I’m always six seconds away from tears maybe you can tell. I don’t even know where the time goes. It’s midnight and it’s my birthday, and I’m standing at the bus stop just opposite the student apartment I always wanted to live in but can’t afford. Two white girls are analysing a TikTok beside me.
I’m waiting for the bus that will take me home after having failed yet again to complete my dissertation that’s due in 3 days. I have it already but it’s just so frustratingly cumbersome that it’s bigger than me. How did I let it get so complex?
I can feel myself getting sick, running out of fuel.
They blocked the nearest bus stop from the library so I have to walk 5 minutes. I need a song to walk to.
I open Spotify, sick and tired of every song in my playlist(sss). I need something different. This tired rap beef has synced me up to a different frequency. Tired of living inside songs pretending to be what I’m not, I want to be uplifted, but I don’t want gospel, I want reality
Only one song comes to mind, “Count me Out”. But what if I’m only living inside this same song too. It’s possible but it’s also true that it resonates with my heart tonight
I’m wearing a dress with a slit up to my thighs by midnight, I’m not as cold as I used to be in this white hell. Growth?
Even now I’m five seconds away from bursting into tears. Am I bottling something that wants to be let out? Is it the cliche birthday blues, echoing a list of all the things I should have achieved at my age? I’m practically 40.
I have now reached the bus stop by this time. What have I achieved with my life ? I’m not lying if I say this is the first time I’ve ever considered this question.
Why does it feel like I’m writing for an audience ? Is somebody peering into my soul right now, why am I trying to make it perfect before it’s even birthed?
I don’t think about achievements, except for a few. But clearly this question is brought up to me for some reason. It may be possible that this is some existential bridge every body arrives at when they get to my age — a rite of passage after which they finally grow up.
I don’t feel like I have ever been young, if that makes sense. So I’m not sure how to actually grow.
“Have you achieved anything yet?” I’m lost in that question, I don’t even remember the two girls talking beside me . And for a brief moment I feel Presence, as if the universe was trying to answer my question for me.
What am I looking at? Two high rise structures, the student apartment I can’t afford.
It’s unlike any building I’ve ever seen in Lagos or Ilorin, it’s proof of abroad life. It is what I’ve achieved?
Does moving abroad for school count as an achievement? Do people remember me and think I’ve made it? Am I living a life of ease and softness right now?
I watched a reaction to a compilation of ‘Girl TikTok’ last week and actually saw what a life of ease and softness is really about. This one I’m living right now is about survival.
At the very least I’m going to do whatever it takes to get out of here, so the world can witness my ugliness and my beauty ( the one I stole from my mother) before I ex.
Maybe not the world, maybe no one and I’ll still be fine I swear. If that’s true then this need not be posted. But I’m posting so what does this say about me . Who really am I?
I have a personal tradition where I look up to the sky to look for birds glide in time to Yosemite by Travis Scott et al.(2018). Yosemite is queued up after ‘Count me Out’. I’d been seeing birds fly past, weirdly enough by 15 past midnight
I try to talk to God, it’s been years since we fell out. I beg God to let me watch a bird glide through the sky just in time with the music, you know as a birthday gift.
I put my heart out there to God in faith, actually believing for the first time in a long while.
The last time I believed, God ghosted. But I try again despite the fact.
Just one simple thing i ask, not as a sign to let me know he/she/they/it exists. Just something to make me know that I’m actually not alone in this big big world.
I wait and wait, Gunna starts singing. No bird. Birds that had been flying in pairs only a few seconds before. No bird for me, a simple spiritual experiment. Futile. Ghost, Delusional. Alone.
Just before the song ends, my eyes catch something right in the middle of the two giant buildings in front of me. It’s midnight blue so I can’t really see much, but I can tell it’s some sort of electrical structure because it has a red light blinking at the very top of it.
Just a few metres below the blinking dot, I see the shape of a bird. But it’s weird because it looks like it’s suspended in the air, wings spread out, but frozen in place. I couldn’t make it out clearly because it’s far away from me towards the sky. I’ll actually go back tomorrow to see it better.
It looked very much like a bird, but it’s not moving. It looks lifeless way up above me. Did it die mid-flight? Why is it defying gravity if it’s dead? Did it get trapped in the transformer, electrocuted?
It felt like a tiny miracle and then it felt like the death of a precious thing. Am I the bird? Stuck in place, frozen outside time like a screenshot of that one good memory my mind cinema often plays.
If it somehow gets unstuck, gravity will take its toll and it will be official.
Time of death: 12:23am 6 May, 2024.
If it stays right there, it will forever be beautiful, picture perfect under the red glare, possibly counting down to its imminent decay.
It reminds me of my own lore, but in a different worthless way. If I let it go, it would have been all for nothing, meaningless like my existence. If it stays right where it is, it will remain epic, beautiful and ugly, forever unmatched, until it decays — because everything decays and dies.
My lore — the entire history of me, is about praying and waiting for a specific miracle and everytime I think it’s finally happening, I get dissed back to back to back to back by the universe again. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. It shouldn’t even hurt because it’s dumb and funny if I tell you.
Now it has morphed into a part of me, like an aged snake secretly using someone’s roof as its permanent address. It won’t collapse into the living room but you will feel its presence, you too you won’t probe your ceiling to confirm it’s actually there. You both simply coexist in peace.
Sometimes you’ll hear ruffling but you’ll know it’s just your old flatmate and it deserves space too, until it’s time for any type of change. I promise you’ll miss it in a dumb and funny way.
My mind is not always a Jordan Peele movie though. Today it’s a Wes Anderson set, there’s so much colour to pull from, if I’m intentional about it. I’m thinking about the palette now and I think I’m going to cry.
I have to decide what jewellery I’m wearing in the morning.
