Which is funny, because that is exactly what I wasn't trying to do.

I published the first piece of this memoir and, somehow, Nigerian blogs found it.

They picked it up.

They pulled out five lines.

And out of everything I had written—the ADHD, the chaos, motherhood, exhaustion, hyperfixation, disappearing from people I love, 350 curry puffs, being unable to answer my phone, thriving in crisis, my mother begging me to slow down—they found the marriage.

The divorce.

The heartbreak.

The man.

Of course they did.

I handed you my brain and you found a man inside it.

I wrote about what it feels like to live inside a mind that can be doing seventeen things at once and still feel like it has accomplished nothing.

I wrote about being the woman everybody thinks has everything together while privately wondering why ordinary things sometimes feel impossible.

I wrote about raising twins.

About overstimulation.

About ambition.

About exhaustion.

About being unable to stop.

About my mother asking:

Walida, aren't you tired?

And somehow the headline became love and marriage.

For a moment, I was irritated.

Then I laughed.

Because perhaps this is part of the story too.

A woman can tell you a hundred things about herself and somehow we still find a way to ask:

But what happened with the man?

And listen, there will be men in this memoir.

There will be marriage.

There will be divorce.

There will be love.

There will be heartbreak.

There will probably be moments when you read something and think:

Halima, please stand up.

I am sure I will think the same thing while writing them.

But they are not the whole story.

They aren't even the most interesting thing about me.

My divorce is something that happened in my life.

It is not my identity.

The men I have loved are people who have occupied chapters of my life.

They are not the title.

The title is me.

The chaos is mine.

The brain is mine.

The two little boys calling Mama seventeen times from the back seat are mine.

The businesses.

The obsessions.

The disappearing.

The coming back.

The white shirts.

The lateness.

The laughter when everything has gone completely wrong.

Mine.

I didn't start writing because I wanted to explain why my marriage ended.

I started writing because, at almost thirty, I am finally beginning to understand why I have always felt like so much was happening inside me at once.

Why I can do extraordinarily difficult things and be defeated by ordinary ones.

Why I can thrive in chaos and struggle with calm.

Why I can love people intensely and then disappear from them.

Why I can be completely exhausted and suddenly find enough energy for a new idea at midnight.

Why everyone around me could look at my life and think:

How does she do it all?

While I was looking at the exact same life thinking:

Why can't I get anything right?

That's the story I came here to tell.

So, respectfully, you picked my chaos and decided to make it about love and marriage.

I understand.

Love makes a better headline.

Divorce gets clicks.

But if you stay long enough, you'll realise the men are probably among the least chaotic things happening in here.

Welcome back to my brain.

Now—

Where was I?

Right.

There were two.

There Were Two

I don't remember everything the doctor said after he told me there were two.

I remember staring at the screen.

I remember trying to understand what exactly I was looking at.

And then:

Twins.

Two babies.

Two.

There are moments when your brain receives information but refuses to process it immediately. The words enter. You understand the individual words. You know what they mean.

But somehow they don't land.

That was me.

I was going to be a mother for the first time.

To two people.

At once.

Of course.

Because apparently even motherhood had to arrive in my life at maximum volume.

How Do You Mother Two People?

I wish I could tell you my immediate reaction was uncomplicated joy.

That I placed my hands lovingly over my stomach and instantly imagined matching outfits and two tiny babies holding hands.

There was joy.

But there was also:

How the hell am I going to do this?

One baby already seemed like an enormous responsibility.

Two felt almost absurd.

I was supposed to become a mother overnight and somehow learn everything twice.

Two babies to feed.

Two babies to change.

Two babies to soothe.

Two babies to keep alive.

And this was before I understood something that would become very important:

Twins do not care that they are twins.

There is no meeting between them before birth where they agree:

Okay, when I sleep, you sleep.

When I eat, you eat.

Let's make this easy for Mummy.

Absolutely not.

One baby finally falls asleep.

The other wakes up.

You settle that one.

The first one starts crying.

You feed one.

The other decides he has also suddenly remembered that food exists.

And everyone tells you:

Sleep when the babies sleep.

Which baby?

Please specify.

I Had Never Been This Tired

That first year is still a blur in parts.

I barely slept.

Not I'm tired, I stayed up late watching Netflix tired.

Twin-newborn tired.

The kind of tired where you don't really remember the last time you slept long enough to dream.

Night and day stopped meaning very much.

There were feeds.

Bottles.

Nappies.

Sterilising.

Burping.

Laundry.

Crying.

Rocking.

Trying to remember which baby had eaten.

Which one had pooped.

Which one had been changed.

When.

How much.

Was that this baby or his brother?

Sometimes I couldn't even tell whether I had already done the thing I was about to do.

And somewhere underneath all of that exhaustion was also a marriage to be in.

That's difficult to write.

Because when you have your first children, particularly twins, there is a picture people expect.

A family.

Two exhausted but happy parents.

We're in this together.

Look what we made.

And maybe there were moments like that.

But there were cracks too.

I knew they were there.

I think I had always been a woman waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Even before motherhood.

Even before I understood why.

So now I was trying to learn how to become a mother while also trying to exist inside a marriage.

And when something feels unstable, I do what I have always done.

I control what I can.

Mother of the Year

My babies were going to have a routine.

Not a routine.

The routine.

I became obsessed.

Feeding.

Sleeping.

Milestones.

Food.

Skin.

Development.

Everything had to happen when it was supposed to happen.

I researched constantly.

I needed to know.

What should they be doing this month?

What should they be eating?

How much should they sleep?

Should they be doing this yet?

Why hasn't he done that?

Is this normal?

What about his brother?

Should I be worried?

Google and I were in an extremely committed relationship.

I didn't know then how easily my brain could turn concern into hyperfixation.

I just thought this was what good mothers did.

And I was going to be a very good mother.

Mother of the Year.

Nobody was running the competition.

I was apparently competing anyway.

The funny thing is that I couldn't maintain a routine for myself to save my life.

I could be late.

Lose track of time.

Forget something.

Start something and abandon it.

Spend twenty minutes looking for an object that was directly in front of me.

But my children?

Military operation.

Their lives had the structure mine had never managed to have.

And once I found something that worked, I did not want anybody destabilising it.

Everybody Has Raised a Child

My boys had difficult skin.

Eczema. Psoriasis. Flare-ups.

So naturally, I became even more obsessive.

What did they eat?

What touched their skin?

Which detergent?

Which cream?

Who carried them?

Were they wearing perfume?

Please don't carry my baby with perfume on.

Please don't feed him that.

What's in it?

Let me see.

No.

Everyone had an opinion.

This is something you discover very quickly when you become a mother in Nigeria.

You may have given birth to the children, but apparently the advisory board is enormous.

Everybody has raised a child.

Everybody knows what works.

Everybody knows what you're doing wrong.

Everybody knows someone whose baby had exactly the same thing.

And there is always a remedy.

Always.

Someone's mother used it.

Someone's grandmother swore by it.

Someone's neighbour's child had eczema in 1994 and was apparently cured immediately.

Sometimes you just want to say:

Please. Leave me and my babies alone.

But I was also a first-time mother.

So beneath all my certainty was doubt.

What if they knew something I didn't?

What if I really was doing too much?

What if I was being overprotective?

What if I needed to relax?

Stop Being So Extra

We had recently returned to Nigeria from America with the boys when an aunt suggested using some leaves for their skin.

She said they could be soaked and used on the flare-ups.

Her so. had apparently had similar problems as a baby and she said it had worked for him.

Everyone swore by it.

I said no.

I didn't agree.

I didn't want to use it.

My sister told me:

Are you the first person to have kids?

Stop being so extra.

Stop being so protective.

There it was again.

That feeling.

Maybe I was too much.

Maybe I needed to relax.

Maybe everybody else could see something about me that I couldn't.

Eventually, I gave in.

That night, I was exhausted.

Completely exhausted.

My mum and cousin were helping with the babies.

And I slept.

Really slept.

The kind of sleep that only happens when your body has finally decided that whatever is happening in the world is no longer its concern.

While I was asleep, one of my babies developed a severe flare-up.

By the way it was described to me the following morning, his body had swollen and his skin was weeping fluid.

Everyone panicked.

Nobody woke me.

My mother called my sister in America.

My sister was horrified.

She was worried about how serious an allergic reaction could become.

And through all of this—

I slept.

You See?

The next morning they told me what had happened.

We went to the hospital.

I remember the doctors questioning how things had been allowed to get that far.

I remember being frightened.

But I also remember something else happening inside my head.

A voice.

You see?

You knew.

You said no.

You let people convince you.

This is what happens when you don't listen to yourself.

I don't claim to know now precisely what caused every part of that reaction.

What I know is what the experience did to me.

Everyone else saw one frightening night.

I saw evidence.

Evidence that I shouldn't relax.

Evidence that I shouldn't allow people to pressure me into decisions about my children.

Evidence that if I wanted something done properly, perhaps I needed to do it myself.

Evidence that control kept them safe.

So I tightened my grip.

Diet.

Products.

Perfume.

Sleep.

Schedules.

Routines.

I wanted to know everything.

I wanted to anticipate everything.

I wanted to protect them from everything.

And somewhere along the way, structure became one of the ways I loved them.

It also became one of the ways I managed my fear.

Four Months

Then, when the boys were four months old, I went back to work.

Four months.

I was still learning how to be a mother.

Still barely sleeping.

Still trying to keep two babies on schedules.

Still existing inside a marriage that had its own problems.

And now:

Work.

There is something almost funny about looking back at that version of myself.

Because I already had years of evidence that ordinary organisation was not exactly my strongest area.

I still don't completely understand how I got a 2:1 law degree.

Then went to Law School.

Then got a job.

There are days now when I look at those achievements and think:

Who did that?

Apparently me.

The same woman who could complete a law degree could sometimes feel physically incapable of completing a simple task.

The same woman who could survive Law School couldn't leave the house on time.

The same woman who struggled with her own routine had somehow decided she would maintain perfect routines for two babies.

And I did.

Mostly.

Because that is another thing I'm learning about myself.

When something matters enough to me, my brain can become relentless.

And nothing had ever mattered to me like those boys.

The One Thing I Never Abandoned

I have abandoned many things.

Hobbies.

Ideas.

Businesses.

Plans.

Promises to call people back.

Entire versions of myself.

I have started things with enormous enthusiasm and woken up weeks later wondering where that person went.

Motherhood has been different.

I have never become bored of being their mother.

Overwhelmed?

Yes.

Overstimulated?

Absolutely.

Exhausted beyond anything I knew was possible?

Frequently.

I have wanted breaks.

I have wanted silence.

I have wanted someone else to handle bedtime.

I have wanted to sleep for twelve uninterrupted hours and wake up in a hotel where nobody knows the word Mummy.

But I have never wanted to stop being theirs.

There is a distinction.

My boys are almost five now.

Five.

We still have routines.

Of course we do.

I am still particular.

Of course I am.

But they're old enough now to challenge the systems I created for them.

They're sensitive.

Affectionate.

They want one more hug.

One more kiss.

One more goodbye.

They want me to look at something.

Listen to something.

Stay another minute.

I spent their infancy desperately trying to teach them routine.

Now they're teaching me something completely different.

How to stop.

How to stay.

How to be where I am.

My mother has been telling me for years:

Walida, slow down.

I rarely listened.

My boys found a better strategy.

They became the two people I couldn't rush past.

There Were Two

When I first looked at that ultrasound screen, I thought the biggest surprise was that there were two babies.

I couldn't see what was coming.

I couldn't see the sleepless nights.

The eczema.

The schedules.

Going back to work.

The businesses I would start.

The marriage that would eventually end.

The single mother I would become.

The ADHD I would eventually begin to understand.

I couldn't see the woman who would one day sit down and write all of this.

I could only see two tiny lives.

And I was terrified of whether I would be enough for both of them.

Almost five years later, I think I was asking the wrong question.

I spent so much time wondering what kind of mother I would become for them.

I didn't realise they were going to raise parts of me too.

They would make me softer.

More affectionate.

More present.

They would frustrate me.

Overstimulate me.

Humble me.

Force me to apologise.

Force me to regulate.

Force me to stop moving when every part of my brain wanted to race towards whatever came next.

They would become the one commitment in my life that never needed novelty to keep me interested.

The one thing I didn't abandon.

The one thing I didn't eventually replace with another obsession.

For years, I thought I was incapable of consistency.

I'm not.

I have proof.

Two of them.

Chaos Will Sit Across From Me
Memoirs of a Single Nigerian Twin Mum with ADHD

Not a lawyer.

Not a wife.

Not a divorced woman.

Not a businesswoman.

A mother.

Because being a mother means being somebody's support system, shield and home.

And somehow I am supposed to be all three to not one, but two little people while still figuring out how to be those things for myself.

To be completely honest, I do a shitty job of that part.

I can barely finish my own malaria treatment.

I know.

Take the medication until it's finished.

Simple.

Except apparently my brain hears simple and takes it as a personal challenge.

I can obsess over my children's medication schedules. I can remember what they need. I can monitor symptoms, research something, worry about them and make sure they are taken care of.

Me?

I'll take my medication, start feeling better and suddenly the packet and I are no longer acquainted.

Yet I am responsible for two human beings.

Sometimes I think about that and laugh.

Who approved this?

Because motherhood requires emotional skills I am not always convinced I possess.

I can barely regulate myself some days.

I can become overstimulated.

I can snap.

I can shut down.

I can feel everything at once and then, almost without warning, feel nothing.

What I am very good at is appearing okay.

Excellent, actually.

Put it on my CV.

Special skill: functioning while internally falling apart.

I know how to smile.

I know how to go to work.

I know how to make the joke.

I know how to fix the problem.

I know how to say:

I'm fine.

I know how to cry privately and come back when my face looks normal again.

What I don't always know how to do is sit inside a feeling.

Especially somebody else's.

Please Stop Crying

My boys are sensitive.

Beautifully, inconveniently sensitive.

They feel things.

And then they expect to be allowed to feel them.

Imagine.

Sometimes one of them is upset and crying and I can feel something happening inside me.

I want it to stop.

Not because I don't care.

Because I care so much that his sadness makes me deeply uncomfortable.

What's wrong?

Okay, don't cry.

It's okay.

Come on.

You're fine.

Except sometimes he isn't fine.

Sometimes he's sad.

Sometimes something has hurt his feelings.

Sometimes he's disappointed.

Sometimes the thing upsetting him seems completely ridiculous to my adult brain.

But it isn't ridiculous to him.

He's four.

His world is still small enough that the wrong cup can genuinely qualify as a terrible day.

And there I am, wanting to move him quickly from sadness back to okay.

Because okay is familiar territory.

I know what to do with okay.

Sadness asks me to sit still.

And I have spent most of my life doing everything except that.

Suck It Up

I wasn't taught to examine every feeling.

I learnt to carry on.

Suck it up.

Move.

Handle it.

Don't let things consume you.

And in many ways, that philosophy has served me extremely well.

Chaos sits across from me and I smile.

Something goes wrong?

I'll figure it out.

Heart broken?

Get up.

Tired?

Keep going.

Overwhelmed?

Start another business, apparently.

I have survived by refusing to give certain feelings a chair.

And now I have two children dragging chairs out for theirs.

Mama, I'm sad.

Sit.

Mama, I'm scared.

Sit.

Mama, that hurt my feelings.

Sit.

And I'm standing there thinking:

Do we really have to do this?

Yes, Lily.

Apparently we do.

Because I am beginning to understand that when my child cries, my job isn't necessarily to make him stop.

Sometimes my job is to make sure he doesn't have to cry alone.

That is much harder.

Their Feelings Are Not Emergencies

I am trying to teach myself something I wish came naturally:

My children's difficult emotions are not emergencies.

Sadness doesn't mean something has gone terribly wrong.

Crying doesn't mean I have failed.

Anger doesn't make them bad children.

And discomfort doesn't always need to be fixed immediately.

Sometimes they need to feel something all the way through.

And sometimes I need to sit there while they do.

That means resisting every instinct in me that wants to say:

Okay, enough.

It means sitting beside him.

Letting him cry.

Maybe rubbing his back.

Maybe saying:

I know, baby.

You're upset.

Mama is here.

Three words.

Mama is here.

Perhaps that is enough.

I don't need to have the perfect thing to say.

I don't need to solve the problem.

I don't need to make the emotion disappear.

I need to stay.

And maybe that's why this part of motherhood is so difficult for me.

Staying is harder than doing.

Give me a problem and I'll solve it.

Give me a crisis and watch me become frighteningly efficient.

Give me 350 curry puffs and apparently I'll spend two days making every single one myself.

But give me a crying child and tell me there is nothing to fix?

Just sit there?

Just be with him?

Now you're asking me to do something difficult.

Am I a Bad Mother?

Sometimes after I lose my patience, I wonder:

Is there something wrong with me?

Why does the noise bother me so much?

Why can't I just be patient?

Why do their big feelings make me uncomfortable?

Why can't I be one of those endlessly soft mothers who always knows exactly what to say?

Then comes the guilt.

Motherhood produces guilt with extraordinary efficiency.

But I am trying to stop measuring good motherhood by whether I ever become overwhelmed.

I am going to become overwhelmed.

There are two of them.

And one of me.

Sometimes both are talking.

Someone is crying.

Someone needs something.

Someone is touching me.

The television is making noise.

My phone is ringing.

I'm thinking about work.

We're late.

And somebody is saying:

Mama.

Mama.

Mama.

My brain is screaming.

Sometimes I will get it wrong.

I will raise my voice.

I will rush a feeling.

I will tell them to stop crying when what I really mean is:

Your crying is making Mama feel something she doesn't know what to do with.

Then I have another job.

Come back.

I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have shouted.

Tell Mama again.

I am learning that repair is also parenting.

Maybe my children don't need a mother who never gets overwhelmed.

Maybe they need a mother who shows them what you do after you get it wrong.

They Are Raising Me Too

I used to think I was raising my boys.

Obviously I am.

But almost five years into this, I am beginning to suspect this arrangement has been mutual.

I taught them routines.

They taught me interruption.

I taught them safety.

They taught me affection.

I taught them how to move through the world.

They keep asking me to actually look at it.

Mama, see this.

I taught them to sleep.

They taught me that another hug is sometimes more important than being on time.

And now they're teaching me feelings.

The very thing I have spent so much of my life outrunning.

They don't suck it up.

They don't pretend to be okay because everybody else would be more comfortable.

They cry.

They ask for hugs.

They say they're sad.

They come looking for me.

And maybe that is something I should protect rather than correct.

I don't want to teach them that strength means pretending nothing hurts.

I know where that road leads.

I've lived there.

I want my boys to know that they can be strong and sensitive.

That they can cry and still be boys.

That needing affection isn't weakness.

That having a bad day doesn't require an apology.

That they don't have to perform fine for the people who love them.

Which means I have to learn how to tolerate something I have never been particularly good at:

Not being fine.

Theirs.

And mine.

Maybe that's what motherhood is doing to me.

Not making me perfect.

Making me confront all the things I thought I could outrun.

My impatience.

My need for control.

My discomfort with vulnerability.

My inability to rest.

My instinct to fix.

My instinct to flee.

My feelings.

All of it.

The toughest thing I have ever had to be is a mother because my children don't only need what I am already good at giving.

They need things I am still learning how to give.

Patience.

Stillness.

Softness.

Emotional safety.

Presence.

And maybe that's why they are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

Not because motherhood completed me.

I don't think children should have that job.

But because loving them has made me willing to learn things about myself I might otherwise have spent my entire life avoiding.

I am supposed to be their home.

Some days I still don't know how to be a home to myself.

But when one of them is crying and every uncomfortable part of me wants to make the feeling disappear, I am learning to sit down beside him.

Not fix.

Not rush.

Not run.

Just stay.

Mama’s here.

Maybe, for now, that's enough.