this is the day results should be out and we haven't seen anything yet. a boy makes a very expensive joke, sending a false result to our resit group. i was expecting this. i know someone would decide to be the kevin hart by doing something of this sort. my other mates do not take it easy on him. one says something about how someone his age would do this kind of thing, many insult him, another says he should be removed from the group. i wonder what is going on in everyone else's mind, if they are resitting one, two, or three as the case may be. if they fear repeating like i do, or theirs is withdrawal from the faculty. i wonder if they are alone, all by themselves or together with their friends. i wonder if they are playing music to calm themselves down, i wonder what type of song they are playing. are they playing nf's fear on repeat like i am, or they are playing something gospel. something that makes God seem a little bit closer like my friend had suggested.

someone says on the group this time that the result is out and they are about to paste it on the faculty notice board. i try to watch an episode of better call saul but just couldn't bring myself to it. i walk over shalom's place and back. i sit in front of the zumunci baptist church with my knees pulled up to my chest, checking what chimel is trying to tell me on whatsapp. simi calls and prays for me, asking if i was alone, telling me it is settled. that my result is settled and i said amen, although i wonder the audacity it takes to tell a person this. how did she really know that it is settled?

results are out, and yes, there's a four letter word next to my matriculation number. pass. i passed and for a moment i do not know what to do with my body, what to feel, how to feel it. i had thought my reaction would be something cliché, something like me screaming, rolling on the floor, although i would later shout at the top of my lungs when i enter my compound to tell my neighbours about my results. i call baba and ask where mama was. i tell him i had passed and he says i now can take a sigh of relief. i drop my phone and walk outside my room again. i come back to pick my cardigan and go over maza hill again, and this time maybe for the last time. i watch myself breathe in and out. i whisper, today is not the day i die.

this is not to say i have been particularly happy about many things. this is not to say either that it's actually a bad thing to be happy or even want to write about it. these days, i find myself oscillating between several emotions. hope, disappointment, doubt, mostly doubts and surprisingly, happiness too. a sort of peace i cannot actually explain is upon me. i am trying to perform alchemy with these six weeks. to turn stone into gold, to cash in on this time and do not let any lesson life is trying to teach me slip by. last week, jerome said this resit might be full of many things but one thing we should know is that we are not disadvantaged. i tell myself so, i am not disadvantaged.

the exams is starting on the 27th of this month. 27th is just three days before the proposed date for my brother's induction. three days to seeing my parents and them asking me how the papers are coming through, relatives telling me things like my brother has passed through this and i should not be an exception, i am their little project and I cannot fail. and i would nod. i would smile, i would have something to say but i would understand ultimately they mean good for me. i would understand the importance for me to pass this time around. that there's a stadium of people awaiting my becoming and i do not really have the luxury to give this game up. i simply have to play and win.

the timetable isn't yet out so i do not really know what we are starting with. only few of our tests are out and i am quite optimistic about the rest of them. i know, it is easy for me to want to talk about the brute of medical school, how unforgiving it is without wanting to take responsibility for my actions. i believe that this time, i am doing the things i didn't do, and not doing the things i did that cost me. i made sure i took my cas with utmost importance and yes, i am praying that these efforts do not fall to the ground. i am trusting the process now, because that's literally all i can do.

i revert to my earlier thoughts. i think about my reluctance to want to write simply because there's nothing interesting happening, and i think about also about a chinese proverb i know. a curse actually, "may you live in interesting times." i remind myself that i don't want to live in these. to always want to have chaos to write about, a turbulence to narrate. i would write about stillness, about the ordinariness of living because this, too, is my life. yes, because this, too, is life.

i do not want to make the same mistake twice. i don't even know if it's even about a mistake, a thing i did or didn't do to start with. i just finished watching a movie and i play another one as i wait for the two eggs i put to boil. frying them would have made more sense and save gas but there's the fact that i am already out of vegetable oil, the time is reading 22:22 on my screen, already late, mallam doesn't accept transfer, and perhaps, mama always says boiling is one of the healthiest forms of cooking, so yeah.

i continue with the movie i am watching, sentimental value. in the first scene is a lady having a panic attack and wants to run before her performance on stage. i fetch from her nervousness and pray she gets herself eventually. there's guilt trying to cover me but i do not let it. everything i do these days aside reading feels wrong. i cannot be watching movies. i cannot afford myself to be distracted. i must read. i still have anatomy test to write on thursday. carbohydrate chemistry is waiting on friday. i must open that textbook. even if i am already tired. even if i do not feel like doing it. i have to have the will, the mental muscle to lift myself up because i still have an exam to write and my life basically depends on it.

many people are reaching out to me. i keep getting asked how am i? how have i been doing? what's the plan and honestly, i do not know. on most days i say i am fine. that's it's bit rough but i would be writing these papers in five weeks time so it's okay. i do not tell them about the day i was stopped at pharmacy gate at main camp because i wasn't with my id card and it just dawned on me that i shouldn't even be here to start with. how me and my courage play hide and seek every morning before i eventually find it to take me to school. i do not say that the air in bauchi road feels suffocating and it as though it is somewhere lodged inside my throat. i do not always say that it's traumatic relearning all the pathways in biochemistry, cramming the innervations of the neck. i tell them i am fine and alright and sometimes wonder if this really counts as lying.

some of my mates are repeating the whole year. some of them are my friends, some i just talk to. i haven't reached to any of them. i do not know what to tell them, i don't want to tell them they would be alright because haven't they heard this before? did things really turn out to be fine? are they now okay? certainty is a thing i cannot promise them so i am refusing to be a vendor of false hope because i feel hope in itself could sometimes come off as being dismissive. it just tells you somehow something good in the future is waiting for you without really explaining what's currently happening. i cannot tell them to be strong as if they have been weak all along. i cannot tell them to move along, that they would be alright eventually because what about now? do you now tell a grieving mother she isn't allowed to cry over her dead child simply because she could birth another?

i am told that this is just a normal challenge. i am told i should be grateful for another chance at this and put in the best i possibly can. i am trying as much as possible to prepare well for my tests as they would sum up my cumulatives. i am trying to pay attention to my practicals because apparently that's where the marks are. i am saying all of these just so it serves as a reminder to myself. just so i get to know what exactly are my thoughts, to know how i am doing because most times, i do not really know what's up with me until i write something down. so for those who always check in, who want to know how i really am, this is an attempt to your question.

today is my viva. viva is the form of exams that test to see if you can say the things you know out loud, and what i know doesn't seem to be as much as i would want it. previously, i told my friend how i felt grossly insufficient, and she says residual knowledge would come through for me. that it isn't possible that i have spent 18months here and not being able to say something for the very least, and maybe, that's what scares me the most. because let it not be heard that i perhaps don't meet up to the standard and fumble the barest minimum.

last night, one of my neighbours caught me staring into space and asked how preparations were going. i am going over frequently asked questions from senior collegues, memorising high-yields and things lecturers seemed to have emphasized a little bit than normal. the thing is i do not think you can prepare enough because there are thousands of things to learn. thousands of them that you could just be asked. i mean what if they asked me something i don't know, something i skimmed through while reading, a paragraph i ignored.

i started with anatomy and i never knew i could be that mute. i tell myself to calm down, and take consolation with what one of our lecturers said about one not knowing everything and that it's very much okay. i do not wait to check if really it's okay or not to not know when a person's life literally depends on me because ignorance isn't always bliss. i move on to physiology and was asked what my best topic was. i said i love the cardiovascular system only for me to be asked basal ganglia in neuro. since we are not doing community medicine orals now, biochemistry was the last one to do to call it a day.

i post a picture of myself on my whatsapp status just afterwards and i do not know what to tell the people already congratulating me. our results would be out on monday and i do not really know what to feel about it. i am tired of being scared, i do not have the strength to panic any longer so i would let things take its course, to let the chips fall where they may because what can i even do about it.

i am playing noah kahan's call your mom again. there's a mass happening in-between my selves. i am trying to go through my biochemistry jottings of the pentose-phosphate pathways while i turn my body into a cathedral, humming along to the song, quietly holding the lyrics in my mouth like communion, like prayer. these days, this is what i do.

once i was told that exams periods are the times one has to really get closer to God. to establish a rapport with him, to construct a relationship, and while this sounds good and makes sense, i actually am struggling with that logic of wanting a relationship with someone just because there's an simply something to gain. i feel it's to bribe God, to show up more for prayer meetings, to change my playlists, to listen to more of hillsong and theophilus sunday. it is to massage God's ego, to apologize to him for every single thing i do because apparently, he would fail me if i don't.

now, this is not to say that there's anything wrong with devotion to God in critical moments like this. this is not to say either that i am not taking my work with my creator seriously. i am saying that why the camouflage. why the shielding, why do i have to run back home if i know i am going to leave again, to play the prodigal son only to trick my father yet again and again. why do i have to treat him like a booty call, a one night stand, to get what i want once and ghost him till we probably see again. this is not the day to answer these questions.

as you might know, my mb started last week wednesday, and i have seen things that are beyond what i can say here. i know, the plan was to write something up here every week but life was asking a lot from me. life is taking a lot from me, and i still do not know how to say no. i am in a conversation with someone and told him i have a track record of being scared. that at every point in time, there's just something i am nerve-wracking about. would i be alright? would i win? what if i lose? i don't want to lose. i keep going, spiraling and mostly, i always come out of them uninjured and i am wondering if my body has now developed amnesia that it cannot remember the times it had gone through. what is it? have i not survived these hard days before? why do i feel this much pressure, this much fear? why do i have this thick dark cloud over my head?

i have many things to say. my life is one big question mark, forcing its face onto me. i have more doubts than i ever used to have. i have more questions and just few answers to them. i am scared. i am really really scared that what if i do not come out of this one alive? what if it consumes me? because yes and indeed, there is a possible universe where the stars do not align in my favour, where things do not go my way. and maybe this is what makes of these all the more scary because truly, i do not want to disappoint my parents. i don't want to fall the hands of the host of people cheering me to success. and most especially, i don't want to break my own heart. i really don't want to hate myself, i cannot afford to shrink myself again, to put myself in a position where i do not want anyone close to me, and not even my own shadow. no please, not again.

it's thursday at our cmda prayer meeting after my biochemistry practical paper, and i am an atheist for a moment. i have exhausted all the faith i have, all the belief my strength could muster. i am not praying, i am deciding to give God silent treatment because what happened today wasn't what we discussed. i am watching my friends speak in tongues and in other languages i do not understand. how they raise their voices, bend their bodies, praying to a thing greater than they are with so much strength and fervency. i am in my own thought, that me still coming here says something about my belief. that no matter how small i think my faith is, it sure moved me to this place of prayer, and i mean, didn't they say it too, can move mountains?

i turned twenty-two on wednesday and the day came in and went like how the others did. there's nothing different about me aside the fact that my beards now grow faster than it used to, and i now have a biased preference for low cut as my hairline is receding by the day. i am still learning how this new age looks on me, i am still testing the dresss and i do not know if it's too early to say it is oversize. i am caught in a conflict happening between my selves —the child i used to be trapped in an old man's skin is still demanding my attention. still not yet ready for whatever it is to be twenty-two. still have not escaped the cruel fingers of life, still learning how to cry, this time in other new ways. still showing up that it still wants to live but probably not like this.

there's a thing i have with expectations. about how i have perfected the art of not demanding much from life and letting it serve me the hand it deems best. and no, i understand that this is not a way to live, but i know also that to raise one's expectations is to know that they too can fall. i know that the only way i can get disappointed with this life is if i let it, and i do not want to give it that privilege. a larger part of my adult years now has been spent in or trying to recover from the transitioning shock of adjusting from the small boy inside into the big man i am claiming to be.

a new year is here and i am trying to act like it even if i do not know how. i am taking more photos, posting them and trying to document the happenings of my small soul. i am watching less movies, following up more often with the news, learning how to blame every problem of the country on the government, and questioning the whole idea of how humans are the most intelligent beings. i have stopped running away from God like i used to, i am having conversations with him and i think he really wants to be my friend. i am letting people into my life and allowing them invade my space more and more. i am talking to a girl and i seriously think i am going to marry her and make very beautiful babies. i am giving life a chance, and trying the other things of life even though i don't know what that means. i have died so many times, and now i am witnessing my own resurrection. i am deciding to take the front seat of life, and picking up my animalistic rage towards whatever viciousness this life has to offer.

andrea gibson once said that joy is a muscle you build by dancing when you are inclined to stay in bed. i think it's the violent non admittance of one's state. to move your mind so your limbs can follow. it is to know happiness is a thing you have to aggressively pursue. a state you have to intentionally seek, a door you have to constantly knock and if it doesn't open, you barge in into it with all your might. i am learning that joy is not a given. that there's a paradox to peace and that is i have to fight to get it.

the attacks did not end on the sunday evening that it started. it extended, and is as though it gave much more time for it to go deep and cut the thing that makes you want to burst, to shout, to turn another human’s body into an abattoir. to see him as meat, to cut, and cut again till you see blood, to hear him begging you to stop, but you won't. you would continue till the white thing inside of his skull appears. till you see him no longer moving. there's something cold about the video i saw of a man being hacked beside the permanent site campus. there's something colder about how humans passing in vehicles move without stopping. and this is making me think of the parable of the man travelling, the priest, the levite, and well, in this case, i do not a see a good samaritan here. i am thinking, how do they come back from this? how do they convince themselves that inside of their skin isn't full of worms? how do you even sleep at night when you see the bawling image of your own kind begging for their own lives?

the waves from monday are gradually coming into tuesday and we cannot allow it to consume us. everything seems so unreal and cliché at the same time like scenes only watched on tv. there's an apocalypse happening here, a reverse in civilization. the streets are deserted, the bitumen senses something unusual but doesn't say anything as homo sapiens take over the roads meant for other four legged machines. one car passes and you forget something like that ever existed before another comes again. everything is now losing its purpose. there's no electricity. shops are closed, everyone is walking with heavy school bags and ecolas. mr john, my neighbour insisted he would go home that yesterday. aunty lois had her police brother come pick her up. and basemath told me car is coming to pick her and her brother up. people are asking me if i would not leave. there are buses evacuating people home, and today, the concept of home seems rather intangibly vague to me, and it is not just that i am running away from where it's meant to be home to another one, but the fact that i do not exactly know where to go. bauchi ringroad could be home, lamingo with teekay is home, tudun wada is home, kanke is home, langtang too is home, and suleja, the very one place i should instinctively pick has not seen me for almost two years now. in my life, i have never felt like i belong to so many places and people and no one at all. i have never had so many origins and still feel like a pilgrim.

basemath somehow missed the car that was meant to pick them. she tells me that another vehicle is coming to take them home. i am on the toyota dyna pickup truck, alongside her, her brother and a girl whose name i have forgotten. i have settled my mind that i might as well just drop at old airport junction and take it down to tudun wada to stay with my uncle and his family for the meantime. basemath is taking photos and videos of us. i do not know how to feel or what to do with this moment. so i laugh. we just laugh at the whole situation we find ourselves because what else can we do other than laugh at what wants to make us cry. i think of a series, the last ship i watched in 2023, and what tex said in one of the episodes so profound on humour that i still have a screenshot of it. that the secret source to humour is not joy but sorrow, and that's why there's no humour in heaven. and well, this is not to say that humour is abundant in hell either, but the simple truth is that you must laugh at man to avoid crying for him. we must laugh at ourselves to avoid crying.

the time is 10:42am at mado, tudun wada, and i am watching focus nigeria on the tv. amaechi anakwe is discussing with the guest the recent conflicts in the headlining african democratic congress. i am selfish, and i want all the space on the newsline all to the killings at angwa. i want everyone talking about this thing and doing something about it. this morning, i had news that heipang was attacked too. my uncle tells me that my cousin in the polytechnic there would be coming home today.

i come online first to gideon's text asking if i was safe, hoping everything was fine on my end. gideon did a military command secondary school so it is normal to have him this conscious, but beyond this present emanating chaos, he always checks up on me so randomly that i am still learning to find comfortable. i told him i was fine and doing well one minute, and the next, i told him i wasn't. i had just worn my shirt and stepped out of my room, standing in front of my door when i heard gunshots just a few meters away. and i heard it again, sporadically. there's hell breaking loose close to me, and what if it is me it wants to find? what if it has come looking for the boy who couldn't go to church? what if it had heard me dared it so many times and is now here to see me, to see if i would say anything?

it's crazy, the thing that started like a joke on my class group chat is escalating, and gaining traction from within jos, and the country over. news are in circulation, somebody is sending something to different group chats with indication of forwarded many times. everyone is a police of themselves, and their brothers also. my friends are calling me, some to know how i am doing, others to see if i am not dead yet because anything is that possible. my brother tells me to not be scared, to go read my books and that nothing would happen to me. i remember when something similar happened to him then when he was staying in angwa. something much more serious that occupants in every compound had to contribute money to buy bullets for the community. and sometimes, i wonder if the bullet bought with his money eventually found home in another person's body. if it apologized before it did the thing it was sent to do. if this made him a killer too. an accomplice to the greater crime of survival.

i am crying at the chilling video of a mother holding her son's decreasingly warm dead body. "tashi", she says, "yaro na ka tashi," she urges him to wake up. this cannot be happening to her. it is not true. her son is not dead. why is everyone crying. why is there blood on his body. is this the new colour of her son's sweat? it is crazy. it is mortifying to see. to watch a mother running through all the stages of grief and coming back to the first. and just so you know, it is not normal. this is not normal. and it all made sense now what someone said about Nigeria being the place God sends his least favourite people, and damn, what a thought! because please tell me why this place is this cursed? tell me why a mother would be the one planing her young son's funeral. tell me why we spend so much time begging, asking for God's hand and still be the most backward country ever? what do we have so many people calling unto heaven, and only hell seems to be answering? why, please?!!

i am angry. and i think we all should be. i want to say so many things. i want blame the state of this country on my parents, for giving birth to me here, on God for allowing this and many more still happening. i want to blame the government and all the other people saying we should pray for Jos, and if you think of it the very least and most we could do is to pray, but guys, have we not been doing this for Jos like since forever? is God not saying anything about this issue? for how long are we to go on with the love your enemies talk, when we don't even know the enemies. how do we love them when we have refused to label them properly, when it always some men with guns that are always unknown and unidentified. and if we claim that God loves us, and them the most, can we all now agree that it is only right we quickly identify and send them to him?

i have been seeing certain similar posts on my Instagram algorithm about how young people in their twenties should learn how to live and not put pressure on themselves, stating Jesus as their illustration. as in, if Jesus’ life in his twenties was not worth mentioning, why the pressure? i mean, what was he doing before turning thirty? and honestly i don't know and probably don't think it's that significant in this discourse. now, it made sense that i shouldn't want to put myself under undue pressure. but however, here's the caveat we don't talk about: that the starting of Jesus' ministry could be said to have been influenced by his cultural context. the initiation of a male child properly into manhood in the Jewish culture was 30 years. and that is to say, this is when you take on a rabbi for lessons, you become eligible for public service, or you learn a trade or something. the point here is not to say that Jesus’ destiny was primarily determined by his culture, but to say that this too can be a point. that the society plays a role in determining one's becoming, their responsibilities and today's society is vicious at that.

i am not thirty yet. i do not have to be for me to know that things are happening. young people are making waves, and i am here, still not being able to figure out which of my ties would go with the shirt i want to wear to class. i do not have solid skills that i could earn money with, i do not have the time to learn any. i am too lazy to do anything, i do not apply for all the competitions people send to my DM. i do not have the conscience to steal or mind for doing fraud. i think my parents are happy with me, but i don't think i would want to still be calling home for money. i am failing at being myself, the man i thought i already am. i think i am grossly insufficient and this weighs me like a bag of wet sand.

these days, i am fighting too many things i cannot see. i am dealing with myself. i am learning unhealthy habits. some days it's my phone i am glued to, other days it's my bed that has a hold of me. i am lazy. i am seriously sick, and i am tired of taking meds. i desperately want to go out to a monastery and live without counting the meanings of life. i do not smoke, and beer is too bitter for me. i am too smart to want to do drugs, and feel too dumb for school. i am not Ben Carson, i am not Jesus. what were they doing at my own age?

i am still texting my ex. i am chaos. my friends are leaving me, and i do not have the strength to ask them not to. one said i do not care about her enough, another the other day had to ask me if we were still friends, if i ever considered him to be one to even start with. my homeboy lost his mom, and is still grieving her, i tell him that he would meet her someday in heaven. another told me he's losing his mind, and i do not know what to tell him. i do not know where lost minds go to. i do not know where to find his for him. i don’t know how to save him. to save them. to even save myself.

i want everything to pause. i want to skip time to the good parts. i am contemplating what they say about someday looking back and smiling at these days. i have abandoned a poem i was writing about the underestimated power of laughing at oneself, about how to take my body like the amusement park that it is and double in the participation as performer and audience in the circus currently happening. i think, something has to be on the horizon that i can't yet get my grip on, a twist maybe, but well, something because this isn't how it's going to be till forever. i mean, didn't i say i was going to take over the world?

there's about six hours to my steeplechase head and neck anatomy test. i am still rotting in my bed and my mind is spiralling. going at a million thoughts per minute as to the various possibilities of how things could go. this week, i had a surprise steeplechase on monday in physiology. it is surprising because one, we have been preparing for mcqs, and worse our normal essay test. and two, it has never been done before so this modality never even crossed our minds. i do not know if this is conclusive but i have come to the realization that steeplechase is not my strongest hold. because tell me my intestines stiffen anytime i think of what i have to answer today. like what if my brain shuts down midway, what if my memory betrays me and says it does no longer want to do. what if my pen ceases in the hall. what if i just collapse in between spots because the pinned cadaver looked like my uncle that just died and is being buried today?

what is fear? fear is when Ritji asked me how preparation was going and i told him that i was too tired to read, that i will only just sleep because what possibly would i learn within a night to the test? fear is me spending more time staring at the anatomy of the anterior triangle of the neck on my atlas like a ghost instead of memorizing the structures. it's me opening my calculator and plotting for the next test because this one might actually be gone. it's me also always playing defense with my relationships, always guarding my heart as though there's something left there. it's me admitting loss even before the market opens. it's me writing myself off, not giving myself a chance to prove itself. it's me losing a game even before it starts. and just like how Rudy Fransisco puts, it's me what-ifing my way through a situation, debating myself into a corner and calling it home.

i am of the opinion that no matter how ugly some of our emotions could seem to be, it is still human to have them, and being able to express them is not an indication that something is wrong with us. recently, someone said fear is just fear, that it is just what it is. that it is just an emotion and it is neither good nor bad. i think its manifestation in our realities is dependent on the lens from which we choose to see it, and still on this vein, it could be said to be anonymous and in itself having no distinct identity. i think just as how several definitions are oftentimes juxtaposed with a particular context, fear is dependent on whatever we let it to be in our lives. because it is same fear of a test that disables me from reading, drives me the most to open up that book and stay all night reading. the same fear of being average that causes us to want to be excellent, for without fear, there's no need for courage, without feeling scared how then can one be brave?

we oftentimes say things along the lines of killing fear and sometimes not having it at all, and honestly, i do not think fear could ever be completely annihilated, or if it's even meant to be killed in the first place. i think it's an important ingredient in our becoming, and the trick is knowing how to deal with it. this week, i had a conversation with a friend who has been scared of life after the university, the pressure that is looming ahead. i did not think i was in the best position to tell her this but i had a sudden urge to, that all the things she's scared of would not happen. and between the both of us, i don't know who needed that the most. there's fear, no doubt. i feel it in my bones, i feel its smell emitting from my breath, it is palpable. but so is my faith. so is my insistent belief in miracles. this is what faith is. it is me making room for fear in the boys' quarters and letting hope take the master's bedroom. it is me not letting this darkness fool me. it is me saying though dark, the lights can still be turned on.

i read a thesis about how medical students face more suicidal tendencies than any other students in the academia. you see, about eight out of ten medical students were once prefects in their secondary school. five were either head boys or head girls, and most here who might have survived the admission process is said to be way above average intellectually and have really never had a face to face interaction with failure. most of us have always felt unreachable of some sort by academic setbacks, and when it eventually happens, when we stumble, when we do not meet up with the idea we have of ourselves in our head, it comes in which much gravity that shakes our core. the very moment you feel your efforts aren't exactly proportional to your scores, when life turns a deaf ear to you and you wonder if you're not been audible enough, you ask, you begin to interrogate yourself, to doubt the very truth of yourself, of life, and in this process you try to doubt if living was all worth it because how can the one thing you thought you could do best disappoint you this way? how can the very one thing you so much love, the thing that has taken your time, your attention, your strength and have had your dedication not love you back?

there's something callous about this place. something very brutal, something unforgiving about failing in medical school. this week, some of the biochemistry tests i wrote came out and i did very badly in them. and while not to make excuses, to evade responsibility, or saying this because i am a victim right now, i am saying that the negative marking system doesn't give allowance for trial and error. it's so crazy that it isn't bad enough that i don't get the mark for a question i don't know, but still go ahead to be penalized for failing at an attempt at it. and this made me think of how ironic the saying about how it's better you should fail while trying and not try at all. well, here, in the confines of medicine, grace is foreign—you have to either know or know, to be sure and certain and that which in reality we can't always be. failing is ugly, not allowed, that it's better to not even try at all to begin with than to fail. truly, i am wondering if we really are not losing our humanity. i mean, what sort of people are we becoming that doubt is a luxury we cannot dare afford?

it is true, that one doesn't particularly carry an inscription of suicide on their foreheads. we've had people who have presented with depressive signs, and also those who are asymptomatic, who would talk to you, laugh at your joke and unknowningly to you, nurse these deadly thoughts of ripping out their hearts into a zillion pieces. i always say that inasmuch as bulk of our time and everything is channelled towards this school, it isn't the whole definition of our lives. we have families, relationships to keep us with. some have jobs, spouses, children, bills to pay, sick parents, broken homes and all the other things competing for their attention as well. and all of these could come with each of their problems and a cumulative of these could result to one just losing it because this world might just seem too much for them to handle.

it's about forty days to my exams and i think God has a sense of humour. i am on my phone's calendar tab trying to decide what to write on the 15th April as it is the start of the second mb, and also, my birthday as well. i am pressured. i am really thinking this right now is too much for me to handle. my senior colleagues keep telling me i will be fine, i cannot dare complain to my mates as all of us are being cooked with same intensity of heat. i am honestly tired, and confused. my friend studying computer science tells me not to worry. that maybe this exams starting on my birthday is just God's way of saying he sees me.

september 1. you flight is scheduled for 1pm. i am not there to see you off. you didn't ask me to come, and neither did i because i couldn't trust myself to know how i’d feel about you. and sometimes, i think myself to be a coward. maybe, i should be a little more crazy. maybe i should do it like the way people do in movies, maybe i should take taxi to the nnamdi azikiwe airport and jump all over you, and say something along the lines of “don't go”, or whatever people in love say to eachother when they know they are not going to see for a very long time. but i don't. instead i am here, outside almost all day at the open field close to your house, staring at the sky and waving at every flying thing i see, hoping that you'd somehow wave back too. i am here praying to the air lords to steady your flight, and to the winds that they go gently on you.

i am in the cmda transition tutorials. i still find it hard to tell abduction from adduction. i am discovering very strange things in biochemistry, and i am learning in physiology that cell is simply more than just the basic unit of life. i get a text from you, and you tell me your visa has been approved. i send some happy stickers and tell you congratulations. i am going to call you later. for a moment, i am human and do not know what to exactly feel about this. i remind myself that my wanting to hold on to you doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things. didn't i promise myself that i would always let you take whatsoever form you want? i come over to suleja, i wouldn't complete the rest of the tutorials. we are to go on a date, i cancel several times and we cannot go because you are now busy with prep. you need to be at the embassy for the rest of your applications. you are nervous, i tell you to not be. i love you. you've got this babe.

january 7. your head is resting on my collar bone, and my chin at the top of your head. you just finished plaiting your hair, and it looks beautiful and full. i always tease you about your side burns and the thing on your chin that you don't want to agree are beards. you are wearing an oversized pink shirt and blue skirt. i hug your petite body tightly towards mine like i want to burst your intestines. like i want to suck the whole oxygen from you just so we'd have mine to both share. i lift you, carry you over, and spin you round with your feet bent in the air. i feel a swarm of butterflies in my stomach that they borrow me their wings to fly. i am levitating, i am in a trance where mortal language cannot yet transmit the experience. you would later tell me that was the happiest you've ever seen me.

june 5. i am reading Paul Coelho’s Alchemist when a call came from an unknown number. you say it was you and for a moment, it feel it was a dream. a prank of some sort. it is unbelievable that you got my number to check in on me because i wasn't in church the previous sunday. i tell you thank you and wonder how this cannot be a coincidence. i was just reading the scene in the book where santiago finds love in fatima but still has to leave, promising to come back to her. i want to believe i am Santiago and have found something in you. and funny how i now look for correlating events whenever i meet someone new. how i so much believe in omens like a shaman now.

today. i am texting your mom about something, and she has you as her display photo. i go through the photos you took in front of the eiffel tower. i check the other ones you've previously sent me and i catch myself giggling to the pixels, smiling so crazily to the videos, and mentioning your name in between breaths. i write a poem about this, and this time post it. it would be a crime to keep all of you from the world. to not tell of how much love i have learnt from you. i always say grief and love have something in common. they always know how to sneak up on you in the moments you least expect.

this is fifth day of the week, and i am struggling to let these words find expression through my fingers. this is not the only thing that beats me. just like most days this week, today i am having a temporary mental paralysis, and my friend nanko is helping me recover. i am too disabled to think for myself, to figure out the littlest things like what to eat, if i should wake up or even if going for that 8am lecture is really worth it at all.

i do not like complaining or coming off as someone who does, but i think i am too old for this but for a minute, how can one be? too old. truth is i used to think that maybe by this time, this age, i would have had things figured out and not break as much as i do, but it seems i keep failing myself time after time. i don't know if life should be this way, but my life doesn't seem arranged, or linear. it feels zigzag, random and unjointed like the handwriting of a left-handed child who's been forced to write with his right. it seems i am still not fluent in the language of this lifetime.

friday is here and this bauchi road doctor is running late for his community medicine class. i am inside a keke, begging my memory to help me confirm if i had locked my door properly. yesterday, when i went to throw my dirt, i came back to a sagging padlock on the door that i could swear i had locked. last year, two gas cylinders were stolen from my room and i really don't want that affliction to rise for the second time.

the wires of my black oraimo earpiece assume its resting spot on my body as i play NF's Fear. i have been putting his album on loop for the past few days and i coming to see the things that make people so obsessed with him. i am transcending through the portals made available by his lyrics. there's an event that the melody is causing in my soul. a live recording, an awareness that i am been brought to that goes more than the physical. there's a preparedness of my mind for the head and neck test i have. this is indeed what i want.

the test came in very fast and furious. we answered forty objective questions, one for twenty seconds as they were projected for us per time. i think the concept of time appears a little bit differently to us here than it does for anyone. it always seems brief, bounded, and never overlapping. the rule is simple one time is not meant to interfere with the other. your time for reading cannot be used for sleeping, your twenty seconds for question 15 should not be used for question 16. this is the regimen we are to understand properly.

we are outside, waiting. there are some of mates standing by the side to perform another ritual of going through the set past questions. i join one of the circles and i am excited that i got the answers correct. i left as the ones i didn't were rising a little bit more uncomfortable than i want to admit.

i am trying to believe in something. i think it's human to always want to find something to attach meaning to, to attribute our being to and in my case, trust and hold responsible for my existence. i am in our cmda prayer meeting, and mandong is dancing to the song raised. who has the final say? i sing along to it, pointing my fingers to Jehovah. for a moment i find it hypocritical. i am reminded that i should be reading my books or trying to finish up my head and neck summary due for friday. but i am here, along side about 50 of us, and inasmuch as i don't want to particularly look needy and make it seem as though it's just God's face i came seeking, i think i want his hand also. i think there's a violent desire in my heart, and i am trying to make a deal with God. and just like the mother hannah in the holy book, this child, samuel, i am praying for.

it's been a while i talked to baba. i really don't want to make it look as though it's only when i need something i reach out. i decided to call. he didn't pick, so he returned it afterwards. we are in conversation, and he didn't ask much about my preparation for exams and i did not know which to find unsettling—that he didn't think to really ask what's up with me or that he believes in me well enough to not bother about the business of my academics, and that which i feel all the more frightened. i was expecting to talk to mama but she wasn't around as they had finally called off the fcda strike that extended to close to a month. i remember the moment baba told teekay and i to try our best to finish medical school and leave this country because there's no hope and there's nothing here for us. i do not know when this transition happened, but my dad used to be very passionate and patriotic about the Nigerian state, but i guess when a thing you love breaks your heart repeatedly, you learn how best to stay away from it.

my brother teekay would be taking the hippocratic oath some time this year. he's spent over 8years in medical school with his mates and finally, he would be climbing the next ladder or whatever there is to his career. there are times i try to fascinate myself in his stead. to assume his position and wish i too were inducting. i stop, because that is an illusion i cannot keep up with. final year is already not easy, and i was told that life as a house officer would be the most demanding part of your life as a medical practitioner. i do not know how prepared he is to not just only make decisions as a medical doctor but then to take up the personhood outside the hospital—about family, about choosing a spouse, about finances, about managing the whole societal expectations that comes with the status of being a working adult, and with it, the office of being a doctor.

it's forty-four minutes past midnight, and i am nocturnal, actively participating in the happenings of my own life as i take intervals between different thoughts. i am on a brief sabbatical from the neurophysiology that is restive like a child who waits patiently for me to look the other way so he could run out of the house to play.

i am eating the jollof rice i cooked the previous night. i just finished reading Parkinson's disease and it seems as though the things i had read is playing hide and seek with me. it is disturbing as i take another trip through my thoughts, wondering how wild the minds of the people who invented these to learn must be. i ask myself if this wouldn't cause a sort of transmutation in us, or worse, a neurological disorder, with the sleep deprivation, stress and the intense level of reasoning i am experiencing now, and for the years to come. i don’t think i would ever remain the same after these days. i do not think so.

Love, I was told, is nothing but your mind playing unfair tricks on your heart. And I have been thinking about it. I am thinking it is true. That love is indeed a drug, and we are all born junkies, and maybe that’s why we cannot help but try to satisfy this existential hunger in us. So we do the things we do, we keep finding, we keep searching as though our own very life depends on it. And I think this explains so much to me how inwe can be, because tell me why anyone would believe that their salvation is in something so ridiculous that you get into by falling?

For some time, I have been noticing that a whole lot of people are moving about with abysses in their souls. With fractured spirits and broken hearts. And while this could mean so many things, I think it’s the fact that we are demanding one person to fill it. To love us. To care for us and be our everything. So we cry when we don’t get it. We beg, we scream, we hurt when these services we ask for are not provided by the ones we expect.

I am learning that love is pluralistic, not singular. I am learning of our ordinariness too. That we cannot help ourselves, so why would we want to put that same responsibility on another? I am learning that we were never meant to be loved by a single person. That all we are is too much for one person to handle, and they cannot hold us, or try molding themselves to our expectations even if they want to.

I am realizing that we are not angels, and thank God for that because we’d still fail to fly with the kind of loads that we carry. I am coming to terms with this truth, and maybe this is what love still is. That we acknowledge this much littleness of our being. And I am not saying this without the knowledge of the difficulty of this. I have had my own fair share of disappointments, but one thing I try to remember is the forgiveness of our humanness. Of our frailty, of our existence. Of how just like me too, we fail and cannot even help ourselves. That we are only but fragile little things, and their minds are too small to contain the bursting desire that we bring.

It is true, loving too can be a spell, and the chains binding my friends are made of vibranium. One recently told me she just broke up with her boyfriend and is now angry that he still hasn’t called to apologize to her yet. And I wonder if she really wanted the breakup in the first place. Another doesn’t want me bringing a particular girl’s name in our conversations again. And one whose love life fluctuates more than the naira told me he just met a new girl. I didn’t know if I should be happy, or worried that maybe this one would end like the last.

On some days, I am my friends and their need for love. I am their addiction, their wants and desires. I am their emptiness and the silence in the brokenness of their hearts. I am their stubbornness, the fullness of their hearts that runs over and cannot be contained by anything.

This is 2023. And it's almost that cliché night in a Nigerian home before their child leaves for school. I do not have a good memory of what exactly went on then but I know for sure my mum was packing up some crayfish and already made pepper for me as she went on with her talk. About how she's expecting much from me as I go to the university, how specifically she told me of bagging a first class in my 100L. I remember laughing and telling her that they don't do first class in medical school. But I knew what she meant so I said I would do my best.

Today, I am reminded of this. Of how much she believed in me, of her expectations, and most especially of the promise I made and how broken it has become, of how much of a lie I am living. On most days, I know that I am not really giving my all. That if I am to be honest, I am not really climaxing my potential, I am not doing the best that I can, because this? This is not really the height of me. This is not my full acceleration. I mean, how can this even be?

There's a thing my dad did when I was much younger. He would write certain sentences on sheets of papers for us to read out loud to test our reading skill. One of them was the five Ps. Proper. Preparation. Prevents. Poor. Performance. He liked this one so much and I really don't know why. I don't even know where he got it from at first, or whether he invented it himself. I really don't know, but I have been thinking about it. I have been thinking if the reason I am actually fidgety about my performance in the upcoming exams is because I haven't prepared properly. And now, I am using the word properly because yes and indeed just like how there's a way a man enters a city that doesn't wear him out, there's a way one ought to go about things, to prepare here as well.

I know, there are a number of things I am still trying to figure out about myself, but one thing I know is that I am not dumb. I'm not mediocre even. I’ve got a very excellent spirit, and one of the soundest minds I know. And while this might sound a little bit self-important and a little bit uncomfortable to admit, I know better than to place the blame for my complex on medical school or any other thing than myself. I am realizing that no one is really coming with the responsibility to save me. I know that sometimes I too can be my own greatest villain. I know there's a mountain in front of me and I am it.

It's ten weeks to MB. Some say it's nine. But all I know is this marathon is now turning to a sprint and God am I praying to be freaking Usain Bolt. For these long lectures and endless number of things to read within these very much short time. I have been having conversations with myself, and I don't want to be a coward. I don't want to be that guy who talks one thing and does another. I am not that kind of person. Who frets at the sight of pressure, who just prays for their dreams but is scared of waking up their minds to it. Dadom Victor, this is the life you've always wanted. Live like it.

These days, I have been apologizing for the things I didn't do. Like not replying to messages, like not staying for small talk or mustering the energy to say hi like I used to. I am apologizing for being lazy. On days like these, one would want to argue with God. That he adds more time because twenty-four hours doesn't feel enough for the things one actually wants to do. My friend said that here, the years are long and the days, short. And I think that is an interesting way to see it.

Today, I wrote two tests in biochemistry. Lipids metabolism and GIT biochemistry. It's so crazy how I am surprising myself because normally, I would have whined and yapped about how hard it is, how inconsiderate it is too to write two tests for different topics in one sitting. And I don't know if I should be, but I am bothered because this much composure is quite foreign to me as in chaos and panic has been part my identity. I am wondering if this is what growth looks like on me, or this is just the case of the frog in boiling water.

Sometime last week, a lady at the fortress who calls me "student doctor" reached out to me about a girl whose nail on her right toe had accidentally pulled up with the one she just recently fixed. I didn't know what to tell her, or the girl in person. A particular meme about an emergency, a medical student and mitochondria came to my mind. I didn't laugh. I told her it was not a big deal and it would be fine and how funny it is that she thinks that I know something worth listening to. That she called me, and especially that I told her something and she believed me.

I am often faced with the question of who I am right now, where I’m at, the kind of person I would want to be, the doctor I am becoming now. And it scares the shit out of me that I am not really who I think I should be. That I think I am insufficient, not enough for the calling in beckoning on me. There's a loud voice in my head that tells me things that I don't want to hear. There's a picture I have in my mind, and it seems it is that versus myself, the real me, and they are in constant misalignment. I feel like who am I really to be the gatekeeper of a stranger's life, to have the license over life and death. How little am I to want to play God, to dictate and make pertinent choices that affect their existence while I’m still trying to pack the fragments of mine together.

Recently, I had a conversation with a doctor I met for the first time. He said he graduated 2022, a year before I got to medical school. He went on recounting his different experiences, his time at Bauchi Road, the years he spent before medical school, how that he stayed in Naraguta Hostel, the things he wished he did but didn't. There’s this attempt for him to not be didactic with his speech but still, there's a part of him sounding preachy and instructional. He told me about marriage. That I make sure I marry a girl who loves me. I asked if it's possible to marry someone who doesn't. I really have been thinking about this.

My dad's younger brother retired last year. I am thinking of him. I visited him on the second day of this month. Exactly a year after I went to his house. He was asking me if I knew he had stopped work on the 31st of December. I told him I knew, and he went on telling me about his plans for retirement, one of his daughters getting married, another of his still having admissions issues and his son who is not seeming to be doing well in school. I tell him it's going to be fine and deep down, I realized that I won’t be getting money from him like I used to. That wasn't the only thing. I saw the crackiness in his tenor. The uncertainty masked in prayer, the questions of what he is really going to do after thirty-five years working, how’s he going to fit into this sedimentary family home style. How true it is when they say that family is everything. That regardless of the things you do or where you go, family is all you've got.

This is the second year since I went home. The last time I travelled back was after my 100 level in June 2024. My friends ask me how I do it? If I don't miss them and whether I really love them or worse, if they don't love me. And while missing and loving mean differently to many of us, and we manifest these feelings in various forms, I think I do more violently than I actually want to admit.

I miss them. Maybe I miss the times when I don't really have to do the thinking for what to eat or the food to cook. Heck, I miss times I didn't have to think for myself and everything I was was a product of my parents'. I miss following my mom to get new clothes, the ethereal happiness I felt. I would want to add that I miss going to the market generally with her but, she always spends more time haggling prices than actually buying and I don't think I really want to go back there.

I miss the Saturdays when we spent the whole day watching Premier League matches on Channel 203. And Sundays after church continuing the circle. I miss how we wait with keen anticipation for the Champions League. My dad always complaining and talking to the TV whenever a player messes up, the silence that follows after Arsenal . I knew passion from him. I miss watching him jumping up and then to the cushions to celebrate goals on his end. And I oftentimes wonder how small our bodies are to contain all of the joy we can have.

Though we are getting more estranged by the day, I miss my friends. I miss having them around, going to the barber's shop in my area, having different conversations with them making me feel like the smartest person in the room. I miss my friend James for putting me on the latest gists in town. I miss Jonathan for always taking me to go play football on PlayStation, making sure I was learning while he beats me mercilessly. I miss a lot of things and while I understand that nostalgia is a liar, today it is telling the truth. It is not montaging or photoshopping any of these experiences into what it isn't. Today I am full of it.

Last week, I wasn't feeling fine and I called my mother to tell her. She called me again to pray for me and I almost cried. I am transported to and fro, taking trips to the past and present. I am now realizing that I may not have or spend as much time with these people as we all grow old together. I am contemplating the unfair transaction that we all are engaging in. That this is how it would be. That this is the price we pay for growing up.

It is true. This place is a small one and it can't be said to be negligible either. And even the people too. The influence of your mates here would go in on you subtly, quietly in ways that you begin to look more alike than you actually realize. There's a high tendency that you'd spend almost a decade together with these people in school, and then maybe start to practise with them for many years. discuss salary increments and arrears, send updates on strikes to one another, and God forbids, share same streets holding placards begging for the barest minimum. We would witness our own becoming, our doings and undoing and still be here. And I wonder for a moment, if isn't what they say soulmates are? To stay together for better, and for worse.

I was told that one would need a family to survive here. A support system of some sort, and while I don't really know what this means, I somehow have found people who hold me dear and close to them. I do not know if this counts but I like to treat people individually, to have separate and single friends. To have them in parts and not in cliques as it is popularly seen here. I don't know why this is, but I have never found myself in a place for a very long time. With a particular people consistently. I am always on the go. Always moving, and funny how I know how to move on except when it matters the most.

I really don't know if I am enjoying myself. I don't know if this place is even meant to be enjoyed either. Or liked. And while almost everyone I know is still tired or for the very least, their energy drained, there are some people whose enthusiasm is still evergreen and it makes me wonder what exactly keeps them going. My second MB is coming, and my friend is really panicking. We are calculating our averages across our courses and I tell him to calm down. Not that I am certain that it would work but I hope that helps him. That he remains calm and composed.

In every class you get into, senior colleagues tell you it's the only free time you have to chill. That the future which is supposed to be bright seems frightening and as well threatening. Like it doesn't even want you to come at all. Once, during our early 200L, we were told that for one to do well in medical school, you have to become a robot. Well, I guess that's why this place isn't particularly pure bliss for me. That I have refused to become a robot. A machine. Another programme in the system.

I want to become myself, a bug in the matrix. Although, I still don't know what this is, but I know it looks like me still doing medicine and reading fictions. Going out more with the people I love and gisting them about the new episode of the Sopranos I just watched without feeling like I'm wasting time. It is me not having this many alarms on my phone, my life feeling mechanical, and like my friend would say, I want to write riveting essays and fire poems. It is me finally learning something new. Like breathing. Like not always making it look like my life is rushing and at same time still feeling stuck. To learn to like actually live instead of trying to survive, to not get tired of the next day even before it even arrives.

And one would say that life isn't even bed not to talk of all the roses I'm laying on it. That I am trying to romanticise my life but I would tell them that at least I am trying. And if I don't try to, who would? You see, like I said earlier on, I still want to do medicine. Badly so. Saving lives is really fulfilling and cool, but what is the essence of learning how to save other people's while almost losing yours?

I could easily use this moment to rant about how the whole year has been. How terrible it has been for me. How the previous year ended with me actually wanting everything and everyone around me to cease happening. Like me sleeping and waking up to oblivion, how I wanted my life to end but not ending it myself, because that would mean suicide, and that is a treasonable crime to man and even God and I am not allowed to think of it. The transition to 2025 was really bumpy and I would want to complain.

I would want to, but I am learning to count my blessings with both hands, to raise them like casted ballots just so everyone would see. I am learning not to be one whose one hand praises something while the other curses it. I am learning to be grateful, and this is not to feign ignorance to the ugliness of life, but this is me saying that beauty itself is subjective. And yes, I know ugliness and beauty shouldn’t be in the same sentence, but I was told that I have issues at finding so many things beautiful. And today, my life too.

I am learning that the difference between existing and actually living could be illustrated by how present one is in their own reality and the people they share it with. And in truth and all honesty, I didn’t make many friends this year. I didn’t go out like I would. I didn’t interact with people the way I would want to, and this partly could be said about how intense school has been. But still, one thing I’m grateful for is depth — that I went deep with the ones I had already acquired, and I saw their crudeness, and I loved them. Loved them in every form I they exist, and better still, I loved them into their own refinement.

This year, I showed up. For myself too. I took it upon myself to own up to my own shit, to see myself clearly, to dissect my being, to interpret my own colour, and see what I am actually made of. This year, I turned twenty-one, and I felt life moving a little bit too fast for me. There’s still that childishness I am fighting off. I am trying to fit into this adulthood pant well, and though I still suck at it but this too, I was told, is a privilege. And yes, there have been disgusting times and moments for me. I wrote the other time that I felt so low, rock bottom became the roof over my new apartment, and it’s true. I sank. I missed a couple of shots. I failed some tests in school that nearly ruined me. There were times I stared a little bit longer at my bank balance. I missed so many competitions I wrote letters, essays and lots of poems that I never got to share with anyone.

But I think the highlight of my year was in October, when I fell into deep love. Well, I wouldn’t say it was me falling, because this person has been an old friend, and I was very conscious with this decision. I walked into love with her. Deliberately, and she too loved me intentionally. With everything in her. She came in devouring every form of weakness I had. She explored all of my insecurities and laid them bare. She invaded me. She overwhelmed me.

Talking about this now is something I really think I wouldn’t have done previously, because I have been so uptight for most of the year and even now too, I have been and still guarding my heart. With her, I am learning to be open and actually let someone in. Even with my brokenness. And for the first time in my entire life, I am scared I’m going to ruin this one, just like the other times. I am scared she’s going to really see me for what I am and decide to leave. So yeah, I have been acting a little bit out of character.

It is true. There’s this tendency of me running away from people who love me, and I think it’s a sickness. A disease killing me. And it’s a good thing this is being treated. I hope I stay here, because this is what my heart needs — that I rest my heart in love. That I stay now, next year, and even till the road vanishes.