unsafe, slowly grew quieter because of the way you looked at me and listened to me.
You made me like the person I was becoming.

But I also love you. I genuinely do.
Not because of what you did to me, but because of who you are.
I love your heart—the way it always seemed to lean toward gentleness before judgment. I love your faith. I love your honesty, even when it hurt me.
I love the way you made room for difficult conversations instead of running from them. I love the way you carried people; often putting the spotlight on them.

I really like who you are. Not just your qualities, nor your actions, but your actual entity. Dare I say I admire your humanity. There’s a certain beauty in how you embody your flaws and your pursuit of perfection, that makes me want to be your biggest cheerleader.
And somewhere along the way, my admiration became tender affection.

So, in the end, the feelings were never just about me.
They were never just about you either.
“They’re our thoughts,” you once said.

Maybe that’s why this grief feels different.
It isn’t only the loss of what could have been.
It’s the sudden homelessness of a love that had already learned your name.

People tell you to let go as though love is something you hold in your hands.
It isn’t.
For me, love has always been something I become.
It is the meals I want to cook.
The prayers I want to pray.
The small details I want to remember.
The comfort I want to offer before it’s asked for.
The celebrations I want to make bigger.
The burdens I instinctively reach to carry.

When I love someone, I don’t just feel differently.
It makes me want to live differently.

So, when that love can no longer be expressed in the ways it longs to be, it doesn’t simply vanish. It stays. It slowly morphs into grief. It quietly asks the question I still don’t know how to answer…
If my love can no longer live with you…
Who will house my love?

I had left this piece in my draft because it felt incomplete and I think it’s because love can’t exist in a vacuum. I read a post on here by that talked about prayer as the most beautiful love language. There was a line that said…

And maybe that’s why prayer feels so universal. I think prayer is where that love goes when it has no place left to stand.

Isn’t that beautiful? Here I was wondering where love goes when it cannot be housed by the one it’s addressed to, only to find the answer in prayer. What a sacred answer. That love can be offered at an altar where the incense of intercessions burns so fervently. I think that’s divine, I think prayer will indeed suffice.

With love,

Chinelolum.

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Muahhh! ❤️

Dating has always been such a strange concept to me.

I’ve never understood how people date to “see where it goes.” How they bravely step into such level of uncertainty; beginning something without knowing where it’s headed. Or how people date to get to know each other, because it always begged the question, “What then is friendship for?”

Every conversation about dating seemed to assume that exploration was normal, while I was always somewhere sitting in the corner thinking about destinations, certainty, and how anyone can be so adventurous.

So, I made up my mind that dating must lead to marriage, like an audition for a role. But as soon as one party decides that they do not see a perfect fit, they must walk away cleanly. No interdependence holding anyone back. If you know where this is going, you’d know when it becomes unproductive, and come out unscathed.

It’s not because I believe you should only date who you’d marry; I actually agree to figuring that out along the way, when you have that dramatic epiphany of wanting to do this forever.

Yet, I streamlined dating as a road to marriage because my brain needed a way out of the uncertainty. If I pat myself on the back and say this is forever, then maybe I’d stop bracing for a cruel ending of something I’ve always known to come with an expiry.

But lately, I’ve realized that for many people, myself now included, dating is not just about adventure but about permission—the kind that answers the question, “Who am I allowed to be to someone I love?”

I want to date you

I want to be allowed to love you.

We live in a society where brows are raised at mere acts of kindness, intentions are vetted for purity, and boys and girls can’t just be friends.

Titles and labels, as imperfect as they are, are permission in our society. They answer the question, “Who is she to you?” They say, “Oh, this is why she gets to do these things. This is why she has the right to care this deeply.”

For the longest time, I believed friendship should be vast enough to hold the love I have for someone. I wanted “she is my friend” to be enough permission.
But is it? Is the watered-down version of friendship we often end up with enough?

And even though it was, my feelings must’ve outgrown it, or I’ve been asking friendship to carry what was never friendship at all.

When someone asks me in what capacity I’m doing all these things for you, and I have no answer that matches the weight of my affection, is that fair?

Why won’t you tell everyone that I’m allowed to do this?
Why won’t you give me a title that gives me the authority to carry out the duties of my love for you?
How can I love you if you don’t want permit me to?

“Let’s be friends,” and before we know it, you’re asking me to withhold myself because I’m not permitted to love you the way I want to.

Having to trap it all within myself is suffocating.

I can’t just give it to someone else because it has your name on it.

Can you see my dilemma?

And when the life coaches say, “Pour it back into yourself”, I sigh because they don’t seem to understand that loving you fully is loving me too.

So that’s what’s changed.
I’m becoming more open to the idea of dating. Not because I’m suddenly brave. Not because I’m no longer terrified of intimacy. Not because I think relationships are less risky than I used to. If anything, I’m just as afraid.

But I’m beginning to realize that if dating grants permission to love someone intentionally then it’s an odd I’m willing to take.

To let my tenderness become directional instead of constantly wondering whether I’ve overstepped. To devote myself without apologizing for caring too much. To stop shrinking my love to fit a container that can no longer hold it.

Because I’m so painfully aware that the more I get to know you, the deeper I’d want to go in expressing my love for you.

But I don’t want to be the pathetic girl who overplays her role and does too much. A character in a familiar story: she cares more, waits longer, gives more, gets hurt, and looks foolish afterward.

I draw the line at looking foolish because I work so hard to rid myself of internalized shame.

So, this is not about exclusivity, or even reciprocity, it’s about legitimacy.

Love has duties, and duties require a role. Roles don’t create the love, but they authorize what it’s allowed to become; how far it can reach, how obvious it can be.

And in some masochistic way, I often subject myself to the pain of wanting more but never allowing myself to have it because what even is dating? I guess I’m finding out.

So…

I am your friend. A friend who loves you. A friend who doesn’t have permission to love you in all the ways she wants to. A grieving friend. A restrained friend. A friend who can’t become a lover but must not return to a stranger.

A friend, nonetheless.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Whenever I read something relatable, I roll my eyes and scrunch up my nose because how dare the writer invade me so. I hope this piece has you rolling your eyes or scrunching your nose, but please don’t let it infuriate you. It’s a transcript of my heart, not law.

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Muahhh! 💋

I have an irrational fear of hurting people.

Not because I think I’m incapable of it, quite the opposite.

It’s because every time I do, I am convinced I’ve just witnessed the beginning of the end.

It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other, how much love has been exchanged, nor how many times we’ve shown up for each other.

One painful moment, one disappointing interaction, one careless mistake, and suddenly I’m bracing myself for the switch.

The distance. The slow replies. The quieter laughter. The version of them that no longer reaches for me.

I’ve realized that I don’t think of love as something that can be repaired. I think of it as something that can only be depleted.

In my head, love is an account.

Every time I hurt someone, a withdrawal is made.

Every misunderstanding. Every moment I fail to meet them where they’re at. Every version of me that falls short.

Debit.

Debit.

Debit.

And because I don’t believe deposits count for nearly as much, I’m constantly wondering how much is left.

Surely this is the mistake that empties the account.

Surely this is the crack that lets all the love leak out.

So, I keep the cracks visible. I never fully heal. I don’t forgive myself because I’m anticipating the day I’ll realize that they never truly forgave me.

If I move on too quickly, then I’d miss the moment they switch up. What if I forgive myself, relax, and then one day I’m blindsided by someone deciding they’ve had enough?

But if I never fully let go, at least I can tell myself I saw it coming.

It’s a strange way to feel safe.

The funny thing is that I’ve never consciously believed people should love me less because I’ve hurt them. I’ve just always assumed they eventually would.

Maybe that’s because I know what it feels like to be on the other side: the one who was hurt.

I don’t know about superheroes, but I believe in villains.

I learned to villainize the people who hurt me because it felt like the safest way to make sure they couldn’t do it again. It’s my kind of justice. It makes leaving easier. It keeps me from romanticizing them. It reminds me of what they’re capable of, so I don’t keep returning with expectations of safety.

If someone hurts me, I rehearse it. Not because I’m unforgiving, but because I’m overly self-protective.

If I forget what they did, how will I protect myself?

Forgiveness makes sense.

Forgetting feels like sabotage.

It feels like I’m betraying myself. Like I’m taking away the one tool that has always helped me survive: memory.

Almost like I’m shrinking back into that little girl who couldn’t let herself believe the father and the monster were one and the same. Wide-eyed with expectation, crushed by reality.

So maybe that’s why hurting people terrifies me so much: I expect them to make me the villain too.

Doesn’t everyone want to protect themselves?

But I guess I’ve misunderstood safety and secure attachment.

I thought security meant never hurting the people you love.

Never disappointing them. Never giving them a reason to leave.

But what if security isn’t built by the absence of hurt but by the presence of repair.

Apparently, people don’t keep emotional ledgers the way I do; instead, they build histories.

Histories where hurt exists alongside laughter, honesty, apologies, grace, ordinary Wednesdays, difficult conversations, and choosing each other again.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been so confused when someone tells me I hurt them… and then stays.

How can you still see me the same?

How can your affection survive this?

Aren’t you going to lose interest, pull away, and most importantly, protect yourself?

What I’ve failed to notice is that I’ve almost always loved people far more than I’ve hurt them. They trust the love I’ve shown, more than the hurt they’ve just felt. They choose my track record.

Yet the moment I become the source of someone’s pain; I treat it as a verdict on my character instead of a moment in our story. As though my worst moment suddenly becomes my truest one.

Then I shame myself until I believe I deserve the punishment I think they’d give.

Lately, instead of punishment, I’m met with grace, and grace ever so often says, “Love doesn’t require believing you’re irredeemable every time you fall short.”

Love isn’t proved by perfection. It’s proved by what happens after you err.

Character is revealed less by whether you hurt people than by what you do when you realize you have.

Telling the truth. Listening without defending yourself. Apologizing. Repairing what can be repaired.

Because the cracks aren’t evidence that love is leaking out. They’re simply the places where love is asked to do what it has always done best:

Withstand.

There doesn’t have to be a good guy or bad guy, just complex people, willing to love.

Is this the beginning of the end? Maybe not.

With love,

Chinelolum.

To those who need a new lens on love.

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Muahhh! ❤️

Photo credit: Old-fashioned way on Pinterest

Not here with an opinion piece, just the kind of article that leaves you feeling like you strolled down the bustling halls of my mind. Ps: this is my attempt to quiet it down a little bit.

Hi, I’m Chinelolum and for some silly reason, I now allow people call me Chi. Chi in my native language (Igbo) means God, the full name means God has thoughts for me, and in an interesting way, knowing God has thoughts, comforts the thinker in me.

Maybe it’s a God-like thing to have a mind that ponders the way mine does. I barely ever refer to myself as an overthinker because in my humble opinion, I just think.

Anyway, here are some of my prevalent thoughts…

“Am I building muscle!?”

I have mentioned becoming a gym girl here before but guys, I might actually be on to something! I was sitting at the dresser in my room and without locking my thighs, I could feel muscle; firm, warm, tension blending in with what was once all squishy flesh. It’s such a satisfying feeling to see your body change, not a change born of self-hate and torture but of experiment. The gym for me right now is about putting my body in a lab to test how capable it truly is. The other day, I saw a reel of a lady do a full body push up and I had been trying to get one for a while, so I randomly decided to try again. People of God, I did it! Best believe I called all my friends to show them. Realizing that I’m in control of my body has done wonders for the way I see myself. The Substack police said we shouldn’t be too open on here, so I won’t talk about my lifelong body image struggles but just know that I’m healing.

“Yearning is pathetic.”

Articles will be written and podcasts will be recorded about the things I have learnt on the topic of shame. It’s been transformative to stop being so ashamed of my feelings in whatever form they show up. But you see yearning? I can’t help but feel pathetic about it. What do you mean I’m going on a walk and I break down in tears because I miss you? It’s such a puzzling feeling to be actively living without you yet feeling like I can’t. I’m occupied with my little life, pouring into myself, being my own best friend but something about your absence makes me question the real quality of my life. And fine is always my goal, I just want to be fine. But when you meet people who introduce you to fancier feelings like happy, safe, or even soft? Fine becomes so unsatisfactory. The burden of yearning is heavier when you can actually be okay without them. You are genuinely fine…just cursed to feel their absence even after filling the gaps they left.

“God is pleased with me.”

Psalm 37:23 NLT “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.”

Whether it’s building muscle or yearning for someone’s biceps, you’d find me thinking about love; you’d find me thinking about God. And when all is said and done, I’m just a girl who wants to please God. Nothing has been harder to accept yet humbling to acknowledge than the fact that God is pleased with me. I think about it often and it washes so much warmth over me.

I believe it, I hope you do too.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Thank you for reading this log. If this felt like a walk through a friendly hallway, subscribe so you never miss an entry. And I'd love to know — what's been living rent-free in your head lately? Leave it in the comments.

Muah 💋

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I have come to the interesting realization that I am, in fact, a busy bee.

I’m one month into my internship and four months into the job itself. I worked part-time during the semester, and now I’m getting a taste of what it’s like to do this full-time. I ask with genuine concern: How do people do this every day?

I’m the kind of person who looks forward to a break whenever something feels tiring or unfamiliar. When the semester gets overwhelming, I think about the upcoming holiday. When the holiday gets boring, I teleport mentally back to the semester, where there’ll be something stimulating again. I’m always looking for loopholes in every system—avenues to escape to days when I can do as I please.

Sometimes I want to be perfectly still. Other times—maybe most of the time—I crave the hustle and bustle. When I have too much time on my hands, I miss my routine. When my routine starts feeling like bondage, I miss the freedom of an unplanned life.

But real life doesn’t come with built-in breaks. Productivity is a fundamental part of being human. The semester ends, but work continues. The holiday comes and goes, and Monday returns. Eventually, there will come a time where holidays are not a given.

Maybe what I’m realizing is that life isn’t meant to alternate neatly between work and freedom. It’s mostly learning how to live somewhere in between. To find flexibility in the routine. To not see the days of freedom as days when living stops altogether. To accept that this is life, and it never truly stops. It expands, it changes, it intensifies, but it doesn’t stop.

As I was saying, I am a busy bee.

I plan my days before they come. My months, even. If not for the uncertainty I have about the exact path my life will follow, I would have planned my entire life, day by day. I would pick an engagement day, a wedding day, the day I release my first book, the day I start that podcast with my friend. If I could be in control of every tiny detail, I would. But I’ve learned to stop playing God in the name of planning.

I digress.

I came to the conclusion that I am a busy bee, because I get a productivity high every time I accomplish a task. I move through my day ticking things off my to-do list, and it gives me great delight.

I have fellow interns who want to do the barest minimum and lowkey hate the job, but I can’t relate. I love my job because it’s a job. I get to be busy. That’s the whole point.

I get to walk around in my corporate pants and business casual shirts, drunk on success. I learn something new, or I make a mistake that becomes a lesson in giving myself grace. I get remarks like, “Good job, Chinelo,” from my superiors, and it keeps me going. I come in the next day looking for another good job. Sometimes I go unnoticed, but it doesn’t faze me. It’s not about the applause, or even the pay. It’s about the thrill of doing something I’m proud of. Or maybe just doing something at all, for whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.

It’s the aesthetics of oolong tea in the morning, sitting at my desk and responding to emails. It’s telling the customer, “I’d love to help you with that,” and actually meaning it. Because I do love helping you. I’m keeping score of what I accomplished today, and you get to be on the list. It’s a win-win situation.

I’ve been told before that I’m a Type A person: time-oriented, driven, competitive, ambitious. But I’m not one to put myself in boxes or categories. I do, however, believe that at heart I’m just a girl who lives in the sweet spot between taking things seriously and not taking them too seriously at all.

I love my life. I love living.

Whether that looks like a corner office or a difficult course, I can’t help but fall in love with the things I do.

I firmly believe that you won’t always do what you love, but if you love yourself enough, you’ll learn to love whatever it is you do.

When it comes to building a lovely life, you have to let that love spill over into everything you touch. Your work, your relationships, your routines, your ambitions—all of it.

And when something stops reflecting the love you have for yourself, that’s your cue to leave.

Maybe that’s why I’m a busy bee.

Not because I’m obsessed with productivity or achievement, but because I genuinely enjoy being engaged with my own life. I like having somewhere to be. Something to do. Someone to help. A challenge to solve. A reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I am a busy bee. I suppose there are worse things to be.

With love,

Chinelolum.

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If you ask me what I have been up to lately, my response would be adulting.

After an exhausting semester, I’m finally on my summer break, but it has literally felt like one big catapult into adulting.

I got an internship for the summer, working in IT support. You know, woman in STEM and all that jazz. So, my daily life now looks like that of a twenty-something post-grad woman working a regular 9-to-5, starting right at the bottom of the career ladder.

I had to quickly switch gears from student to intern, but I had been mentally preparing for this for a while, so I’m not exactly thrown off by it.

I wake up at 6 a.m. after testing 7 a.m. for a week and realizing that although getting to my job is just a walk down the street, I still need more than an hour to get ready if I’m to clock in by 8 a.m. I stretch every morning on my yoga mat; I even sweat a little. I drink my warm lemon water, sometimes with chia seeds, and get on with my day. I make my bed on days when I’m feeling extra detailed. I go to the kitchen to pack my breakfast, and lunch which I must’ve already prepped the night before.

I play worship music and talk to God to get my mind right, then I get to showering. In the shower, I say, “Hey, this girl, stop caressing your body and hurry up,” every single day because I somehow think time stops when I’m in the bathroom.

It does not.

Then it’s on to my five-step skincare routine that I follow judiciously. Someone at the office told me that I always look moisturized, and I was like, yes, absolutely, that is the goal. My skin is dry as dust, so you will find me layering lotion and oil every morning. I finish off with sunscreen because I must protect myself from UV rays. Then a little extra touch on my face: brush my brows, mascara on my lashes, and the ultimate lip combo.

By the time I’m out the door, I always say, “Tomorrow, I will wake up earlier,” because there never seems to be enough time.

Safe to say that I have the perfect morning routine.

But honestly, it’s more like an anchor. I didn’t realize how important these little rituals were until one day, I was on a call with my friend Jojo, who is also doing an internship. We were talking about our routines, and I said, “Wow, Jojo, this is the so-called adult life oh. Busy weekdays, 30-second weekends, rinse and repeat. No time to breathe.”

She said, “Ah, Chinelo, this is it oh. There’s nothing else to it.”

That got me thinking.

I don’t want to be someone who works a soul-sucking job that takes all the color out of her life and turns her into a machine. I don’t want to abandon other parts of my life just because I work. Then I found myself saying, “I don’t want to work a 9-to-5.”

Yet the bitter truth is that not everyone can escape the office and freelance through life. Those CEOs you admire once had desk jobs they were faithful at before they rose to the top. So, if I have to trek through the corporate world before I pursue something else, then I must at least romanticize the routine.

I must build a life I truly enjoy.

Starting with a stable morning routine. I locked in with the one I have now, and I never skip a step. Then came an after-work routine that feels like pouring back into myself. And just like that, guys, your girl is in the gym.

If friends invite me out, I go without treating it like a waste of time. I am not meant to be so burnt out that I forsake connection and isolate in the name of rest.

I take time to watch a movie, continue my ten-seasons-long series, read a novel, journal, go on a therapeutic walk, cook something from my hundreds of saved recipes, anything and everything to excite myself in the ordinary.

So many people lose themselves to the weight of their jobs. Skipping meals, disregarding body care, doing nothing for their mental health, and some are single, living alone, so there is no love waiting at home either. And those little ways in which they abandon themselves compound into burnout that we all blame the job for.

But sometimes, it’s not just the job. It’s the way you made it your entire life.

This is the life. You must work, and you must be great at what you do. But if you play your cards right, you can still afford a vibrant life, no matter how much you give to the grind.

There is no constantly fun job, fun community, or fun routine. They are all monotonous and tiring in their own ways. There is just you. Your life is only as exciting as you are.

So, say yes to that Friday night movie. Try that online recipe for your meal prep this week. If you fancy dressing up like me, put together a nice fit for work and finish it off with a new scent you bought with your adult money. Find the beauty in the mundane. It does not have to be different to be cool, but it ought to be sustainable. Most importantly, it must make you feel good about yourself.

That priceless feeling that you are pampered and looked out for by no one else but you? Chase that feeling.

You deserve a life you love.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Thank you for reading this piece. I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve been in the corporate space, how do you find the balance? Leave a comment.

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Muahhh.💋

I came here determined to write something, anything at all, because I refuse to let this become another part of my life I abandon for ridiculous reasons. Self-consciousness being chief of them all.

I was greeted by ’s latest letter and she said to write back. So here I am, allowing her to inspire me as she often does. I do not have any deep, thought-provoking thing to say right now but like she said, “These days, I mostly write for myself.” I felt that.

I once let someone into the inner workings of my mind. But there I was in every corner, monitoring their perception of me. I watched the very twitch of their eyes when they read something I wrote. If they smiled, I was desperate to know what they found amusing, but if there was a joke in there and they didn’t catch it, I’d be crushed and immediately condemn my art. MY thoughts, MY words, MY tone, and eventually my entire existence. Tsk, what a sad way to live.

I told him that I’ve realized how self-conscious I am about the way my mind works and how people perceive me on a mental level. I’ve always valued being smart and witty, over being conventionally attractive. He said, “oh I know.’ And the next thing, I was fidgeting again at the thought of being trapped in his mind as one insecure silly girl. What do you mean you know!? So, you have perceived me and even labelled me!?

That’s when it clicked. My self-consciousness is actually just a rebellion against labels I cannot escape or even evolve out of. Ugh, boarding school was a land of labels. Labels so choking, they constantly distorted my identity as if I was not allowed to choose who I am. And you know the worst part about labels? They leave no room for growth, no grace for becoming. So, the older I get and the more I desire to accept myself, the more I want people to keep up with me. I am like a human iOS right now; I have a software update every fortnight.

So, promise me that you won’t hold me to who I was yesterday. That you will see me and say, “Hey, what’s life been teaching you lately?” Because I have been learning and if you ask nicely, I’d love to share.

It’s my mind. It’s words from my heart to yours. It’s my Substack and I’m proud of it.

With love,

Chinelolum.

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Okay guysss we’re backkk, did you miss us? ‘Because we missed you! (Please get the reference)

I am not making any lofty promises of consistency, but I intend to try. I want to be so much more committed to my art, and I hope you stick around for the journey.

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Muahhh 💗

My desire for community left just the way it came. Quietly.

But what dismissed it wasn’t disappointment, it was memory.

I remember now. I remember why I often kept to myself. I remember why solitude made more sense than connection. I remember the battles I had to fight to find the light in my eyes. I remember how quickly people dimmed that light not maliciously but by merely being..different, complex…requiring effort. Effort that barely goes into myself.

And I can’t help but wonder, if my thirst for community was just a desire for more of me. Does this deficit of connection that sits within my soul simply mean that there are parts of me I’m yet to explore? Am I my own adventure?

Now I’m uninterested. Now I’m tired. Now I don’t want it anymore. Because what’s the point of external desire that can only be internally satisfied? Emotional needs that only I can meet?

It’s a decidedly futile venture. It has more risks than returns. It’s a high you’re chasing but real life is lived in sobriety. So what then is the point?

This is not pessimistic or cynical. This, I fear, is the truth.

I’m not saying I don’t need people. I’m saying I don’t want them because unmet desire is slow poison. I’m not made for a life of endless longing. It’s too miserable to be someone who is insatiable.

I intend to be content. Desire challenges that contentment. The more I wanted community the more I reinforced in my mind that I’m not enough for me. But I am. I have to be. Who else is?

Everything I need the Lord will provide, not everything I want.

I have to accept that the only connections I get to have are the ones that contribute to my destiny not the ones I seek on a whim.

And those destiny ones? They’re here on assignment. They won’t indulge my desperate cries. They are not here to soothe me. They are here to move me. Wanting more out of them defeats their purpose.

So this is the aftermath of yearning. This is withdrawal. I have examined the cost of wanting and I’m no longer convinced it’s worth paying.

I’ve always been the girl who didn’t want anything and I remember now.

I remember why I avoided desire like the plague. Wanting a father. Wanting new cells. Wanting more than this provincial life. It didn’t leave me heartbroken, it left me fatigued. It left me drained.

So no, I don’t want it. But if in a holy twist of fate, I’d get to have it. Then, well, that’ll be great.

But wrote, “When community feels heavy, lighten the load; don’t dump it.”

And I can’t help but wonder what that will look like for a girl like me. Because if the rules of engagement are too much, I always choose to not engage. But I like Toni’s approach, I just have to figure out what it means.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Straight from the archives 💌

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I once came across a question: “Are you climbing the mountain for the world to see or for you to see the world?”

All it takes is one shift in perspective for us to realize that everything we do for applause is an adventure in itself. An adventure we ought to relish.

Yet we can’t appreciate it for the thrill it is because we’re focused on the wrong thing—applause. We all want an audience as if life is one big staged play.

And maybe life is just a show. But what if I told you that the acting is so much more important than the reviews. That being there, under the lights, giving all you have to embody the script you’ve been given is much more fulfilling than any cheer would be. Because it’s in the acting that you get to discover just how talented you are. You tap into parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. You test your limits. You come alive.

Why have we stopped seeing existing for the gift it truly is? Why do we want more life than life itself? And what on earth makes us think that we will get it from people who are just as wretched as we are?

You must’ve heard about sonder—the sobering realization that everyone is living a life as vivid as your own. If that is true then everyone is probably seeking an audience too. Everyone is as hungry for approval as you are. Which then poses the theory that if everyone is hoping to be seen then no one is actually living.

So what’s with the fantasy that the audience is somehow complete, qualified, or transcendent? When the people we want validation from are just as hungry themselves.

That’s why I can’t get behind performative love because why belittle something so great an experience to mere recognition from people who don’t even recognize themselves?

So when I’m asked if I’m climbing the mountain for the world to see or to see the world, I really hope my answer is the latter. I hope I’m always found choosing adventure over applause.

I hope I thrive without needing anyone to see me at it.

I hope I love for the sake of it. I hope I still cook when there’s no one to eat. I hope I write without a reader and speak without a listener.

I hope I’m satisfied with living, even when no one’s watching.

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Because an audience may see my life publicly without ever understanding it, while I—the one who’s living—may also be estranged from my inner life.

And we’re all plagued to ask the rather dull question, “If no one sees me, did it matter?”

Yes. It mattered because you were there. So learn to find enough meaning in the act of being alive.

Meaning is generated by participation not by witnesses.

It’s not a crime to want people to witness your life, that’s the root of our need for relationships. But the absence of a witness should never stop you from living.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Straight from the archives 💌

Thank you for reading this piece.

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Or don’t. I’d keep writing regardless. But please do. 🙃

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March brought me a gentle realization: I am capable of loving and trusting myself far more than I thought I was.

A huge chunk of that self-love and trust was tied to forgiveness.

After finding all the ways I traded my peace in February, I was really hard on myself. It’s a thing I do — I cry over spilled milk and hope that regret is going to make me wiser.

I’m convinced that if I hate myself for what I did, then I won’t do it again.

But the truth is, self-loathing is just poison.

It’s not a catalyst for change. It’s not productive in any way. It just makes you feel unsafe in your own body — a body you cannot escape.

So I had to forgive myself.

For my emotional reactions.

For all the tears.

For being weak and needy.

For exposing my vulnerabilities.

For abandoning myself.

Even for sidelining God.

But most of all, for my humanity.

I had to forgive myself for being human because I would much rather be a god.

Sometimes, I think I am above being human. But here I am, stuck in humanity — the kind that comes with a need for connection, a nervous system that needs regulating, a body that needs tending, and a mind so wild it must be tamed.

March said:

Chinelolum is human, but God can handle her humanity.

Chinelolum is human, so emotions are expected from her. They are normal, not an emergency.

Chinelolum is human. She’s complex, complicated, weird, and wounded — but Christ is her simplicity. His love interprets her in ways even she could never have done for herself.

Chinelolum is human. She will have desires. It is not a betrayal of contentment to want more than this provincial life.

Chinelolum is human. She will feel a wide range of emotions. Some are chemical, because hormones are interacting. Some are spiritual, because she hasn’t been praying. Some are psychological, because her mind is working overtime to protect her from pain. But they are all part of her human experience, and God is not unaware of them.

Chinelolum is human. She will get attached to someone who feels like an exhale after holding her breath for so long. She will get excited. Then she will want time, attention — anything that keeps the feeling alive. She will get a little entitled, but that doesn’t make her needy or spoilt. She’s just human.

Chinelolum is human. She will gravitate toward people in search of connection, safety, and solace. But because she is dealing with fellow humans, she may be disappointed. She may not find what she’s looking for.

But how she deals with that disappointment matters.

Will she make desire the villain and say, “I’ll never seek connection in people again. I’m fine on my own”?

Will she make the people villains and hate them for the same humanity she has?

Or will she accept that not all stories have villains and realize that what she wants is not perfection, but company — a human to be human with?

Because in acceptance lies great freedom.

Yet we can only accept others if we accept ourselves.

If love is accommodating a person’s humanity, and we ought to love others as we do ourselves, then love starts within.

We must first make room for ourselves, determine how much space we take up, and become comfortable with it.

So much of the hate we feel toward people — and the world at large — is hate we have for ourselves. We are often just projecting.

But oh, I am so done hating myself.

In March, I learned to accept myself.

I accept my strengths, so I exercise them.

I accept my beauty, so I take compliments with grace.

I accept my hysterical laughter, so I go where there is humor.

I accept the way my mind works, so I write — I do not hold back.

I accept my body, so I care for it, adorn it, and steward it.

I accept my voice, so I speak. I ramble. And if you let me, I’ll minister truth to you.

I accept my hair, so I wear it proudly, and when I want to switch it up a little, I get clean braids.

I accept my weaknesses, so I ask for help. I refuse to romanticize false independence.

And because I accept her, I am now armed with enough love to change her, grow her, teach her, and align her with the vision God sees for her — a vision He is opening her eyes to see too.

I accept her, so I trust her.

I trust that she will not bleed again in the hands of people who merely opened a wound they did not cause — a wound that never really healed.

I trust that she will treat her emotions as the information agents they truly are, not as catastrophes.

I trust that she will no longer abandon herself in search of things she already has.

I trust that she will not shrink again, because she will not be ashamed of her totality.

I trust that she will forgive and release resentment.

I trust that she will not betray herself by doing things that do not contribute to the life she wants for herself.

But the flesh is a wicked thing, and it cannot really be trusted. So when all else fails, and it turns out that I am not so trustworthy, I trust not in myself, but in Christ in me — the hope of glory.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Thank you for reading this letter. I hope it resonates with you. Do tell me about your March in the comments — I’d love to hear what it taught you. And if you’d like to keep receiving these reflections, subscribe. 💕

I’ve always wanted to be a Christian who stays.

The kind who has placed enough value on God to know there is no life without Him. I don’t want to be a roller coaster Christian—up today and down tomorrow. I want to be steadfast, immovable, unwavering in my pursuit of God. Because true devotion is not found in passion, but in consistency.

I can know so much about God and do even more for Him, but if abiding in Him is not the fabric of my existence—if it is not the very air I breathe—then my Christianity is a mere hobby, a thing I do out of curiosity, when it ought to be life itself.

So whenever I find myself in that distant place—the place I arrive at when life gets in the way and I stop tending the fire on my altar—I grieve a little.

I know I should be praying more. I should be studying daily. But I haven’t lately. I’ve slacked. I’ve gotten self-absorbed, even proud.

I start navigating this wild world on my own, giving in yet again to the foolish idea that it’s all about me. It’s up to me. It’s my burden to bear. My life to live. My heart to heal. My body to do with as I please. My name to make known. My glory to reveal.

When I’m in that place, I think about returning.

But first I ask myself: Why did I leave in the first place? Why can’t I just stay? Why can’t I read my Bible and pray fervently every day? Why do I have highs and lows?

But that question is loaded with so much shame and accusation. It is not I speaking in that moment—it is the accuser, and the goal of such thoughts is to distort my view of God.

It doesn’t stop at shaming myself; it becomes projecting my shame onto God. I’m tired of my inconsistency becomes God is tired of me. God is rolling His eyes, wondering why He wasted His investment on me. God is irritated by my inability to get my act together. God is disgusted by my falsehood, because it’s always lies with me. I say I will fast, but I eat—I even feast. I say I’ll pray, but I sleep off. I say I’ll study, but I skim the pages like Scripture is a bore. God is not going to wait around for me to change. He’ll go to those who are not doomed to fail like me. To those who stay.

But through these lies, the Spirit reveals:

To learn to stay is to relinquish the shame of returning.

It is to stop making a ceremony out of it. There is no hunt for a male goat and two turtle doves for a sin offering. There is access. Not beggarly, shaking hands and weak-in-the-knees access, but boldness and security.

Why are you so insecure about returning to a God who stands with open hands? The One whose Son was nailed to the cross in the very posture of an embrace—arms wide open.

To learn to stay is to live like you never left.

I imagine the prodigal son thought about returning the very night he left, but pride was in the way. I don’t need my father; I have taken all I need, he must have thought, until he squandered it all. And even if he had been prudent, he still would have run out, because yesterday’s supply cannot meet tomorrow’s needs. That is why we have daily bread and new mercies. That is why we ought to stay—because we must remain connected to the Source.

But staying connected is only half the lesson. The other half is knowing what to do when there’s a disconnect.

The prodigal son did not make a spectacle of returning. He considered the worst possible outcome and still decided that serving in a place where he was once a son was better than royalty outside. He forsook the lies of independence and returned.

I’ve found that we often hesitate to return because we think our absence has made our acceptance conditional. Many of us would rather bring a bull or a goat, because then forgiveness would make sense. Then we could say we appeased God’s wrath with our offering, and so He let us in.

But that only reveals how little we understand the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice. We have yet to grasp what it means that the wrath of God was satisfied. That we are grafted into the vine, adopted into the family. We are always welcome. Reconciliation is not ongoing; it is already done. Sanctification is what continues.

Jesus did not build a bridge so that we could live outside and come in occasionally. He demolished every external place and delivered us safely into His kingdom. There are no temples to enter and leave; we are the temples. If we cannot depart from our own bodies, then we cannot escape His presence abiding within us.

Isn’t that what the Psalmist meant when he said, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?”

You are not going over a bridge. You are inside.

In fact, you never left.

You are cocooned in Christ, and Christ in God. You do not get kicked out when you fall. You simply fell. Your stamina changed, not your location. All you have to do is get up. Your fellowship may have been disrupted, but your sonship was not revoked. You are not journeying back home. You are home.

What if we saw “returning” for what it often is: an excuse the flesh uses to delay fellowship?

What if all the time we spend contemplating how silent we’ve been was spent praying? What if we chose to read the Bible more than we think about how many days we’ve missed on our Bible plan?

If we strip returning of the shame it carries, we may find that the Christian journey is not about repeatedly finding our way back to God, but about waking up to the truth that in Christ, access is eternal.

So to those ridden with shame about their inconsistency, wondering what to do to appease God, I submit to you that He is not angry at you. He misses you. He wants to hear from you. You’ve been silent? Just speak. You’ve not heard Him? Be still and listen.

There is love at home, my friend. Go home.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Thank you for reading this piece.

I hope you always remember that the believer’s experience of distance is real emotionally, but not ultimate spiritually. Don’t let shame keep you away from home.

Happy Easter Week 🤍

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“That’s the thing about books, they let you travel without moving your feet.”
—Jhumpa Lahiri

To the one who loves writing,

I hope you live and not just write.

Sometimes writing is pretentious, and if, like me, you have a knack for escapism, writing can easily become just another portal.

When people write to teleport themselves to a world they’ve yet to experience, it’s romanticized as a beautiful way to use the art.

They say it’s creativity soothing you because reality scorned you.

But I must ask: of what use is a pen that writes fables but never documents truth?

And I know truth is not pretty enough. It is untamed, and maybe not relatable.

But truth is life, so I hope you live.

I hope your words jump off the page and materialize.

I hope you write about your dreams, then write about how you’re living in them.

And if you’re feeling brave, I hope you write about the disappointments too.

I hope you don’t curate your life like it’s an article you’re editing.

I hope you embrace imperfections as more than plot twists in your perfect story.

I hope you put a full stop in place of a comma—not just to correct a punctuation error, but to accept that in real life, things end, and not everything will have a sequel.

So don’t write fiction that encapsulates feelings you’re not allowing yourself to express.

Don’t write eulogies for the ones you love, then look them in the eyes and say nothing.

Don’t write highlights of a day you dissociated from.

Don’t abandon your body and live through your pen.

I hope you don’t let writing become a substitute for reality.

And I hope that whenever you do write, it will be real, and raw, and true.

Don’t just carry people to places with your words. Muster the courage to go there too.

Step into the light.

Bathe in the sun.

Come alive.

Don’t let these pages be the place you hide for the rest of your life.

With love,

Chinelolum.

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There’s nothing like your heart playing emotional gymnastics while your brain and body are just trying to get by. It’s such an infuriating experience because you can’t ignore the stretching and flipping and straining it’s doing while you’re wondering if this will all lead to it getting broken. It’s forcing you to deal in real time so that you can restore order to your system.

But luckily, I don’t believe in broken hearts. The heart is a muscle. Bones break, muscles strain. So whenever I go through emotionally heightened seasons that threaten to drown me, I’m assured deep down that I won’t have a broken heart.

Maybe a tighter one that refuses to stretch to accommodate any more pain, or a loose one that stretches way too much and becomes a dumping ground for all sorts of things. But never broken. For what will I do with a broken heart?

February was about emotions. High highs and low lows—a subtle dance with depression.

Which is ironic because the word I got for the month wasn’t love since it’s love month after all, it was peace. The word came so strongly with scripture to follow yet I spent the subsequent days of the month losing my peace.

It was not in fact a loss of peace but a trade. I traded my peace for silly questions and unhinged curiosity. I traded my peace for extremism—having some dramatic conclusion to the most infinitesimal things. I traded my peace for fear, of the same broken heart I’m convinced I can’t have. Fear of grief and loss and all the things that come with displacement in relationships that ought to be home. I traded my peace for self-preservation—preparing for a battle I didn’t even have to fight.

You see that’s the interesting thing about getting a word for the month…

No doubt it’s often a topic the Lord wants you to explore but sometimes it’s a word he wants you to remember and circle back to when life does what it does best—shakes you up.

My struggle with anxiety was deeply fueled by how well I got at ignoring that call to peace. I ignored it because I confused peace for passivity.

I told myself, if I sit back and watch, I’d get hurt and who’ll save me then? Or worse, I won’t allow myself feel at all and by so doing, undo all the progress I’ve made so far. So, I must step in now while I can. I must react, decide, and act swiftly.

But peace more than anything meant pace. Pace yourself, Chinelolum. Pace yourself.

Slow down. Breathe. Take a walk. Sit with your feelings. Listen to your body. Hear your voice, better still hear Abba’s voice, rising above the noise.

What’s the rush?

Pain is not the end of the world, and a moment of sadness does by no means predict a life of sorrow.

But I guess you can’t blame me. Well you can. But if I want to plead my case I’d say that this experience taught me regulation. Something I’d never known how to do all my life.

I walk on thin lines and tight ropes. You’ll find me blurring the lines between clearly distinct things until I lump them into one drastic move. There’s a thin line between reevaluating a friendship and ending it. But you’d find me blotting their names out of my heart like loving them was a sin I’m repenting of.

I feared that if I waited, my subconscious would take matters into its hands and do what needed to be done. A clean cut off. A firm disconnect. A mental blockout. Maybe even a little memory loss just to protect me because if anyone doesn’t play about me, it’s me.

So reactivity was my way of participating. I rather fight with you than evict you from my life as though you never existed. I rather cry than look at you and feel nothing. Drama was more human than numbness. And I wanted to interact with my humanity so that I could understand theirs. Because what else makes us hurt each other if not the friction between our humanity?

So you see, it’s the people who can regulate that can pace themselves. It’s people who can feel without fainting. People who don’t cry a river when a couple drops will do. People who don’t obsessively chase receipts to prove their humanity because they’ve never had to question it. People who are loved enough to believe they too can love. People who don’t grieve in advance just to get ahead of the pain they’re constantly bracing for.

I wasn’t one of those people.

But I’m something those people might not even be. I’m saved. ✝️

I have peace not because I can regulate myself (even though I need to learn that) but because I know the Prince of Peace. He talks to me. He holds my heart. He cares infinitely for me.

So I may have ridden a roller coaster of emotions and a gyroscope of feelings but nothing changed until I came back to the altar.

That’s where it’s at. Everything you can ever imagine.

It’s not in psychoanalysis, or venting. It’s not in begging the ones who hurt you to hold you. It’s not in apologies and reunions. It’s in looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. It’s in knowing that in this world you will have many trials but you can be consoled everytime you remember that He has overcome the world.

I am at peace within myself because I am overwhelmingly loved and that love encompasses all my desires, including my desire for safe friendships.

I know the Lord will provide. Yea, he has provided.

Selah

With love,

Chinelolum.

Thank you for reading this article. I hope it blesses you and reminds you to seek peace and pursue it. I’d love to hear about your February so leave a comment. What did February teach you?

If you’re new here, you’re welcome to subscribe. I hope you stick around.💗

Can’t wait for what March holds.

Image credit: instagram @postburns

He asked, “Who cares what you did, or what you had for breakfast?”

A girl responded, “My people care.” And I was like, heck yeah. 🤏🏼

My small community of devoted readers cares about my stories. And it made me realize that there’s a certain pride—maybe even arrogance—to blogging. There’s an assumption that my two cents deserve to be heard. That somewhere out there is an audience of people who will fall in love with the way my mind works.

Maybe that’s why it can feel so debilitating to have low views.

But low views can also be validating, depending on your perspective. They can make you feel niche—an acquired taste, a special cook for people with diverse palates.

All of this made me realize that I’m not even doing it right. I’m so serious. I take myself way too seriously, and I automatically assume other people take me just as seriously as I take myself.

But where’s the fun in that? Where’s the joy in perfectly worded sentences and carefully crafted articles that convey depth and meaning, if I can’t, in the same breath, post about my egg salad—and how I would’ve never considered myself a “salad girlie” until I had one of those?

That’s why, aside from my Christian newsletter, Dear 99, I started writing in other lanes. I have a series called Window to My Soul for all things deep and broody. I have another called Post-Watch Thoughts, where I analyze the shows I’ve watched. However, I soon realized that not many people consume literary content the way I do. It’s a conversation for another day—how invested I get in a movie or show, to the point that when it ends, it feels like an airplane landing in my mind, bringing me back from some alternate dimension.

But these other lanes don’t seem to be enough. I need to be more flexible with my writing than I currently am. I need to throw caution to the wind and care a whole lot less about perception. Because the people who come to this app to read, to write, and to make sense of their little world could use just as much lighthearted, humorous content as they could intense, passionate reads.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is: welcome to my personal blog. 💁🏽‍♀️

And if there’s anything you’d like me to write about—anything that would let you further into my little life—tell me in the comments. Subscribe, too. 💕

I was going through my drafts and was about to delete this one because I started it on one of those days when I sulk and feel sorry for myself — when the gaps between who I am and who I’d love to be seem infinitely larger than usual.

It was one of those days when I asked, “What if I spend my life coasting, never really connecting with myself?”

But instead of deleting it, I’m here making an attempt to complete it and share it with you all because I think it’s worth talking about…

I had a call today that was somewhat of an interview, and I was required to talk about myself.

I learned in the past that interviews are conversations, not trials, and that realization really helped with the nerves I used to get.

But now I’m discovering that a large part of the anxiety I felt in interviews — or any sort of interrogation — stemmed from not having a clear grasp of who I was, let alone who I needed the interviewer to know I am for the sake of the responsibility they’ll be entrusting me with.

How can someone who doesn’t know their value advertise themself?

If the conversation I had today happened in the past, I might have been very thrown off by the questions I was asked. I’d have cooked up answers because I know what it takes to fake confidence by being verbose, but I would’ve left wondering what it was that I really communicated about myself.

I’d have felt empty. I’d have spiraled into self-loathing. I’d have hated myself for not loving me enough to know me.

So imagine the pride I felt within me when I sat comfortably and spoke with so much grace and enthusiasm, as if I were passionate about the topic. Indeed I was. The topic was me — and I am deeply passionate about her.

The person asked, “So, what’s your story?” and my first thought was, Oh, it’s an exciting one that I’d do my best to summarize — not “What story? I don’t have one, and even if I do, it’s boring and sad.”

After the conversation, I said to myself, “Wow, I know her” like someone who just had a wild epiphany. Of course I do, there’s no way I’d have spent the rest of my life not knowing her.

I know who I am, and oh, what a beauty she is. What a force to be reckoned with.

But how did it happen?

I can’t say the exact moment when it happened, but it did. And the thing about self-awareness is how incomplete it is without acceptance. It’s not enough to know yourself; you have to accept who you discover.

So maybe I didn’t ever not know myself — maybe I just started accepting her. Loving her. Allowing her to exist without constant negativity.

I stopped being ashamed of the things that have made me who I am. I finally saw that my imperfections are intertwined with the very things that make me lovely.

I accepted myself because I stopped wanting her to be normal and started permitting her to be anything else. Quirky. Loud. Intense. Whatever she wishes.

I let her be customized — not tailored to the default of society.

Therefore, the question is not What if I never know her? It’s When will I accept her? And the answer is today.

I accept her right now, in this moment.

Self-love is no longer a slogan; it’s my reality.

I hope it’s yours too.

With love,

Chinelolum.

Thank you for reading this article. If you’re new here, what are you waiting for? Subscribe and join the fam!

Leave me a comment if you may. Tell me what self acceptance looks like for you.

All my love. ❤️

Post-watch thoughts.

Anyone else know that feeling of wanting to strip yourself of everything someone knew about you when you lost them? Like how it feels only fair and complete for you to lose yourself just as you lost them?

You feel forced to reject yourself the way they rejected you.

Because what you truly want is to have something in common with them.

So if they say, “I don’t like you,” you’ll feel like saying, “Me too. I don’t like myself.”

If they say, “I can’t stay with you,” you feel obligated not to be able to stand yourself.

And anytime you do something that proves you’re choosing yourself, it feels like you’re betraying what you shared.

You ask, how dare I choose autonomy over relatability? If I love myself, I can’t relate anymore. If I rest in this misalignment, I give up on the relationship.

And sometimes the misalignment is staying alive when death takes them.

So it shows up as survivor’s guilt, and that’s why it feels like you may die—because you really will be considering death for the sole purpose of being on the same page again.

It’s like you’re punishing yourself for disclosing parts of who you are to them by denying those parts were ever yours or by flat-out living life without them.

Sometimes you feel regret for revealing yourself at all, because you know that now you can’t stand yourself.

So you ask, why didn’t I prepare for this possibility? Why didn’t I at least protect this part of me? Why didn’t I withhold some of myself so that, in their absence, there’s some completely separate part of me that wasn’t corrupted by the communion between us?

My music taste, my favorite foods, my style and preferences, all corrupted.

Recently, I watched the movie retelling of the book Wuthering Heights.

Without question, I’m a sucker for period pieces and the way they remind us that there’s no novelty in life. They show us that everything there is now in society has been before—maybe lost, forgotten, or reduced to insignificance. But nonetheless, it happened once upon a time.

I love period films because they minister deeply to the poet in me. The choice of words. The way everything said and done reflects the state of society at the time and how humans could still be tamed by the constraints of their socioeconomic conditions. There was a limit to how fake you could be, to how much you could live above your status.

Thus, dreams meant something. Desire was tangible. Forbidden love was forbidden unto death. Things were allotted to people as birthrights, so those who dared to change their fate never went unnoticed.

Every little defiance was a statement—a poetic plea for the life one deserves, not the one they were given.

But I digress.

I watched Wuthering Heights expecting a period piece of brave, sappy love. Instead, I got consuming desire. Erotic romance. Love that was actually insanity.

A few lines jumped off the screen and gripped my heart. One of them is the most popular:

“I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul.”

And I think nothing quite captures the feeling I was describing earlier like this statement. It felt like Heathcliff was saying, I am you and you are me. How can we possibly be individuals?

For someone who left for at least three years, you can only wonder about the pining that filled his days. The plans he had to redeem the time lost from himself. How being with her would be like the self-discovery he denied himself when he went in search of who he thought she wanted him to be.

To him, he must’ve thought it was all worth it—the erasure, the dabbling in insanity, the brief acquaintance with the monster in him when she rejected him. It all made sense because what is life without her? What is it to be sane without her?

But the question is, should love be that intoxicating?

Why can’t we be sober in love?

Yes, it should be a deeply intimate union. Yes, cleave to each other. Become one flesh. But what does that truly mean?

Does it mean complete loss of individuality? Does it mean feeling safe enough to get lost in someone? To trust them as you trust yourself because you expect they will treat you as they treat themselves?

Can’t you see how excessive that sounds?

But even worse is the thought of doing this with someone who doesn’t love himself or herself. Or someone you’re incompatible with, yet expecting them not just to see you but to hold space for you.

Weird stuff.

I presume this is the same doctrine behind the statement, “I don’t know where you end and I begin.”

Shouldn’t it be: I know where you end and where I begin, but I prefer and choose to live where we meet—to live in the confluence?

That’s why marriage has been painted as safe enough for one to erase themselves within it and cease to exist, because if their spouse exists, then they do too. It feels permitted. It feels secure. There is no clause for leaving—at least there ought not to be. So fusion seems justified. If we are never meant to part, then perhaps we can afford to dissolve.

But courtship is different.

Courtship is not permanence. It is discernment.

And yet we practice fusion there too. We intertwine identities, routines, futures, bodies, secrets. We speak in absolutes before anything has been made absolute. We disappear into someone we are still evaluating.

Then when it ends, we call it maturity to walk away.

But if we fused, walking away is not neutral.

The breakup then becomes a rehearsal for divorce. It is training the soul to detach from something it already treated as indivisible.

You’re teaching yourself to leave something that doesn’t work instead of learning to truly discern what works and never go in until your discernment is at its sharpest and your entire being knows, without doubt, that this is safe to step into.

If marriage is meant to be unbreakable, then why do we date as though we’ve married then break what ought to be treated as whole?

Courtship should not be the place where we dissolve. It should be the place where we remain intact enough to see clearly. And if we keep merging before we know for certain, we are not learning love — we are learning how to survive separation.

But I digress again.

Deep down we dream about a love where we disappear into another. A love where we are so fully seen that we could find our way around each other in the dark. One that anticipates the lights going out and prepares for it.

Within us we ask, “How bad can it be to disappear?”

Yet in this individuality pandemic of our generation, we’re being taught to ask, “Who am I apart from this person?” While some hidden parts of us believe that love is the inability to exist apart from your lover.

I believe love is choosing not to do what you’re perfectly capable of doing because it doesn’t serve the union in the way it should.

If there’s no choice, then maybe it’s not love. Maybe it’s a trap.

But that’s just me.

With love,

Chinelolum.

I’m really enjoying my “love writer” era. It’s such a vast topic, as vast as the One who is love Himself. So what a privilege it is to partake of Him in this way.

I don’t have all the answers but I intend to write my way to as many as possible.

Thank you for reading this article. Please share your thoughts, I’d love to hear it.

Subscribe and join the love train I guess or come with us to wherever words take us.

❤️&💡

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