I was rushing through the market trailing behind my mother as she moved at what felt like the speed of light to my skinny, frail, 13 year old form, already regretting agreeing to follow her today but alas it was fate, maybe.

I’d come to this market maybe 3 times in my entire life, excluding the times I may have been too young to remember and my mom just straddled me along. My mother however knew it like the back of her palm. When we finally got to the shop, it was a huge interior decor shop in front of an even bigger building facing the crowded streets. We walked in and it was beautiful, my mom was letting me pick out some Items to redecorate my room since my sister had moved away to school abroad and I wanted to make the space feel more like mine.

Her mother was the owner of the shop and friends with my mother in classic motherly fashion. I don’t remember much of what was said after I laid my eyes on Her that day, she shone, brighter than every bright and glittery thing in that shop, brighter than the sun maybe. All I recall is our mothers nudging us towards friendship by saying our ages and schools and hobbies.

“Naomi go and show your new friend those new posters we got, I think she’ll like them”

Her mother said enthusiastically, the sound of her name calling my awareness back into the room and away from the brown eyes I’d been drowning in. I remember immediately becoming aware of what a weird sensation that had been. We barely said anything to each other while we went through series of pink glittery posters with Barbie’s, bratz and all the other things mothers assume 13 year old girls should like.

“You like music?”

She asked noticing that all the posters I had kept were pictures of Ariana Grande, little mix and 5th harmony.

“Yes, do you?” I asked

“Yes, I love Camila Cabello”

The conversation flowed easy after that and we exchanged numbers on our button phones.

Now I don’t know how to explain how what seemed like it would be the start of a really good friendship turned into my sexual awakening, I can’t put a finger on the day and time I knew I was in love with her but by the 4th time she came over to my house for a sleepover I blurted out a question relating to a topic we had both be raised to view as taboo

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

As much as my exposure to none heteronormative relationship types was limited, my knowledge of romance was not as dense. In JSS 2 a boy named Chibuka was dared to kiss me, My friend had set the whole thing up when were playing truth or dare at our schools party for the graduating junior class. We got the idea when we watched a film called the kissing booth on her sisters computer while she was out. My mom was very strict about what I was exposed to so up until that moment I had no Idea what kissing was supposed to be like beyond the stories of some of the girls in my class who had dared to try it. My best friend Moyo being one of them.

Moyo thought Chibuka was the most handsome guy in our class and thus the best candidate for my first kiss, most of the girls in the class had a crush on him and I for the most part thought that I did too or claimed I felt things for him that I had never felt prior to her.

Before the dare, Moyo had asked her “boyfriend” Ezra who was Chibuka’s older brother to find out how he felt about me and sure enough he had a massive crush of me, I believe his exact words were.

“Sienna is the most intelligent and beautiful girl in our class”

Or maybe I’m glazing, but I digress.

The kiss with Chibuka left me feeling flabbergasted at how overhyped the experience of kissing a boy was, it felt like I was being violated by someone else’s bodily fluids and I tried hard to hide the disgust but apparently not hard enough, cause the room fell silent and Chibuka never spoke to me after that day.

When I asked Naomi that question as we laid face to face in bed together, soaking in the after math of our 5 hour late night music video marathon, every bone in my body hoped she would say no. I couldn’t stand the thought that she had been forced to feel what I felt when I exchanged saliva with Chibuka.

“No” she said

“My mother would kill me if I was ever alone with a boy!”

I giggled a little, relieved by her answer.

“Have you ever kissed a boy?” She asked back

For some reason my brain was very aware that’s she used the word ‘boy’ in her question and aware that I hadn’t in mine.

“Yes”

She gasped in shock, her eyes lit up even in the dark room and it made me smile.

“It was the worst experience of my life, I’ll never kiss anyone everrrr againnn” I said, the disgust evident in my expression.

She laughed, I don’t know how to explain it but Naomi’s English when she spoke was queen’s standard but when she laughed, a genuine laugh you could hear the igbo girl that she was and I loved it.

“Surely you’ll change your mind when you get married, you have to kiss your husband”

She teased.

“Yuckkk, I’d rather kiss a frog! When you kiss someone you’ll know what I’m talking about”

I argued back, I knew some girls liked kissing boys but I was positive Naomi wouldn’t, cause she’s just like me, I thought to myself.

“Maybe you didn’t like the kiss because you didn’t like the boy.” She said

“How would I know if I like a boy?” I asked.

“Let’s go downstairs and browse it” she said as she jumped out of bed.

I knew my mom kept tabs on the browser history of our kids desktop. It’s why we didn’t have phones that allowed us to surf the internet, my mother was a good catholic woman raising God fearing children and she would be damned if any of us was exposed to the “sins of the world” under her watch. Naomi’s mother and mine were alike in that way.

As we snuck out of the room though, I found myself feeling comfortable with the idea of getting into trouble, Naomi looked so excited to do it, how could I not be excited too?

How to know if you like a boy according to google: “when you find yourself thinking about him constantly, smiling at your phone when he texts, feeling nervous or excited when he is near, and noticing small, specific details about his life and personality“

I read the words out loud.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that” I said

“Me too honestly, the only person I get excited to talk to is you” my heart did a back flip at her words. I smiled and I also slightly wondered what that meant. Did she like me? Could she? Would she kiss me? Could she?

We rushed back upstairs to my room and laid down again. Giggling still from the rush of our little escapade.

“I get really excited to talk to you too” I said

My words made her blush. Naomi was a very shy girl. It had taken time for both us to come out of our shells in our friendship but I was happy we did. She felt like a very safe space to be. I loved my other friends, Moyo and Tomiwa but not in the way I loved Naomi.

It was two more weeks before she came over again. We were preparing for our mock junior waec and our parents didn’t trust we wouldn’t be a distraction to one another so they ban sleepovers until after.

To celebrate finishing the exams our moms took us to the mall for the whole day and let us plan to spend the entire weekend together at my house. After a long day we snuggled up on the living room couch to do our usual routine of watching music videos till we get sleepy. That night MTV base was doing a thing they do on celebrities birthdays where they play a bunch of their songs and it just so happened to be Katy Perry’s birthday.

That was the day we heard the iconic 2008 banger “I kissed a girl”

We went to bed after that particular video. Not much was said between the two of us, but we knew exactly what we were both thinking.

We laid in silence for over an hour until she broke it.

“Sienna” she called

“Yes” I answered turning over to face her.

“I’ve never kissed a boy, because I’ve never liked a boy.” She said

I watched the light flicker in her beautiful eyes and the starred into mine. I was searching for words to say, how to follow up on such a statement was beyond me.

“…but I like you” she said again

A tear ran down the side of my face on to the pillow, I looked at her, my mouth hanging open, my mind still searching for words, not sure why I was crying. A tear flickered in her eyes as well.

“Don’t cry” I said immediately reaching out my hand to her cheek on impulse.

“I’m crying cause you’re crying” she said

“I don’t know why I’m crying” I said and laughed a little “I’m just stupid” I followed after.

“Sienna… can I..”

I kissed her.

Everything that followed my first kiss with Naomi was transcendent. Our weekend together and the 2 months of bliss we shared exploring every emotion and sensation we had towards one another. she was magic and I was basking in her light. I loved her with every ounce of my being.

I won’t taint this story by going into the details of the day we were caught in the heat of our sapphic romance or any of the events that followed, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse, the boarding schools, the prayer houses, being forced to forfeit uni to go to a conversion center across the world for months, coming back to find her wed off to and old Igbo man’s hyper religious prick of a son.

I want this to be a happy story of the first time I kissed a girl and my realization that I was a lesbian.

Two days ago. I recieved a letter from Naomi. It’s been 10 years since… Her.

I’ll leave you with her final words to me.

Please listen while you read

My Sienna,

I hope you are doing well.

My mission to bring the gospel to slums of Kuwait along with my darling husband has been rigorous to say the least but worth it when I think of all the souls that are saved by the work that we do.

I am writing to you because I have met a young girl here who looks just like you, her name is Ani. She talks like you once did, with a little cute stutter when she’s nervous and a little crisp in her voice when she’s about to be mischievous. She walks like you used to, a little slouched and a little girly, girly in a way that feels like she does it more out of obligation than out of nature. Her eyes are dark brown like yours are, almost as dark as night. Her skin is fair, her hair is brown, her lashes are long, her fingers are slim, her lips are plump on the top and little thin on the bottom, her nose is small, her figure is full, honestly Sienna she’s a spitting image of you.

Today she agreed to give her life to Jesus and although it brought me joy, I couldn’t help but think of you. I see the things you post on social media, your support of the LGBTQ community and your open relationships with other women. It hurts me to see you so far away from Gods light Sienna. Please come home. Jesus loves you, there is no sin too big for his blood to wash away, you are not too far gone. You don’t have to be who the devil has decided for you to be. Come home.

Take my life as a testimony, my marriage saved me from the shackles of lesbianism and has set me on the track that God intended but my happiness cannot be full without you my dear friend. I miss you. I love you… with the love of Christ, as a friend and as a sister.

I have thought of you everyday we have been apart and my love for you only grows. Come home Sienna.

Love

Naomi

Authors note:

Hiii guyysss,

This story was inspired by the song take me to church by hozier, particularly the live version. Amazingg song. It’s purely fictional. I really enjoyed writing it and just so there’s no confusion. Naomi’s Letter to Sienna is more of a cry for help, she’s been trapped in a life she doesn’t want and she holds on to every detail of her memories with Sienna as a way to escape and she reaches out to Sienna under the guise of trying to save Sienna but hoping it’s the other way around. I genuinely wish I had the resources to make a short film out of this so you guys can really see the pictures how they are in my mind. I know I’m not the most patient with descriptive writing so this probably won’t hit as hard. but I’m glad I got to write it and I genuinely appreciate it if you read it. The last thing I want to say is

Be who you areee for your prideeeee.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

It’s needless to say how pathetic I feel writing to you. Here, on my death bed. 88 years of a seemingly glorious life and all I can find to speak of as I lay here is our 4 months together in Italy. 68 years ago, that was. When the arms of youth held me still and I had my whole life ahead of me. The years have been kind to me in appearance but cruelly slow, as the days are when you heart houses a hollow ache that never fades away, a cut that never stops bleeding.

I remember conversations with myself in the early days of nursing my wounds, just about a month after you flew out my window into the dark of the autum night, I stood at that window for hours, my back to the open sky

“Turn around!” My mind screamed, but I would not.

I could not.

And a month later I laid and I recited words to myself, as some sort of cold comfort.

“Healing takes time”

“Just because it hurts doesn’t mean you did the wrong thing”

“You can’t look back”

Fooled by my youth, I could say that I was, But even then I knew exactly what it was, what you were. I knew the burden I had carried would not get lighter as the years went by, it would only become a place of my willing entrapment.

On the eve of the new years, I wrote to you. I had seen in the news a mysterious “fever” plagued the small town of San Marino, I knew you well enough to know that you would never allow your feeding to leave trails that could lead back to you but a part of me, my ego most probably, told me that you were mourning our loss too, that it was somehow a cry for help and that you missed me as I missed you.

Fool I was again, cause you never wrote me back.

They say that memory is a trickster, that the more you recall an event the less accurately you envision it in your minds eye. But somehow even on the cusp of death I remember, your lips on mine, your teeth on my neck, your fingernails digging into my back, your dreadlocks in between my fingers. How can my mind dare to forget when every cell in my body has screamed for your touch since the night we last met.

“You don’t kiss me like you did before” you said to me that night. The weight of the inevitable hanging lowly between us. I acted oblivious but I knew, my kisses tasted more of pain than of passion and you would know, they were birthed of my endless desire for you.

Over the years I have indulged in various art forms, I have traveled, I swam in the sea, hiked the mountains, ventured the forests and cameled across the desert. I have loved, I’ve know the arms of men and women a like. I have received love too, in friendship, from family, from romantic partners of many tribes and tongues all over the world. I have lived what us mortals would call a full life. But not once in all my endeavors and indulgences have i felt my heart tremble as the day I stood in front of you and your dark brown eyes burned straight into my soul and your lips grazed mine. My heart has never danced with another like it did with yours.

Push and pull

Give and take

Yin and Yang

You and I, my forbidden love. We could’ve been… something, we were… everything… and nothing at all.

I can feel the cold hands of death reaching for my heart now and in this moment I see so clearly what my youthful eyes were too blind to see, you are a light of your own source, the very thing through which beauty is made and perceived, there is not a single soul on this earth as bright as yours. you are the moon and sun who gives it light, you are every star in the night sky, you are ocean and wind, earth and sky, you and I… could’ve been… we should’ve been… everything.

My only wish in death is that you know.

Know how much you consumed my every waking hour, know how the hope of feeling you on me once more fueled me to live a life as full as the one I had, hoping I’ll see you at every corner of the world I travelled too.

As my mortal life fails me i hope that my words can live long enough to reach out and give you the love I was never brave enough to show you in all the 68years I spent loving you.

My life has been for loving you and I will love you even more in death.

To: The vampire Bow Qudus.

From: The mortal Ally.

Authors note: this piece was inspired by the show interview with the vampire. I hope this was fun to read, it was definitely not fun to write.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

I think back on that conversation sometimes, I remember telling him that i honestly believed in being true to myself and how i felt in every situation cause the whole toxic back and forth people like to do these days was honestly not for me.

Thinking back at it now a number of questions pop in my head

1. Why did he assume my own intensions were pure?

2. Is it wrong to just want sex from a person or is it only wrong when you’re a girl

3. Did he think I was stupid cause I liked him?

Now before I delve fully into this I want to state that I personally do not subscribe to hook up culture and in the same breath I hold absolutely nothing against people who enjoy it.

What I want to discuss In this article is the unfair standards women are held to by society and the dehumanization of female sexuality.

Every human being has a sex drive with the sole exception of asexual people. We all crave sexual intimacy on some level. For some people such as myself the desire for sexual intimacy is heavily tied to romantic compatibility. Simply put, I can only have enjoyable sex with someone I love and have established a romantic connection with. (I may be demi-sexual but I haven’t given that much thought yet)

For other’s sex is just sex, they come and they go (pun intended) without needing to form a romantic connection of any sorts with their partner(s). For some reason society has decided that only men should fit into this second category.

Why does a womans sexual autonomy provoke more outrage than the violence of a man?. Why are we called loose, easy, sluts, whores and shamed for acting on desires that are very much human and doing things that are much less evil than the atrocities that men are quite literally praised for.

A girl comes online and talks about how she was neglected as a child and therefore was exposed to a lot which lead her to be sexually promiscuous in her teen years and you see grown men and women shaming her in the comment section for talking about it, as if a womans sexuality is something she should be ashamed of. People can’t stand to know that a grown woman is aware of her sexuality and in control of it.

Men will see a woman, like her, choose to pursue a relationship with her because they want sex but the moment they find out that she just wants sex too then she becomes “too easy” Because the animalistic predator in them wants to chase down a woman that does not want them and lie and coerse her into being with them so they can feed their pathetically fragile ego’s.

If you’re a man reading this and you find yourself chasing after women who clarely do not want you please check yourself and check your intentions because that is not normal at all.

A woman posts a thirst trap and you see people in the comments saying vile things like “we can fuck you but we no go marry you” what makes you think that she wants more than sex? did she tell you shes posting to audition for a husband? and most of all who tf are you?????

(I’m calm)

And don’t even get me started on religious people and their one sided ass purity culture. We can pray for cheating husbands and justify polygamy but we draw the line at a young girl who has had sex with more than one man? make that make sense please. Are women not human too?? why are we held up to higher standards of sexual purity than men are??

When we allow a womans sexuality to be owned and dictated by inhumane standards we’re making room for complex personality disorders to begin to develop. A young girl cannot be raised to see her human nature as something she should hide away from or be ashamed of. Girls learn to put themselves and their needs secondary to that of a man in this way and they relenquish a significant part of their personhood to the pariarchy.

WHY DOES SOCIETY NEED WOMEN TO BE ASHAMED????

These words urge us to look at sex and sexual desire not as an obscene thing but as a vital part of our individuality. A Girl who is taught to understand and trust her own desires is not so easily manipulated.

If we truly believe that a womans worth decreases everytime she exercises agency over her body then her worth was never really hers to begin with.

I’ll leave you with this line I saw a girl post on tiktok once, I can’t for the life of me find her video or her page it seems. but this is what she said

Chew on that for a while

Love,

ALIYAAH.

Sometimes though I have feelings that I can’t seem to write about and in those times my sketchpad sits closer than my journal so I draw whatever and I use colours to translate what I’m feeling and afterwards it usually becomes something I can then write about. It’s like a condensation reaction of some sort in my brain.

Anyways all of this to say, I have feelings for this girl and I’ve been trying o write about her for a while now, I’ve tried and tried and failed continuously to the point where I started to hate myself for it, cause I always have something I want to write about especially when what I feel is this real.

Today I decided to try drawing an Octopus from a tutorial I saw on TikTok and I failed but at least it led me to pick up my sketchpad and while listening to the playlist she made for me I finally condensed the feelings I’ve been struggling To write about for the longest time into an image that isn’t perfect but looking at it feels to me like her.

Every colour I used in this image is symbolic to me of how my feelings for her have progressed and daily growing ways in which she affects me.

The first colour I ever mentally associated with her was purple, I remember thinking after one of our conversations that she’s such a warm kind of sad, that somehow made perfect sense to me.

Then I got to know her even more and I learnt it can get icy too, real and raw blue sadness.

The next colour I associated with her was pink. When I was younger I loved pink, talking to her takes me back to a younger happier version of myself. My childhood was definitely not a bed of roses but there were pockets of time that felt as radiant as the colour pink and she makes me feel like those times when she pronounces words like a toddler or says made up words like children do and when she laughs silly and cute. She feels pink.

Her edges are black, like her perfect skin, I trace my fingers across my screen and imagine making contact with her and how it would feel. She says her favorite colour is black and that makes sense. It’s the colour of her, it’s flawless in my eyes.

In some pockets of time, when I’m under the influence and free from the turmoils of being trapped in my mind I see her endlessly in yellow, my desire for her burns bright as the sun, she consumes me, I’m pathetic for her.

I burn for her in orange, my favorite colour, all of me, Hers alone.

I know it doesn’t look the best but in a way that too signifies what her love has felt like to me, I never have to present perfection to her, I only have to be.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

What I mean by that is I think I am quite all over the place with like my interests and what I do for work vs what I studied in school, I find almost every kind of joke funny as long as its not offensive, I like things that are polar opposites of each other. I listen to all kinds of music I watch all kinds of films, I read all kinds of books too. In the past this vastness never made me feel a type of way I always knew it was just how I am and loved how any and every topic was interesting to me, I loved knowing things and exploring things but now I think its starting to feel like a lack of personality.

I was looking at my social media the other day like all of them and I couldn’t find a personality in anything I posted and it was worse when i went accross platforms, It’s like I’m a totally different person with every post that I make and I’m starting to worry it’s becoming reflective of more than me just being a person with many Interests and my personality is in fact getting drowned out by all the media I consume. It’s to the point where I think i don’t even look the same in every picture even when they’re just days apart.

The other day I wore a dress and heels and my friend said i looked nice and he’d never seen me dressed like that before, I started to wonder, what do i typically dress like then? cause I’d never given much thought to what I wear enough to notice that I hardly wear dresses. That felt so silly to think, do I really pay that little attention to myself? and is that okay?

I know the fancy term for all these thoughts i’m having though, it’s the classic early to mid twenties identity crisis and a lot of people (my older sisters) say it’s necessary to have one and life is about watching yourself unfold and discovering who you are as you go but i think what’s scaring me right now isn’t that I don’t know who I am it’s more about what is influencing this person that I think I am or I’m becoming.

I grew up policing myself a lot, trying to present myself in a way that matches every room i enter to maximize approval and reduce the possibility of conflict. As I’ve studied myself these last couple years I’ve learnt to not do that anymore, to allow myself to exist as I am so i can find the rooms and places that actually are for me or create them for myself. I’ve become fully liberal and open to so many more experiences and ways of life and its been nice but if 1+1=2 then taking in all of these is definately affecting my output right?

How do i draw the line between growth and erasure of self?

I’ve been sitting with that question all week and going back and forth accross my socials and looking at other people’s profiles too. I still am confused, I’m simply writing this to give my thoughts a sense of direction and as I write this more and more questions come to mind

What self am I so scared of erasing? Is it my morals? my hobbies? my vast interests?

Am I overthinking this because I’m worried about how people percieve me? or am I genuinely concerned about being drowned out by media consumption.

I don’t know.

But I guess the questions are a start and what I do know for sure right now is that amongst other things I want to be they type of girl who pays attention to how often she wears dresses. I don’t want to not find random knowledge interesting, I want to post film edits today and skits tomorrow and some really alternative shit the day after that. Maybe as I grow I’ll start to feel and look like someone who knows who the are and what they like and are confident about it but in the mean time I think I’ll just allow myself to find out and probably count how many times I wear a dress next week.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

P.S I will be running a survey for fun so if you’re willing to answer a few questions about how you percieve me, text me yesterdayyyy!!

(I swear theres like 0% narcissitic intent behind this or maybe like 2% max)

The song “The cure” by Olivia Rodrigo hit a little too close to home for me.

I have for the most part always known what I wanted, romantically, in a partner and at a point in my life I had all of that.

I wanted someone kind, not just to me but to everyone around them, Someone who looks at the world with a particular softness and gave love out freely as often as possible and I had that

I wanted someone funny, not just any kind of funny, my kind of funny, the kind that makes it obvious i’ve watched a bunch of sitcoms and I grew up on disney and nickelodeon and my screen time is beyond unhealthy and I had that.

I wanted someone emotionally vulnerable, someone who could cry when they’re sad, blush when I say something corny, laugh as loud as possible at the silliest of jokes (cause my jokes are really not the best to be honest) and I had that.

I wanted a poet, someone who would adorn me with their words till I forget every other bad word I’ve previously associated with myself, I’d be their most interesting muse and they’d write about my smile and my eyes and and my shitty jokes like it’s the most facinating thing in the world and I had that.

I wanted a painter, someone who could look into my soul and draw out the beauty im too scared to look deeply enough to find, they’d fill entire gallaries with paintings in my favourte colour and they’d never find it to be annoying or too much the way most people see orange, and I had that.

I wanted to be with some who only had eyes for me and I had that.

But it was never really enough, beacuse on the surface it’s simple but in practice trying to please someone who hasn’t found joy in themselves is an endless futile journey of bending over backwords to try to keep up with every insecurity and every unhealed version that keeps on surfacing no matter how many you get through.

I realized my well of needs and wants would never run dry, even if they gave up their entire lives to “worship” my very existence it wouldn’t be enough cause I never felt enough. I always wanted them to do more because some how I didn’t think I was worth the little they had done in the first place. Like i was searching for worth in how far a person was willing to go to prove they loved me and I thought that would be enough but it never was.

On the song “the cure” Olivia says “my head is full of poison and my heart is full of doubt” and It made me think of a conversation I had with a lover of mine recently where I told her that I felt like something was wrong with the love I give, I think my love is good because there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do for someone I love but behind that is the sick rotten desire to somehow earn that level of devotion in return and you may be thinking there’s nothing wrong in asking for it if you can give it back but I think that there is.

The first thing in every persons life should be themselves, your first point of devotion should be to yourself. Just because you’re willing to put yourself in second doesn’t make anyone obligated to do the same for you.

And real problem is that you’re willing to go that far in the first place.

I am learning or trying to learn the difference between selflessness and self abandonment, I’m learning that the value of my love isn’t priced on how much of myself i give up to make room for another person and in turn I cannot measure the love i recieve based on how much of themselves theyre willing to abandon in pursuit of my affection.

Healthy love can be given and recieved freely, I requries sacrifice but not the kind that takes you out of who you are and makes you give up on your own life.

This isn’t any sort of advice or anything though this entire piece is me just trying to unravel my own mind and not repeat old patterns. I’m committed to learning and unlearning myself this year and so I guess thats what this is. If it makes sense or is relatable to you then Mashallah.

I want to be the best version of me for me and for this amazing girl I’m in love with shoutout to her for listening to all these thoughts when I was still just scrapping at them and probably not making any sense.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

Creativity was once a natural extension of human expression, community, ritual and survival. The establishment of industries and the global shift to a science lead world not only lead to a wide spread trivialization of creative arts but also endorsed the commodification of creativity under the capitalist society.

Art used to exist because humans needed expression. Songs were sung before record labels existed. Stories were told before publishing houses. People danced before choreography became content. Creativity was not originally a career path, it was part of being human. But capitalism reshaped creativity into labor. Now art is expected to justify its existence through income. If your creativity cannot be monetized, society treats it as childish, unserious or self-indulgent.

In a lot of homes children are brought up on the belief that artistic creativity is pointless to invest in, If you’re not an absolute prodigy making genius art before you’re 10 years old just forget about it. Society has so much stigmatized artists from expressing, you see it when people say things like “at your big age you’re doing music”. We all learnt very early on in life that whatever you chose to do with your life has to earn you a living, such a sick concept to have to earn your living.

I am a 22 years old and expressing myself creatively is the only thing keeping me alive right now, I write, I draw, I sing, I like to tell stories through lenses, I like to act, I sew, I colour. All of these things i do because they make my life feel fuller and more mine. But if I’m lucky and i have a good week at work I’ll get to write 1 pieces or do 1 sketch or start a sewing project I wont have enough time to finish. This is how capitalism is directly reducing the quality of my life right now.

One of capitalism’s greatest successes is convincing people that rest, imagination and creativity are only valuable if they produce something measurable. We have become unable to enjoy our own humanity without guilt. Even hobbies now need side hustles attached to them. People cannot simply bake because they enjoy baking, they must consider opening a business. You cannot sing for yourself anymore, people immediately ask when you are dropping an EP. Every talent is pushed toward monetization until creativity starts feeling less like freedom and more like unpaid labor.

I’m not a great writer or singer or actress so I can’t make money from it, does that mean I should Abandon it entirely?

Somewhere along the line we started believing only exceptional people deserve to create. If you are not extraordinary, profitable or marketable, you are encouraged to stop trying altogether. But creativity should not belong only to the talented. Human expression is not something that should be earned through excellence. A person should be allowed to create badly, privately, inconsistently and still have that creativity hold value even if only to themselves but the way things are right now I have a hard time enjoying my writing without the validation of a like or a comment or something to make me feel like I didn’t just waste my time.

Maybe that constant cloud hovering above creatives is not simply insecurity or artistic frustration. Maybe it is grief. Grief from being disconnected from a natural human instinct. Grief from living in a world where imagination must constantly defend its usefulness. Grief from having to choose between survival and self-expression over and over again

I am not saying people shouldn’t be able to make money from their art, I am just saying arts shouldn’t be reduced to just it’s transactional value. Being creative is a way of life and the world needs more spaces where people can express themselves creatively without the fear of not being good enough to sell. I shouldn’t be sitting here worried about what work tasks i could’ve gotten ahead of instead of using my time to write this piece.

I want my creative expression to always always always feel worth it.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

The more I learn about science the more I realize how many unethical experiments were carried out to give us the priceless information we have about various aspects of life, psychology having some of the the most goring ones and it really is thought provoking. Isn’t it some sort of privilege for us to call those scientists monsters when the quality of our lives is a direct or indirect product of the work they did?

This is not to say that they were right it’s to question the moral high ground from which we stand to call them wrong, a ground that was built by their (by some standards) “sacrifice”.

How many scientists went down in history as mad doctors because of the lines they pushed, yet the work they did was never discarded and still contributes to modern day science?

Would we really choose a world where these men didn’t make the choices they did and push the lines for the advancement of mankind?

Take for example the work of Harry Harlow, whose experiments on rhesus monkeys remain some of the most disturbing in the history of psychology. Infant monkeys were isolated, deprived of affection and subjected to conditions designed to study despair, attachment and emotional dependency. The cruelty of the experiments still unsettles people today, and rightfully so. Yet much of what modern psychology understands about attachment, maternal bonding, emotional neglect and early childhood development was shaped by the findings of those very experiments. Entire approaches to parenting, therapy and developmental psychology were influenced by work born from immense suffering.

Then there is Stanley Milgram and the Milgram experiment, where ordinary people were psychologically manipulated into believing they were harming others, exposing terrifying truths about obedience and human nature. Or J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, scientific brilliance that gave humanity both unprecedented technological advancement and one of the deadliest weapons ever created. Even the horrifying work associated with Josef Mengele continues to haunt ethical discussions about whether knowledge obtained through atrocity can ever truly be separated from the atrocity itself.

History repeatedly shows that some of humanity’s greatest leaps in knowledge were made by people willing to cross lines the rest of society considers unforgivable. Which raises an uncomfortable question: if we continue to benefit from the discoveries, are we as distant from the moral consequences as we pretend to be?

We draw a lot of lines around things as a society and they really are necessary to protect the individual over the institution but as long as we continue to shy away for the discomforting truth of our hypocrisy then we truly are not ready for any change whatsoever.

I write this on my laptop while you read it on your phone, and somewhere buried deep within the foundations of the modern world are discoveries tied to suffering most of us will never truly comprehend. We point fingers, call names, condemn the monsters of history from the comfort of lives that still directly or indirectly benefit from what their work produced. Because the truth is, nobody throws their phone away. Nobody rejects life-saving treatment because the road to that discovery was unethical. Nobody truly removes themselves from the benefits once those benefits become woven into everyday life.

For most of us, the knowledge of that reality is just a brief moral discomfort, an inconvenient thought we push to the back of our minds before continuing with our day. But for someone else, it was their whole life. Their body. Their mind. Their suffering. Sometimes their death.

We can say it was not worth it, but we still live inside the results. That is the contradiction humanity can never fully escape. So what really is morality then, if not something flexible enough to bend whenever the consequences become too inconvenient to reject? We perform humanity like a competition, constantly trying to prove we are more ethical than the people before us, while quietly consuming the world their choices helped build.

The things I’ve learnt in my readings about history and science will keep me up tonight, my privilege will burn hot in my throat. I accept that I am a hypocrite.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

I got my nose pierced 2 days ago and it was so much fun to do. I think refusing to get a piercing cause it’s painful is so silly, it’s literally 2 minutes of pain and 100% worth it but I digress. While they were inserting my septum ring I started bleeding, I bleed so profusely it was all over my clothes and my first instinct was to cover my nose so nobody knows I’m bleeding. Shout out to the guy that was doing the piercing though he was so gentle and careful with me and when he helped me clean up all the blood I started to wonder why I was even ashamed in the first place.

I got home and as I thought more about it a pattern became to clear to me. I’ve never felt comfortable with the appearance of being in need and it’s not from a place of pride or feeling like i’m too independent to ask for help.

It comes from 2 places, 1 is a place of believing theres no room for my needs in the world. I remember being on a line at an ATM like 8 years ago and this lady got stung by a bee and she screamed, I wated people try to help and ask what happened and just showing care and I was so shocked by it. It seemed so odd to me because if I got stung by a bee I’d just stand there in silence no matter how painful it was cause my pain could never be anyones problem but my own.

Another reason is that I was soo much applauded for independence as a child, it made me feel like the most acceptable way to live is to never need anything from anyone, thats what made me lovable. I’d graze my knee at school and do everything to hide it, I’d be hungry and not say anything till someone remembers, I was constantly praying people would notice but doing everything to not get noticed so I wouldn’t become a burden.

I am grown now and I know better in theory but i still hid my bleeding nose. I still have trouble wanting things, not just saying what i want. I can barely allow myself to just want things and to take up space in rooms. Its ridiculous how much the ideaologies we internalize from childhood continue to follow and plague us even when we learn to know better.

I am worried I am going to spend my whole life trying to rewire my nervous system.

I had a long talk with a friend and he was convincing me that life is beautiful and worth living and while I know that in theory, how do i bypass the systems in my body and in my mind that don’t allow me to see life as more than a horror story happening to me? I don’t want to be here discovering things about myself and fighting to better them all in an effort to bring embers of joy to a life I do not want.

When I started writing this I thought I was going to take some sort of revelational or motivational course. But what can I say that you haven’t heard a thousand times? “love yourself, take up space, you’re the main character, you’re not a burden, you are loved, you are lovable” What good is hearing these over and over again if i can’t get my inner child to believe it?

what’s it all for?

what am I living for?

Love,

ALIYAAH.

On the 17th of January 2026 I wrote in my Journal “…You are a balloon and I am a turtle, I am scared to tie you down and scared you’ll lift me off the safety of the ground”

Love is a leap of faith, to love you must be vulnerable, you must go outside of yourself and extend yourself to accomodate another for all that they are and so my little turtle tied herself to a ballon and she walked and she ran and she flew.

Some parts of her flight felt nice, there were small gaps between her fear of falling where she let the breeze and the views embrace her and she felt the majesty of taking flight and in those moments she would write things like “…being with you is divine” and “… your love is my devotion”.

Then one day my little turtle looked up at her balloon but there was no balloon in sight, only the sun in all its splendor stairing back at her and calling to her. How does a turtle attempt to touch the surface of the sun? surely she would burn. And burn she did the closer she flew.

Love can be scary, it forces you to face the worst parts of yourself, avoidance, anxiety, difficulty accepting love, to name a few. but my little turtle was brave, she felt the burns and she didn’t look down, she was lifted by the promise of illumination and the certainty that she would be happy once she touched sun.

One day she looked at herself and she wasn’t her anymore, her shell which loved so much and spent years of her life hardening was melting, she didn’t know who she was outside her pursuit of the sun. Was this the meaining of devotion? to lose who she was entirely and her shell, she loved her shell.

Musicians have often described love as a drug. If that comparison is true then like any other drug, love can be abused. It can be manipulated and corrupted by selfishness and lies. whether it’s the lies we tell ourselves unknowingly or the truths we withhold from others.

My little turtle never lied though, in the moments when the heat was too much she would write “… This hurting me” “I can’t keep doing this” “Please let me go” but the sun would sing for her, her sun would shine even brighter, it would send her warm rays to distract her from the burns and she would ignore the melting of her shell under those same rays and only then would my little turtle begin to lie to herself.

let’sjust be Friends

Love is a two way street, you come to me and I come to you, you hold on to me and I hold on to you even when our hands are shaking.

My little turtle looked at the sun again and she realized, the sun never moved and it never would. The sun never grew dimmer to protect her frail eyes and it never would. The sun never softened its rays to keep her from melting and it never would. her love story with her sun would always be a one way street and she wondered who she would be when she finally touched it.

Am I even still a turtle anymore?

Love is not self seeking, love pushes you to change for the better and stays with you inspite of the worse. Is it better to be loved for who you are or inspite of who you are?

My little turtle knew the sun would never move for her as she did for It. My little turtle loved the sun for everything it was to her and inspite of the the burns she knew the sun would never reach to mend. She looked back at her shell again, oh her beautiful shell, she loved her shell but there was not much left of it.

The hardest truth to face in love is that the complexity of human beings forces it to be conditional, you can love someone truly and still have to let them go. It is a brave act truly, to let go of someone you love.

My little trutle was all out of bravery though, she had given and given and given. So she looked at her melted shell and she fixated on it, she denied herself the pleasure of seeing beauty in her sun. She let the pain of every burn consume her and she brewed her pain into hatred and hatred into indifference till she looked at the sun and she felt nothing at all.

Still tied to her leg was the string from the balloon that lifted her off the ground, she cursed the string “…You’re a coward, you never tried to stay on the ground with me, we could’ve been happy on the ground but you brought me here to burn cause you’d rather see ME burn. you sorry excuse for a lover”

My little turtle was never unkind before the sun, she was patient and gentle and understanding, but sun had burned her and now she sought so spread her pain. She hated what the sun had made her and knew she couldn’t keep flying towards it anymore so she cut the string and she fell.

My little trutle misses flying sometimes, she can never fly again though.

Turtles aren’t meant to fly to the sun, in the same way the sun isn’t meant to move or change for the love a turtle, she can only enjoy it’s warmth from afar and it can only keep shining in hopes that she sees it.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

NB; I know turtles are actually found in water not on the ground but i prefer turtles to tortoise so don’t overthink the metaphor please.

I have only ever felt heart broken once, that was when my last relationship ended last year and I didn’t even really sit with that feeling for more than a week. I’ve seen people come apart for months, devastated and dismayed by heart break. Makes me wonder if I’ve ever really loved anyone. I’m always subconciously ready to let anyone go.

The paradox here is that when I love, I love. I give it every single thing I have and I feel it in every single nerve of my body. I believe all my lovers were some how fated to me. I let myself know them, I let myself see them, sometimes better than they see themselves and when I’m in the high of loving them i could drop a vital organ for them, I could run off and marry them, I could even let them try to convince me to reproduce. I could unweave the tapestry of my life to reweave it with theirs.

I have never held myself back from giving my love, I have tried to and I have failed but somehow when my time with them ends I find myself scraping around the emptiness they once occupied for a reason to miss them or to feel hurt or to want them back. I lie to myself and squeeze my eyes to make myself cry, I try to perform sadness to see if i can trigger it. I never delete pictures or videos of them, I watch them over and over again and I scrape and scrape every inch of every memory that once made my life feel like it was worth living hoping to feel something that moves me enough to cry or to beg them or to feel like my life would crumble without them but it’s never there.

I lie to my friends sometimes too, I exaggerate my saddness so I don’t look like a hollow cruel thing or so they don’t think I was never in love because I know I truly truly was or I believe that I was. I know I was. I write and write the most goring things i can think of that could emulate what I think a heartbroken person would write then i read the words back and I feel nothing. At best I’ll feel empathy for the other party if i know they’re hurting too but none of the pain is mine really.

Sometimes my lovers come back, and they say that they love me still and they can’t live without me and like a machine whose buttons have been pressed the feelings flood my heart again and I allow myself to love them again, although it’s never like the first time and I guess that’s probably why the second time never lasts and they feel that I’m not the same and they leave again and I’m hollow again.

I know this might sound like a my stake is too juicy or my bread is too buttery rant because why would anyone wish to feel heartbroken about anything when it’s devastating and I tried for a while to believe that I was just good at loving people without getting attached but I do get attached and I do get hurt by the actions of the person I love. Everything is normal until the relationship ends and It’s like a switch just goes off in my brain.

As someone who wants to have a full experience in life, this is a real problem for me. Have I just never loved anyone? Am I broken? I listen to sad songs and I think of my past lovers and I try to imagine what they would feel if they heard those same songs and I try to tell myself I’m feeling that too. It’s sickening.

The last time I was in love I was so far gone that I was certain he would be the one to break my heart, I’d lay awake and think of him then I’d catch myself and say “your healing stage go long” then we stopped talking for a couple days and I felt something, it wasn’t pain or heartbreak but I actually missed him, so when came back and told me he loved me and he didn’t want to live without me I was so sure he was the one. If he left me I’d be heartbroken for real this time. But as I write this that love story is over and I am in fact hollow again, I’ve been hollow since the day he blocked me everywhere. I’ve read our texts, watched our videos, listened to the songs we loved and the playlist I made him and the best I’ve gotten was that I miss the times when we were Friends and I miss it fondly in a way that doesn’t necessarily hurt.

I can’t understand why I am not hurting and I want to hurt cause I want know that my love was real. Love and grief are two sides of the same coin but some how I’m either helplessly in love or I feel nothing at all. Am I a fraud? Is my love not what I imagine it is? why am I like this and how do I fix it?

I should definately see a therapist.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

I watched a movie last year with my best friend Juliet, It’s called blink twice. Very amazing film. It was basically about a billioniare who had an island where him and his friends would take unsuspecting young girls and do unspeakable things to them and they gave them these perfumes that made them forget all about it overnight. The main anatagonist said a line that I think about often “Forgeting is a gift”.

The first time I thought about it, I agreed with it. What you don’t know sometimes saves you a lot of pain and emotional strain. Relating that to my life in particular, I was sexually assulted at a very young age and for a very long time that memory was entirely supressed in fact I started remembering most of the abuse faced as a child both sexually and otherwise just last year and it’s been insanely hard trying to cope with the reality of these memories that my young mind was to fragile to hold at the time.

The second time I thought about the line from blink twice when I was reading a review on the extensive work of the swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in relation to neuroscience( I’ll link the article below). In this review was a quote “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will continue to direct your life and you will call it fate”

Carl Jung believes us humans have a part of our minds that he describes as the shadow which is basically where all our bad thoughts and character traits that we’ve decided do not align with the persona our ego wants to display are stored. He also believes that contrary to what we may the think, the shadow actually runs our lives a lot more that we know. This made me rethink about the concept of forgeting and whether or not it truly is a gift.

Ever since I started remembering my traumas I’ve been kinder with myself, I used to wonder what was wrong with me a lot more before but I’m seeing my self destructive patterns a lot more clearly now. I think forgetting is just an illusion honestly, its a trick of the ego to ignore the things it doesn’t want to see but you never truly forget anything, it just gets lost in your subconscious where you’re less in control of how it affects your life.

Forgeting is not a gift, ignorance is not bliss. It only forces you to relenquish contol over your own life and the quality of it.

The real gift is remembering, this is why we write and document things that matter to us, “good” memories mostly and our proudest moments, the ones our ego has decided are worth remembering but all of it is a part of what makes us who we are. We must own our bad and ugly parts if we do not want them to control us. The ego tells us, out of sight out of mind and we think if something isn’t weighing on our thoughts then its not affecting our actions either but that is untrue.

Owning your ugly memories is so much easier said than done though. I’m sitting here writing this knowing that I am still very much struggling and wondering if my struggle is even worth it at all but little by little I think it gets better. I am on this journey of meeting myself and I am grateful for the gift of remembering. I hope we can all have the courage to embrace our shadow selves when we meet parts of it and that we can embrace every part of what makes us who we are.

Love

ALIYAAH.

The Forbidden Files

The Most Important Psychology You Will Ever Read - Jungian Psychology

think about this for a second…

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5 months ago · 3115 likes · 78 comments · ixcarus

I was listening to the chasing pavements by Adele on my way home today and it really made me think about my life (naturally) and how I’ve been feeling so stagnant lately trying to decide a career path to invest in. I’ve been trying choose something that could be a creative outlet for me and still bring in some money and most importantly not make a slave to some capitalist. I’m not at all short of ideas that check all three boxes cause of my vast interests and how almost any skill can be monietized in this day and age, yet I’m still stuck.

My old boss used to make me watch self help youtube videos (I miss him) and I remember in one of them this lady was giving a TED talk and she told the story of how she started making useless things on youtube and now her channel is… well, big enough for her to be on TEDX and I kid you not every single thing that woman has ever made was actually useless. How does one perdict that you’ll get rich from making useless things? Imagine pitching that idea to your african parents.

What’s more interesting about the story is the fact that she had just quit her dream job before she started making useless things as a hobby. Let me paint a picture for you, you’ve gone to school for 25 years, you bent over backwards studying through all those years and it was all worth it cause you graduated and got the Job of you dreams. I’m talking 6 figures annualy (keep in mind she’s american) health insurance, lots of bonuses, lots of allowances, 5 paid leaves in a year, a house, a car, everything is great for you. How do you explain to literally anyone that you want to leave that job? People will think you’re crazy.

There’s this ridiculous sense of confidence that human beings seem to have in an entirely unforseeable future, we love to believe that we can “figure things out” when that is entirely untrue. There’s no path to discover only one to create and in telling our selves there’s a path to take if you want to “make it in life” we stiffle our potential so much, our voices get lost in the crowd and so does the essense of our souls which long to be expressed. We have to realize that unless we start to read the future there can never be a “right path” or a “wrong path” There is only the path that you create because your experience on this earth similar as it maybe to others, is entirely unique to you. What you can and cannot accomplish is only limited by how much you can believe in yourself and how willing you are to chart your own course.

You are the blueprint!

The truth is whether or not Adele decides to keep chasing pavements the outcome being good or bad would be entirely up to her and what she makes of it. If I quit my Jobs today the outcome of that could be bad for 2/3 months cause ill go broke (I don’t even know that for sure) but who can really say it won’t turn out to be the best decison of my life 2/3 years down the line? hell what if I don’t even live that long?

I could write a whole other piece on how capitalism sells dependency desguised as security or sustainability because it comes pretty close to what i’m talking about right now but I doubt I will. What I really want to achieve by writing this piece is to convine myself first and foremost and hopefully you too, that the future is for you to create, not try to predict. Create a future that is true to you every single day because your present is the only future you know exists. Live unafraid of the things you can never know. Chart your own course. Chase pavements, even if it leads nowhere.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the emotion that is resentment. When you listen to Beyonce’s lemonade album it’s clear the progression of her emotions through the songs and she had to sit with those to be able to make the art that she did out of it so that’s kinda what I want to start doing when I’m exploring difficult emotions I want to write about them but not in rantstack style, I want them to be stories, Steve really likes my stories and you know me and external validation, so maybe i’ll do more of it. I can’t figure out how to add a song to this right now cause I’m lazy but while you read my story you’ll enjoy it more if you listen to Daughter by Beyonce.

Enjoy.

Aliyaah’s POV

I never imagined this would be the thing that brings me to Paris, I had always dreamed of a romantic trip here with my partner, a honeymoon maybe. In a way though I still came here for Love, what a poison my love has become. I don’t know when it beccame this way, when did my beautiful roses wither away to leave only thorns in my garden? when did my candle become an inferno that consumed my conscience? my river a flood, my cool breeze a raging tornado. Was it when I first saw the texts on his phone? Was it when I started putting my ears to the wall whenever he’d go to the bathroom? NO I know when, It was when I saw that fuck ass sunshine emoji for the first time. That was the one that burned this moment into my path. Sitting here on this 6 hour flight I’ve spent half my savings on with only one thing on my mind.

MURDER

Paris is a little disappointing, maybe it’s the time of the year, i’ve never heard tales of it being pretty in the summer, only in the winter and in spring time. Such a pity it would be to die on such a bland day.

My hotel room feels like the back of a police van just before a raid. I’ve laid it all out on the bed, my outfit, your picture, my dagger. I thought extensively about your murder weapon, at first I wanted something untraceable like a pill to slip in your drink, or a gun with a silencer. Then you made that stupid post on your instagram

“Roses from my man or our man, lmaoo”

DISGUSTING

I decided then that i wanted to be close to you when I took you life. I wanted smell your blood and feel the air leave your nostrils. I wanted to see your eyes lifeless. I got a pink dagger, as my own act of kindness to you, you will die seeing your favourite colour.

Men are so gulible really, they see a drunk pretty girl and they’re ready to be super man and help her find her friends hotel room. I wish you were a harder target. But you’re stupid. Just as gullible as the man who lead me to your room. If I didn’t already know you flew here to fuck my man I might have mistaken your foolishness for kindness but you can’t possibly know what kindness is, not like I do. Even in taking your life I was kind, kind when I gave you a hug first and let you calm your nerves in my arms, kind when i went for your neck and not your stomach cause i read last night that it would be less painful for you, kind when I laid you in your red sexy underwear so you’ll look good when you’re “lover” finds you. I was more kind to you than you deserved.

WHORE

Authors note: So if you listened to the song like I asked you too I think you’ll understand the story better. I think it inspired me because i really do believe crimes like this come from resentment, not anger or hatred. A lot of people mistake hatred and resentment but they’re far from the same. There’s a lot of love in resentment and that love is what stops a wife from killing the cheating husband and makes her go for the mistress. It’s a very complex emotion, resentment and in my personal experience its the most painful one.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

It’s 6:45pm, you just got home from the longest day trying to find a place for you industrial attachment and you’re frustrated, tired and hungry. Things have been such a drag these days, since the stuff with your mom, your dad, your sister leaving and since he left. You pick up your phone and collaps into your bed as you dial his number.

“hello”

“I miss youuuuu” you wail.

“I miss you too.” he says, ever so softly.

You start to tell him all about day and school and…

“Ella ... I can’t really talk right now I’m in the middle of something. I’m sorry you had a stressful day, please eat something. we’ll talk later”

You don’t really get a chance to say bye before you’re cut off by the beeping. Classic, you blame yourself for expecting any differently. Ever since he moved away things have been weird, distant, cold. Its hard for you but try to understand, his family is a lot, he’s working 3 jobs, he barely has time for himself. “Don’t be selfish Ella” you say to yourself. You replay your last fight in your head,

“Why are you soooo obsessed with always being the victim?” he said

Those word replay in your head over and over again until you fall asleep.

It’s 10:43pm and you’re woken up by the bright lights in your room, you forgot to turn them off cause there was no light when you got home. you grumble then you get up to turn it off. your room is now solely lit by your phone screen as a notifiction comes in. “It’s him?”

It’s not.

The text is from your bestfriend, she wants to coordinate outfits for your first day of I.T. You spend another hour on facetime with her, wrecking your wardrobe to find the perfect outfits.

“Is Pai gonna bring you tomorrow?” she asks.

“What?… Umm no he’s not, he has work or something I think.”

“aww that’s sad, but in a way it’s not bad that you’re getting some space from him you know?”

“Bro can we just do the red dresses? I’m so tired already and we have to be up early.”

“We’re probably going to look too much in that but fuck it, lets do it!”

You get off the phone and lay on your messy bed, you replay Eyeh’s words in your head “It’s not bad that you’re getting some space from him” over and over again till you fall asleep.

He never texted.

You have a great day at the office, mostly cause Eyeh is there too and a couple other people. And you finally got a text that morning form Pai, it was a cute one.

Hey baby, I’m so excited for your IT. I know you didn’t get the place you wanted but I’m sure you’ll still have an amazing experience and kill it at this place too. You’re YOU! I’m super proud of you and I can’t wait to hear all about it later.

You feel selfish again, the text is effort, but you can’t see it.

“that’s day 7” you say to yourself, you feel like shit for keeping count but you can’t help it, if he still loved you he would say it right? no matter what. It’s not something you want to talk about though, you Know what he’ll say “that’s such a weird thing to do” or “If its a big deal to you why didn’t you say it first?” but it’s so much more than that.

All through the day you bite the urge to talk to Eyeh about it, you’re tired of talking about it and you for the most part know where she stands on it, “If you keep talking and nothing is changing you should leave him” thats what she would say. but it’s not that simple. NOt when you’ve loved him for longer than you’ve known what love is, not when his love became the only lens through which you saw yourself as loveable, the pain of watching the lens blurr has become synonymous to losing yourself again so you can’t just leave, he’s your person, you know it, you just need to find a way to clean the lens again.

You’ve developed a folder in your notepad of all the things you wish you could say to him, things that feel selfish and needy but keep you from feeling like yourself with him. You call it the unsent folder, you watch as it becomes an endless paragraph of silent pain.

Its 5:30am on the first of February, You wake up with an unusual excitment even though you only got 4hrs of sleep. You figured it out last night - how to clean the lens. So you typed 14 emails and made 13 coupons as well as a boyfriend of the year award. It was genius plan you thought, send him one email and 1 coupon everyday till valentines day then you’d give him the award. You told him not to respond to the emails everyday, partly out of fear that his responses would be bland or he wouldn’t have 14 nice things to say about you in response to everyone but on papaer your reason was that you wanted him to just enjoy it. You had even done some in his native language with Eyeh’s help. It was all going to be okay by valentines day, everything would be back to the way it was, He’ll tell you he loves you again.

He didn’t.

So first I just want to say I’m super impressed by how consistent you were with the emails, I loved them especially the ones in Idoma. Thank you.

Happy valentines day by the way, I know how much it means to you.

You look blankly at his messages on your phone, It’s 8;45pm on valentines day, you waited the whole day - for this? You go straight to your notes app, it muscle memory now, going there to type the things you know you’ll never say.

The next morning the cute boy at IT asks to take a picture of your notes, you hesitate cause you know they’re mostly gibberish and you’ve barely paid any attention but you let him. He starts up converstion, “obviously” you think.

You end up talking to Asuai the whole day, He asked about how your valentines day went and you vented for over an hour, his ploy was obvious, he said things like “I would’ve gotten you something for valentines day” and “I would’ve never treated you like that” None of that moves you in the slightest until he says “I really loved your red dress on the first day” He had secretly taken a picture of you on that day.

Even after IT that day, you stayed talking to Asuai, half of the time it was about Pai and the other half of the time when he spoke you wished he would shut up and kiss you. You hated and loved the thought of his lips on yours. He had a really pretty face and the kind of build you think you would’ve liked if you had enough time to form a “type” before you fell in love with Pai.

You wish you were less in the know of what you were doing when you ask him to comeover, you wish you could say it all just happend when you let him stay over, over and over again.

You hate yourself for it but you wanted it.

YOU. WANTED. IT.

It’s 8:24 on a sunday, you’re looking into Pai’s eyes, the lens is clean now. You see how much he loves you swelling with the tears as they gather. “Say something” you think but you’re blank. Your mind is too busy replaying your conversation with him from the night before. The most care and attention you had gotten from him in months. You told him about the Unsent folder and he asked to see it. He listened, he cared, he apologized and he reassured you. Barely 5 hrs later and you’re standing in front of him in another mans shirt searching for words to explain why there’s an unfamiliar man in your room at 8am on a sunday. In your despiration to explain lies another feeling, one that you hate and want to push away,

Relief.

You watch him go, you let him leave.

You hate youself for it but you wanted it. You wanted him to leave. You loved him undeniably but Eyeh was right about the space, you only wish it could’ve have ended differently but you know at the back of your mind it was easier to watch him walk away cause you’d have never found the strength to get up and leave otherwise.

The lenses are off now, you hate what you see again but in some twisted why you love it too.

“You’re such a shitty person Ella” you know, but still

YOU. LOVE. YOURSELF.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

Ps: If you’re a hyperself aware peron what I hope you take away from this story is to learn to love yourself even when you’ve been a bad person or done a bad thing. Don’t beat yourself up, trust me the world will do that for you.

My father was a very funny man, and I use the word funny cause they really haven’t coined the word to properly describe him or maybe I just don’t know it yet. I like to look at his life for lessons though if I can call it that, basically what I don’t want to be is everthing my father is so I mostly just go off of that. One thing I learnt by watching my fathers dealings is that people love romanticized bullshit and if your words are pretty enough people will believe literally anything you say especially in this day and age.

I like to think myself a liberalist in a sense, especially since I started my journey of decontructing the belief systems I got from my parents and trying to find my own. Something that has become abundantly evident to me though is that human beings love to manipulate concepts that are good by marrying their bullshit to it. Take relationships and marriage for example, these concepts are constructed on love, the premise behind it is that you can meet someone, love them and want to share the rest of your life with them so you marry them. But we can all agree that that is not the way a lot of marriages in our society go, part of the reason for that is the patriarchal bullshit that has married itself to reltionships and marrige.

This marriage of bullshit to beautiful concepts is so popular in society that so much of it is actually normalized now, the lines are all blurry and confusing but because I want to be a true liberal doesn’t mean I’m going to suck up to some clear cut BS cause it’s romanticized. Before I get into my pain points tonight, I’d like to define a couple terms, these are definitions that I have constructed based on the dictionary meaning of these words and the context in which I intend to use them

LIBRALISM

Liberalism is a political and economic doctrine centered on individual autonomy, limited government, equality of opportunity, and the protection of individual rights, including life, liberty, and property. Originating from Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, it promotes democracy, rule of law, free markets and other freedoms as long as they do not impede on the rights and liberties of other individuals in soceity or have derogatory effects on their wellbeing.

In simple terms we can all do what we want without hurting each other.

LOVE

Love is a complex, multifaceted emotion and behavior characterized by deep affection, intimacy, passion, and commitment. It involves caring for another's well-being, often described as an act of will rather than just a feeling. Love connects people through kinship, admiration, or romantic attraction, encompassing, among others, familial, platonic, and romantic forms.

ROMANCE

Romance is an emotional expression of love, characterized by intense feelings of attraction, affection, and often, thoughtful actions that strengthen intimate relationships. It involves intentionality, such as through quality time, words of affirmation, or gifts, serving to foster security, deep connection, and joy between partners

.

What I want to talk about today is how Libralism and romantic love have married each other and allowed for some bullshit to make it’s way in there as well forming a thing I’d like to describe as Convenient love. A disease that is burning through our generation like wild fire.

The thing about liberalism is that it’s easier to measure with heuristics that are very black and white. For example if you steal, it’s very obvious you’ve used your freedom to hurt someone whereas if you lead someone on emotionally for benefits such as say… sexual gratification, you can romantize it enough for it to look like it wasn’t harmful to the other party involved or at least make it so that if you get called out it looks like an attack on liberalism, but it’s just bullshit.

As a generation that has fought so hard to be liberated from societal construts, it’s easy to see how the lines get so easily blurred and to an extent I don’t blame the perpetrators of this bullshit spread, humans being are instinctively selfish and when lines like this get blurred and you see that room for some of your selfishness can be created in a way that doesn’t paint you as selfish but as a liberalist living their truth, I’d like to think the average person would jump at that opportunity.

So who then is to blame for creating the mess of convenient love?

Certainly not the victims, not Liberalism, not love, not the people who unknowingly indulge it, not you reading this and definately not me.

One of my favourite things about humanity that I’ve learnt since I started reading more about philosophy is that we are too complex for all questions to have simple answers or all actions to have plain reason or all cause to have clear effects. I dont know who it is we are to blame and if theres blame to be given.

So it really is just complicated. I have my own Ideas and opinions on how to not be a victim or perpetrator of covenient love but I’m afraid its far too simple to cover such a complex phenomena. So I’ll just leave you with a question instead.

In the chaotic reality of convenient love, are you a victim or a perpetrator?

I’ll leave you with this quote from my favourite philosopher as well.

Until the next one.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

I have been trying sooooo hard to write something that isn’t centered only what I’m feeling in the moment where I decide to write cause I didn’t start writing to be emotionally dumping on you all the time. I have so many interests and so many worlds in my mind, all of which I want to share with you, but everytime I start to write about my philosophical thoughts or capitalism or the concept of control or debunking societal constructs I feel like a fraud. Like I’m cosplaying some intellegent writer when I’m still so far from being one, every error I’ve ever made in anything I’ve written on here screams at me everytime I try to write. I can’t escape my self doubt, the same doubt that has made me let go every single creative venture I’ve tried to embark on, I’m never cool enough for cool things like this.

I remember when I first got the chance to sing in church, that was the first time I started to resent singing, I loved singing but I was so painfully aware of how nice my voice sounded and the lengths that niceness couldn’t reach, everything my voice lacked still. That was the day that I started to hate the sound of my voice, from that day it became signal of what I knew I wasn’t good enough to be, a “great” singer. The type of singer I dreamt of being wasn’t the type that came from working hard and training your voice, It was an unmistakable texture that some are born with and some fake but you can still tell when it’s being faked. I knew from the moment I grabbed the mic and sang the intro to oceans on that church stage that I didn’t have it and I would never be the type to fake it. I wanted to be great or nothing, absolutely nothing.

I look back at that version of myself with so much more kindness now, wishing I could take away that longing she had to be great so she can allow herself to just be. I wish I could explain to her that to be be great at anything at all you have to first ‘BE’ not imagine being. I’m trying to explain that to this current version of myself too, but she still just the kid who never felt like a place exsisted for her in this world and that she’d be undeserving of creating that place for herself if she was offering anything short of greatness. I still want to be great or nothing, nothing at all.

I know there’s some future version of myself looking back at me right now though with a lot more kindness than I look at myself. I’m trying my best to make sure she’s not screaming the same things at me that I’m screaming at my younger self. I’m trying to let myself be so that she can be great. So I hope that she looks back at me with gratitude, for things I let us fail at or be mid at or ruin or save or improve or regress. I hope that the will power I’m putting together to write this despite eveything inside of me telling me it’s cringy and mid and probably has a bunch of typos is worth something in her version of reality. I hope that my efforts now start a trend of us loving and being kind to ourselves more in the moment than in retrospect.

I’ve named this piece a bit similar a Hozier song I love so much and it’s been on repeat this entire time. I hope you enjoy reading this, I don’t see how you would but I hope you do. For me this will just be a letter to a future version of myself, hopefully one living in a reality where the climate in our cold cold heart is a little warmer to us.

Very short read cause I need to meet up with two pieces this week.

I’m writing on the concept of control, I’ve been on it all week and I’ve barely moved past the second paragraph. I’m gonna finish it though, even if it doesn’t come out as perfectly intellecual as I want it to be I will share it with you so you can have that piece of me exactly as it is and I’m writing this here to hold myself accountable so I don’t dump it.

Until then my love.

love,

ALIYAAH.

It’ll be hot that morning, as it always is in Abuja. The sunlight will shine directly on your face waking you up as you realize you’ve over slept and you’re about to be late for work, you’ll pick up your phone to look at the time and subconciously look for my name on your screen, then you’ll remember, I never texted first in the mornings, now I’ll never text you ever again, at anytime of the day.

You’ll revisit our last conversation, the one just before the notification ‘you can no longer send messages to this number’ You’ll glance over the paragraphs we shared, pouring out our emotions endlessly through texts, the feeling will gush over you again, your pain, my pain, the pain we collectively created by being exactly who we are. You don’t want to see that though so you keep scrolling, to last time we shared good mornings and I miss you’s and I love you’s. ‘If only I had known it was the last time’ you’d think.

You’ll start to feel the stinging in your eyes as the tears gather. You’ll close your eyes shake your head to push them back, you don’t have time to cry, you’re late for work. You still end up crying in the bathroom though. ‘This is stupid and melodramatic’ you’ll think, but you can’t stop the tears from coming as the water runs down your face.

You rush through the rest of getting ready without giving yourself room for much thought. Before you leave, you glance at the kitchen and in a split second you remember. I was standing there with you two nights ago, we were making pancakes at 2 in the morning cause I hadn’t eaten all day and you wouldn’t let me go to sleep. I was fake mad, you were making jokes. ‘You’re not funny’ I said trying not to laugh, I laughed. You loved making me laugh. You’ll never get to do that again.

You get to the office and your boss is back so you have a lot of work to do, You’re grateful for that, anything to keep you out of your mind. At 11am, you get a reminder, it’s not for you though, it’s for me. ‘I should turn these off’ you think, but you don’t. You lock your screen, go back to work and try not to wonder if I’ve had breakfast or not. I’m not yours to wonder about anymore, but you still do.

You go to get lunch at 2, you’re having spaghetti, you’ll remember when we made spaghetti, you’ll reach for your phone, you’ll go back to our conversation, this time you’re not looking for the happy texts though, you go over my paragraph,

‘This isn’t working…’

‘…you’re hurting me’

‘I can’t keep doing this…’

‘…I need you to let me go’

‘Please let me go…’

‘I can’t live like this… I’m not happy’

‘This isn’t enough… It’ll never be’

‘I’m tired’

Your eyes glance over my words, the emotions gush over your heart, my pain, your pain, the pain we’ve collectively created by being exactly who we are.

It’d be easier if you didn’t know why or what went wrong, it’d be easier if I was cruel about it but I wasn’t, you know me, I’d sooner be cruel to myself than to anyone at all. You scroll back to the notification ‘you can no longer send messages to this number’ You close the conversation.

You get back home at 10pm only cause you’ve run out of reasons to stay outside, away from the constant reminders that lay all around your apartment. I left a dress the last i was there, my toothbrush, my sponge and even things that were not exactly mine. The side of the bed that was unspokenly mine, the stickers I helped you put up, the little hearts I doodled on your table, there were particles of me floating in the air that you could feel even with your eyes closed. You don’t realize it when the tears start to fall until they bring you to your knees, still at the door to your bedroom that feels like hell. You go from your knees to laying on your back on cold hard floor, the sounds start to escape from your lungs, you’re weeping, you’re mourning everything you wanted us to be, everything we were and everything we were not and would now never be.

You channel the emotions the only way you know how to, you write about it.

“My dearest Ally,

I hope you ate something today

I hope you drew or coloured

I hope you wrote

I hope you made a new friend

I hope you read somethimg you liked

I hope you saw a funny tiktok

I hope you laughed

I hope you wore something cool

(you always do)

I hope someone told you looked cool

I hope you looked both ways before you crossed the street

I hope you took water instead of soda

I hope you had a good day, my love

It’s harder than i thought, being without you.

I MISS YOU

I LOVE YOU

You look at what you’ve written, words you know I’ll never read. But what you see more than anything are the words you know you’ll never write, the ones that hang in your throat, only to be heard or read in complex metaphors, never directly, you’re not strong enough to ever say them.

One last time today but certainly not the last time for a long time, you feel the pain gush over your heart, my pain, your pain and the pain we’ve collectively created by being exactly who we are.

Love,

ALIYAAH.

I woke up really sad today, actually its becoming a bit of a norm for me to wake up with a bitter feeling in my heart. Today is no different. Writing has become my favourite outlet now so lets get into my thoughts shall we?

I remember one of my favorite arguments to make when I was religious was that of morality being a yard stick drawn from religion and without the guidelines of religion the lines of morality can be blurred bent and twisted to favour any superior persons. I find myself wondering about that concept once again.

What is the yardstick for morality?

How do we decide what lines go where?

I am determined in my current journey of finding the things I believe in, to approach every question with an open mind and zero defensiveness of one point of view and so I ask you dear read to put on the same hat of reasoning as you read the rest of what I have to say on the topic.

I’ve heard it said that all humans have a conscience, a little voice in our head that tells us good from bad and wrong from right by tugging at our heart strings but to that thought I raise the argument that a “conscience” is a societal construct, in many forms. Christians may say your conscience is your spirit man nudging you back to the ways of God or calling you to the voice of the holy spirit. Some agnostics believe that the conscience is evidence of the light released by the true divine (not the god of this world) to help us humans find our way back to the source while others believe that we are the true source reduced to a lower level of conciousness for this earthly experience and our conscience is an incling from our higher selves.

All religions and belief systems accross the world believe in the concept of a conscience yet we are not all morally aligned. What that tells me is that the conscience is not some unchangeable hardwiring, it is changed by the information we feed it and the belief systems we are brought up on and therefore a societal construct.

This knowledge can in some ways lead us to the conclusion that humans are not born with a moral compass that is inherently “accurate” we’re all in one way or the other piggybacking on someones belief system and who really is to say that one belief system is superior the other? What might sit right with me may tug at your own conscience and because of that how can we truly decide what measurement of morality is correct?

The human brain is like a sponge, or at least thats what they say. If you want to get good at something you have to keep doing it, if you want to believe more in something you have to keep learning more and more about it. Using that logic you can make anyone believe anything is the truth overtime, no? much less the impressionable minds of children as we were when we were first introduced to the moral standards of society.

I’ve had quite a few conversations about this topic and someone once said “Just don’t do anything to anyone you dont’t want them to do to you” and on paper that makes sense but I am afraid its not quite feasible as the only standard for what is morally upright. For example, I like to wear short skirts, I dont think my short skirts hurt anybody, but to some people they are indicative of bad morals and they have religious scripture to back it up too.

Someone has also once said to me that the answer to morality is for each human to operate from a place of Love and as far as answers go thats probably the best one yet, Love is a universal language as some say and if we don’t pay too much thought to the varying definations of what love is and the many many failed attempts we as a race have had at capturing it’s true meaning, then that answer sits pretty nicely.

I am genuinely still lost on the topic of morality without religion and honestly I understand why it’s so much easier to pick a religion and just flow with that and maybe after all of my extensive overthinking about these topics I’ll end up doing that as well but for now I’ll just be doing my best to live in love by every understanding that I have of the word.

If you’ve read this far I’d love to hear what your thoughts on this topic are so by all means, DM me or leave me a comment.

Until the next one.

love,

ALIYAAH.

P.S: I got so nervous about this piece and almost abandoned it but my sweet friend Steve encouraged me not to and I’m glad I didn’t. shout out my nigga Steve.

When you have ambition as a young person, you are so much applauded by society. People love to see a kid with a dream that’s why they always ask what you want to be when you grow up. My first answer to that question was not that I wanted to be a billionaire or a doctor or a lawyer or any of the famously beloved career paths. I wanted to be a teacher. Everytime I said it I was met with a strange look of disappointment, as if to say that I was dreaming wrong. Why would I want to be a teacher? One lady straight up said “Noooo she can do better than that now, she’ll be the owner of the school, not just a teacher”

“…Just a teacher.”

I wondered what was so wrong with wanting to be a teacher, my young mind was still unaware of Nigeria and the reality that most teachers don’t earn up to minimum wage, but I still started to feel embarrassed by my desire to teach, so I changed it. I have been changing it ever since. I needed to be something that would be impressive to people, not “just a teacher.”

I wanted to be a nurse, then an architect, a popstar, an actress, a doctor and finally I found where the money was so I decided I was gonna become a CEO. I was gonna own 8 different chains of bussinesses, I had it all layed out in my life planner in SS1, everyone who cared to listen knew my big big plans and everytime they showed that they were impressed I got a small hit of dopamine in my brain. Now I was on the track to becoming something worth while, not “just a teacher.”

As I grew older I understood more and more of why people around wanted more for me, this country is a nasty nasty place to have real dreams that are born from passion and desire. I learnt quickly that the biggest thing poverty would take from me was not food out my mouth or clothes off my back, it was the dreams in my heart, the opportunity to discover who I am and who I want to be. Choosing a career path that didn’t pay in big checks was a luxury I simply couldn’t afford as well as many others.

When this is the reality you live in, it’s easy to lose sight of the things that matter. You’d have to be very delusional to not prioritize money cause as they say “nobody is coming to save you” You have to grind, you have to work hard, you need to get the bag! As if we came to this world to feed our earthly desires then die.

I have envied people that were able to do that, truly. People who can accept a life of chasing money more than anything else, people are so consumed by their ambition that nothing else matters, people who aren’t passionate about anything but money and how to aquire more and living a luxurious life. You might even be one of those and you probably don’t see the sense in what I am saying, how could you?

I have been plagued with this burning hunger for a more spiritual fulfillment. Half the material things I care about are borrowed interest from a world designed to make me believe I’m somehow broken for not really caring about those things and the other half are things I want for my loved ones.

At the end of the day money seems the only way to truly be free in this society so what choice do I have but to pursue it?

What choice do I have but to drop my passions and take up the seemingly endless pursuit of financial liberation?

I must chase the bag, I must catch the bag and I must catch it as fast as possible and pray I live to see the day when I have enough bag to buy me the luxury of my dreams.

So dear reader, when you see me working 3 jobs and starting a bussiness and moving with ambition, please do not be impressed, I’m just another victim of the system, putting off my dreams with no promise of seeing tomorrow.

Till the next one.

Love,

ALIYAAH.