a new decade

quick update:

i don’t believe i have a favorite colour anymore.

i’m the type of person who takes regular intentional breaks from social media (have i always been this way).

i’m 24 now – hello quarter life crisis.

i’m sometimes bald.

i don’t cringe as much as i thought i would at the things i wrote 3 years ago.

great. now that we’re kind of caught up, i’ll say what i came on here to say. i shoved this space into a corner because i wasn’t sure what purpose it could serve me anymore, except to have older versions of myself in thought and whatever immortalised for my embarrassment in some distant future when someone gives af about what i was writing in my YA years. but the truth is, i miss the lack of rules here. i miss the safe space i built for myself – to say whatever tf i wanted to without feeling like i was taking up space designed for someone else. and i came on here to exercise that freedom. that’s all this post is. a taste of the thing i made. a reminder that freedom like this still exists, and i can exercise it whenever i want.

i also wanted to cheekily make this post’s word count 220, and with these last few nonsenses, i have achieved that goal.

 

Vulnerability

In the past few weeks, I’ve been contemplating writing something, anything. But the second I open up a ‘New Post’ page, I stop myself and ask ‘Do I have anything to say?’. Not just plain content to share, because I could easily pick a topic and write about it and BAM, new blog post, traffic, blah blah blah, sometime in 50 years blogging success or whatever (I dunno). But would that mean anything to anyone? Would it say* anything meaningful, would it be worth speaking for? Maybe. But maybe hasn’t been enough for me lately.

Today, however, I had a different thought. A thought that sprung from what I’m going through emotionally, and what I’m struggling with. So instead of looking at it from the perspective of – the pressure I put on myself to say something meaningful and enriching, – I’m looking at it from the perspective of sharing, if only for the sake of one reader connecting with my story and realising they’re not the only ones going through what we’re going through, and finding some kind of twisted comfort in that.

Maybe that’s not enough, maybe I might end up turning into one of those people who posts stuff with too much feels or whatever – maybe it is enough, maybe I’ll only do the one post for another month or year, but when it comes to sharing my experiences and truly bearing my heart and soul, whatever parts I’m not too chicken to give you a glimpse of, maybe is enough.

In my life, God has blessed me tremendously with light and warmth and a smile that could stretch beyond the happiness my heart can hardly manifest. All these things fill me with so much joy, tear duct draining joy. But with love as large as mine for life, living and people; there is heartache just as big when all the love isn’t enough, because often it’s not.

I go through moments of intense fear of the future, and pain about the past that dictates my present and limits my future, and in those moments, nothing is as true as my wet cheeks and puffy eyes, and I am certain that most people, if not all, have felt this way at some point in their lives.

 

I wrote the bulk of this post (everything before this sentence) a couple of months ago, and it’s just been sitting in my drafts. I’m tired of seeing it in my drafts. I still believe most of this. I’m still working on all of it.

flux

With technology today, and social media, there’s very little you can hide. I never really thought about the impact it’s had on my social life, our social lives. Some mysteries are no longer. Forget remembering your birthday, Facebook will notify me, it’ll even ask me a week prior whether I want to throw you a party. There’s so much we can learn about each other’s lives from social media, and blogs like this, conversational intimacy is, all of a sudden, obliged to accommodate the pretense of getting to know each other (even though we’ve probably cyber stalked each other already), or skip straight to the raunchy.

My current dilemma, as I’m typing, right this second, is how much is too much, and how much of it should define you, what sort of obligations do you have to the things you post. Because, for some reason, you – I feel this need to live up to that CV/tl version of myself.

Then there’s a dishonesty that overwhelms and overcomes you. It violently takes over what you thought might be you. The edited version; meme generating, witty quip creating, quote manifesting, __ likes, trending hashtag, thing. And truth, the truth of who you are, becomes who you generate in a 2D world.

I sound like I’m placing all the blame on that one thing. It’s as simple as turning my phone off. Looking up. Smiling. Syncing energies with a person and not expecting anything back from them except what they have to give. But you spend enough time trying to recreate yourself, spend so much time driving, you forget the destination.

The reality of me, as an individual, is in constant flux. There are times I feel obligated to what’s accepted as truth, it stops being about outward expression, and it becomes absorbent, inward.

I feel like I’m forgetting what the truth sounds like. Forgetting what it means to open up to someone and have that organic process make your stomach flip and turn 50,000 times, but still, and yet, let you bask in the glory and beauty of that vulnerability.

I want that back.

I want to live in mistake, and awkward, and the kind of reckless that’s unforgettably unregrettably (i am aware) foolish and adventurous.

Maybe I stop apologising for ways I’m not.

Maybe I start doing the things that make me uncomfortable.

Private Party

Degree. Job. Marriage. Babies. Grand babies. Great-grand babies. Meet my maker.

The milestones.

There is little about life, I’m learning, that is as simple. Those things are beautiful in their own right – but they are not the things that I aspire towards, and they shouldn’t be.

Spiritual doctrines and culture have taught me that I am not whole, not singular entity – missing a piece or 5. So I need to find my better half, make little mes, get that job, fit into the grand scheme of things.

But I am not. I am complete in my singularity, complete in my being. It takes a lot to unlearn these things and release them to the wind. Let them be choice and not obligation. Love is beautiful, life is a miracle, work is imperative, togetherness is powerful. All of these, however, are only opportunities to improve upon my oneness.

It is conscious reminder from the moment I accepted this as truth – my wholeness – that’s allowed me to keep it; believe that I lack nothing.

Quiet, silent vulnerability, carries with it a sense of emptiness for some, for me at a point, and in the absence of solitude it still makes me a little anxious. But this I was taught – to fear aloneness through pop culture. Although we are social beings, and we are of one, there is beauty in lonely, discovery in having only you to be for, to live for.

A friend of mine asked me what I looked forward to this year; my year of 21.

Loving me, for the sake of no one else but me. Discovering all that is within, instead of grasping for things outside of me, blindly, in the hopes of filling a place inside that I have yet to connect to, yet to understand as once filled, not always vacant vacuum.

21 will be a beautiful mess of wonder, and I cannot wait to pin it up and grow towards every year that follows – always celebrating the woman I am, in that moment, ugly out, beautiful shining, and unapologetically raw and vulnerable to a life of uncertainty and fickle choices complimented by bold strength, and pure forgiveness – acceptance.

This year, I get to celebrate that.

 

I thought I’d have more to say about this, because the song in all it’s wonder grants me so much clarity, and peace of mind, but apparently I don’t. Maybe because it speaks so well for itself.

So happy birthday to me!

Enjoy the song.

 

 

So it’s been a while, and that’s okay because life happens.

Year before last (2014) I went to university in Canada; I threw a bunch of stuff into a suitcase, said goodbyes/see ya’s and started to enact the life I envisioned for myself from the second I landed, sort of.

I did what I loved and enjoyed and lived life the only way I knew how; passionately, and connected with people in the same way. I spent about 9 months in Fredericton getting to know and love beautiful people and beautiful things and I think my name would be sooner forgotten than my experiences.

But if you have any knowledge or experience with moving halfway across the world, no matter how driven, focused, or passionate one might be; the honeymoon phase ends and (I don’t wanna say reality as if it’s an acceptable normality because sadness isn’t acceptable, it’s a thing that happens) something other than the pure happiness and joy in taking a small step towards what I thought was real and true self actualisation checked in, and that thing was daunting.

During my second semester, with many thoughts about purpose, responsibility, sacrifice, and duty, I made a decision to come home, and I did. I threw a bunch of stuff into a suitcase, said goodbyes and came home excited to live up to the see ya’s, confused about my conviction, and in some strange sense, at that point, certain about everything, and harboring a smoke smothered certainty.

I’ve been back ( in Kenya) for 9 months now and it only seems fitting that I (by the laws of nature) should have created some semblance of a life. Maybe that’s putting too much pressure on myself, but if not that, then what else. A couple weeks ago a friend and I had a conversation about location (mental, emotional, spiritual) and I found none on either counts. Lost. Maybe not completely and utterly, but damn near close to it.

When it’s convenient, I often pride myself in being an idealist, and a perfectionist. Before these recent experiences I never saw either of those things as anything but slightly flawed traits that made people better at whatever they did, individually. But put them together and you acquire near constant disappointment. When it is through the eyes of an idealistic perfectionist that you view and evaluate your life, well, unless you have a open and honest relationships, it becomes difficult to deal with the outcomes and implications of your evaluation.

All of the stuff that I said up there are the things (including others I may not know how to adequately articulate in this moment) that have contributed to my location, or lack thereof. There’s a very specific kind of beauty that I’ve found comes with being in this place, that of acceptance, of fear, of resignation, of discovery, and of the illusion of freedom (which I think is an interesting concept – one I’d like to explore – someone have a conversation with me about it sometime, that would be interesting).

Part of reflecting on some of these thoughts, decisions, and ideas I had of and about myself at this point in my life have revealed an aggressive sense of drive that forces me to be something that fulfills an idea or fit into an image I created for my future self, this self. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been driven all my life, drive is amazing, it pushed me to do and therefore experience things I would have never had the opportunity had I not been driven to. However, forcing myself to live up to a perfect and idealistic version of myself that I was supposed to magically step into at (a) certain point(s) in my life, that’s the thing that stops me from living it.

Maybe the way I viewed myself at a past point in my life was warranted from my experiences then, but to extract those thoughts and visions and implant them into a mind that’s now evolved and devolved is a corruption of my subsequent growth. This year I turn 21, according to biology I’ll be done with the 3rd version of my physical(cellular) self, and I’ll be stepping into my 4th. I mean obviously it’s still me, I still have memories, I’m still Laura. Where am I going with this? I’m not sure, maybe these are just a bunch of thoughts I’m stringing together and somewhere along this post I forgot it’s purpose.

I’m learning to be okay with that, with being lost; which also means I’m chipping away at some of the cognition that lead me to believe a state of uncertainty is impending doom.

Go to it

I was sitting by the fire with my niece (She turned 7 months recently)

Both of us, staring into the flame burning bright.

Our eyes transfixed,

The warmth glowing off our brown faces,

Her babble hushed by the orange monster that engulfed the wood right in front of us.

It was like magic,

A sleeve and a heart

There is something to be said of the soul that wears it’s heart on a sleeve

tugged and pulled at so hard that it’s wrist had no protection to boast,

just raw skin aching to ripen with every bit of sunshine that touched it,

Return

The flowers did not ask to join me

So don’t cover me with death.

Instead

Lay me down, stripped of all that isn’t whole

Lay me down as I arrived

Naked.

Extremist

In my life, as in everyone else’s I assume, I’m constantly trying to negotiate balance between external and internal, the world and self. When you realise something new about the world and accept an idea you previously weren’t invested in, you start to change. The way you speak starts to differ, and subsequently your decisions and actions that follow mold a different you, and the balance shifts.

Me, my home.

This past Saturday April 4th the Africa Student Union in Fredericton held an event  – Africa Night – that seeks to celebrate and educate the community on Africa. To say the past few days have been difficult being away from home, and my family, would be an understatement. Having an opportunity to be with so many people from my continent to celebrate it’s beauty, was a tremendous blessing. Sharing a moment of silence for all the lost souls, and singing the national anthem was a gift God granted me in that place where I found comfort in the crowds companionship.

I had written a spoken word piece last month specifically for this event, and I got to perform it for the audience. I wanted to share these words in this space as well.