I was raised a church girl. Communion by age 9, alter girl by age 10. So, I was by nature conservative-ish. The mere thought of the budding sensation when I cross my thighs was a sin. An atrocity. How dare I think about feeling that way and if anything, why am I even feeling this way. So, I would immediately uncross my legs and cross the rosary.

And perhaps that is why purity culture is so effective. It does not need to stand over you forever. Eventually, you learn to stand over yourself. Nobody had to tell me to uncross my legs and reach for the rosary every single time. The rule had already moved inside me. I had become both the girl being disciplined and the person doing the disciplining.

Feminist theorists such as Sandra Bartky and Susan Bordo have written about precisely this kind of embodied discipline: the way cultural expectations can become practices through which women monitor, regulate and reshape their own bodies. The most powerful forms of control are not always the ones that announce themselves as control. Sometimes they look like modesty. Sometimes they look like good behaviour. Sometimes they sound like a girl asking herself why she is feeling something she has been taught she should never feel.

Let me nerd out a bit. The Kamasutra, attributed to Vātsyāyana and generally dated to around the 3rd–4th century CE, treats kāma (sensual/sexual pleasure) as one of the legitimate aims of human life, alongside dharma (ethical/religious duty) and artha (material prosperity). The Kāmasūtra doesn't simply reduce sexuality to reproduction.

Perhaps this is what unsettles me most: the idea that my shame was never inevitable. It was taught. Somewhere, another culture was writing about desire not merely as a moral failure, but as an aspect of human life worthy of knowledge. The Kāmasūtra did not emerge from a world that had never thought seriously about pleasure. It emerged from one in which kāma could be understood as one of life's legitimate pursuits.

School didn’t also teach us much, especially religious studies that called masturbation a misuse of sex. Girls who talked about sexuality so openly became whores, sluts, easy, open. Any slur to downplay their sexual awareness. There is a stark difference between sexual innocence and sexual ignorance. As adults who grew in a shadow world where sexuality is dictated by shame and porn that leads to categorization, you often confuse the two.

If I am unpacking this right, girls are taught not to have sex, not to touch yourself, not to talk about sex, not to look at your body too much. That is not propagating any sort of innocence, that is harboring ignorance. Nobody teaches you about your anatomy. Nobody is persistent on what consent means, how pleasure feels, what is uncomfortable. How to decipher your body without shame. That is not protection, that is stupidity.

Maybe we have romanticised ignorance because it looks so much like innocence from the outside. A girl who knows nothing about her body can be praised as pure, when in reality she may simply have never been given the language to understand herself. There is a big difference between protecting a girl from experiences she is not ready for and refusing to give her the knowledge she needs to navigate those experiences when they come.

The same society teaches sexual knowledge and frames it as sexual availability. Woe on you who talks about sex openly. Congratulations because you are societally a slut, a whore and everything surrounding that. A shameless woman apparently becomes immoral whereas a man’s sexual curiosity is treated as some sort of growing up.

But the greater question is, who gets to assign moral meaning to anatomy? Through my clitonomy, I came to understand that I hold 8000+ nerves in my clit but it is somehow something shameful? Let me be a shameful woman then. And here is the fascinating distinction between function and morality.  The clitoris does not become immoral because someone tells you so. Your body is not suddenly sinful because some religious text or society gives it a meaning.

And this is where biology becomes almost rebellious. My body can produce a sensation before I have decided what that sensation means. The nerves do not consult my religion. My anatomy does not ask whether I am a good girl before it responds. The body simply exists, and then society arrives to give it a vocabulary: pure, dirty, modest, sinful, desirable.

We all know the fucked mentality behind purity culture. You become dirty when you masturbate. But what is dirty about pleasure? What have you contaminated by release? Your body? Your apparent morality? Your dictated femininity? Your marriageability? Your perceived value? Purity culture isn’t merely regulating sexual acts, it actively purposes to destroy any meaning attached to a woman’ body.

So maybe my claim here is not about making women masturbate. This is a question why girls are taught that our bodies are morally suspicious when they belong to us. A body that exists outside male access. A body that can experience pleasure without a man. A body that doesn't need reproduction to justify its sexuality. A body whose pleasure doesn't have to serve anybody else.

So please, as I am cliterally late to my substantive relaxing time, please, touch yourself. Know your body. Do not shun your anatomy. Understand what is shameful and what is the boundary. Your curiosity does not make you dirty and please, that is your body.

as clitically as possible, touch yourself, feel yourself, unnerve yourself,

with pleasure, yours clitically!

It is by design that the rose’s stem has thorns running through it so that when you touch it to get the beautiful part, it will prick and hurt you. And so am I. Loving is a task, a heavy one. My heart comes with baggage. My mind perfection. My soul with need.

So, the garden will be full of that which hurts, bleeds, but at the end is so beautiful.

“In my house, I will have a massive library”

Words seam into this beautiful tapestry of paragraphs that grant the soul light. That is exactly what books have been to me. An escape from reality, a solace from cruelty. But sometimes when needed, academically a validator. And so, a sanctuary that both built me and brought me down when I couldn’t get through it.

So, the library will be so full, one that calms the troubled, one that challenges the able, but in the end, facilitates.

“In my house I will have a big walk in closet full of what I love”

I remember growing up, my mum would get my sister and I matching clothes. But the sad part is, they never fit me well. They were always bought not with me wearing them in mind but it’s possibility of being a hand-me-down. So, the same adornment that was supposed to make me feel confident and love my frame, was the poster for favoritism.

So the closet will be full, of statements that scream of me, that boost me, that actually clothe me.

“In my house, I will have first aid kits”

I am clumsy, terribly clumsy. The kind where glasses break at my touch. The left side of my body is prone to being hurt. All the scars adorn just the left side. The occasional paper cuts. The burn mark from when I was playing master chef. The array of self harm marks. The friction burn from wrestling for my autonomy from that man who. The scratches from still fighting for myself.

So, it will be full of somewhere I can clean the wounds, physical at least. The scars may heal. But the stories remain to be etched.

“In my house I will have a dishwasher”

To know that I truly love you, I will wipe my hands nikiosha viombo ndio nikutext. I have been mommified and chores no longer seem like something to be done but a never ending punishment. You mature fast, you handle things better, you are a first born daughter. Fit enough to take care of everything and everyone while nobody takes care of you.

So in my house, I will have everything that can take care of me without me pressuring or feeling lukewarm about responsibilities and punishment.

“In my house, I will have a big swing where I smoke”

Habits are nature. And especially where habits teach you how to cope. It is no lie that the carcinogens have been cuddling these lungs for some time. But substantially, the high feels like a good cuddle, one that says it’s good it’s going to be okay.

So, I will have a safe space that feels like a cuddle, like the smoke engulfing me is prioritizing me.

“In my house, I will have a big well stocked kitchen”

I can take coffee for seven days or have ten meals a day for seven days. The doctor called my failure to eat a disorder, I call it a mechanism. Because with each word mother dearest utters to mock the frame of my ribs, the more I don’t want any more in me. With each insult of my fluctuating appetite, I shut down.

So, I will have more than a stove and a fridge, it will be somewhere I can have the liberty of choice, I can have the fulfilling decision without ridicule, without insults, without any hate.

“In my house, I will have a big metallic gate”

In the trial and errors of giving it another chance, I have left more of myself giving to others than giving back to my heart. I need to learn when to close it off, when to be quiet, when to say nakupenda. When to regulate, when to push more, when to let it go.

So, I will build a gate, one where I learn when to open to strangers out of my own accord, when to let people out and never let them in. When to close and when to open.

“In my house, I will have a piano”

I taught myself how to play, but somewhere along the way, I stopped. I could feel the difference in how they supported me, and something I once loved became a reminder of what I was not given.

So, I will have a piano, one I choose for myself. One that reminds me that I can teach myself, build myself, and become for myself what I once wished someone else would be.

So maybe home isn’t a place. Perhaps that is what this house really is. A collection of things I once needed, now learning to give to myself. I am building it slowly, with my own hands, with all the parts of me I once thought needed fixing. Maybe home was never something I was meant to find in another person. Maybe it is something I am learning, piece by piece, to become for myself.

I have come to combine my greatest contempt for math with my unsurmountable love for the law. In this cocktail, probability is still defined. Black's Law Dictionary defines probability as "likelihood; appearance of truth; verisimilitude" or more specifically, "the likelihood of a proposition or hypothesis being true, from its conformity to reason or experience, or from superior evidence or arguments adduced in its favor".

Thus, probability adduces to something highly likely happening because of the weight of evidence inclining a reasonable mind to have a belief in it.

So, when such a strictly accurate discipline like Math decides to intertwine with the versatile text of the Law, human experiences that shape it are highly likely to be born from the union. And love is born. It’s a particularly interesting feeling. It sparks with a very random comment on a public platform because aish probably they will look and get the uterus to answer. (I never use ‘balls’ to imply courage, why use something that will break a man to his knees to imply courage?)

You are now in an endless loop of communication. One that didn’t start with what is their favorite color but their ability to face your audacity. They tell you their favorite color finally but you are different, you ask why, they are different, and it is a conversation that spirals into 2 AM despite your usual 10PM bed time. Their number pops up on your screen and you save it with an emoji, you don’t even have your mum saved with an emoji, but there they are. Full government names with that conspicuous red heart, boldened. So, are you probably lovers?

The probability of being in love relies on security. The mind is an echo of the heart. That which the heart sounds, it pumps and traverses to the mind. That is why the good morning texts have meaning again.

The heart resonates with care. It lies in the fact that I know your favorite movie is Spider-Man. I also know I will never ask you to watch it with me because of what it reminds you of. I am your sanctuary and you mine.

To love is to fall, fall in love, fall off a boda going to see them, fall so deep and deeper. It is allowing them the space to fall so deep they can see your why beyond your what. I don’t need you to know my cow’s name, but I need you to make a space so secure that you will know my boldest fears.

To love is like making tea. It needs patience. When the milk rises you have to be careful, watchful so it doesn’t spill over. Lower the intensity of the flame, let the spices seep. Being patient enough so it doesn’t burn.

To love is to sign a contract written in water; It is the audacious act of making a binding commitment using the most fluid, changing substance on earth trusting that as both of you shift, the agreement still holds.

To love is to hand someone your skinless places: It is letting them touch the parts of your story that haven't even scabbed over yet, betting everything on the softness of their hands. While also actively letting them slide in, glide through, make you reach, make you ache, make you come undone.

To love is to let it be

In as much as hatutapigana na kuumizana for real, here is my heart laid out in blue, pink roses, white kitkats, falling in love again. In a way that is looking at the evidence, taking the leap, and admitting that the probability was 100% all along.

{ We'll make a promise that we're gonna be ok}

I feel, then feel again, and it gets back to you.

I feel blue, the colour.

and when you told me that its your favorite,

it stuck on me, painted on a new canvas, in all its shades.

The cover of an album, the ink of a pen, the banner on the street.

they all in their shades, make me see you, feel you, live you,

I feel blue, the color.

I feel webs, a spider

They are subtle to notice, especially now, but I do notice.

they intertwine in the most beautiful and chaotic way

more or less like your heart, I notice it in the subtlest ways,

I see you.

I feel webs, Interconnect.

I feel safe

One way or another, the mind says but the heart stays.

I have thought and felt, deliberated and still felt

A sanctuary, a hiding place, a shelter, a meadow,

And that is what you are to me, safe.

I feel safe.

"I know I'll lose parts of myself with you.

But somehow I know I'll find an even more beautiful version of myself too"

It’s more than an acknowledgement, it’s a promise.

It’s also more jarring, the pursuit of love and the finding of loss.

For a mind that loves certainty, this undoing is terrifying.

But it may be jarring, and yet there is nothing more beautiful and profound.

I see roses, pink and white.

The terrifying softness of it, how it bloomed in the dark before my mind could even reason a defense.

The blinding certainty of you, just a quiet peace that ruins every walls I ever built.

They aren't a performance for the world; they are a slow, beautiful ache, growing wildly in the spaces you broke open.

And as long as you keep painting, I promise to keep being your quietest admirer,

your safest place to land, and the person who will love every single masterpiece you create and

every raw, unfinished piece of you in between.

It’s terrifying to love this deeply, but I yield all my fear to the unseen.

Kama ni ajali njema ya Mwenyezi Mungu kutukutanisha, then let Him paint the rest of our days. Inshallah

I’ll just be right here loving you through every stroke, every shadow, every word

I see you, I hear you and I love you, endlessly

Death will forever remain an emotive topic for me. No matter how much I try to enclose it in fake strength, saying how I am desensitized to it, nobody truly ever will be. The idea of permanent loss. The fact that they are not here tomorrow or the day after, or merely the fact that you won’t be here tomorrow, or the day after.

I have lived to say only death can stop me, quite scary, engulfing even. But no matter how much of a finality factor I give it, I have killed myself more times than I think I have lived. I have rightfully taken the life away from my hands not more than once but still, I get back and up. So, is death really the finality factor to life? I have experienced death metaphorically many times through regret, comparison, anger, self-harm, and escapism yet none of them truly ended me. So what is death really?

I have hanged myself on the gallows of regret. Suspended myself on the ropes of undue pain. To live a life well lived or to well, just live life. I hate regret, why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I save the day, why couldn’t I just do it? It creeps in, conversations not had, words said badly, intentions misinterpreted. There they lie, in between the periphery of questioning and recalling. Regret. So, I hang on the gallows I myself stabilize and die. Die from regret, from opportunities missed and a well, just live life life.

I have sat on the electrifying chair of comparison. Felt the sparks of self-loath vibrate and reverberate through each nerve as I recalled what I don’t have and what someone else has. The voltage of the current shot through in megavolts when I sat to scrutinize why I can’t laugh with my mother and someone else can. The current shot through when I pushed myself to limits that were nonexistent to prove a point, to become the one other would be compared to. So, I got electrocuted, my charred remains echoing a well, just live life life that resulted in no relationship with my mother and unmet expectations and goals.

I have overdosed on the pills of anger. Each tablet dosed with futile fury. Anger that learnt how to build over the smallest of things. I would slowly pop my pill when the waiter was a bit late, when my sister made one bad joke, when my ‘s’ was shaped crookedly and my teacher of English would highlight that only over the magnitude of a story I just wrote. So, I took the can and swallowed it. Swallowed my anger. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. The tablets of my anger brewed more than what they were supposed to, rage, pity, violence until I lay there, run down, angry and lifeless. The tablets inebriated my system and the aftermath? A lifeless body, torn down by milligrams.

I have bled myself to death. Slit my arms at the expense of using more pain to subdue the torrents of pain gushing in and out of me. I took a blank canvas, the knife was my pen and wrote all over it, wrote on my thighs in ugly slash marks, to punctuate how much my body needed help, I kept writing and punctuating. Until I came to realize that was not my canvas or my notepad, neither was it a pen. I had transformed the layers on skin into a canvas and a knife into ink and there I was, an artist on material not permitted. So, I bled out, the blood gushing and seeping out until I lay there, no life, no longer an artist, but with the art of my canvas on a lifeless artifact.

I have submerged my head in barrels of liquor and drowned. Was I aware of the destruction? Yes. Did I love it? Yes. I had never felt more comfort submerged in matter like that to the point where death felt like more of a floating away feeling while in the realest sense, I was drowning. So deep I couldn’t get to the surface and scream for the lifeguard. This was a willing death. I loved it, every moment of tipsy. Up until it developed to panic. The transition between oh I am swimming in this pool happily to the realization that I am drowning, I am not happy, I can’t breathe, I am dying.

So, when I talk about being alienated from death, I speak from a point of experience, I have done it to myself more than once, at the expense of a life well lived. I have hanged, bled, overdosed, name it. And not once has it been a finalizing factor. Not once has it dropped me. I have seen death in the face and spat on it. On a good day we have sat on an outside bench and shared a cigarette knowing it is only eating me away inching me closer to it. I have sat on the cliff of life and swung my legs as death sat next to me laughing. And in that moment I have never felt more whole.

So maybe death cannot stop me. Maybe it will keep on enabling me or drowning me. But trust me, we, we will have so much fun, that it won’t feel like pain but an immense release from captivity. So maybe death cannot stop me. Or maybe it has tried, in quieter ways than I ever noticed. Not in a single moment of finality, but in fragments in regret, in comparison, in anger, in the slow drowning of escape. And yet, I am still here. Not untouched, not unbroken but here. Maybe that is what it means to feel my heart for the first time. Not the absence of death, but the refusal to let it have the final word.

With absolute love,

If you want to love me, be like black coffee- bitterly awakening. And not in the sweetened black coffee or the poured instant one for the color. Love me like brewed coffee. Take measurements to know just how much you spill in. take precaution because if its too much, then it becomes too bitter. But isn’t that the way I like it, darker, more bitter. But what happens when I finally gain resistance. And your continuous effect gets eroded by familiarity? Will I still love you out of need or spite?

Love me like red wine. Boldly like its color, stain me in the most perfect way, like cabernet to a white dress. Hit me slowly and precisely, just like how it made through fermentation. A process; keenly and observantly but patiently enough. In sync like the perfectly cooked steak lathered in thyme accompanied by you. Tantalizingly like pasta in sauce. But be careful to do it in small amounts, maybe I’ll be healthy. However easy not to do too much, I’ll make you dependent.

Love me like cigarettes on a Monday morning. Why Mondays? So, you can start me over, be my new beginning in an imperfect world. Give me the headrush and trigger dopamine effectively. Cling onto me like the soot stained tar that lives permanently in my lungs. Be part of me. But won’t that make me need you more? Because if only one stick can make me happy, then I’ll need you in packs and packs till you finish me whole.

 Love me like whiskey, a warming burn. Run down my throat leaving a fire that you only ignite. Hit the pits of my stomach in an upsetting way. But it depends on how you come onto me though. Neat so I feel you actually or on the rocks aided by lies and seduction. Will I notice something vanilla in you to sweeten the burn? Or feel you like smoke and spice. Heighten my fire!

Will you cling onto me like glitter in form of grief, attached, unwavering, uninvited yet it stays? Will you cling onto me like loss? Will you be as deep as the sadness that comes with grief. Are you going to me as intense as the anger that comes when I piece the pieces together? Or will your reconciliation come out of guilt perhaps your negotiation method too. Will it reach a point where I am numb to the arguments and the rash words? Or will we bear a feeling of restlessness. Are you going to stay forever and engulf me at 3 am?

But maybe you can be as calming as my type of indie music. Dreamy, introspective, effortless? Will I listen to your voice and drift the way the Lumineers do? Will I feel your departure like Seafret’s Atlantis? Will I crave for you after you are gone and maybe yearn for our little talks? Are you going to feel like home? I’m praying to whoever is in charge of our destiny that you’ll be my source of softness.

Perhaps I will feel you in my soul like what house music does to me. The vibrant steps that match with my heartbeat. A rhythm that will feel like fleeing and escape engulfed in feeling still grounded. As repetitive as it is, lets never get tired of it. Let’s stay spiritually. Let Kabza flow through us over and over until we are one continuous repetitive groove that just stays beating vibrantly.

Love me as intimately as the Kenyan love song genre. Kaa na mimi milele, baby usijali tuko pamoja. Be my super human- show me that I will be fine. Nipende kwa mazuri na mabaya. Let our love be as beautiful as the sunset, nitangoja however long it takes. The sound of your laughter will forever be my favorite song. When the distance hits, panda basi uje Nairobi, I’ll be waiting for you at the doorstep. Never forget you are still the one, my everything. Ambieni hao wengine wasonge kando, huyu amenifanya nipende tena? vipi siwezi sema.

But in all ways, love me like how a poet loves their words. Structurally if possible because I have OCD. Mesmerizingly so I am amazed every single day of our love. Hold me in a position that has more. Make my mind bud and my heart full. Raw, hauntingly, powerfully, simply, deeply. Love me precisely, use the right words, step by step. Show me the love in fragments, in images, in description. Sometimes just easily but sometimes, harder.

So, if you stay, do not come for the parts you find easy. Come for the distillation ;the caffeine in my pulse, the smoke in my breath, and the heavy bass of the city in my bones. Love me not as a collection of habits, but as a single, disciplined symphony. Because to love me is to hold the glass, hear the song, and breathe the ash all at once, until the bitterness and the sweetness are no longer separate, but simply us.

I wore my first Kenyan bracelet at age 6, class one, I vividly remember it because my dad was just starting off as an engineer so he would get posted up around and he always came with gifts. When he gave it to me, he taught me one word that stuck with me, patriotism. So, on many days, apart from school of course, I always had it on. Pride and love for my country.

Until I became logical and radical.

I took off my bracelet permanently when I sat and analyzed our simple unity framework. The laws and the implementation. The concept of tribalism and senseless discrimination.

So

“Ee Mungu nguvu yetu, ilete baraka kwetu”

Ee Mungu kama wewe ndio nguvu yetu, your people are weaker than ever before. The clergy you left to look after your children are the same ones destroying every single hope left. Mchungaji anakula kondoo na kulia hakuna profit hii mwaka. Your leaders are comprising of rapists, child molestors, corruption king pins and liars. The blessings your strength bestows upon us is now covered by the myriads of hopeless congregants who have nothing but aimless hope. Hope that refuses abortions in young teenage pregnant girls but fundraises for the pastor’s new v8. Hii nguvu na baraka, sio ya kujengea shule ama kuweka local dispensary, hii nguvu ni ya kuwekea bibi ya pastor boutique kilimani auze pushups.

“ Haki iwe ngao na mlizi”

We are studying law in a lawless country. One that grants passports to terrorists but when the local kid who got a one in a million chance to get a scholarship applies so they travel, they have to pay some 4500 and wait until public service decides oh well, shika passport. Article 232, Constitution of Kenya 2010 stipulates public servant officials to work diligently adhering to ethical standards: but things are different. Where your mpesa balance is non-existent so is the service you will get or if you are lucky, you will be served what you need with a platter of rude glances, heavy delays and instrumental insults.

“Natukae na udugu, Amani na uhuru,Raha tupate na ustawi.”

Udugu- the emphasis on the interconnectedness of all people and the importance of community. So tell me, how does udugu apply when the LGBTQ+ community remains one of the most targeted in terms violence, hate speech and exclusivity. How are we interconnected when love towards another is apparently evil? Amani nowadays has just become a name to give to newborn baby girls. Where is the peace when government is unresponsive to a flooding crisis in its country? Where peaceful protests are turned into a political agenda with our blood coloring the same streets our ancestors fought for freedom? Uhuru is clear in Article 33 but wait until it is time to actually exercise your freedoms, a cyber security act enacted to limit you. So raha and ustawi, I don’t think you guys have a place to fit aki.

Our unifying tune asks for a firm foundation for our land but guess what, our foundation is eroded by the greed in land grabbing. Anywhere development for public use is enacted, there is a dynastical family that owns the place. The agricultural act is now nothing but a mere decoration pale Kenya Law reports. The rate of inflation in matters food is an upward 7.3%. with the most local commodity mboga, Sukuma wiki facing a monthly inflation of 2.4%. We sing and stand attention asking for plenty to be found within our boarders, yet our land is a sieve for counterfeit sugar while our sugar factories die slowly. The firm foundation is not the soil we till, but the luxurious high rise apartments in suburbs that defy zoning laws.

If justice is our shield and defender, our defense is then tucked in a tear gas cannister or a plain cloth officer in a Subaru. Article 244 calls for police officers to foster relationships with the community. To be implementors. No clause allows for innocent lives to be taken. We sit in class to learn the bill of rights- right to life, to freedom, but we stand on streets to sell masks and go back home casualties.

In a country where breathing feels cautioned and expression is just a term in the dictionary, maybe fleeing is the next best option. The government newest hot export is its most resourceful- young minds-. They would rather bring in remittances than create prosperity. A place that views radical vocal thinkers as a threat rather than an asset.

The bracelet didn’t fall off; it was strangled by the very wrists it was meant to adorn. You cannot wear the colors of a flag that uses its red for the blood of its protesters, its green for the grabbed forests of its ancestors, and its white for the shrouds of the hope it kills every day at the altar of a V8.

So, nchi haina nguvu, baraka za nchi ziko kwa mfuko ya chips funga wa minister. haki ni story tunafunzwa lakini ground ni different. unatoa haki ama thao? lakini si tutakaa tu kwa udugu.

ni siku gani ndugu zangu tutaamka? tujitoe kwa nguvu za kimabavu zinazotuangamiza. Nchi yetu ya Kenya, tunayo ipenda, tuwe tayari kuilinda.

but for now, mkono inahonga imevaa, bracelet ya colors za flag.

“I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading.”- Chimamanda Ngozi, the danger of a single story.

I love this excerpt from Chimamanda’s work, not only because it articulates such an inner thought, but also because I have never read something that touches my core more than it. As a first child, I was always supposed to do it all. It did not matter how incapable I was, I had to feign capability regardless. So out of a loud mouth, I started speaking by age 1, crazy? It was Kalenjin, asking for meat from my grandfather because he taught me how to be a carnivore.

So, my first overachiever narrative, my speech. This aspect of me sought to reflect who I am cognitively. While it was torture at first, having a small body and a big mouth saved me from being bullied. So maybe I owe it to overachieving speech by intimidation in nursery school. But came my weakness too from the depths of my strength. When you speak out, you are too much. When you make interactions that are not cool, you are a social climber. When you no longer speak, concern rises. Then the strength I so long clung to, became the residue of a tired overachiever, no more speech.

There is something weird between academia and I. we are so parallel yet so in touch. I would label it a classic Nairobi day situationship. Skin to skin at night but if you do not cling onto me, I meet my next casualty for breakfast. So, in a bid to hold on and cuddle deep, I held on tighter, harder, stronger. Until it became such a small part of me. How could the element that held me at a pedestal turn into a bygone? When the overachiever got tired.

Then okay, maybe speech and academia made me tired. So, let us find some other poison to cling onto and make sure we overachieve. Friendships. In a bid to be bring her back, we lost her almost fully. Holding on to a place I so much knew was my Achille’s heel. And just like Icarus, we flew too near to the sun. we did too much for people who would not do a fifth of it. So once again, we tried to overachieve and failed terribly.

But there is something, a cognitive dissonance on overachieving. Your accomplishments feel like an obligation but you are weirdly proud of them. On matters speech, I knew I had to talk to survive, but there is a funny sense of pride in being trilingual and grasping language at an early age. The primary 400 and KCSE A-, was a big thing yes in the eyes of a random person, but not in the face of an overachiever. But some gratification came from it, for a moment before you remember you can do better hits you, that millisecond of self-satisfaction, that small I am proud of myself. Then you remember you could have done better. You meet great people and substitute companionship for misery because you overcompensated a void that you made; for a moment it is bliss, but for an eternity it is a channel for self-loathing.

As a tired overachiever, the aim is to no longer substitute my spirit for gratification. Deal with this cursed blessing. And maybe, we can change the diary entry, from a tired overachiever to a gratified one

I love it when I plug my earphones in at the highest level of volume and the base hits my eardrums so hard I can feel it in my head. My eyes twitch and I know I am home. I am at my undefined sanctuary. I tend to love it more when they are not noise canceling and I get to hear the engine of the embasavva revving and the people shuffling. It doesn’t feel distant. It feels like my mind is so close to the people. In a way I feel weirdly connected to myself and the unsettled Nairobi. 

I love it when I am on the uber boda at night from a long day or a long drink. There is something magical about the wind hitting my face and for a figment of time, I truly feel alive. The unexplainable thrill of speeding through Mombasa road when there is no traffic and, in that moment, I feel one with the road. The vibration of my feet at the foot rest that is extremely ticklish I find myself laughing hysterically at the back of the bike. Nothing else but in that moment, it feels infinite. My friend sends a screenshot, “75 risks” on the group chat regarding my travels. I know it’s that dammed bike but something about the risk excites me. 

I love it when my tumbler is filled to just the right capacity of the shot. When my wine glass is half full. When my chaser is not some soda, but a 5% alcoholic drink to add and maintain my high. I mostly definitely hate that empty tumbler. I tend to love it even more when the bottle is half full, not full because it means they do not enjoy the drink and not too low because they are drinking too much. Just in the middle

I love it even more when the club is literally shaking from Kenyan music. I can remember screaming Nyaduse at the top of my lungs at 2 AM, an experience I will never feel again. I swear in that moment, I am most whole. The deejay knows the right spot, the strangers I meet know the lyrics and every dance move. They transition from strangers to a heartfelt memory to be stored not only in my heart, but the favorites folder of my photo library.

I love coming home to my tiny siblings. They are literally my children. My younger sister who mimics my every move. How I bake on Sunday afternoons and she refuses to take her afternoon nap because she wants to be the smaller muffin man. How I dress in my color coordination, she will never let you pick out her clothes without her approval. How I blend my blush onto my cheeks as she does a perfectly imperfect job on my eyelids. “Mishie, you look beautiful”. My heart will never be fuller.

I love it when my cigarette is almost coming to its halt and I can feel the burn of the butt nearing its end. I can taste finality in my throat as the smoke turns hotter and lesser. The sting of the cigarette is stronger an it is my will, to hold on and let it burn me, or stay holding it and show it I can handle some stinging burn.

I maybe love it when I call for the first time and someone does not pick up. So, I call and call and call until it is no longer helpful and I am stuck there. A funny okoa jahazi debt, but a fulfilled mind knowing I did my best.

I tend to love the things that challenge me and more so hurt me. The instances that burn me but keep me alive in the moment. The intimacy of a possibility that never will be. Maybe it is a big problem I am evading or a beautiful way of telling me to get myself together.

But until my big break comes, I will enjoy the pain in my ears caused by my overly loud earphones. I will feel immense belonging in the comfort of a matatu in the morning because it smells fairly good- business class have showered ready for their miserable 9-5’s. I will feel a deep sense of intimacy with my present tumbler and dying cigarette. I will feel an inherent sense of love when I call and they do not answer and repeat this beautiful chaos.

Find what you love, and let it kill you.

now this dear not gentle reader, (because I write for the strong, the hurt, the willing, the brave)

I have faced this year with grit, tears, countless shots of whiskey and my forbidden trinity. this has been a cocktail of the most bitter high percentage spirits and also the sweet ones on a good day. this piece is short but for each paragraph is pure emotion. my keyboard is crying in happiness because we are finally over writer’s block. i don’t know about consistency but one thing’s for sure, keep the shot glasses running for this.

Over my course of discovery and redirection, we have lost more than we can count. love, opportunities, anything that recounts for success. coming to terms with the fact that I have been carrying anxiety and feigning it as false confidence evidenced by the random palpitations at random times. the weird feeling of grief over the woman who once was, and will never be. I have buried past versions of myself- the ones I would give a serious whooping and also the ones who just needed a hug notwithstanding the ones who need a girl’s night out.

Grief is a funny feeling when you make it. sometimes I like to laugh my pain away in the public eye but I understood I am hysterical when I was laughing about it on 27th November at 11:43 am with nobody in my room as I was bed rotting. it drives you to who you aren’t, who you thought you could never be but you are. nonetheless, grief is also like glitter, it’s hard to wash away, it sticks and lingers annoyingly. you find yourself itching and scratching deeper and deeper into your skin to get it out. it does not. it stays and you hurt yourself.

So, I started becoming best friends with my grief, I will silently sit with it in a matatu at 8 am blasting ohangla. I will hug it in the middle of tort law class before my lecturer calls me to the podium to discuss duty of care in a foreign case. I will curse at it in the middle of the night after a long day of tolerance towards my birth-giver. so dear grief, thank you for always being there for me.

The year also gave me the gift of understanding my anxious nature. something my big ego has never wanted to acknowledge but keep on fighting it. I have lived to always mask my fears in fake confidence, so I would talk and snarl back withholding the real thing. I would pump mugs of black coffee to my system knowing verily how fast it makes me unsettled- they are very sugarless too.

But just like grief, we have sat and strategized together, I finally acknowledge its existence as anxiety and nothing else, and it rewards me with the eternal gift of awareness. we have felt each other in the halls of lectures, in the middle of acquaintances, in the missed recipe step, in the shivers when I wake up, in the weird tiny spaces with my mother. but hey, at least I am aware of it, right?

I’m not a sad writer, I sprinkle positivity once in a while come on! the best gift however, has been the gift of realization. this is the experience that taught me to be brutally honest with myself. because knowing what is not meant for me, knowing what is real and what is fake to me. finally coming to terms with knowing. Reality is as real as it can be and as overwhelming or underwhelming reality is what we have.

Imagination proves hope but reality carves the present. Sitting and understanding that what isn’t meant for you isn’t even if it is painful. What is for you is for you it doesn’t go and come the way it wants. It’s those thoughts you push away at 3am but in real sense they are the rawest forms of reality. What is funnier is you can’t lie to reality.

This holy trinity of grief, anxiety and realization has painfully and skillfully shaped me, carved me out into something. a Michelle who I have never seen nor contacted. but for one thing I know and have learnt is to sit with my trinity, get down on my knees for it, exalt it. for without these bleak and hurtful experiences, then they wouldn’t be a me.

So we dance with the trinity, for every etch of it, is every part of me.