Should we always choose reality over happiness?

Is truth intrinsically valuable, or just instrumentally valuable?

Does sanity matter if suffering becomes unbearable?

…okay, I’m spiraling. enough questions, I need answers now.

There’s a woman I’ve never met living in my memory. I can’t stop thinking about her life and the ethics surrounding it, which is why I’m writing this. And I need your honest take on this as well because, I need to know if I’m overthinking this when it’s really just a simple black and white situation…

Contrary to what you might be thinking, there is almost nothing special about this woman’s life. She wasn’t remarkable in the way history loves. She did not change the world in any way. She most definitely did not discover anything scientific. She did not leave behind a movement or a body of work that people will go on to quote centuries later.

I merely came across her story some years back in Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, and for reasons I still cannot explain, it’s been stuck in my mind ever since. But I suppose this phase of my life has brought it forward more than ever before.

Anyways, her story goes…

Once upon a time, Lady Smith had a different name. I can’t seem to remember what she was called then, but she was a simple woman with ordinary dreams. She wanted to fall deeply in love and spend the rest of her life with one man. She simply wanted a husband who adored her. She wanted children whose laughter would fill the rooms of her home. She wanted a home loud enough to complain about. She wanted to spend ordinary Thursdays wondering what to cook for dinner. She imagined herself growing older surrounded by the small, beautiful chaos of a family she had built with her own hands. She wanted a boring kind of happiness because that was the beautiful kind.

She wasn’t asking for too much.

Or was she?

I guess it doesn’t matter because nothing in life ever goes according to plan.

Her marriage became a place of loneliness rather than love. Her husband had no room for her in his life. He wouldn’t even sit at the same table to eat with her. She prepared his meals only to carry them upstairs, where he preferred to eat alone. And the children she longed for? They never came. The future she had replayed a thousand times in her imagination dissolved before it ever amounted to anything. The life she kept postponing herself for simply... never arrived.

Eventually, something inside her broke, and her mind gave her the life reality never did. She stopped answering to the life the world insisted was hers, and created a new world in her mind.

That was how she became ‘Lady Smith’.

In her mind, she was a woman of substance, married to an English aristocrat. Every night, she gave birth to their loving baby and wrapped him or her in her handmade imaginary blanket. And every morning, there was a new baby to tell the doctor about. She always liked to confirm from him whether the baby had her eyes or her husband’s smile.

She found her perfect life and she was living it, except she was always dressed in white safety jackets and her entire world was reduced to white hospital walls.

Yesterday’s child was always different from today’s. And you never could tell, tomorrow she could be having triplets. It all depended on what she wanted. Sometimes she spoke about her husband as though he had just stepped out and would be back before dinner time. Sometimes she spoke about her growing family with the exhaustion of a mother who just folded too much laundry and slept too little. Sometimes, she asked the doctor for his opinion on what to cook for dinner.

She celebrated birthdays that never happened and she loved children who never existed. Still, she smiled more and grieved nothing, because, inside her world, nothing had been taken from her.

She was… happy.

And it’s honestly unsettling how the mind works. Because, even in madness, she wasn’t searching for a different life. She was searching for the one she had always hoped would be hers.

But all we will ever see that as, is insanity.

As the doctor strolled with Dale Carnegie to Lady Smith’s pitiful ward, he ended the story with another reason why it has refused to leave my mind for years.

“If I could stretch out my hand and restore her sanity, I wouldn’t do it. She’s much happier as she is” he said.

I remember reading Lady Smith’s story over and over again before I finally moved to the next chapter. And I remember that I kept trying to imagine what “getting better” in her case would actually look like.

You know…

We usually talk about healing as some sort of ‘return’. A return to the life we’ve lived before whatever happened happened. A return to normal. A return to reality.

We create this understanding that wellness is as simple as walking back into the life you had before. But what if there is nothing to return to?

What happens then?

I honestly get that reality is good and accepting reality is where healing begins. After all, reality is where we tell grieving people they must eventually return to.

But why?

Why do we treat reality as though it possesses a moral authority?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking this question because I think reality is unimportant. I’m genuinely fascinated because I have never stopped to ask what makes reality so morally important.

We say truth matters…

Of course it does.

But is that because truth is good and valuable in itself? Or because we believe truth eventually leads us somewhere better?

Because I don’t think those are the same thing.

Living through whatever phase of my life this is, has made me suspicious of sentences that sound obvious and should be self-explanatory in themselves.

“The truth is always better.”

Is it? Always?

What makes the truth better? Is it better simply because it is ‘the truth’?

I mean, think about people with dementia who ask for their spouses or loved ones that died years ago. Don’t you think the kindest thing a caregiver could do for them is to not insist on their reality.

…I think I’m spiraling again!

Anyway…

I’m starting to think that a reality that is repeated over and over again, becomes a fresh bereavement every single day. And I think that’s unfair.

Because, tell me…

How much truth can a human heart survive?

Whatever the answer to this question is, I think Lady Smith already found the edge of it. Because by definition, I believe Lady Smith was happy.

Still, some part of me wants to counter that and say “She only felt happy.” but that would mean I’ve reduced happiness to a state where the feeling was the least important part.

If Lady Smith wakes every morning believing she is loved. If she kisses her imaginary children goodnight with more tenderness than some parents manage with real ones. If she laughs more than I do. If she sleeps more peacefully than most of us...

What exactly am I saying she lacks?

Truth?

Yes.

But if truth leaves her permanently devastated while her illusion gives her peace, what exactly makes the truth superior?

What then am I actually defending when, as rational beings, almost everything we do is as a means to happiness in itself?

Everything we do, we do in the quest of finding our own happiness.

We study so that one day we’ll be happy. We leave relationships because we deserve to be happy. We stay in relationships because we’re happy there. We travel as much as we can because we find happiness in experiencing new places and new cultures. We go to therapy because we want to heal our past traumas, feel authentic and be happy again. We start businesses because... honestly, I don’t know why we do this to ourselves…I doubt there is any happiness here. But I know we quit businesses to find happiness and peace of mind.

Everything we do eventually circles back to the same promise…

HAPPINESS.

In fact, every advertisement and every motivational speech we come across eventually arrives at the same place… selling us happiness.

Happiness is the reward waiting at the end of every sacrifice we make. It is the reason behind nearly every decision we make. We postpone sleep for happiness. We postpone love for happiness. We postpone joy itself because we are busy constructing a happier future.

And that’s just normal until someone finds it some other way. Then, suddenly, happiness is no longer enough. Now it has to make sense… now, it has to be justified.

And I find that truly fascinating.

Because…

If happiness is really the destination, who gets to decide that Lady Smith never arrived there?

Who gets to decide that she is unhappy?

Okay, I know that sounds absurd. But before we dismiss it, consider how many illusions we already live in.

Every day, we wake up telling ourselves that our desires will open a path to happiness for us. That the next promotion will finally make us feel enough. That marriage will complete us. That parenthood will heal us. That success will silence our insecurities. That money will buy peace… and happiness.

That if we can just survive this year, this season, this hardship, happiness will be waiting on the other side.

We build futures inside our minds and live for the purpose of that reality. And when these futures collapse, most of us do not lose our minds…

But we do lose ourselves.

…See why I can’t stop thinking about this story?

Because unlike the rest of us, Lady Smith didn’t merely imagine a better future. She lived inside hers. Yes, she was insane!

But…

Suppose the doctor cured her and she opened her eyes to see her babies and her home disappear. Suppose she got cured and her husband is once again a nightmare. And everything she became in her insanity disappears — the title, the conversations she remembers having with her kids over breakfast… the… just everything! Would that be a good thing for her?

Because from where I’m standing, what I can see is that she would once again reach for a child who has never been there. And for the first time in years, she’ll be forced to remember every empty room, and every unanswered longing, and every future that never became hers.

And she would probably cry herself to insanity once more until it becomes a cycle.

Would that be healing?

I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know.

But I know we are all familiar with the statement “the truth will set you free”. True! But first, it will piss you off!

And I know we are also familiar with the fact that there are truths that leave people standing in subjective cemeteries wondering how the sun has the audacity to keep shining.

In the end, not every truth liberates. And yet I cannot convince myself that illusion is the answer either. Because if reality no longer matters, then neither does choice.

And I think that’s what has bothered me all this time. It’s never really been about the doctor being right, but how I realized I couldn’t confidently say he was wrong either.

I no longer find it easy to say that the truth is always kinder. Or that happiness, by itself, is enough.

If you ask me what I’d have done in place of the doctor, my answer would be simple…

“I have no idea!”

I don’t know. And I suspect I never will.

Because on some days, I will answer yes, considering the fact that he had a duty to wake her up. But on other days, I think I would want her to keep dreaming.

Truth is, I am no longer certain which answer makes me more human.

I know I said enough questions earlier, and I know I still asked a ton of questions afterwards, but I can’t help but wonder…

Lady Smith’s story…

Is it madness? Or is it mercy?

I honestly think it’s both.

That’s it!

That’s how much this story has ruined the simplicity of happiness for me.

I no longer believe it is enough to ask whether someone is happy. Now I think we need to ask follow-up questions, like...

What kind of happiness is this?

and…

What did it cost?

Because I’ve come to understand that every kind of happiness comes at a price.

Anyway, Lady Smith passed a long long time ago, so I should probably stop obsessing over this. But before I put a period to this piece, I need to know…

My dear reader,

If reality took everything from you, and illusion gave it all back...

Would you want someone to wake you up?

…

I genuinely want to know!

Leave a comment

Alright, I need to go find something to snack on.

Ghost hugs,

Shakirah!

Dear reader, it’s been three months since I last wrote to you.

For a while, I convinced myself that three months was not a long time, that I had simply been occupied with work and life, and had become one of those ‘grown-ups’ who disappear into responsibilities and emerge months later saying things like, “Life has been life-ing.“

But my truth is that I didn’t stop writing because I was busy.

I stopped writing because somewhere, somehow, I lost the part of myself that knew how to write honestly. Not beautifully. Honestly.

Because you see, writing beautifully is easy. All you have to do is arrange words into neat little rows, add a figurative term or two, maybe more, and hope nobody notices that you’ve hidden yourself behind them. Writing honestly, on the other hand, requires sitting in front of a blank page and admitting that you don’t entirely understand what is happening to you. And for months, that was my problem.

I didn’t understand what was happening with me. I just knew that something felt off. You know, like walking into a place you’ve lived for years and immediately sensing something has changed, even though nothing is obviously wrong. It just no longer felt like home.

Everything was technically where it should have been. My dreams were still my dreams. My goals were still my goals. The future I wanted still existed. And yet, somehow, I felt disconnected from all of it, including myself.

Especially myself.

Before I write anything more, I want you to know that I am writing this with utmost shame, and if you need a picture of what that looks like…

It’s me, currently writing this in my journal with my chin resting on the table. I’m wearing a grey baggy hoodie a friend gave me some time ago, but that’s not important, what’s important is that I have my head buried inside its hood because, even though I’m the only one in this room, I’m still ashamed.

And in all honesty, I’d much rather be curled up under my blanket than writing this. Still, I picked my poison. I’m sitting in a very cold room with blocked nostrils, a pen in my hand, an open page with more doodles than words, and a clock that reads exactly 1:52 a.m.

Honestly, I should be sleeping.

But what good is sleep if, every time I close my eyes, all I can see is the picture of myself finally writing to you?

Because if I don’t write this, my shame won’t fade. I’ll go to bed with it in my heart and wake up with it in my hands.

After all, three months is a ridiculously long time to be away, and… I apologize for that.

And truthfully, I wasn’t prepared for the constant check-ins I got from you. The messages and the affirmations. They mean a lot to me, and I don’t know if I’ve said this enough, but thank you. If anything, I was humbled by the fact that my absence occupied space in other people’s lives.

I had originally convinced myself that I could quietly slip back in, post another essay and pretend I had been here all along. But that would have been a poor excuse for accountability. And you mean more to me than that.

You have given me something incredibly precious over the past year — You’ve given me your time, your unending kindness, and your attention. Some of you have trusted me with your stories. Some of you have let my words sit beside you on difficult days. And every single one of these is too precious to be met with pretense. So I know I owe you honesty.

I don’t know if this letter changes anything, but I wanted you to know, in its entirety, how life has been looking from where I’ve been standing.

While I was away, my sister got married to the absolute love of her life, and that’s been the best part of this year.

Then, I resumed writing the book I abandoned over a year ago. I don’t know what the outcome will be. I don’t even know if I want it published. I just know I want it completed, and off my chest.

Then, I launched TU’ARI.

My beautiful, frustrating, exhausting little dream.

I finally launched my self-care and aromatherapy brand, TU’ARI ELIXIRS, nearly a year after the launch date I originally picked. I’ll still call that a win though.

Except my sweet little dream, I’ve realized, is also perhaps my sweet little dilemma.

It’s been one challenge after another, and I’ve thought to myself countless times “isn’t it best to just give up? Maybe business really isn’t for me”. Except I didn’t start it because I wanted a business. I started it because there are things that need to be said, and feelings that need to be felt, and memories that need to be remembered, for people to finally find a home in themselves.

That’s what it has always been about for me. What I didn’t account for though, is that knowing your reason doesn’t make the difficulty less painful.

People don’t talk much about what it feels like to build something alone. Everyone talks about entrepreneurship like all it takes to make it work is courage, vision, and ambition. But sometimes it also requires you sitting in front of your laptop wondering if you’re building a company or developing a new personality disorder.

Somewhere in between all of this, I got scammed. A substantial amount of money disappeared — money that was supposed to cover the entire brand packaging cost — and I had to raise more than that amount again in less than two months, because prices had gone up… again.

Then, I turned a “big-girl” age this year, and suddenly I feel like a proper adult.

I’m hoping I’ll finally start doing big-girl things, things like following my dreams. Still I wonder — or maybe, more accurately, I regret — why I thought I had to wait to be a grown up before I could do big things.

Anyway, my daddy still calls me his baby, and quite frankly, I still think I am one, and I think I’ll be one forever.

Because then again, what makes someone “a proper adult”?

Then, I attempted songwriting.

The lyrics survived, but I bet your ears wouldn’t have. This is me telling you some things are better left as trials, eh.

Then, I took a series of Human Rights courses via Amnesty International and I genuinely think you should too.

Things are getting out of hand in the world — and in this part of the world especially, we owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to actually understand the rights we’re supposed to have and depend on.

Then, there’s my PhD.

The process has been difficult, ironically, because I know exactly what I want to research and choose to stick to it. My problem here is that I know exactly what I want to study — Intergenerational Responsibility through an existentialist lens.

Finding someone whose expertise aligns with that vision is what has been seeming almost impossible.

And this made me realise I’ve unlocked a new fear…

My fear right now isn’t that I’ll fail, it’s that I’ll never get the opportunity to try to the best of my abilities.

Then…

I lost my mentor.

I lost Dr. Fatai, and the world lost a genius.

But it is strange that we lost him at different times.

The world lost him the day he passed, and I lost him a month after — I learned of his death over a month after he was gone. I still don’t know how to explain what that felt like… what it still feels like. The grief of loss in itself was painful, but there was something sour beneath it, too.

For weeks, “my subbbb” had been gone. For weeks, his family had been mourning. For weeks, the world had already adjusted itself around an absence I didn’t even know existed. And for me, the news arrived on a Wednesday afternoon, when I saw his office locked. I had to begin grieving when everyone else had already started making peace with his absence.

Even now, the reality returns unexpectedly. I could be doing something completely ordinary and suddenly remember that he is no longer under the same sky as me.

I find myself asking strange questions every time he crosses my mind.

How dark is it where he is now? Didn’t he always like his light on?

Does he know today is Sunday?

I hope he remembers his youngest daughter is about to complete her service year (NYSC).

Isn’t it laughable, how death keeps making me ask questions that have no intention of answering themselves.

I wish I could tell you there was a grand lesson hidden inside all of these. There probably is. I just haven’t found it yet.

What I have found, instead, is a strange kind of feeling. Sadness, I would say, and I have never known a sadness this soft. This is the type of sadness that forcefully reminds you that being human is not simply about joy. It’s also about uncertainty. Longing. And waiting.

And sadness and joy, I’m learning, are made of the same material, just pointed in different directions.

Still…

Somewhere in the middle of all that uncertainty… and longing… and waiting… I found comfort. I discovered that I remain astonishingly myself.

I thought I’d lost the version of me that knew how to dance with a pen. I was wrong. I never stopped being astonishingly myself.

Right now, writing this, I am beginning to remember “the point of it all” again but then, I wonder if you still remember me after all this time away.

Even if your answer is yes, I’d still like to introduce myself again as if we were meeting for the first time, because in truth, I think we are.

…And I still don’t know how to draw a star.

I still love the smell of rain and the sight of dark clouds.

I still love coloring books.

I still think elephants are magnificent, and I still believe animals are rational beings in ways we don’t give them credit for.

I still love anime and cartoons more than any respectable adult probably should.

I can still tell apart a flying aeroplane from a helicopter just by their sounds, a lot of the time, from miles away.

I still cry while watching scary movies.

I still bite the people I love.

I’m still convinced my daddy’s laugh is one of the best sounds in the world, and I still find my mammy effortlessly adorable.

I still love that God is my God, even when there’s silence between us.

And this — all of this is the point…

To remember who I’ve always been.

And now that I have begun to,

I think I’d like to write again.

Ghost hugs,

Shakirah.

Tell me, my dearest reader…

How’ve you been? How has life been from where you’re standing?

The sun was still high, pressing itself into the back of my neck and settling into my clothes like heat had a right to live there. We had only just stepped into the afternoon, and yet I had already said the word “sorry” nine times.

Not thought about it. Said it.

“Sorry, please, excuse me…”

The words slipped out again and again, as naturally as breath, as I squeezed my way through the human traffic of Oshodi.

My left hand remained locked in my friend’s palm as I tried to catch up with her fast-paced steps. Our mission was simple: find what we needed for her aso-ebi girls, get out of this space where the air smelled like exhaustion and freshly baked agege bread, and then, go home.

But nothing in Oshodi is ever simple. The market does not move for you, you move with it or you are swallowed whole. Bodies brushed past me like waves that refused to fall. Voices rise and overlap. Prices are shouted, argued, dragged back and forth like ropes in a tug of war. Someone is always calling you or touching you, and someone is always in your way.

And still…

“Sorry, please… excuse me…”

The words kept slipping out of me, too quickly to examine and too naturally to resist. My tongue moved like it had been trained for this exact performance — to soften myself, to lower my presence, and make my request small enough to be accepted.

Because in Nigeria, you don’t just ask. You apologize for asking.

It’s a strange construction when you think about it, isn’t it?

“Sorry, please, could you…?”

It sounded almost ridiculous when I paid attention to it. It felt like I was trying to wrap a simple request in layers of protection, as though my bare words might offend someone. So, I force three softeners together like a fragile nest meant to shield me from any annoyance my words might breed.
An apology before the offence. A plea before my request. A submission before any interaction.

It is obviously grammatically excessive, yet I find it socially important.

And so I started to wonder about it — this instinct we have, to apologise before we are even heard. To plead before we ask.

What does it mean for a person to live like that? To move through the world already sorry for taking up space in it?

Tell me, what exactly was I apologising for?

For needing space?
For existing in a crowded place?
For asking another human being to shift, just slightly, so I could pass?

And why did it feel wrong, almost rude, not to say it that way?

The sentence sat heavy in my mind after that. Because it carried the weight of an apology for something that had not yet happened, as though I had already wronged you simply by approaching you. My request bowed its head before the interaction had even begun, shrinking itself in advance so that you would not have to.

And yet, this was the only way I knew how to speak.

…

A few days ago, I did the same thing in a restaurant. It was one of those quiet, neatly arranged places where everything is in its place and everyone speaks a little softer than they need to.

I raised my hand slightly over my head and called the waiter.

“Sorry, excuse me, Mr. Emmanuel, can we get some water?”

I had asked for his name when we arrived. I remembered it, and I could have just said, “Mr. Emmanuel, can we get some water?” That would have been enough. Clear and Direct.

Right?

But that wasn’t what came out, my mouth did not trust simplicity. So I dressed my request in unnecessary gentleness, as if bare words might wound him.

He came over with a warm smile and told us our drinks would come shortly. And still, I felt like I had asked for too much.

But all I asked for was water.

Just water.

Do you ever feel it?

The quiet, unreasonable guilt that creeps in when you need something from someone else?

That fear that you are being rude, demanding, and inconsiderate just for needing something from another human being?

So you soften your voice. You reduce your presence. You apologize. Not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because it feels safer to assume that you have.

“Sorry. Please. Could you…”

Layer upon layer, until your request is no longer a request, but a careful negotiation for permission to want.

…

It’s become an unspoken culture to speak this way to each other in our country.

We like to say Nigerians are polite, and… respectful, and… humble.

And maybe that’s a part of it.

But sitting inside the fabric shop at oshodi that afternoon, watching Lagos unfold in restless motion, through the narrow frame disguised as a passage of entrance, I found myself thinking about it again and something in me went very quiet.

That afternoon barely contained the chaos outside, and my mind barely contained the sudden stillness that hit me. It was the kind of stillness that comes only when you see something so clearly it almost hurts.

As I watched people move in a hurry under the hot afternoon sun, as I watched the market blur itself into the lives of thousands of people, all the questions I had about my grammar construction dissolved into something else. It wasn’t grief, neither was it pity. It was the feeling of recognising suffering you have lived alongside for so long, you almost stopped seeing it.

There was a woman outside balancing a tray of oranges on her head. Her slippers were worn so thin they were barely a suggestion of shoes anymore. I’m guessing it’s from the accumulated weight of the days before this one, pressed into rubber and sole until almost nothing remained. A man stood a few feet from her, he was roughly dressed in a white shirt and a black suit trouser, his shirt carrying the particular weariness of clothes that have seen too many days like this one. I watched him argue into his phone with the frustration of someone who has already explained this three times and cannot believe he has to do it again.

And then there were the boys, beautiful young boys, darting between moving cars, weaving themselves through traffic with bottles of water in their hands, their small legs calculating danger with a casualness that broke something in me. Because no child should have to learn that calculation. No child should have to decide whether the gap between that danfo and that Corolla is wide enough to contain them.

That sight didn’t look like childhood to me.

And across from the shop, a woman sat behind a smoking grill of corn. The umbrella above her head was more memory than shade, it tilted just enough to protect her from the sun in whatever way it could. And she sat the way people sit when they have been in the same spot long enough that the ground has learned the shape of them. She wasn’t rushing, but her eyes were already scanning, and anticipating the next person to stop and honor her handwork by purchase.

There was movement everywhere, and everyone seemed to be in a hurry because slow movement seemed to be the same as stillness, and stillness, in this country is expensive.

And then, I couldn’t help but think…

I am, indeed, sorry.

I am so sorry.

And I don’t mean that in the casual, reflexive way I had been saying it all day.

I am genuinely, deeply, sorry.

I apologize because life here is already too hard, and the last thing I want is to become one more inconvenience in someone else’s suffering.

So I say “sorry” before I speak. Because I really do not know what you are carrying, but I am painfully aware of what we are carrying, collectively.

Because…

In a country where everything is already difficult…

where electricity comes and goes like a rumour and the roads punish you with its portholes, where you are forced to plan your day around fuel queues, where the systems exhaust you and traffic stretches your time until there’s nothing left of it, where the education system is more concerned about your grades rather than what you’re taught.

In a country where you have to sit in a banking hall for two hours for something that should have taken four minutes, where data subscriptions finish faster than it should but the network disappears when you need it most, where you lose opportunities because of your nationality, where salaries stall but prices don’t, where the reality of being here damages your body and your patience, all at once…

In a country where you wake up already tired, already calculating what the day has in store for you and already preparing for inconveniences, where survival itself feels like a full-time job…

…every request feels like you are asking for something extraordinary. Even when you are not.

So when I say,

“Sorry, please, could you…?”

I am not just trying to be polite, I am acknowledging that you, too, are carrying something. That you, too, are navigating a system that does not care if you are tired. That you, too, did not choose how hard things have become.

And still, here I am, one more person asking something from you.

So yes, “I’m sorry.” Not just for interrupting you on the road in Oshodi. Not just for asking you to move aside.

I’m sorry that you have to be here at all.

I’m sorry that this country has stretched you thin and still asks you for more. I’m sorry that resting has started to feel like laziness because your need to survive is urgent. I’m sorry that you have to wake up every day and fight systems that should have been built to hold you. I am sorry that this is the life we have to navigate through.

I’m sorry that being Nigerian often feels like carrying a weight you did not choose.

I know I am one more thing in your way today. But still, please, make way for me.

Because I, too, am trying to survive this place that has made movement feel like the only proof that we are not drowning.

Sorry…
for the life this country has forced on you, for the ways it has stretched you thin before the day even begins.

Please…
do what you can to keep going, to hold yourself together in this place that keeps asking for more than it gives.

also,

Could you…
when you have even a little left to give, be kind enough not to make it harder for someone else?

Because this is how we can survive with each other here.

We don’t survive just by moving through the same crowded roads, but by remembering, however briefly, that the person in front of us is just as tired, just as human, and just as much in need of grace.

THE BEAR.

I choose the bear and I will always choose the bear. And it doesn’t matter if there are ten bears to one man. I will choose the bears. And my reason is simple…

I know my fate with the bears. I already know what the bears want from me and I know the worst thing I will face with the bear is death.

Will probably be ripped apart, but it will be death either way.

“The man or The bear?”

Should that even be a question?

When the answer has always been painfully obvious!

They ask…

“Would you rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear?”

…like it’s a riddle that’s supposed to be difficult to solve. Clever, maybe. Debatable? But unfortunately, it’s not.

For many women, the answer has always been clear — The bear. It will always be the bear! And when we say it, the room shifts, it becomes comical and intense. Our response is taken as a joke. Yet, every man in the room begins to raise their eyebrows, and subtly takes offense at the insinuation that the man is more of a beast than a beast that lived in the wild its entire life.

For some reason, our response feels like an insult. But it really is just one honest, trembling answer.

And what’s even more interesting about this, what’s almost ironic, is that many men choose the bear too. Especially when it comes to their daughters.

There was a video circulating online sometime in 2025 where fathers were asked if they would rather leave their baby girls alone in the woods with a man or a bear. At first, they resisted the question. They argued that they would never leave their daughters alone in the first place, and that’s fair. But after much probing, and they had to choose, all of them chose the bear. I remember one of the father said:

“Maybe the bear will see that she’s just a baby and leave.”

He was willing to gamble on the mercy of a wild animal because he was not fully confident in the mercy of a man.

Let me make that clear enough…

He was willing to take that risk because he knows that “seeing that she’s just a baby” will probably not be reason enough for the man to leave his baby girl alone.

…

You see,

Women are not choosing the bear because we love danger. We are choosing the bear because we choose to hold on to that little hope that a bear, a wild animal, might have a shred of ‘humanity’ because there is no assurance that the human might have it.

We are choosing the bear because we understand it, and we more or less know what it wants from us.

We know a bear is hunger with fur, so it just wants to eat us.
We know a bear is instinct with claws, so it might rip us apart.
We know a bear does not pretend, he just wants to fill his stomach.

When a bear stands on its hind legs, you already know what you are looking at. Power. Size. Threat. Danger.

A bear does not smile before it strikes. It does not call you “beautiful” before it bares its teeth. It does not ask you to come closer so it can teach you a lesson about trust or promise to love you right.

A bear will either leave you alone or it won’t. There is no performance in it and no pretense to it.

But a man?

A man in the woods?

A man is a question mark with shoes and skin. You just never know what step he might take next and you don’t know if his heart is a lighter or darker shade than his skin.

As women, we grow up learning the grammar of danger before we learn any other thing. We are taught and constantly reminded to measure the footsteps behind us like meteorologists predicting storms. We are taught to scan parking lots like preys sniffing the wind for any possible danger that might dash at us any second. We are taught to carry keys between our fingers, making that our own small, trembling claws to fight whatever danger jumps at us in our society, outside the woods.

By the time we are twelve, we know the weight of a gaze that stays too long. We know the looks of someone who wants something from us. By the time we are fifteen, we know how to laugh at jokes that make our stomachs fold inward. We become a great pretender ourselves. By the time we are eighteen, we have memorized the art of shrinking. We start to think that maybe if we become invincible, the dangers won’t reach us.

And still…

Still, you ask why we choose the bear?

Well, for starters…

The bear won’t pretend to be our friend first.

The bear won’t say, “You’re overreacting” when we say we don’t like how we are being touched.

The bear won’t tell the world we wanted it.

If a bear attacks us, the story will not become a debate. There will be no panel discussions dissecting our outfit. There will be no question of how much we drank. And no one will search our past for proof that we were “that kind of woman.”

The bear is not our cousin, or our friend, or our coworker, or anyone we have to see at gatherings.

If we act dead, the bear will leave us alone.

The bear lives there, in the woods, the man probably followed us there.

The worst a bear can do is kill, and death is the end to all suffering, right?

If a bear attacks us, no one will ask the bear for its side of the story before they believe us. The world will act first, the investigation will come after that.

The bear sees us as a human being, maybe as a ‘worthy’ meal, but as a human being… and that’s the point.

No one will say we liked the bear’s attack.

The bear will be what it has always shown itself to be… a bear. Just a bear.

But a man can be danger wrapped in familiarity.

A man can be danger wearing your favorite cologne. Danger who knows your mother’s name. Danger who texts “Did you get home safe?”. Danger that has previously showered you with love and care. Danger you live with. Danger you don’t even know.

So you see,

While the fear of the bear is physical, the fear of the man is layered.

Layered with the fear of not being believed. The fear of being blamed. The fear of surviving something and still being made the villain in your own story.

Women choose the bear because at least with the bear, the forest will testify for us. The claw marks will not lie and the broken branches will not make whatever happened to us our fault.

We choose the bear because its violence is not personal. Its violence is not about power and it’s not a show of strength. Not about humiliation. Not about proving something.

The bear does not love women or hate women and the bear does not feel entitled to them. For a woman in the woods, the bear happens to be a safer beast than the man. So…

When women say “the bear,” it is not a condemnation of all men. It is a confession of exhaustion. It is the sound of centuries pressing against our ribs like tight corsets we never even agreed to wear. It is the memory of every time we walked the street at night. Every time we shared our location with a friend in an uber drive. Every time we pretended to be on the phone. Every time we stuff our bags with tools that are meant to save us if need be. Every time we rehearsed rejection like a script because apparently, “no” can be a spark in dry grass.

Apparently, a simple “no” can be the beginning of the worst thing that could ever happen to us.

And the bear? The bear does not require all these rehearsals.

And this is what hurts the most. Not the fact that women fear men, but that we have learned to calculate them just so we can survive. We have learned to measure your tones, to soften our words, and to anticipate the pointing fingers of the world if anything ever goes wrong.

Choosing the bear is not about statistics. It is about lived mathematics. The silent tally of stories passed between women like heirlooms. We hear these stories every day, we live them every day!

“Text me when you get home.”

“Send me his location.”

“What’s his full name?”

“I have a bad feeling.”

This is simply what the beginning of our safety measure looks like.

We are not afraid of every man. We are afraid of not knowing which man.

A bear in the forest is honest about what it is. You see it and you know what it is capable of. But a man can be a stranger or a friend or a lover, and still become something unrecognizable in the dark.

So women choose the bear because it feels simpler and honestly, safer. Because if the worst happens with a bear, it will be tragedy, not betrayal layered with shame. Because at least the bear will not ask us to carry its reputation after it’s done its bits.

The bear will not make us doubt our own selves. The bear will not ask why we were there. The bear won’t find it funny. The bear will not demand that we forgive it afterwards.

So yes, women will keep choosing the bear.

Not because we hate men. Not because we are irrational or being illogical. And definitely not because we crave drama.

But because for too many of us, the woods have never been empty.

And if we must face something wild in the dark, we would rather it be something that does not pretend to be safe.

In his song “Keep Ya Head Up”, Shakur said:

“And since we all came from a woman

Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman

I wonder why we take from our women

Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?

I think it’s time to kill for our women

Time to heal our women, be real to our women

And if we don’t, we’ll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies”

Well, how real is that?

I know you didn’t ask anyone to speak to you, you probably don’t even want to hear anything right now. I know you are tired of words. Tired of hearing people talk about how much the world needs you and how much you matter.

Another ‘stay alive’ advice painted in a different color and decorated with ribbons?

No, thanks. I’m here for something else…

You see,

I am writing this to mentally place myself beside you and sit with you in whatever heavy space you’re in right now.

And you’re probably wondering why I would do that…

Why I am stubbornly writing this to you, even though I know you probably don’t want to read it…or talk about it.

Honestly, my reason is selfish. There is nothing noble about my writing this to you.

You see, I came across a WhatsApp post. It was an image that gave the statistics of people who seized their breathe since the beginning of 2026. The numbers were shocking to me, so I decided to check the facts myself.

And I got to know that, as of today, 4th of February 2026, over 80,000 to 95,000 deaths have been reported as suicide.

And all of a sudden, I got scared that your name will go down in history as a casualty of a global mental health crisis. So yes, I am stubbornly writing this to you because I don’t want your name anywhere in those statistics.

It pains me enough to know that the people who have gone will never come back but all I can do, in such a vast world, is sit in front of my laptop, write this letter, and hope that somehow, it gets to you.

I understand that life can be unbearable. I know that sounds painfully obvious and familiar, but people rarely say it as it is. Don’t they?

Life can be exhausting. Humiliating. Repetitive. Annoyingly lonely.

You could wake up one day and suddenly feel like you’re carrying something invisible while everyone else walks past you unbothered, free of burden. You could wake up one day and suddenly feel misaligned with the world, that existing starts to feel like an error. You could wake up one day and suddenly feel like you’re failing at something everyone else seems to do effortlessly… staying alive.

And even if no one understands, these are reasons to want out. These are reasons enough to not want to be a part of whatever circus life is playing at anymore.

And I know this isn’t about me but…

I want you here, with me.

Not because I know you on a personal level. But because you being here, on earth, with me, convinces me that maybe, just maybe, you’re one of the people I’m meant to meet, do life with and love with my whole heart.

See? i told you, selfish.

I honestly don’t know if this letter will change anything. I don’t know if this letter will “save” you. I don’t know if words can do that. But if anything, I know that everyone will die. Someday.

One day, we will close our eyes and we won’t be able to open them anymore. And there won’t be any prize for arriving early or any medal for ending the story before the plot has finished unfolding. Because every story ends. Right?

If we’ve got limited time, then I’m betting on it to do everything I can and meet everyone who needs to be in my story. Tell me…

What are the chances that you’re a part of my story and I, a part of yours?

That was just me thinking out loud, so let’s put that aside.

Now, back to what I was saying…
…

Life is temporary…anyway.

There is going to be a ‘one day’, and it will be the day you leave all of these behind. Whatever, ‘these’ is to you by then. And even after that, there is going to be another ‘one day’, and it will be the one you’re not a part of.

So, until that day comes, I think you should make a list of things to collect before your curtain closes.

I mean, there are still things you need to do before you go. A ton of them!

And I’m not talking about grand, gigantic things. I’m not talking about the responsibilities tied to your faith, religion or loved ones.

I’m talking about utterly selfish things!

I’m talking about shamelessly forgetting the people that will cry in your absence. I’m talking about completely forgetting the punishment that is said to come with your faith.

When I say ‘the things you need to do before you go’, I mean things that have to do with you and only you. Because before your death becomes anyone else’s grief, it is your loss first.

So, before you lose yourself, my dear reader…

before you disappear…

before you kill youself…

you need to drink one more cup of iced coffee.

You need to selfishly walk into a café and place an order with your favorite nickname just so you give the barista extra work… and extra cash.

Before you kill yourself, you need to clean your room, sort the clothes on your chair, and change your pillowcase.

Before you kill yourself, you should get a pet and cuddle them, and if you don’t like animals, I think you should feed the birds and watch them take flight in the sky.

You need to touch another living thing, and hear their heart beat.

You need to find the missing pair of your socks. Cut your hair, or maybe style it some other way.

Before you kill yourself, ride a bicycle.

Change your route home. Change the music you listen to while doing the dishes.

Before you end the sentence of your breath, you deserve to dance, awkwardly, slowly, reverently with someone who holds you with both hands because you are fragile and worth protecting.

You need to experience what it feels like to take a photograph of a building at night with different lights in each window and stay amazed at how human life is individual and inalienable.

Before you kill yourself, you should find people who share your name, your birthday, your favorite song.

You need to love yourself a little too much, selfishly, with everything you have. You shouldn’t fly to the sky without experiencing what that feels like even once.

Before you kill yourself, you need to never know who you really are.

You need to leave an empty seat for the version of you that hasn’t come yet. Leave that seat empty until your last breath, hoping that you never fully know yourself that you take the magic out of your being.

Because mystery is part of your whole being.

Before you kill yourself, go back to the things you enjoyed doing as a child. Sit on the floor if you want. Watch your favorite cartoons. Barbie. Tom and Jerry. Ed, Edd, n Eddy. Pinky and the Brain. Eat your cereal dry, without milk. And give your heart one more chance to remember what it feels like to exist without explaining yourself.

Before you kill yourself, you need to talk to someone old. Someone who has buried dreams and people and still wakes up curious about the morning.

Don’t leave this world without bursting it in your mouth, my dear. You need to let the world taste like confetti in your mouth. Taste life again, and let it be so strange, you laugh yourself to tears.

Let the world surprise you once more, or maybe…surprise the world.

Before you become a part of the sky forever, you need to remember that you have a to-do list and there is nothing short of a hundred things on that list.

So, put down whatever is telling you that this is the only ending available to you.

Put it down and…

wait a minute.

Before you kill yourself, all you have to do is…

Wait a minute.

This is all I’m asking.

A million hugs,

Shakirah!🤍.

p.s: if you are reading this and there’s something in your heart you’d like to say to anyone who’s experiencing this, please leave a comment. That will mean a lot, thank you!🤍

A few ‘random love letters’ you may want to read:

living through this period has been so exhausting for me.

I’ve never been particularly attentive, at least not toward myself. But recently I’ve started noticing small things. Really unimportant things if I may say. Details that I would normally pass by without a thought. One of these ‘things’ is… my left hand.

It’s important to note that this realization didn’t come with a conscious effort. It just slipped in while I was doing the dishes after dinner last night. My hands were deep in warm soapy water, plates knocking softly against each other, foam performing tricks on my wrists. Somewhere between rinsing spoons and scrubbing a pot, I noticed my left hand wasn’t doing any real work. She was just there, still. All she did was support my right hand and receive the weight of the objects, while my right hand did all the work. She did the scrubbing, she did the sorting, and the tidying. My left hand was undoubtedly there, she held the objects but she never strained. She was present, but she didn’t pressure herself into action.

This morning, I noticed it happen again, the softness of my left hand.

I was in a rush. I wanted to cook breakfast before a meeting that was to happen in less than an hour because I was damn hungry. And I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to concentrate on that meeting without something holding my stomach. So, I decided to cook yam quickly. I peeled the yam into a pot, placed it on the gas and tried to transfer boiling water from the kettle into the pot. My right hand naturally took charge for most of these. But the kettle sat closer to my left side, so I carelessly reached for it with my left hand. Bad decision. My balance staggered immediately and my grip became loose. For a split second, a violent image of blistered skin and weeks of painful healing flashed through my mind. One careless moment could have easily become a scar I would carry forever. Without another thought, I quickly switched hands.

I found it startling how weak my left hand was. I mean, how could a whole limb feel so unprepared for something as ordinary as carrying a boiling kettle?

So out of curiosity, I tried to write with my left hand. The result was almost offensive! Turns out, my left hand wasn’t built to hold a pen either. The letters horrifically collapsed into each other, losing all sort of direction. It looked like someone trying to remember a language they never fully learned. It was unbelievable how ugly the writing was.

Yet strangely, I felt admiration for my left hand. Maybe even jealousy.

You see,

My left hand lives a soft life. She does not overextend herself. She does not volunteer for stress. She helps, but she does not hustle. She participates without competing. She lives like a Sunday afternoon, and I don’t think she cares much about the reality of life. Sometimes when she works and it gets too heavy, she sends me a message in form of a dull ache, a tightening muscle in my arm until she eventually withdraws without apology.

I love that! I love that about her!

Earlier this month, my right hand suffered terrible joint pain. The ache ran from my wrist to my shoulder and I could barely do anything. anything. My left hand had to step forward clumsy as she was, slow and inefficient, but heroically available. She showed up when she needed to, carried what she could, and when that season passed, she returned to rest. It was so natural, I barely noticed. She slipped back into the background, into softness without pride or the famous identity crisis about productivity.

She did her thing and then she let it be. I love that for her so much and I realize that I want to share that space with her.

I want to live on the left side of life, like her.

And I don’t want to make the mistake of thinking this is being lazy or being irresponsible…

I want to put in the effort without internally violating myself.

I want to work without panic breathing down my neck.

I want discipline that does not feel like punishment.

I want to show up gently and fully when I need to and return to ease when the demand has passed.

And wanting all of these, wanting to live this way has made me realize that softness needs somewhere to rest its faith. Because choosing ease in a world obsessed with striving can feel irresponsible if you don’t believe, deeply, that effort is not the source of provision.

This brings me back to Sabr (patience). Thinking of the left side of life, I’m reminded of how Islam teaches us not to wait passively, but to strive with trust. Do what you can. Leave what you cannot. And believe that reward is not always proportional to visible strain.

There is a narration about birds in Islam that tells us how they leave their nests hungry every morning and return full. Provision has been written for them even before they took flight. Effort is required, yes, but anxiety is optional. Obsession is optional. Self-destruction is optional.

Now this might not be the perfect analogy, but it makes the point I‘m trying to pass and it gives me the comfort I need, that sustenance is from Allah SWT.

While I have big dreams, demanding ones, I do not want them to become the weapons fashioned against my mental health. I do not want ambition to harden me into something constantly clenched. I do not want to do everything ‘right’. I just want to live without tearing. I want to reach without falling apart. I want to build without burning myself into a scar.

I want to be soft, and steady, and supportive, and unhurried like my left hand.

Strong when I need to be, but mostly relaxed. I want to live like something, someone that knows she does not have to suffer constantly to be worthy of provision.

I want to be soft like a Sunday breeze too. Tender like warm sunlight entering a vintage room, without constantly asking for permission. Fragile like a hand that knows it is not the main worker and is still an essential part of being.

I no longer want to measure my worth by how clenched I remain. I want to hold instead of push, to support myself instead of strain my entire being.

I want…

I want to live on the left side of life,

and trust that that will be enough.

Metaphorically, the world has been swept under the misconception that pain ends with a person. That the pain of a person dies along with them. But on the contrary, pain does not disappear simply because time has passed. In many families and societies, experiences of suffering are not resolved, they are absorbed, reshaped, and passed on. And this is what it means to live with a pain you didn’t experience firsthand, and still strive to heal from it.

Intergenerational trauma is not an abstract idea or a psychological buzzword. It’s what happens when pain outlives the moment that caused it. When unresolved fear, humiliation, or loss doesn’t disappear, but reorganizes itself and continues through habits, rules, and expectations. As social beings, we don’t just inherit stories, we inherit patterns too.

You can look back and still not find the moment the pain you’re trying to heal from took a seat beside you. Not because it doesn’t have a beginning, but because not everything starts with a certain event. Some start with an atmosphere. Some start with what was allowed and what was forbidden. Some start with what you were praised for and punished for. The only underlying truth about all these is that we find ourselves somewhere in between these lines, obeying rules we never agreed to.

Don’t talk back. Don’t cry too much. Don’t want too much. Be strong. Be quiet, stay quiet. Endure. Move on.

We grow up learning how emotions are handled without anyone explaining the lesson. We learn that anger is dangerous and not permitted. We are taught that vulnerability is embarrassing, so we just don’t partake in it. And in all of these, we find holes in the love that we are given, whether freely or quietly rationed.

“With great power comes great responsibility”, yeah? and power in this case is to exist, to breathe and be aware of your own aliveness.

This is how trauma moves. Through our existence first, and then through repetition and cultural normality. And because we learn to make most of our trauma an identity, it becomes normal, and rarely announces itself as a problem anymore. It somehow becomes “this is how we’ve always done it” — a religion of emotional suffering.

A child who used to be beaten for being loud becomes alarmingly quiet and it becomes “that’s just who she is”. She learns to wear her trauma as a badge of morality, and she grows to become a “cultured” adult. Ironic.

Families often believe they are protecting their children by passing down what once kept them alive. A family can look perfectly functional while operating under invisible rules shaped by old wounds. A parent who has endured humiliation or violence often internalizes coping mechanisms that later influence how they relate to their children. Fear becomes disguised as discipline, silence for strength and in Africa, “respecting your elders”. Control becomes care. Emotional distance becomes protection. It becomes a sick cycle, and you don’t need a prophecy to tell you the emotional state the coming generation will find themselves in if nothing is done.

Clearly, the intention is not harm, the intention is safety. No one wants to hurt their loved ones but this is what happens when unaddressed patterns flow like blood in our veins. Sadly, intentions don’t erase consequences.

What I believe began as a survival course in one generation has become restrictions for the generations that followed. In simple terms, a strategy formed under pressure will harden itself into a rule long after the pressure is gone. It’s like wearing armor long after the war has ended — what once gave you protection in war will start to limit your movement without its essence.

And unfortunately, this has spilled outside family settings.

Entire societies operate the same way. Histories of colonization, slavery, war, poverty, or political instability don’t simply vanish with time. When loss and injustice go unaddressed, they shape collective behavior. You begin to see it in how people relate to authority, how they compete instead of cooperate, and how mistrust becomes a default setting. Trauma, at scale, produces cultures that are always bracing. Always alert. Always preparing for some sort of loss. Never leaving us space to live authentically.

And because these patterns are widespread, they are rarely defined. They are called resilience. Culture. “How things are.” But again, resilience without reflection eventually becomes stagnation and survival without healing becomes an inheritance.

This is where the moral question comes in...

Which Pain is ‘Ours’ To Heal?

…

Honestly, I would say ALL.

And I understand if this just pushed your buttons, my dear reader. Afterall, you did not choose the pain you feel, it was handed to you. But…

There is this quote that lives rent free in my head, it goes, “if you don't heal from what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you.”. You might have come across this quote too and if you have then I’m sure you see sense in it. Right?

It goes like this…

a child who was raised with inherited suffering and didn’t try to free himself from its shackles will be left with bruises and will eventually bleed unto people that didn’t cut him.

Because choosing not to heal opens another portal of pain in the society.

Even if you did not choose the pain you inherited, you can choose what happens to it and what you do with it. This is what it means to take responsibility for yourself and the people left in your care.

Healing intergenerational trauma is not about blame or resentment. It is about responsibility. It’s you carrying something that did not begin with you, knowing that it will shape the world through you in some type of way.

Inherited pain doesn’t stay private, it webs itself through your bones and it slips out of you in the way you love, the way you lead, the way you see power, the way you relate with others, the way you treat differences, the way you imagine justice. Basically, the way you live.

I guess what I am trying to say is…

Multiplied across millions of people, unhealed trauma has become a social reality. This is why healing is not just personal work. But civic work. Ethical work. World-building work.

And it is slow, undeniably and frustratingly slow.

No one “finishes” healing. There is no final version of yourself where all inheritance has been resolved. What there is instead, is awareness. The willingness to notice patterns and rework the ones that don’t serve you, instead of obeying them automatically. The courage to pause where others rushed past pain in the name of survival.

To heal is not to erase the past. It is to carry it differently and move with it responsibly. It is to take what was handed down to you, examine it honestly, and decide what deserves to continue and what must end here, with you.

At the end of the day, I just want you to know that…

Even if you didn’t choose it, your trauma is a part of you and what you choose to do with it affects the society and the generations to come.

Even if you didn’t choose it, your trauma is your responsibility.

Not because it’s fair, but because if you don’t take up the responsibility to heal yourself, be the best you can ever be, then…

who will?

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

— Barack Obama

p.s: I think everyone needs to hear this, read this. so please, pass this along…

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But again, that’s by the way…

Do you have this life thing figured out?

I mean, how is life going on your end?

I can’t stop thinking about this because no one seems to be asking how we’re supposed to make sense of life.

No one seems to be asking the question of how to be a person, so I assume y’all know what you’re doing. Maybe you have it all figured out already or maybe you don’t and you just don’t ask this out loud. I’m convinced it’s the latter but…

I might be tripping, right?

Thing is, I have always wondered about how we don’t ask this question early enough and by the time we are old enough to even wonder, we are already expected to know exactly what we’re doing. So instead of trying to figure out how to be a person, a happy, fulfilled person, we ask questions that fill their own blanks before any answer does…

What do you do? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What type of person are you?

We ask these questions as if being a person is merely the background requirement, well because that’s the easiest way to think, isn’t it?

Usually, we inherit instructions from our parents. From books. From people who sound certain about their answers, people who we think might have hacked this life thing. They show us what it takes and promise us coherence, and we, in turn, try to live inside them, adjusting ourselves to fit a dress that was made for an entirely different person in an entirely different size. They say…

To be a person, you must want something.

You must have dreams and run after them.

If you have a mind, then use it to dream and if you have legs, use them to run after those dreams!

Everyone tells you to run but they forget to tell you about the terrain. They forget to tell you how the ground shifts underfoot. How on some days, your path will dissolve entirely and you’ll be left standing with a compass that only points inward. What happens then? To want is not the problem, that’s quite easy because I want a lot of stuff, we all want a lot of stuff, don’t we? But wanting isn’t time framed. Wanting will ask you to wait longer than you planned, and you know what they say…

“later, the coffee gets cold”.

Wanting asks you to love outcomes you might never live to see and keep carrying dreams that grow heavier the closer you get to them. Sometimes even, wanting something outlives the thing itself. You could achieve your dream and discover that it’s smaller than the space it occupied in your chest. Other times, the dream you spent years chasing leaves and shuts the door of your mind, and you are left with nothing but the ache of having once believed.

It turns out that wanting is not as simple as the instruction says.

To be a person, you need to be consistent.

Consistency is key, Chale!

If you are not consistently chasing it, then you don’t want it enough! Why? Because consistency is clean and reassuring. Consistency is a promise of reward — if you show up enough times, life will eventually reward your effort, and it’s honestly true (I have tried it before, it works guys). But the thing is…

life is programmed to interrupt. At some point, your body will fail you when you wake up and on a scary day, you might find yourself in a hospital gown. Your mind will fracture in ways that don’t look like breaking, but feel like becoming unreliable, even for your own self. You will lose something, someone and grief will rearrange your priorities without your permission. You will seek change, you will change, and then life will change. Then it will become a cycle.

You will seek change again and you will change again but after a loss, a failure, maybe something as small as a sentence someone says in passing, the version of you who made the plan won’t be the one to continue it. And still you will have to remain faithful because that’s what consistency is about.

It’s a paradox!

To be a person, you must be loud!

Talk. Take up space. Own every room.

If you can’t shout at the top of your lungs in every room, then you should trade your voice for a blanket and stay in the one room you’ll only ever fill — your bedroom. Because people who already hacked this authenticity thing say people who are quiet will never be whole. If you can’t be loud, you’ll only remain an echo. Because if your voice cracks, then…

They say cracks suggest hesitation. They say they expose your fragility and unfinished thoughts. If you’d rather sing than wail, then your voice is a waste — give it out, give it away. You can’t be a proper person if your sound arrives softly, if it asks instead of declares, if it searches rather than conquers.

To be a person, you must learn to sit.

Sit properly, straight-backed. Sit still. It’s really that simple… just sit.

If you have a body that refuses quiet and a leg that begins to shake the moment nothing is required of you, then you are doing it all wrong, clearly you haven’t mastered it yet.

You need to learn to occupy a chair, or a step, or at least the edge of your bed. Learn to be still so miracles and opportunities don’t pass you by. If you move too fast, you’ll miss your chances but… but… but…

it’s funny because if you sit still for too long, miracles won’t find you.

Miracles and opportunities only appear when you’re moving, but not too much. When you’re waiting, but not for too long. When you’re open, but not exposed. When you’re ready, but not expectant. When you’re still enough to be available and restless enough to be noticed.

So, it’s impossible to sit without having one foot lifted. Because sitting is rarely graceful. Sitting reveals your urge to flee. Your impatience with yourself. The fear that keeps you up at night that nothing will happen if you stop making it happen.

“Just sit”, they say.

As if the body doesn’t know how easily life keeps moving without you.

At this point, I have tried everything.

I have tried being louder. I have tried shrinking myself into politeness. I have tried consistency like a religion and inconsistency like rebellion. I have tried sitting still and I have tried running until my lungs burned. I have followed instructions the way one follows a old recipe, trusting, hopeful, and convinced that if I just measured better, or waited longer, or believed harder, something would finally rise.

But none of it seems to be taking me farther than being an infant trying to make sense of the world. Grabbing at light, startled by sound, crying without knowing how to name the pain that hurts me. Everyone else appears fluent but I’m still babbling. I’m still knocking things over. Man!

Since no other person’s instructions seem to be doing it for me, I have decided to create a cheat code of my own. And fortunately for me, it’s worked well so far.

It’s important to remember that these are not rules and they don’t promise coherence. They simply are the things I go back to when these question resurfaces, as it always does.

1. Yearn.

There’s no use resisting it. Because even on the days when life looks full, something in us keeps reaching forward, for something. I learned recently that the word desire comes from the Latin de sidere, which means to await what the stars will bring. I don’t know how often the stars actually deliver, but the waiting itself matters. The key isn’t just to want but to wait for your desires too. patiently.

So, let yourself want things and be willing to wait for them. Keep yearning, even when you seemingly have everything.

2. Spill your coffee.

If you don’t drink coffee, spill water or your matcha…or whatever. It’s fine, mistakes are allowed, you don’t need to beat yourself up for it. Be messy, fall off a step, use the wrong word in the wrong context, forget your notebook and remember that it’s not the end of the world.

​​This is how I remind myself that mistakes don’t revoke my membership in being human, and that there really is nothing to be embarrassed about. They’re simply mistakes, no biggie.

3. Choose a place to go and be prepared to take the long way there.

Decide on a destination to go from wherever you are and take the longest route possible to get there.

Walk it with pride. Look out constantly for someone you could help, or a way to be useful. When you find a moment like this, leap at it, and tell yourself that “this, and only this, is the reason why you woke up today”. This works because the destination becomes less important when the walk starts to mean something in itself.

Personally, I used to think the goal was to get somewhere fast. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe the woman I’m becoming is being built in the detours. In the conversations I have while walking slowly. In the people I notice when I’m not rushing past them. The destination will still be there, it will always be for as long I live. But the person I am when I get there? That’s being decided right now, in how I choose to walk.

So yeah, thinking about delayed gratification does this magic.

4. Return to nature, repeatedly.

Return to the sky, the trees, the sea, soil, over and over again, no matter how far you go from them. Watch the sky change colors at 6pm. This is an exercise in muscle memory. So, return to nature to remember all that you are. Return to write yourself back in all the ways you’re disappearing.

Let nature remind you that you are made of the same stuff as everything else that grows and changes and doesn’t apologize for it.

5. Use every language you know to demonstrate love for yourself and others.

There are people and things you love and there are a thousand ways to express that. Find the exact words for how they make you feel. Stretch those words like a rubber band between your hands. Test their strength and remove anything that bends too easily. If you don’t find the words, express it through actions.

Record your favorite people secretly on their phone and never tell them, let them discover it. Schedule them an email to arrive a year later. Ten years. Go out of your way for people you love without expecting reciprocity, and remember that the “people you love” includes you. Most especially you.

6. Make sense of things, even badly.

Outside your window, birds have their wings spread out in the sky. The sky isn’t so blue today. Your favorite spoon doesn’t hold much weight anymore. The cover of the last book you read is red. Look at the colour of the eyes of whoever is speaking with you, it’s more beautiful than you can imagine. This is everything! To be present enough to make sense of the details that have made it to your life.

Notice things. Notice how bees try to find flowers. Notice how your hair stretches from your scalp when your stylist combs it a little too hard (this is personal😓). Notice colors, notice the weather.

Notice things enough to make a memory out of them.

7. Cry on purpose and cry by accident.

Every now and then, sit on the cold tiles of your floor and let the ache in your chest find a release. Cry. Cry at movies. At songs. At books. Cry with people too, not just near them. Cry as a man. Cry as a woman. It doesn’t matter in what language you cry. Crying is just proof that something still reaches you. And I think that’s important in a world that teaches numbness to be a survival skill.

8. Trust your body when the spiral comes.

I read this somewhere once, and it’s lived in my heart ever since…

“Most days, the spirals are unavoidable. The beautiful thing about having a mind that spirals at a speed we can’t fathom is that we have a body within which it resides. Breathe. Put the ground on your feet. You’re here.

You can walk, jump, and leap. And you’re not sinking, even though your mind has you believe it. Look around your room, then at your body, and only believe what you can see.”

That’s it!

9. Talk to inanimate things.

I talk to my belongings and no, it’s not weird…i think.

But really, let loose. Speak to the chair in your living room. The cup. Your favorite marvel shirt. Name your keyboards. It doesn’t have to make sense. Just talk to them and let them talk back…ermm literally.

Anyway, this is all I can share right now (so this doesn’t get any longer).

What about you though?

What’s the weird thing you do that somehow makes life make a little more sense? What do you do that makes you a person, simply?

Wait, you actually read to this point? You read the whole thing? In this economy? Wowww, I’m impressed. My own attention span left around paragraph 3😭.

Thank you for reading fr, your audience means the world to me!

A million hugs,

Shakirah🤍

p.s: if you know anyone who might need this, you’re welcome to pass this along.

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You know, it’s been ten days since the new year slipped its shoes on, and with every day that passed, you crossed my mind. I had so many things I wanted to tell you, so many feelings I wanted to share, but the right words kept missing my pen. Or maybe, just maybe, I was too tired to walk in the new shoes time placed at my feet.

But waitttt, this isn’t about me, it’s about you.

Tell me, how are you?

I genuinely want to know how you are doing. I don’t want the polite answer you give everyone else. I don’t want your ever-rehearsed “I’m fine” response. I really do not want the answer you usually give because you don’t want to worry anyone. I want to know how you’re really doing.

How are you?

If you don’t know how to answer that, then tell me…

What do the clouds in your head look like lately? Are they heavy and dark, soaked with everything you had to carry last year? Or are they thin and restless, unsure whether to open up or disappear?

When you wake up these days, do you lie there for a moment longer than usual, listening to your own breath, gathering yourself before the day asks anything of you?

If you can, send me a message. Tell me everything that’s been hiding in your heart. I want to hear all of it!

How are you?

You see,

I don’t know what part of yourself you’ve been trying to hold together since the year started. I don’t know what conversations you keep replaying in your head, or what worries sit beside you when the day closes its curtains. But I know what it feels like to wake up carrying something you can’t quite name. I know what it feels like to have a mental question mark hovering over your head where certainty used to be.

I know you are tired and I know your tiredness isn’t the type sleep can fix. I know it’s the kind of tiredness that comes from thinking deeply, and caring strongly, and hoping that somehow, everything makes sense soon. I know your tiredness comes from trying to be brave for a ridiculously long time, and realizing that bravery doesn’t always get rewarded quickly. I know you are standing at a strange place where faith hasn’t left you completely but also doesn’t feel solid in your hands.

I know because this is exactly how I’ve felt for the past few days.

I mean…

Without ever saying anything to each other, we carry familiar feelings in spite of our differences. I think about that often. And that’s why I’m writing this to you.

My dear reader, I’m writing to tell you that…

you can exist, simply.

Without thinking of what this year has in store for you...

Without knowing fully who you are supposed to be or what steps you are supposed to be taking…

Without breaking your back with the bricks you used to build the mental prison you live in.

I understand that everyone has been all about being audacious and you should be too. I really think you should stick to that theme for the year. But let that audacity look like loving yourself first. Let it look like choosing yourself without breaking your own heart. Let it look like staying soft in a world that keeps demanding hardness. Let it look like doing things simply for yourself. Simply because they make you happy.

We live in a world that tries to find meaning in everything, a world that tries to find sense even in the little things but I think you should breathe this year.

We are ten days in, which means you still have 355 days to learn find happiness for absolutely no reason. To do things you enjoy just because. To dance without music. To smile in the bathroom. To paint a canvas in odd colors. To mess up your kitchen while cooking. To do whatever makes you feel less like a burden to yourself.

Take bold steps and still be gentle with yourself.

Because there will be moments when the weight you carry feels invisible, even to yourself. There will be moments when the world goes on, while you notice the quiet hollows in between the spaces where laughter used to live, the way your own heartbeat sounds louder than everything else.

And trust me, I’m really not here to advise you, I just want to remind you that the point of being alive is to be human…shamelessly.

I just want to be sure that no matter where you’re at in life, you’re holding your own hands. I want to be sure that even though you are tired, you will keep going until everything makes sense to you. I just want to be assured by you that even when you feel unsure about your life, you will still hold faith in yourself and the things you are capable of.

My dearest reader,

It took me ten days to say these simple words to you but here’s what I hope for you this year…

That you let your hands get messy and your heart feel lighter. That you move at a pace that lets you breathe. That you stop confusing uncertainty with failure. That you learn to speak to yourself with the same kindness you offer everyone else. That you trust that small steps still count, especially the ones no one sees. That you become audacious without living your heart behind.

That you don’t need to have everything figured out to be on the right path.

You’re already walking, and honestly, that’s the most important thing.

A million hugs!

Shakirah🤍

P.s: I’ve been wanting to write to you, even though writing hasn’t come easily to me lately. And I’m glad I finally did.

And, my dear, I didn’t forget…

How are you, really?

Message Shakirah🤍

P.s.s: If these words reminded you of someone, you’re welcome to pass this along.

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I’ve seen a lot of reflective essays and some part of me really wants to tap into that but I honestly don’t have a summary to share with you. I don’t have a miracle story that stood out for me this year. I don’t even have a neat sentence about what the year taught me. But this isn’t to say 2025 gave me nothing. Because it did…

It gave me a heart full of gratitude and that’s my big W this year.

Every day since the year started, I wrote down one thing I was grateful for.

On some days, gratitude came easily. On other days, I had to sit with the day for a long time before anything showed up. And there were days when gratitude also felt like work.

It’s easy to say this year wasn’t particularly kind to me, but it was honest with me and it held me kindly. And even on days that felt heavy, unfair, and exhausting, there was still something I could notice, hold onto, and be grateful for.

And as I write this, the one thing I’m grateful for is you, my dear reader.

If there were 365 things to be grateful for this year, you are the extra one. Thanks to you, I get to be grateful for one more thing before the year ends.

So, I want to say thank you. Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter, for reading them quietly yet closely, for staying and holding my heart even when there was nothing spectacular happening.

This space became gentler because you were here. And this year felt less solitary because it was shared with you.

So regardless of where you are and what this year asked of you, know that I am grateful our paths crossed. Know that I hold you dare to my heart as you’ve held mine.

With all my fragile heart,

Shakirah🤍

P.S:

instead of telling you what this year looked like for me, I’ll share twelve gratitudes from my compilation, one from each month, exactly as they appeared to me then. I realise that this might be the only record I have of this year; the fact that I kept finding things to be grateful for, regardless...

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

This is what the year actually looked like for me. It didn’t pass in big moments, but small mercies I tried to hold onto.

Once again, thank you for sharing my little corner of the internet with me, it means the world to me.

I can’t wait to do 2026 with you!❤️

I kept postponing it because writing makes things real. Writing it would mean admitting that the life I lived this year is all on me, not luck, not circumstance, not timing, but me. Writing it would mean admitting that no one else is responsible for the decisions I made this year but me. Still, not writing it didn’t feel like an option.

So I’m here, sitting in the back seat of my sister’s car as we travel to our hometown for the new year, phone in my hands as I try to outrun my thoughts as fast as the car is moving. The road is long, bumpy and endless, and so is my mind. As I write this, all I can do is hope that if I write fast enough, I won’t give fear the time to stop me. So I’ll be plain as I say the truth I’ve been avoiding.

“There is a disconnect between my prayers and the reality I live”.

In my prayers, I am delusional to the core. I ask God for the most unrealistic things and I believe, I truly believe, that they will come through. I stay awake on my prayer mat almost every night. I cry and I wail and I speak boldly to the only One who can turn my delusions into reality. Yet the moment I stand up from my prayer mat, the moment I close my palms, I live like I’m preparing for those same prayers not to come to pass. Like I’m preparing for their absence.

This was my biggest realization this year, and it’s ironic that it came so close to the end of it. Of everything I learned this year, this was the most unsettling — the possibility that I might be working against the very things I’m praying for.

To pray with that much faith and still be the one acting against your own prayers…it’s an uncomfortable truth.

What made it even worse was realizing how common this is. How normal it has become to be the villain in your own story without even knowing it. I mean, I didn’t even see how much I was standing in the way of my own prayers until I was tagged by to share the most ridiculous question I asked ChatGPT this year, and I realized I asked none. Yes, not even one.

Because well, I spent the entire year behind my desk.

I worked harder than my body could take, grounded my bones to dust, and convinced myself it was sacrifice. I told myself this was the price I had to pay for the future I wanted, a future where I was relevant, impactful, and undeniable.

I would be sick, exhausted, stretched thin, and i’ll still write. I’ll still research and strategize for the business I’m yet to launch.

Thinking about all of these broke my heart. It was painful to realize that for over 360 days, all I did was work and survive.

So I’ve been thinking about this nonstop. It occupies my mind even when I don’t want to think about it. When I’m doing the dishes, it’s all I think about. When I’m trying to sleep, it’s the only thing that takes up the space in my mind. I just can’t help but think…

Am I acting towards my duas or against them?

Because when I look honestly at the life I lived this year, I see how actively I’ve been preparing for disappointment. I am certain about the kind of life I want. Certain about the prayers I’ve made. And yet, I’ve been quietly building contingency plans.

For instance, One place this disconnect shows up clearly for me is in marriage. I pray for a soft man and I know I won’t settle for a marriage that isn’t what I prayed for, but I work like betrayal is inevitable. I work hard to build my own wealth just in case…

And because of this, people call me hardworking and they say it like it’s a compliment. And it is. It is. It’s something I should be proud of, right?

Right?

It’s supposed to be a crown I wear proudly, a badge I polish and put on display. But it isn’t. It doesn’t feel like it and I don’t want it. I don’t want to be this hardworking. I never dreamed of a life where rest would feel like rebellion and softness like a luxury I have to earn over and over again.

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Earlier this year, I told my elder sister about my plans to pitch a Harvard professor. She is a senior academic in her field, with decades of teaching experience, a daunting number of peer-reviewed publications on mindless behavior, and books cited across continents. Knowing of her existence alone felt overwhelming and sending her a simple “hi” felt frightening. Still, I wanted to do it. I needed to. And when I told my sister, she wasn’t surprised.

“Because it’s you,” she said. “That’s what you do.”

That’s simply who I am in my family, the one who does “daring” things.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that about myself, truly. But beneath it, there’s always this dissatisfaction, this sense that I’m never doing enough. Sending that pitch was scary, yes, but it didn’t feel daring to me. It felt necessary. Like the bare minimum required to become enough and stay ahead of irrelevance. It didn’t make me feel brave. It didn’t feel exciting. It just felt like another work I had to cross off my to-do list.

And honestly, I don’t find it fun… no one finds work fun.

Because the truth is…

I work because I’m afraid.

I sent that pitch to the professor partly because of fear. And I’ve emailed many more professors after her because of the same reason. I sit in front of my desk even on holidays because I’m afraid that if I don’t, the impact I want to have will never come. And I keep pushing, even on my tired days because I’m unsure of what would happen if I stopped.

People don’t see this fear. They see the output instead. The results. They applaud my drive without seeing the panic beneath it. They don’t know that sometimes my work isn’t driven by passion, but by the terror of being powerless. That sometimes I’m not chasing greatness but running from helplessness.

I work because somewhere along the line, I learned that disappointment doesn’t follow calendars. That people change. That promises break. That you can wake up one day abandoned by the person who swore their heart to you.

I work because I learned that even if money disappears overnight, your skills and ambition won’t. I work because I want options. Because I never want to beg. Ever! Because I don’t want to wake up trapped in a life I didn’t choose for myself.

I work because I don’t trust the world to catch me if I fall.

And in seeing all of this clearly, I’ve realized there’s nothing particularly noble about my hunger for wealth. Yes, I want comfort and impact. I want to change the world and help as many people as I can, but I also want security against helplessness. I want insurance against disappointment. And this is where the disconnect in my prayers becomes undeniable.

Because while I pray for certain things, I live as though I’m bracing for the moment they collapse.

While I pray for a soft man, who listens to me without the need to fix me, who stays by my side without being begged, who feels like rest on the days I face the cruelty of the world, who chooses me without needing to be impressed, my hands are busy building an exit. Just in case the prayer is answered and then taken away. Just in case I receive it and still lose it.

Just in case I get him and one day he turns on me.

Since I became an adult, life has sounded like an unending book of instructions.

“Grind”.
”Push forward”.
”Don’t slow down”.
”Don’t relax”.
”Don’t get comfortable”.
”Make it”.

“You must make it!”

So I tried to do all of these and learned to measure my worth in productivity. If I’m not working, then what am I doing?

I learned to feel guilty when I’m idle. I learned to equate exhaustion with progress. Somewhere between chasing deadlines as dreams, I forgot how to want ease, without feeling ashamed of it.

You see…

My dreams are bigger than my hands can carry. So I carry them with everything I have. I carry them with my time, my body, my youth, and mostly, my sanity. I carry them on days I’m tired of myself. I carry them even when my chest feels tight and my thoughts won’t rest. I carry them even when all I want to do is cry. I carry them because dropping them feels like failure, and failure feels like accepting disappointments without a choice.

But as I reflect on the life I lived in 2025, I keep wondering who I’d be if the need to survive wasn’t always in my background. If success didn’t feel like a deadline I had to catch up with. If I wasn’t constantly calculating or thinking...

If this doesn’t work out, what’s my backup?

If love fails me, what will I have left?

If I stop working this hard, who will I become?

I don’t know the answers to these, but I know this much…

I want to be soft without feeling unsafe. I want to rest without feeling irresponsible. I want to believe that tenderness won’t make me foolish.

I want all of these but I’ve also learnt that blindly believing in your delusions doesn’t come easily when you’ve seen how quickly things can fall apart.

Belief is fragile in a world that constantly teaches you to brace yourself. In a society where every corner gives you a reason to prepare for a worst case scenario. The society we live in rids you of every belief you are meant to lay beside your delusions. You look around you and all you can see are reasons to chase and keep chasing, because if you don’t, you become one of the people who life happened to and was unable to do anything about it.

You see marriages where wives are maltreated and convinced that they have to put up with it because they have nothing outside of their marriage. Somehow, marriages are now sustained by endurance and not care…I will not be a part of that.

You see work environments where employers treat their staff as slaves, like they are doing them a favor by accepting their skills. Somehow, workplaces are now built on exploitation… I will not be a part of that either.

Everywhere you look, there’s evidence that not chasing comes at a high cost. So I find myself praying with one hand open and the other clenched into a fist.

I pray for partnership, but I prepare for solitude. I pray for care, but I plan for self-sufficiency. I pray with faith, but I live with fear. I hope deeply, but I brace myself carefully. I live with a full heart, but I keep my fingers crossed.

This is the unfortunate contradiction at the center of my life our lives — finding space in the tension between hope and self-protection.

As the year closes, this feels like the last lesson it offered me, to look honestly at the distance between what I ask for and how I live. To notice where I believe with my heart but brace with my body.

So, my dear reader, as the year comes to an end, I’ll leave you with these questions:

Where are you preparing for the undoing of the very thing you’re praying for?
Where has fear rewritten your faith? Where are you believing with your heart but bracing with your body?

In what part of your life are you disconnecting your reality from your prayers?

Whatever your answer might be, I hope that next year, both of our realities will begin to agree a little more with our faith and delusions.

With Love🤍,

Shakirah.

“across lifetimes and landscapes, two souls remain tethered, as if by fate, by a thread only the heart can feel.”

We call it ‘akai ito’.

赤い糸

Ancient Japanese legend has it that there is an invincible red thread that connects us to those we are destined to meet. A thin, invincible line drawn between two people long before they learn how to name each other or want each other. The legend says that this red string is tied to our fingers at birth. They say it may stretch across oceans, coil around years, knot itself through challenges and missed timings, but it will never cut. The people connected by it are not necessarily promised ease, speed, or certainty, but they are promised fulfilment, adequacy, and unconditional companionship. They are promised an important story. A meeting that is inevitable, even if it is delayed.

Whenever I think about this, I don’t feel urgency claw at my chest. I don’t feel the panic of being left behind. What I feel instead is something I’m not sure I should: relief. I feel relieved when I think about the love that has my name written on it and it’s strange because I see everyone freaking out.

Why do I feel a kind of relief that settles slowly in my body when other people are biting their nails off?

I have no answers per se but I think there is something deeply reassuring about believing that love is not lost just because it hasn’t arrived yet or because it holds no certainty. That the empty space beside you is not evidence of loneliness or fear, but evidence of time doing its work. After all, the red string does not promise immediacy, it promises arrival and inevitability. And I find that far more beautiful than any love story built on chance.

Thus, every time I think of this theory, I can’t help but think about my spouse.

You know, the man who will lay his prayer mat beside mine, not perfectly aligned, but close enough that our hearts brush against themselves as we place them in the hands of our Lord. I imagine how natural it will feel to pray close to him, how the room will seem to exhale with us in it. I imagine the way his presence will soften the sharp edges of my day without trying to fix them. The way love with him will not just arrive with fireworks, but also with care, like warmth spreading through cold fingers — slow, assuring, and undeniable. I imagine him coming home with the weight of his own life still clinging to him, the disappointments he doesn’t talk about, the small victories he barely celebrates, and I imagine him setting them down gently before me not as burdens to fix, but as truths he is finally ready to share. I imagine putting my feet beneath his on the days he has cold feet, the days the world has left him weary, reminding him that even those who stand guard over others need a place to rest, i’ll say to him “even if I’m small, I’m mighty. You can rest here, you’re home”.

I imagine how we will learn each other’s silences. How some evenings will be filled with conversations, and others with nothing but a kind of silence that does not need to be filled to feel present. I imagine him slow-dancing with me in the kitchen, barefoot and unhurried, while the food simmers and time forgets us.

Love, in these moments, will feel ordinary, natural and sacred all at the same time. Like something I was born to hold in the fragility of my hands.

Of course…

Of course, I think of the many people I still have to meet too. The possibility of my red string diverging like branches, reaching people far beyond my imaginations. Faces that will one day feel familiar. Names I will learn to pronounce with care. People who will enter my life gently or abruptly, who will stay for a season or a lifetime. People who will teach me how to love without conditions, how to breathe without holding it, how to live without clinging to moments. People who will feel right. chosen. written for me.

Some of them will leave quietly. Others will leave marks I will carry longer than I expect. They will shape the way I speak, the way I trust, the way I forgive. They will stretch me, disappoint me, soften me. They will make me wiser, and I will need them — all of them — to become who I am meant to be.

But if I am honest, they blur in my mind when I think of him.

My thoughts always return to him, to the man whose life is unfolding somewhere in the world while mine unfolds here, in this very moment, as I write this. He is waking up to mornings I am not part of yet. Maybe held up in traffic right now. Or making tea. Or saying prayers. He is somewhere out there, carrying responsibilities that do not know my name. Living days that are full and exhausting but beautiful, days that are shaping him in ways I will only understand when we finally meet.

Sometimes I think about the small details of his life. Like the way he laughs when he says something funny. The worries he keeps to himself. The moments he feels lonely. I imagine that there are nights when he looks at the sky and wonders about love the same way I do. And there is something achingly tender in knowing that we are becoming, separately, for each other.

Believing in the red string of fate means believing that no part of your life is wasted, even the heartbreaks and disappointments play a role. It means believing that waiting is not an empty time. That our partners have been chosen before our names ever got called. That while we are busy living our separate lives — making mistakes, learning patience, unlearning fear, and loving imperfectly — there is something unseen but attentive at work. There is a force behind everything, patient enough to let us grow into the kind of people who can hold each other gently and perfectly.

It means trusting that even if we were to walk the earth barefoot, cross oceans that sail no ships, live lives that bend and bruise us into better versions of ourselves, we would still arrive at the same place — in the arms of the person at the end of our string.

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But again, there is something even deeper than the red string of fate, a language that taught me to speak in relief…

In Islam, we say…

“If the rain that touches your skin traveled miles to find you, then so will everything written in your name.”

We call it ‘Qadr’.

قدر

Long before I learned about red strings and ancient legends, Islam taught me that nothing meant for me can pass me by, and nothing that misses me was ever mine. That God, the One who raised the heavens without pillars, who holds the galaxies in their orbits and set the stars in their paths, who knows the weight of every leaf before it falls, who knows the number of breaths I will take before I even take them, is also deeply involved in the smallest details of my life. Even love. Maybe especially love because marriage in Islam is half of worship.

“And among His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy.” (Qur’an 30:21)

The Creator of all that is vast promises me something intimate. Promises me Tranquility. Promises me Affection. Promises me Mercy.

God has promised me a love that quiets the chaos inside me. A love that does not demand perfection before it arrives. A love that feels like shelter. And because of this belief, something in me has softened. The sharp fear that once accompanied the idea of choosing a spouse has loosened its grip on my throat. Love no longer feels like a cliff I could fall from if I step wrong. It feels like a path already laid out for me, beneath my feet, even when I cannot see its full length.

I know that picking the best person to do life with is not a decision I am meant to make alone, so God has done the heavy part and all I have to do is walk my way to destiny everyday. I cannot force it into existence. I cannot rush it with anxiety. I cannot outthink what has been written with care and mercy. The red string tied around my finger stretches far beyond my thoughts can take me, and it is moving in rhythm with the man holding the other end.

And while I still worry about many things, while my heart still tightens at the thought of a bird caught mid-air when the wind turns violent, forced to recalibrate its wings in a sky that suddenly becomes hostile, while I worry about the deaf person who has to survive in a world that understands nothing but sound, while I worry about a candle left burning in an empty room…

While my heart carries the weight of these worries, it does not concern itself with the weight of love. Somehow, I do not worry about love or marriage. I do not worry about the most important decision I’ll have to make in my life.

Because I’ve learnt that the best kind of love does not need to be chased. It does not need to be proven through pain. And it does not need to be feared into existence. It simply can’t be.

I mean…

Fate is at work here, and so is faith. And both are far gentler, far wiser, far more deliberate than my anxiety will ever be.

And for everything, He has created a pair,

Heaven and earth

Night and day

Sun and moon

Shore and sea

Light and darkness

The sky and its stars.

— Me, For You.

p.s: i can hear the question forming alreadyyy. i know this will inevitably raise the question of ‘free will’ versus ‘predestination’. a part of me wants to write about that too, but that’ll be something for another letter. soon, hopefully.

Thank you reading,

Shakirah🤍

Every time I walk up to her, try to get close to her and touch her, I wake up.

I wake up…on purpose. I wake up because I’m terrified that if I touch her, I will become her. I’ve questioned myself so many times about why that scares me, but I’ve come to realize that I am terrified of what it would mean to become her in skin.

While I want to be her so bad, I…I keep pulling myself back from the edge of her beauty.

I want to become everything!

I want to change the world without changing the things that make me human. I want to live by the sea, get my feet familiar with the sweetness of the sand, but still teach them to lead me onto stages that will shake nations. I want to create art and also be art. I want to be disgustingly educated. I want to bake desserts, eat them, enjoy them, and somehow still remain healthy. I want to read novels that break me open and write poems that stitch me back together. I want to go bungee-jumping without worrying about how my bones feel like jelly. I want to be the sea and the sky, steady and wild, grounded and limitless. I want to be adored and respected, but also understood. I want to be soft without being underestimated, and firm without being hardened. I want to love loudly, without shame and be loved the same way. I want a life that stretches me but doesn’t swallow me.

This is what success looks like to me!

But on some days, I get scared of becoming more than I already am. On days like today, when the sun rises in a way that exposes more of me than I’m ready for, I get scared of becoming the version of me that finally gets everything she prayed and worked hard for.

How does that even work?

How can we be scared of the very desires that kept us breathing for so long?

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Success is a strange fear, isn’t it?

People talk about fearing failure, but they never talk about the fear of becoming someone new, someone better. Success demands a kind of visibility that feels overwhelming. Success asks you to leave behind the self-doubt you’ve grown used to, the wounds you’ve spent years caressing. Success asks you to admit you want more, without shame even. But I was moulded with shame as a principle, I can’t not live with it. Success asks you to show up without the excuses, the hesitations, the comforting stories you tell yourself about why you haven’t tried like you should.

And honestly, it is easier to stay small. It is so much easier to stand behind people who shine brighter, clap for them, study them, admire them, and convince yourself that their story is good enough to lay you to sleep. There is safety in shadows. Success tells you to be bold, and daring, and more and more and more, but shadows?

Shadows offer you protection. Shadows shield you from disappointments. They give you a place to hide your hunger for a bigger life. And if you pretend long enough, the world will believe your smallness was intentional.

Even though I want to be everything, and I’m scared of becoming anything, I’m worried that I’ll live a life full of nothing.

I fear the slow erasure of my life if I never try to be everything I dream of. I fear becoming the woman who once dreamed loudly but lived quietly. I fear waking up ten years from now and realising the only thing I ever protected was my comfort. I fear settling into a version of myself who only craved and never ate.

And I don’t know how it’s even possible, but I’m scared of the two versions of me that could possibly exist – the successful version of me who gets everything she ever wanted and the version of me that will dissolve into nothing if I don’t chase my potential as fiercely as it chases me.

While the idea of rising is daunting, the idea of losing what I’ve worked for is even worse.

What if success exposes me? What if I climb only to fall? What if I become everything I’m capable of and then fail to sustain it? What if I shine and…?

What if…?

See? My fear is vast! It’s spread widely like the sand on earth and suspended like the clouds in the sky, and deep like the quietest part of the ocean. My fear goes beyond being successful, it goes as far as chasing my potential to the point of being seen.

Nobody is really talking about it but there is a grief peculiar to the recognition of the distance between the life you’re living and the life you know you’re capable of. There is a peculiar pain in realizing that nobody is stopping you but you. We love to blame circumstances, don’t we? The timing, money, opportunities, but sometimes the thing that stands between who you are and who you could be is the loyalty you’ve sworn to your own fear.

And I know that fear.

I know what it feels like to hold yourself back to avoid disappointing yourself. I know what it is like to shrink so no one calls you out. I know what it is like to choose the safety of shadows over the vulnerability of standing in your own light.

Vulnerability! If that’s the doorway to overcoming all this fear, then that terrifies me even more. Because vulnerability isn’t something I was given permission to touch without trembling while growing up. So again, the thought of being something I’ve never been scares me.

But I know…

I know that fear is just a noun, and I know that fear won’t disappear just because you choose to stay small. If anything, this noun will only grow its roots around your identity until it takes form and becomes the reflection looking back at you in every mirror.

The fear of being more than you already are will push you to take shade in other people’s shadows, convincing yourself that you are protecting yourself from falling. But the life you think you’re protecting by avoiding risk? It isn’t protection. It’s a slow burn. It’s losing yourself in the most quiet, sorry way possible. It’s becoming invisible to your own potential.

Thinking about all of these…

I think the reason why I’m so scared of being anything more than I already am is because growth is a kind of loss in itself. The loss of your old identity, your old excuses, your old limits, your old habits, your old wounds, the old you.

Growth forces you to grieve parts of yourself you once depended on. And that’s a hard thing to do, even if those parts of you are ugly.

But, I’m choosing to look at it from the lens of it also being the beginning of gaining the self I’ve always longed for. The self I plastered on the walls of my childhood dream. The self that won’t let me rest because she knows “I was made for more.”

So, I stand in the front of my mirror, telling myself that I don’t have to fully become her today. I don’t have to burst into greatness or rise with confidence. I just have to stop running from the truth that I want more than the life fear has negotiated on my behalf. After all, the version of me I’m afraid to become is the version of me I still want. She’s still the one I hope to be. She’s still the one I try to reach and touch in every dream. She isn’t waiting at the top of some unimaginable mountain. She’s just waiting on the other side of my hesitation. And honestly, I am so tired of running when all I want to do is take her hand.

I’m tired of being scared because I know that I have to become this version that scares me regardless. It’s the only option I’m willing to take, for if I don’t, then I’ll be lost in the insanity of not being her. If I don’t become her, then I’ll have to fight the regret with every breath I take. If I don’t become her, then I will spend the rest of my life haunted by the ghost of the potentials I laid to rest.

I am aware that this scary version of me has the power to ruin me in more ways than any fear could, so I’m done hiding from what must be done! I don’t want to run anymore, so I’ll dear to say…

In a few years, I’ll be wearing her skin!

My dear reader, I know this fear isn’t exclusive to me, so if this fear has become a demon that sleeps under your bed too, I hope today is the day you take it by the hands and dance with it.

I can’t help but hope that one day, you meet the version of yourself you’ve been avoiding too — not in a dream, but in your real, living, breathing life.

if you long to be seen, to speak, to express, it’s because the world longs for you too.
i believe our desires are rarely solitary, they aren’t ours alone. they are a collective pull, an echo of the people, communities, and listeners who are waiting for us to become more than we already are.
so if you keep longing to do more, it’s because you were never meant for less.

don’t settle for less!

I didn’t hold my pen for a week, nor did I touch my journal because I was scared I was going to write exactly what you’re about to read.

On Sunday, the 23rd of November 2025, my aunt celebrated her 60th birthday. My friend died the same day. He was 26.

I was sitting in the backseat of my mum’s Jeep, occupying the space between two of my sisters as my mum drove us to the venue. I had just posted the piece I and Abdullah wrote on love and boundaries and I was overjoyed. The sun was melting itself into my skin as it filtered in through the windows, but it didn’t matter because the car was also full of chatter about my cousin’s wedding from the night before, and in that moment, life felt light. Everything was perfect. I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right people.

But my phone kept going crazy with unending notifications, so I took it out of my bag. Its stubborn stream of notifications kept interrupting the jest I was making with my sisters and my mum. We had been talking about my cousin’s wedding and some funny things that happened, we weren’t talking about anything important. I unlocked my phone to see a couple of messages from my secondary school group chat, ‘Friends Forever’ was unusually bubbly and honestly, I thought it was just one of those times when someone tried to promote their business or new single, but it wasn’t. It was an announcement that went…

“Good afternoon everyone.

I bring very sad news. We received confirmation this afternoon that our friend and classmate Wahab XXX has passed away. It’s a shocking and painful loss for all of us though we are yet to confirm the actual cause of his sudden demise… Let’s stand together for Wahab’s family in this difficult moment. May his soul rest in peace. 🕊️.”

By the time I got to the name, AbdulWahab, my heart had stalled.

He was gone.

Just like that.

And it broke me in a way I didn’t even know how to hold.

It felt unreal because the AbdulWahab I knew wasn’t the type to die, he was the type to hide from death. He was the type who blended into the background, who you could walk past ten times without noticing until he gave that quick laugh that made you feel like you were sharing a secret with him. In secondary school, he was so quiet people used to joke that he could get lost in a crowd and none of us would notice for hours. So unbelievably brilliant, he was the best of us. He represented the school in every competition that required brain power and always brought home our prize.

AbdulWahab was quiet. AbdulWahab was easy going. AbdulWahab could have passed as an invisible mutant in a superhero movie.

AbdulWahab was supposed to be the head boy of my set but his voice was too soft and was often hidden behind his smile, so the school management made him assistant head boy instead. Still, AbdulWahab didn’t mind, he was happy. His happiness was simple like that.

He never did sports. He preferred watching from the sidelines. His uniform was always crisp enough to cut through paper. He was a model student who barely used his voice.

I remember when we got our admission into UNILAG — myself, AbdulWahab, AbdulGafar, and Fareedah. We would always sit in front of my hostel, talking about absolutely nothing. Everyone used to come with snacks, and the four of us would sit there laughing like the world wasn’t racing ahead without us. Sometimes it was just the boys, who always somehow convinced me to come down eight flights of stairs to give them food I swore I wasn’t going to cook.

I would complain about how much they were stressing me, having to come down just to see them and feed them. A lot of the time, they’d both laugh at my complaints then we’d go back to subtly pulling each other’s legs until we realize that it’s gotten late and the boy’s hostel gate will close in a few minutes. They would both run like their lives depended on it. They always said “next time, we’d leave early”. Every time, they didn’t.

Somehow this became our little ritual... They’d come to my hostel, we’d talk and eat together. And then they’d race back to the boys hostel.

Life was simple then. But I don’t know what went wrong, we stopped talking like we used to — all four of us. Once we left the university, life got really serious, and we were all left with basic checkup messages. But even now, I wouldn’t be able to send those silly, low effort “bro, what’s up?” messages to AbdulWahab anymore. Because AbdulWahab is gone and all I could send him off with upon hearing the news of his return to Allah SWT was ‘Subhanallah’, and even that one tear that escaped had to be wiped quickly because we were already at the venue of my aunt’s party, a party celebrating life.

I walked into that party in a black bubu brocade gown threaded with gold, my wrists, ears, neck, fingers, and ankles jeweled like I was attending a coronation. I looked like someone ready to dance, not someone whose friend had just become a memory. So I couldn’t even leave the party to go to his house. Who wears brocade and multiple gold jewelries to a family home mourning the absence of their son?

I couldn’t bring myself to face his family dressed to celebrate and I couldn’t bring myself to make my family members worry about me on such a joyous day. How do you face the family of a deceased adorned in gold? How do you ruin a joyful day for your own family?

Which emotion was I supposed to hold on to?

I couldn’t mourn my friend properly so I did what felt easier, I didn’t.

I let denial hold me together. I pretended like he was still alive, smiling somewhere in the world and just hadn’t sent me a text yet. So, I smiled at the party and danced with my cousins. And even after the party, I didn’t mourn or cry because AbdulWahab wasn’t dead. AbdulWahab wasn’t dead, he just hadn’t messaged me yet. But I couldn’t leave him a message either, because if I did and got no response, then it’d mean one thing…

I was wrong, and he was… La ilaha illa Allah!

I’ve always known death was everywhere, quiet and close, walking with us like a shadow we pretend not to see. I’ve always known death had no smell, only that cold drop in the stomach, that sudden stillness in the air, that tightening in the throat. But knowing it doesn’t make it easier to feel. Even now, as I write this, I still don’t know how to feel.

Is that really all it takes? One second? The same time it takes a tear to fall?

I’ve lost people before, my grandparents, uncles, and aunts, and the same question sat heavy on my chest those times too. But hearing about two deaths in less than twelve hours? It felt like God was grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me awake.

Just the day before AbdulWahab left, when I was at my cousin’s wedding, I got a message on snap from a close friend.

He said…

“I just had the worst experience of my life and I don’t know how to feel.”

I didn’t see it until almost midnight because I’d been busy dancing and having the time of my life. I sent him a quick message the moment I saw those words and his response came in almost immediately. He had watched a man slump and die right in front of him during a football match. I mean, they were playing football, it was an ongoing match and this man fell and died on the spot. One moment the man was running, alive, sweating under the sun. The next, he was gone. One second, and a whole life ended on a football field.

How can a human being live for decades, and all it takes to disappear is one second?

Subhanallah!

Since the beginning of November, I had been drowning in work, trying to ‘lock in’ in all areas of my life. Hosting and attending countless meetings and shuffling between roles — student, researcher, applicant, founder, writer. I’ve been working nonstop, I forgot none of this was permanent. I’ve been running after something I have no idea about, obsessing over a future I am not even certain of. I used to talk to my dad on call everyday, but lately I’d been so busy that even when we talk, I don’t concentrate 100%. I’ve been letting my life slip away from my embrace and it took the forever absence of a dare friend to remember that death has been holding my hands from the moment I was born and that at any given time, he could pull me in for a hug, a comfort for all the goodbye I might never get to say to myself or my loved ones.

Life is so fickle! This year alone, I’ve been reminded of this too many times. I’ve been reminded of the suddenness of death countless times, heard the news of so many people’s death and the news of near death escapes.

Like during Eid -al- Fitr when my sister’s car caught fire. The entire engine was swallowed in flames while she and two of my other siblings were inside. It took multiple good hearted strangers to jump out of their cars to help put the fire out. One more second, and three people I love could’ve died while I was on a journey to see them.

Or is it the night when death sneaked into my neighbor’s house and left him cold on the hard surface of his interlocked floor? He had a stroke, called someone for help using his phone but the person thought it was just ‘one of those calls’ and took his time. He got fried yam on his way, ate it, and even conversed with some familiar faces on his way to my neighbor’s place. By the time he got there, the man was lying lifelessly in his backyard, his phone still in his hands. Death had visited 2 houses next to mine and I only found out the next morning after hearing the commotion outside my house.

It could have been me.

About two months ago, my younger sister told me about her former coursemate who had died from a condition I grew up with. I’m older than she was, yet I’m still here.

It could have been me.

I’ve heard the news of so many deaths this year, I cannot even begin to count them. Yet the only similar thing they have is that all it took was a second.

My friend, AbdulWahab passed in just one second…it could have been me.

The man who slumped and died on that pitch…it could have been me.

And my siblings could have died in an instant…and that would be the end.

A million deaths have happened in a million different ways and anyone of them could have been me…or you.

I’m not trying to scare you and I’m sorry if this does. I know that death isn’t something a lot of people like to discuss, but you only die once and you live everyday.

Life is life until it’s death.

Life takes at least 9 months to actualize, death takes a heartbeat, a second and that’s it.

I don’t know what this is supposed to be honestly, but in this piece I was able to accept the absence of my friend, AbdulWahab. Yet, in these words, I was reminded that death is closer to us than we think. Death is probably closer to us than our own breath.

All we have is really this one life and then we become memories and tears on someone’s cheeks.

I just hope we all get to use our time wisely and kindly.

P.S: I avoided talking about AbdulWahab for a week. I went about my day avoiding any messages that had his name in it but he lived.

AbdulWahab lived!

My friend lived and I was forced to confront all the feelings I was hiding when I read Pwanoveno’s last post. So special thanks to Pwanoveno❤️.

And please, say a prayer for the dead if you read to this point. May Allah SWT preserve us and make us among those He is pleased with, Aamiin!

P.S.S: Forgive me for the typos and whatnots. It took everything in me to write this but writing is the only outlet I know. This piece has no structure, and it’s unedited. Thank you for understanding.

Please, I need you to listen to me carefully. loving your family does not mean accepting disrespect, or dysfunction, or toxic patterns just because they are blood…

Well, Abdullah and I decided to put our thoughts together, not as relationship experts, but as people who have lived, felt, and learnt a few things about love, respect, and boundaries. We realized that it’s easy to talk about love, everyone does that, but it’s much harder to talk about the parts of love that come with disrespect, and ache, in the long run. The parts where you’re forced to stretch yourself thin, feel guilty for your emotions, and bare responsibility for everyone but yourself.

Dear reader,

We’ve tried to put these thoughts into words, Abdullah and I, and here is what we have to tell you…

I used to think that loving someone meant letting them have all of me. that boundaries were walls, and walls meant you did not really love them enough to let them in completely. but i was wrong, and that belief almost destroyed me.

somewhere along the way, we learned that love means access. that if you really care about someone, you give them permission to everything: your time, your energy, your peace, your space. and if you try to protect any of that, you are being selfish or cold, or you do not love them the way they deserve. but that is not love.

That is self abandonment, and we have been confusing the two for too long.

Family is where everything becomes blurry. This is because nobody teaches you the difference between love and access, especially not when it comes to the people who raised you, grew with you, ate the same meals as you for years, and share the same last name with you. From childhood, we are told that family is supposed to know you, be there for you, and understand you, and all of these are true. But the truth of the matter is that these don’t automatically come with respect. Respect doesn’t follow all of these the same way a balloon would follow its string. Sadly, knowing someone doesn’t automatically mean respecting them, and this is especially true with family.

You know, it’s funny that strangers will ask you before they cross a line, but family? Family steps over the line, walks around the room, rearranges your entire furniture and emotions, and expects you to be okay with it, even if they know that it hurts you. So you don’t call them out, your parents, your siblings, extended family members, because if you do then you’d not only be hurting them, you’d also be disappointing them. And sometimes, you find yourself in a similar setting with friends and lovers.

This is a harsh reality to live with, well, because you and I have been taught that protecting ourselves from people we love is the same as dishonoring them. So what do we do? We eat up our discomforts with a smile that says ‘I don’t mind’. We endure humiliations, collecting them like a soldiers’ badge. We let things slide because we convince ourselves that they didn’t mean it that way. We give all of these excuses until we shatter into pieces so small we no longer recognize ourselves. Family becomes complicated because love becomes assumed. Respect becomes optional. And boundaries become betrayal.

This is where the conflict of who you love and what you cannot longer endure begins.

Sometimes, love makes us forget that we, too, are people with limits. We’re taught that loyalty is measured by how much we can absorb, how much we can endure, and how much of ourselves we can lay down without asking for anything in return. And because these lessons often come from the people closest to us, we rarely question them. We say to ourselves ‘this is just how family is’, and ‘this is just how love works’. But many of us learned to shrink ourselves in the name of love long before we learned to even put a name on it. Love has been sold to us as something biased. We’ve been wired to think…

If you love someone, then you are supposed to endure — quietly and endlessly, without complaint.

If you love someone, then you should hold onto them through their worst habits, even when those habits keep bruising you. Even when you’ve tried to help them grow and they simply do not want to.

If you love someone, then you should always make room for them, even when you have no room left for yourself.

So when your mother calls you at midnight, even though you have work in the morning, you answer because she is your mother, and saying no feels like betrayal. your sibling borrows money they never pay back, and you keep lending them because they are your sibling, and cutting them off feels cruel. your father criticizes every choice you make, and you sit there and take it because he is your father, and defending yourself feels disrespectful. All of these grow with us until we eventually, we create the exact same relationship with friends and partners.

I have watched people drain themselves trying to show up for family members who do not show up for them. People who give and give and give, because love is supposed to be a sacrifice, and sacrifice is supposed to be proof that you care.

But there is a difference between sacrifice and self destruction.

All of the examples Abdullah gave above are the exact moments when love stops feeling like love and starts feeling like a weight you were forced to carry out of duty. It’s crazy to even think that the same people who taught you what love are sometimes the ones you have to unlearn the act of conditional love from because you can love someone deeply and that love will still be you destroying yourself.

But love isn’t supposed to empty you and sacrifice isn’t supposed to feel like bleeding to death. You can love and sacrifice, and still be clear on boundaries. Just in case you haven’t heard it today, love without boundaries is not devotion, it is self-abandonment. Like Abdullah wrote in his draft (we were supposed to edit this part out because of the length, but I think it’s really important you hear it)...

“You can love someone deeply and still tell them no. You can respect someone completely and still walk away when they disrespect you. you can honor your family and still refuse to let them dishonor you. and none of that makes you a bad person. It makes you a person who understands that love without boundaries is not sustainable…”

So yes, you can still care deeply for the people you love and protect yourself at the same time. You can see the worth of other people in your life without letting them treat you like a rug they wipe their feet on before walking further into their own comfort. Contrary to what you’ve been taught, choosing your heart, saying no and sticking with it, and stepping back, aren’t signs that you’ve stopped loving your people but that you acknowledge your own existence too and that love shouldn’t erase that existence.

I think about how many of us have been taught that setting boundaries with family is wrong. that it means you are holding grudges or being difficult, or you have forgotten where you came from. but setting boundaries does not mean you have forgotten. It means you remember what it cost you to not have them.

Your parents raised you, and you are grateful, but gratitude does not mean you owe them your mental health. your boundaries are not disrespect. They are self respect, and you can honor your parents while also protecting your peace.

Your siblings are your siblings, and you love them, but love does not mean you have to fix them or fund them or save them from consequences they created for themselves. helping is not the same as enabling, and sometimes the most loving thing you can do is let them figure it out on their own.

Yes, I get it. The guilt of setting clear boundaries will be there, and I assure you, it will feel very unfamiliar to you. A lot of the time, the guilt will come before anyone else even says a word. Your heart will break when you say no to your parents or siblings before they even try to call you out. The guilt you feel will make you doubt yourself, because you’re doing something you were never taught to do. It will feel foreign to you to protect your well-being instead of automatically giving it away, and that’s fine!

But most of the pushback you will feel from setting clear boundaries is simply the discomfort of change. You’re shifting a pattern that has been in place for years, and that shift affects everyone, not just you. The guilt that shows up after setting your boundaries will sometimes feel like proof that you’re wrong, but it isn’t. It’s a sign that you’re stepping out of old habits you thought were normal but were never healthy. Every single person has to go through this phase in their self-development journey, and that includes you. Over time, the people who value you will adjust to these shifts, and you’ll have better relationships, with yourself first, and everyone else.

What is most important is recognising that discomfort is part of the process.

The people who love you will respect your boundaries, and the people who do not respect your boundaries do not love you the way you deserve to be loved. they love what you give them. they love your availability. They love your compliance. But they do not love you, because loving you means caring about your well being, even when it inconveniences them.

Real love does not demand access. real love asks permission. real love does not guilt you for protecting yourself. real love celebrates that you finally care enough about yourself to say enough.

Love and respect and boundaries are not enemies. They are partners, and any relationship that does not have all three is not a relationship worth keeping, even if that relationship is family.

You are allowed to love your family from a distance. you are allowed to honor them without letting them hurt you. you are allowed to respect them without sacrificing yourself. and anyone who tells you otherwise does not understand what love actually is.

because love without respect is control, and respect without boundaries is fear, and boundaries without love are walls. but love with respect and boundaries is freedom, and freedom is what we all deserve, even from the people who gave us life.

so set the boundaries, protect yourself, love yourself enough to say no, and trust that the people who are meant to stay will stay, and the people who leave were only there because you had no gate.

you are not selfish for wanting peace. you are finally awake.

Thank you for reading, and we hope you learn to love yourself as much as you love other people!🤍

Shakirah & Abdullah.

The video opened with soft lighting, two chairs facing each other, and a woman in her late fifties sitting majestically, her legs crossed in a way that could only be earned from years of holding a life together. She wore an afro, and the faint wrinkled lines along her face told stories that I was sure her mouth hadn’t yet spoken. She was the esteemed guest of this show and you just know that for her to be seated on stage, facing an equally successful host, in front of a crowded room, she must have lived a glorious life…

“Who are you?” the interviewer asked. If I remember correctly, the interviewer was a Black woman in her thirties, at least that’s how she came across to me.

In response, the older woman smiled, warm and proud. “I’m a mother.”

Even if you were sat at the far end of that hall, you’d have seen just how much pride her smile carried. It felt like she had waited her whole life to say that out loud.

The interviewer nodded gently, but her eyes didn’t leave the woman’s face. Then she asked again in a firm tone, “Who are you?”

The woman blinked, her smile unwavering. She had a questioning look on her face, she had obviously just given an answer to that same question. She leaned forward a little, as though making sure she would be heard.

“I am a mother and a wife. I’m a wife too.”

Still, the interviewer tilted her head, obviously unsatisfied with the answer she got. “Yes, you are,” she said, “but who are you?”

By now, you could see the woman’s smile fade. At that moment, I assumed her fingers tightened. But she tried again, “I’m a mother and a wife, a grandmother, a sister. I am so many things to many people.”

“Who are you without these people?”

The question kept returning to her like a dog does to its owner. I wasn’t inside that room physically but I could almost feel the air in there shift. By what I think was the millionth time (fourth in reality) of hearing the same question, I felt the woman’s throat tighten. The camera operator must have been paid really well, they zoomed in on her hands as they fell open.

And as I watched this, something in me untied itself. Her lips trembled, and my eyes glossed, both our actions came from the frightening clarity that stripped us both bare.

She was nobody without roping herself to others...

Even sitting miles away, nations apart even, with my phone balanced in my palm, I felt the hall shrink. The silence on the screen was so heavy it pressed against my chest. Like me, everyone in that hall had the same sad clarity she did.

And then came her very quiet sobs that eventually turned into the wails of a woman who had lived her life in the shadow of others. The cry of a broken-hearted woman who had just realized that she had lived most of her life only in relation and service to others. And in that moment, I felt an identical realization slap me so hard on the face. It was as though her unraveling had pulled a thread connected to my own…

And I find that really scary!

I watched that video months ago but lately, I’ve been thinking about the woman that sat in front of that crowd, bawling her eyes out. It was barely a 5 minute video but it told her story so well.

There was a time that I forgot all about it. But for some reason, the scenes have been replaying in my head every day, like it’s forcing me to remember everything I have to lose. And I think it comes from my inability to make decisions.

For the past couple of days, it’s been really difficult for me to make decisions.

Who am I kidding?

I have always found it hard to make decisions. This isn’t something I just noticed. It’s always been this way. Yes, for some reason, I still struggle to make decisions that are simple as picking what to eat or what to wear. Sadly, I’ve grown into an indecisive adult, tiptoeing around choices as though if I picked the wrong option, the sky would cave in.

My friends say it’s because I’m some sort of a perfectionist but I’m convinced it’s because I don’t know who I am or rather who I’m supposed to be. I can’t really place a finger on who I am without coupling up with the identity of others. So I go around asking people to make my decisions for me. My sisters, my friends, my parents, have all been a victim of my constant “what should i do” question. And the more I think about the video of that woman, the more I’m convinced that the reason why I am unable to make decisions is because I do not know who I am.

Erm, don’t get me wrong. I know who my future self is. I have painted her picture in my head a million times and her face has been carved into my mind like a pillar that holds my sanity in place. And for sure, I know who I used to be. I have read her words time and time again to remind myself that I have become better. I know her because her words have been curved into a map that guides me to becoming my most authentic self. I have grown to know these two versions of me like I know the scars on my skin.

But the present me?

The one holding this pen, attempting to find something in these words? The one who wakes up every morning, hoping to change the world someday? I do not know who she is. Sadly, I do not know her.

This is a funny realization for me and I really don’t know how to feel about it, because every day, I wake up and convince myself that I know what I want out of life. But how am I sure of what I want out of life when I’m not even sure of the person I am?

Every single day, I say my name out loud and I hear people call it continuously and, so far, this has convinced me that I know who I am. All these while, I thought knowing my name was the beginning and ending of who I am supposed to be. But now, I’m scared I’ve been so wrong.

All of these got me thinking…

I mean, what do you really know about yourself that isn’t your name or your relationships? If you were asked to describe yourself, what words would you use?

If you don’t already know your answers, then I guess we are sitting in the same boat, holding hands, and trying desperately not to drown from the weight of other people’s identity.

I don’t know what this piece is supposed to be, but i know for sure that it scares me to think that one day, there would be someone else on that chair, giving the same answers or similar ones, then bursting into tears in a crowded room because they realize that they’ve been everything for everybody else and nothing for themself.

And it’s even scarier to think that that person might be me or you.

To be clear, I don’t think there is anything wrong with being many things to many people. Being a mother or father is unmatched. Being a daughter or a son is a gift in itself. Being a partner is opening your heart to the entire being of someone else. And all of these are beautiful in their own right. These roles form a core part of our identity, they become important chapters in the stories we live. But it becomes heartbreaking when these roles are the only thing we spend a whole lifetime building. It becomes heartbreaking when we allow ourselves to remain untouched, unnamed, and unexplored.

To avoid such a reality for myself, I have been doing everything I can to ‘find’ myself, ‘know’ myself, and ‘accept’ myself. Even my last published post was also an attempt to know who I would be if I didn’t care about the opinions of others. And even after that, I can barely say, “this is who Shakirah is”.

This is a wake up call for me and it should be for you too.

Let’s not lose ourselves being everything for everyone else. Find out who you are without the strings that tie you to others. That would be the greatest research you ever conduct.

Errm, my wrist hurts a little, so I think I’ll put my full stop here.

Sayoñara.

Not to sound inconsiderate or inhumane, but it would be a kiss on my soul to finally fill my lungs with undiluted air and expand my long, tired ribs until my delicate chest aches with relief. If I couldn't feel your lingering eyes in the depth of my soul, dear reader, I promise you…

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I would laugh louder. I would laugh louder than the squeals of a happy whale. I would laugh so much, a type of laughter that is decorated with snorts and stumbles. I would laugh so much, a type of laughter that forgets itself halfway through a sentence. I would laugh so much and I would stop asking if my laughter was too much for the room, because I wouldn’t care.

If the world were blind, I’d only go to the grocery store in sequins materials. I’d wear pajamas outside my compound, pretending that the world was nothing but an extension of my room. I’d make sure my stockings were of two diFfeReNT colors, convincing myself that they’re from two separate universes and that they somehow get along well.

If the world were blind, I would dance without worrying about rhythm. I’d move like a question mark—crooked and uncertain. I would dance in my kitchen. On my bed. At traffic lights. And I’d play my songs too loudly and lip-sync like I was auditioning for a concert no one asked for. I would dance. And I would sing. And I would be on top of the world.

And it would be a perfect life because no one would see me live it.

Oh, if the world were blind!

I would wear yellow every day, because yellow feels like sunlight, an escape from the darkness of this world. I would wear yellow until the color became my skin. I wouldn’t care if it clashed with my undertone or if someone thought it was “too bright for my complexion.” But of course, they couldn’t think that, because they wouldn’t see.

If the world were blind, I think I’d stop editing myself in public. I’d let my words come out unpolished and raw, yet soft and tender. I’d say “I don’t know” but without shame. I’d eat my mangoes the messy way, the way that drips down your chin, stains your shirt, and leaves its roots in-between your teeth as evidence of its once-upon-a-time existence. I’d cry in the middle of the market if I had to. I’d lick the spoon after baking, even when I’m not supposed to. I’d buy myself flowers for no reason and forget to put them in water. But I wouldn’t beat myself up for that, because I wouldn’t have to remind myself that mistakes don’t make me less of a person.

If the world were blind, I’d let someone hold me without diluting the experience with the thoughts of how it makes me look needy or weak. Might sound rigid but, I’d stop smiling for pictures. Instead, I’d smile when I genuinely want to. When something actually cracks my heart open in joy. When someone says something that melts the ice in my heart and means it. When the sun hits my skin like it knows my name.

I would smile, but I would smile from the bottom of my dear heart.

If the world were blind, I’d read my favorite books out loud just to fill every room with pieces of myself. I promise, I’d start writing letters again. to people, to places, and to feelings I’m too shy to name. I’d write to my teenage self, telling her she didn’t have to dim her light to make others comfortable. And of course, I’d write to the sea, thanking her for reminding me to be wild in spirit and deep in soul.

Anyway,

If the world were blind, I think I’d dye my hair white. Or maybe shave it off completely. And I wouldn’t worry about my “face shape” or “aesthetic” or “what people would think” because guess what? people wouldn’t think — they wouldn’t see.

Maybe I’d take more walks just to feel the earth hold me up. I’d stop rushing to arrive somewhere grand in the future and start arriving where I currently am, here, again and again.

If the world were blind, I would stop hiding behind being “put together.” I’d let my hair grow wild and my thoughts grow honest. I’d be kind because that is who I am, not who I pretend to be. I’d give compliments because I mean them, not because I want them back. I’d finally stop trying to impress mirrors. I’d stop adjusting my smiles, and my opinions, and my dreams, just so they look acceptable in someone else’s gaze.

The world isn’t blind so I’ve forgotten the sound of my own voice when it isn’t echoing off someone else’s approval. But maybe if no one could see me, I’d learn to hear myself again.

And so, if the world were blind, I think I’d fall in love again with being alive. I’d love the sacred moments between my heartbeats. I’d love my scars for proving to me that healing doesn’t always look beautiful but is indeed always, always beautiful. I’d love the ordinary, the messy, the tired, and the trying parts of me that lack perfection.

But the world isn’t blind. And right now, I remain the blind one in a world blessed with sight.

Dear reader, would it be inhumane of me to wish blindness upon the world?

For I am convinced that if the world were blind…

I’d finally open my eyes.

But, shocker?

It isn’t! I’d been wrong all my life!

And I only got to know this a few weeks ago when a friend posted something with the title “Things I Have Failed At — Career Edition.” It was a checklist, and every bullet point felt like they could hold different stories: failed startups, botched interviews, jobs lost, rejections that somehow led to redirections. So, out of curiosity and a little bit of excitement, I decided to make my own list.

And that was when I realized… I didn’t have one. Actually, I didn’t have any.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t write just one thing I had failed at but I knew it wasn’t because I was successful enough to not have any. Far from it. I mean, even the most successful people have failed, miserably! I know this because I have asked and I have listened to people who have attained extraordinary success talk. Most of them try to be as honest as possible but I think even they struggle to give coherent responses about their success without sounding generic.

I don’t think most successful people really know how they succeeded, but I do think they know why. Most successful people can’t trace the exact moment it all clicked for them. But the one thing they all have in common happens to be failure, which also happens to be the one thing I don’t have! I’m talking about the kind of failure that breaks you, embarrasses you, and forces you to start over when all you want to do is disappear.

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Every successful person I know, every brand we admire, has failed repeatedly before anything worked out for them. For example, Canva didn’t start as the global design platform it is today. I learnt that its founder, Melanie, got rejected by over a hundred investors before one finally said yes. Airbnb? The founders were so broke they sold cereal boxes just to stay afloat. Dyson, the tech company that manufactures household appliances, built over 5,000 prototypes before finding one that finally worked.

Over. Five. Thousand.

You see, I’m convinced that success always starts at the place where things fall apart.

Think about it…

When you listen closely to people who have “made it,” you’ll notice their stories are less about what went right and more about what went wrong. What they talk about the most are the countless things that didn’t work until something finally did. They talk about failing, repeatedly, until the lessons start forming a pattern.

That night, as I stared at the blank note in front of me, trying to reassure myself that I have had my own fair share of failures, a thought crossed my mind:

maybe the reason I’ve been feeling stagnant and almost invisible in the motion of the world, was because I haven’t been taking enough steps to stumble.

For so long, I thought my job was to figure life out, to plan carefully, avoid mistakes, and take only the steps I was sure about. And somewhere along figuring life out, I mistook stillness for patience. I convinced myself that my waiting season was noble, and that not rushing was a sign of wisdom. But in reality, I was just standing still, calling my fear by a prettier name.

No wonder I’ve always felt like I was stagnant, like everyone else was moving past me while I stood at the bus stop of my own potential.

Because tell me, how could I move when I wasn’t even taking steps?

There’s a quote by Tai Solarin that says, “May your road be rough.” It was a much longer quote, but those words alone were enough to offend every hopeful bone in my body. When I first heard it, my thoughts spiraled and the first words that came out of my mouth were “God forbid!”. Why would anyone wish difficulty upon another person or even themself? Now, I can’t help but laugh at my naivety. I screamed at a prayer I should have held on to.

Because a smooth road doesn’t build anything. It doesn’t teach you anything about yourself. It’s the rough roads — the ones with detours, delays, heartbreaks, and a questionable amount of “no’s” that shape who you’re becoming.

Now, I know that everyone fails, but the question is have you failed enough to attract success?

We’ve all had our share of failure and pain. Moments that hurt deeply. But pain isn’t the same as failure. Pain happens to you but failure happens because you tried. And that’s what I’ve been missing my entire life! Trying. The fearless, foolish, messy kind of trying that leads to both heartbreak and discovery.

That’s what I want to start doing more of. I want to start trying enough things that some of them flop spectacularly. I want to burn a couple of pancakes. I want to spill the paint while trying to redecorate my living room. This sounds silly, but I want to send the wrong email. I want to put myself in a space where mistakes are made and are allowed. I want to try, and if it doesn’t work, I want to keep trying.

So if like me, you’re stuck right now, wondering what to do with your life, I think you should focus on chasing failures. Don’t wait until you have the perfect plan or the perfect timing. Don’t wait for clarity. Don’t sit still hoping purpose will find you. Start where you are, with what you have. I’m sure you’ve heard it before but this time, take it from a different perspective. Take it as you building your own failure checklist. Break a few eggs and mess things up a little. After all, success isn’t something you plan your way into, but something you fail your way toward.

Chase failures, my friend.

Try something bold enough to fall apart.
Attempt what scares you.
Risk being wrong.
Dare to look foolish in pursuit of something real.

Because the moment you start failing, you’ve already started moving. And motion, as they say it, is what builds a meaningful life.

Share Twenty-Something & A Half

And me? Me, I’m tired of hearing it!

Everywhere I turn, someone is reminding me to “live my best life” in my twenties, as though joy were a timed assignment due before thirty. Every other week, there’s someone preaching…

“Travel the world.”
“Publish a book.”
“Meet a millionaire mentor.”
“Go skydiving.”
“Learn three languages.”

It’s the same recycled sermon, dressed up in different filters time and time again.

And to be honest, I have a problem with it! (Like you probably already guessed).

My problem isn’t the advice itself though, it’s the careless assumption that everyone can live that way. That everyone has the freedom, the time, or the money to fit into that glossy narrative of what a “fulfilled” twenty-something should look like or live like.

But not everyone was born a child of privilege and not everyone’s story begins with a soft landing. For many, life at twenty-something isn’t about adventures, but survival. It’s the constant battle of trying to stay afloat in a world that keeps romanticizing motion while ignoring stillness.

We tell people to chase happiness but forget that joy is not one-size-fits-all. We tell people to “explore the world” but never acknowledge how many are fighting to keep their world together.

I find it sad that we’ve turned our twenties into a checklist. And you see it everywhere — a carousel of other people’s mirrors. It looks like freedom if you zoom in but up close? it’s a conveyor belt of shoulds. And the irony of this all is that the thing meant to free us has become the cage we all pretend is glamorous.

Yet, not everyone has the ticket to that carousel. Some people have learnt to hold their breath until payday. Some people are raising siblings, making phone calls to doctors, figuring out how to keep a roof above their heads. Some are carrying grief like a second jacket. Some people’s “big plans” is simply surviving the next week with some dignity. But that doesn’t make their lives smaller… does it?

Sometime ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine about multiple realties, and there was a message she sent that brought me to my knees, literally. She said and I quote:

“Some people have the money to catch their next flight but some don’t have the money for their next meal…and we are all in our twenties.”

And just how heartbreakingly true is that?

So let that sit with you. Say it out loud if you have to because it’s a fact-check.

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What the narrative of “best life” often ignores is context. When advice assumes every person has time, money, a safety net, no chronic health issues, no caregiving duties, then that advice is not universal. It’s niched down. It’s for the privileged. And when that niche advice is packaged as gospel it erases the legitimacy of every other way to live in your twenties.

Picture this:

Two postcards. One shows turquoise seas, a cocktail, and a passport stamped “Somewhere.” The other shows a small kitchen table with a steaming cup of tea, leftover rice from the day before, and hands that have learned to stretch what’s left in the pantry. Different stories, different realities but both belong to people in their twenties. Both are valid.

That’s the cruelty of the modern script that equates high-production joy with worth. It tells people they’re failing for not fitting into someone else’s definition of a good life. It makes survival look like a plot twist you should be ashamed of.

Oh, let me be clear…

I am not against ambition or adventure. I love the kind of dream that hums in your bones and spills into action. I love goals. But the problem is the relentless, moralizing tone that whispers, and sometimes screams, that if you don’t tick those boxes you’re not living well.

Dream. Build. Grow.

But do not shame those who are learning to find joy within their limits. Do not measure someone’s life by how loudly it shines in a certain timeline. For this reason, I am convinced that people in their twenties need a new language, a different manifesto from “live your best life in your 20s”:

1. To survive is not a consolation prize.

If you’re juggling work, bills, therapy, or whatever surviving looks like to you, then showing up is already an act of radical courage. Surviving is a series of tiny victories stitched together. Celebrate them.

2. To postpone is emancipation.

You don’t have to do everything now. Life is not a limited-time sale. The urgency marketed to you is artificial. In reality, your timeline is yours.

3. To find joy and happiness where you are currently.

Joy is not only at airports or in aesthetics. It can be a clean set of sheets, a text from a friend, a plant that didn’t die this month, or your favorite song you love to hum while making dinner. These are not small. They are your experiences and that should make them good enough.

4. To refuse comparison as currency.

Scrolling unsafely through someone’s curated highlight reel and measuring your life by it is emotional theft. You deserve to police what you consume. Please do that.

5. To exist in gray areas.

Maybe you have a job you don’t love but it pays the rent and funds the moments that matter. Maybe you take comfort in routine. Maybe your “best life” is the slow, quiet work of building a steady day. That’s valuable labor.

Ermmm, what was the purpose of this writeup again?

Right! To call out the danger of how a ‘well-meaning’ advice can be weaponized. When people on the internet say “you must do X in your twenties,” it often comes with an unspoken footnote: if you can afford it. And that footnote is the difference between inspiration and erasure. After all, advice becomes pressure when it’s offered without humility, or the acknowledgment of different starting lines.

So if you are someone who preaches these checklists, this is a note to you. Please, stop glamorizing every milestone as a must-do sermon. Share your accomplishments without making it a standard. Mention the footnote when necessary. Acknowledge how much of it was luck, timing, hard work or a safety net for you. That simple honesty loosens the noose of comparison for everyone else. And you owe that to the people you are trying to “advice”.

And if you are someone who lives outside of the carousel, someone who wants to tick off these checklists but doesn’t have the means to just yet, this is your queue to block out the voices that has taken space in your head and heart. You can’t live on someone else’s timeline but you can find joy in yours. Live in the present because that’s the only timeline you can control.

The point isn’t to erase ambition, but to widen the table so that ambition can take many shapes. The point is to remind ourselves not to take away the chances of ordinary people to find their own joy where they are. The point is to recognize that people live different realities, even though every single person on earth wants to live their best life.

The point is simply this:

To allow people to show up as they are, without the costume of curated greatness.

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Have you ever paused long enough to notice how unusual the letter “I” is?

I’m asking because I have, and I did for a really long time.

I mean, out of all twenty-six alphabets in English language, it’s the only one that refuses to stay ‘small’. It doesn’t matter if it’s at the beginning of a sentence or hiding somewhere in the middle, “I” always insists on standing tall. Always capital, no matter where it falls.

Unlike “a,” “k,”, “q,” or any other alphabet, it doesn’t bend, it doesn’t shrink, and it doesn’t slip into lowercase unless it’s forced by a typo. I used to wonder about that.

Why not “i”

Why “I”?

Why does “I” stands tall every single time, almost stubbornly so, if I may add?

At first, I thought it was just one of those arbitrary grammar rules, something you memorize in primary school and never question. But the more I wondered about it, the more I realized that...

“I” is always capital because YOU are always central.

It sounds simple, almost too simple. But think about it: the very structure of language insists that when you speak about yourself, you take up space. You don’t get to whisper it in lowercase. You just so happen not to be a background murmur. Even in the mechanics of English, “I” is subjective. It makes you the subject of the sentence, the one through whom action flows. For instance, when you say, “I went”, “I felt”, “I decided”, you are not just filling in words, you are declaring yourself as the center of existence in that moment. Somehow, the story bends around you.

And that realization changed the way I looked at myself.

If “I” is always the subject, then maybe life itself is reminding us that we were never meant to write ourselves as objects in other people’s narratives. Right from the beginning, we were meant to hold the pen. Thus, my answer to the question of why “I” always capitalizes itself is that it does it to remind us that…

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You see, I like to imagine life as a book.

Every day is a new page, and the chapters are filled with characters, some stay for years and others pass quickly, leaving only a faint shadow behind. Parents, siblings, friends, teachers, lovers, and even the strangers you meet once and never again, they all walk through the pages, some leaving fingerprints on the margins. But I have come to know that no matter how large their role may seem, they are not the main character. You are.

And yet, isn’t it strange how often we forget this?

How often we shrink ourselves down, admiring someone else’s story so much that we start to erase our own? I’ve caught myself doing it more times than I can count and I am not so proud of it. A lot of times, I have caught myself reading my life as if I were a supporting role, an extra in the background while someone else shines at the center of the plot, and that’s just heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking when you admire other people so deeply that you start to think their lives, their decisions, their journeys, are more worthy of attention than your own. It’s heartbreaking to stand at the edge of your own pages, watching as if you’re just a witness instead of the author. And while there’s nothing wrong with admiring others (in fact, I think it fills the heart with a certain lightness), the danger is in forgetting that your admiration shouldn’t come at the expense of yourself.

Admiration can be beautiful, but it becomes dangerous when it tempts us to hand over our own pen, and convinces us that someone else’s story deserves our voice more than ours does.

So I started to imagine it this way: every time I put myself in the background of my own story, I see it as me handing over my pen to someone else and saying, “Here, you write it for me.” And if anything, I know I don’t want to live a life like that. Because in reality no one else can tell my story the way I can or the way I want to. Nobody feels my doubts in the quiet of the night. Nobody knows the weight of the choices I wrestle with. They don’t experience the small, private joys that only I notice. And they don’t carry the responsibility of my existence. Only I do.

That is what “I” declares, every time you use it: This is my responsibility. This is my role. This is my life to live.

Thinking about it…

Being the subject of your own story is not just about freedom, it’s also about weight. To say “I” is to acknowledge that you are the one choosing, acting, shaping. It means you can’t always stand aside and wait for someone else to ‘fix it’. It means you have to wear the title of author, even when the plot feels messy or unclear.

It reminds me of those safety instructions on airplanes. You know the part where they tell you to put on your oxygen mask first before helping others? It always struck me as selfish to be honest. If I had a child and we were flying together, why would I put myself before my child, or a loved one, in such crazy situation? But looking at it from the perspective of the rebellious “I” makes it make so much sense.

I mean, if you lose consciousness, you cannot save anyone. So it just makes sense to put an oxygen mask on yourself first before you put it on anyone else if a situation requires it. Not because you want your child or loved one to die but because if you don't put it on yourself first, in all likelihood, you're not going to get it on your child on time and so you won't be in a place where you are functioning well enough to be able to safe your child or yourself. *internal screammmmm, what a discovery!*

I guess this is what being the subject of your story really means. To take responsibility for yourself first, not because you don’t care about others, but because you cannot carry them if you abandon yourself.

Language already knows this. And grammar tells us every time: you begin with “I”, and the action comes after.

Basically…

Of course, this is not to say that other people don’t matter. I think it’s quite the opposite. The beauty of being the subject is that your story is enriched by every other character who enters it. The conversations, the shared laughter, the sudden heartbreaks, they all weave into your narrative. They give it color, texture, movement. But no matter how central they may feel in a given moment, they do not replace you. You are not written in lowercase because your presence is ‘non-negotiable’. Without you, there is no story to tell.

And if you disappear from your own story, everything collapses… that’s just how important you are!

This is what I love most about this idea. That “I” isn’t just capitalized because of a rule but because you are not meant to disappear. Life has enough forces that try to ‘lowercase’ us — expectations, comparisons, cultures that prefer us smaller, quieter, easier to overlook. But then the stubbornness of this alphabet interrupts and says, “Not today, Satan!”.

This has taught me simply not to shrink even when I’m expected to. It has taught me not to bend even if it is required of me, and I love that for me.

Now, tell me what do you think would happen if we really lived like that?

If we allowed ourselves to believe that being the main character isn’t arrogance but honesty. If we admitted that we are not here to be extras in someone else’s chapter, but to write our own in full. Personally, I think we would stop apologizing for choosing ourselves. We would stop waiting for permission to dream or create or even rest. We would stop running from the responsibility of ourself, the responsibility of “I”, and start embracing it instead.

Because in the end, that’s all we truly have: our story.

In the end, all you have is your messy, imperfect, beautiful manuscript that only you can write. Others may appear somewhere in your pages, they may inspire entire chapters, they may leave you changed but with the pen still in your hands. This tells you that no matter what happens, you remain the subject. You remain the carrier. You remain the one whose story is worth telling.

So, dear reader, if you would take anything from this unending rambling of mine, let it be this simple thought…