i’m critical of my former self in a Last Chopper Out of Nam way. i look at her sometimes and struggle to relate to her. i lift my nose up at her, i acknowledge how much better i am doing. i look at the decisions she made and judge her for it. had she made better choices, had stronger boundaries, been more selfish—perhaps we could have avoided many things. that, in itself, is a tragedy.

my current self is a much more refined version of my former self. she’s more confident, she has stronger boundaries, she is happier. and yet she is estranged from her former self in a way that feels like she disregards her.

the thing is that, the denial of compassion i subject her to in spite of my growth is a betrayal of self. nobody understood. and how sad past me would be if she realized that now, neither do i. being the youngest, i never had a little sister. my past self now feels like that to me—i am so protective of her.

but she is also all the things i regret. she is all the things i wish i did or didn’t do. she is a reminder of my pain. and part of the process of eschewing pain, it seems, is eschewing the time and place in which that pain occurred.

i saw a post on tiktok talking about this, and a comment said “you don’t get to hate the girl that got you here.” and it made me pause, then tear up, then read it again. i am who i am because of the sacrifices she made, the things she fought through—and that’s ok.

2. healing isn’t linear

sometimes it feels like i’ve never healed from a single thing that has happened to me. ever. i feel the complexities of everything as though it happened merely yesterday. the pain is still visceral, the hurt palpable, my tongue is still dry.

my life started feeling insanely better once i accepted this perpetual stretch of pain, once i recognized that i didn’t have to be on a constant journey of healing, that possibly i didn’t have to heal at all. it lessened the burden, it made the non-linearity a little less daunting, made it one less thing to worry about.

when i was in my late teens, something happened that hurt me deeply. i saw the rest of my life as a chance to heal from it, but found that no matter how much time passed it never hurt less. i looked to my former self, and felt her pain—a pain that permanently resided in the past but still made my chest hurt. and yes, i moved on. and yes, i coped. but i never, fully forgot about how much that hurt her.

i used to see this as such a failure: if i never move on from the things that have hurt me how will i prove to the past versions of myself that i am better, stronger and more than my pain? how will it all be for something? i’ve realized i don’t need to prove anything to anyone.

the show bojack horseman does a really good job at elucidating the complexity of healing and the cyclical nature of pain and trauma. bojack’s grandmother bottled up so much trauma and then passed it on to his mother, who passed it on to him. and you see so brilliantly how pain that is never dealt with, trauma that is never addressed, festers. in that same way, i hope i never become a person who transfers pain.

bojack horseman is also hyperrealistic because it shows how time in itself doesn’t always heal. just because a person experiences a progression of self, place and time doesn’t mean that they also progress. sometimes they stay stuck in the same place, sometimes they leave the place but find their way back. just because a person wants to be better doesn’t mean that they are. and just because we expect to be better versions of ourselves as time passes doesn’t mean that we will be.

3. memory of the pain vs the permanence of it

we hope the pain will mean something. we hope that in some sort of karmic revenge the people and things that hurt us will also be hurt, will also suffer our fate.

but life doesn’t work like that. and sometimes being a casualty means you live your whole life having never progressed from the things that have hurt you. and maybe the journey of life itself isn’t a journey where you’re constantly better, or constantly healing or constantly a better version of your former self because sometimes the journey is in staying alive. is in breathing. is in looking to the skies and feeling the breeze on your cheek because that day, breathing is enough.

we will pulley forward in this thing called life, where we were dropped with no manual. where we have spent every second trying to understand ourselves like we have tried to understand other people.

i am in constant conversation with my past self in that way. as she lives, so do i. and perhaps that is all the healing i need.

perhaps pain moves from permanence to remembrance and that in itself is not a failure. just because you remember something doesn’t mean you have betrayed the parts of you that have healed in some ways, that you have betrayed your former self. i understand that now.

1.

Nhyira’s husband has left her “for basically dead” to elope with his long-term side chick. She tells you this in a bar off the Oxford Street. The moon is a little halo in the bottomless sky and the air is stiff with the smell of beer. There are three empty, large club bottles sitting on the table, you and Nhyira have shared the contents over painful laughs and held back tears.

Enter Chaos

Nhyira walks in on her husband in bed with another woman. In jealous fury, she almost kills them both, swinging her body from side to side in an ill-fated dance. For a second, it is like a menage-a-trios without the complexities of it. There is only Nhyira, her husband—who she still thinks gorgeous as he soaks up the last rays of sunset— and a woman in their matrimonial bed. The woman looks scared, her lips are pursed together as though if she parts them even a little she is afraid of what might escape. It is a funny scene, because her husband is holding her back and trying to calm her down as though she is the cause of this, as though she rocked the infidelity in her arms and handed it to him. She is often a woman of theatrics, and her husband is immune to this, so only takes her seriously when she threatens to hurl herself off their balcony. He goes on his knees and begs.

She cries herself to sleep every night after that. Love is a dwindled, more passionate form of hate, and she feels the latter swelling in her belly like an unborn baby. The husband says he is sorry. He coddles her, he says it was a mistake, he brings her fresh flowers everyday after work. Their relationship appears to age backwards, first it is an old man shuffling in his walking stick. Now, it is a sick baby in a cot that they are nursing back to health. “Was it something that I did?” she asks him one night. It is late, and they are sharing a bottle of red wine over some sweet potatoes. There are no stars in the sky and the air is humid—glazing over them like a fresh confession. Husband says he does not know a more perfect woman, it is not her fault. He looks directly into her eyes “it is not your fault Nhyira.”

But, somewhere in the dark azure of the night, she notices his buzzing phone makes him more and more apprehensive.

Enter Disillusionment

She does not expect her husband to leave her. They have been working it out. The sick baby is now a toddler that plays in the garden after nursery. So, when she arrives one evening from work and his things are gone, she weeps from her insides & the new baby is born.

The baby is a torn, mangled thing. She cannot find solace in herself. She cannot find solace in other men. Peace is a thing that evades her, sleep is in a distant land and part of a long-lost dream. The days drone on in impunity. It is as though the skies, the sun, the trees point and laugh at her. It is as though her insides taunt her. So, she remains inside until she decides she cannot do that any longer. The sun is a setting storm, casting delicate stings of light into the air. Time is an unconscious burden, used up but not spent.

There is the hurt. It starts out simple, like a snowflake in the chest, then it spreads to the entire body. With it, a snowstorm that promises no end. One day, Nhyira wakes up, and it doesn’t hurt as much, and the snowstorm has subsided to a light pitter patter of rain. She gets into her Honda Civic and drives thirty minutes to the nearest beach. She glances at the waves, iridescent in the sunlight, and feels that perhaps peace is a thing that isn’t too distant—like maybe if she stares into the horizon enough the pain will maneuver its way into a thing she will one day consider fleeting, into something she will think beautiful.

2.

Now, Nhyira is refilling her glass with beer. You’ve both ordered another bottle and she’s tipping the glass in that expert way that presupposes a seasoned drinker.

“What will you do now?” you ask her.

Nhyira does nothing, or so it seems.

Enter Beach-Side Villa on the Coast

He marries his sidechick in a quiet ceremony on his private villa off the coast of Accra. His bride is beaming, the same smile she’s always smiled—lost and abandoned, a woman of few words but many dreams. There is also the blankness. There is also the pain. She doesn’t hate Frank, no. But, she does not love him. He is nice enough but, he is no Tola.

Tola who she met on a cold, Accra night. Far removed. Breathtaking. Tola, who danced with her like if he didn’t hold on tight enough he would drown, who made love to her in quiet inflections and strokes. But he was a hustler. Twenty-nine. Far too young for all the hurt he carried in his body. How could you fix a thing that has been broken for so long? She could feel it in the way he kissed her.

Her friend’s attitudes to this whole situation were a strange mix. How could she? Another woman’s husband? It was that or it was war, or it was “police go, soldier come.” All in all, it did not matter, she missed Tola. Her Tola.

Enter Chaos, Again

They don’t see Nhyira walk into the wedding because everyone, like sidechick, is so far removed. They’re taking in the decor, the beautiful bride and her old-faced husband. They’re taking in the skies that day, blue and beautiful. They’re awwing, trying to hold on to the distant sound of the waves playing on the shore, they’re holding onto the gentle breeze, the soft cocktails on their tongue.

Nobody notices Nhyira standing in line at the buffet table. She has on a rather big hat you see? And the hat covers a lot of her face. She’s wearing a long red dress that hugs at her waist and has a deep cut neckline. Her breasts are jutting out and she looks exquisite, odd but exquisite. Nobody pays attention to her.

It is only when she takes off her hat that the people around her begin to process that something isn’t quite right.

The couple is seated at a table adorned with pretty flowers. Husband is clutching to his new wife’s hand like she might run off if he lets go. New bride looks uneasy, the beaming smile has faltered, in it’s place an uncertainty that festers into a pit in her stomach. She’s thinking about Tola, about how she might never stop loving him. He’s thinking about this grand wedding, how nice it was to give his new wife everything she’d dreamt of on this day. They take turns looking distantly into each other’s eyes. So much so that they don’t see the woman walking towards them.

Enter Havoc

Frank sees her first. New bride feels him tense next to her and trails his gaze to find a woman storming angrily towards them. She recognizes her instantly. But, doesn’t recognize the gun.

It all happens too fast, too quickly, too much like a Ghallywood movie—so that nobody can actually believe this is happening. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and everyone is sure this is Lilith herself, reincarnated.

Nhyira is free-falling into an abyss, at the bottom, an inferno. In the inferno, her lost soul, struggling and struggling until there is nothing else left, until she is all char and smoke. She looks into the eyes of the man she once loved and wonders how that could transform into such a sick thing, how he could love her so deeply and suddenly, not love her at all. He looks a bit sorry, she’s not sure, because he’s looking at her the same way he was when she caught him—despondently and distantly. She shakes her head a slight no as if to say that she is sorry, too.

The sound of the gun is unlike anything anyone has ever heard. Many of them have not even seen a gun. But, which is stronger? The gun, or the bullet? Which will be the mantlepiece that will define their lives from here on? Forever and ever, countlessly spinning, centrifuged by the boundless nature of destiny. The bullet wins. It pierces through his fifth intercostal space, hitting his heart right where it matters. There are screams, of course. There is dissaray, and chaos and havoc. But, there is also calm. And this, Nhyira feels as she closes her eyes one last time and turns the gun on herself.

at the very beginning of last december, i had an unhinged sense of freedom. i spent my mornings deciding what i would do that day: the beach, a solo restaurant date, pilates. sometimes i lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, drifting in and out of sleep like a boat at sea.

one of my favorite people had gotten us tickets to the black sheriff concert because he was such a huge fan. i listened to blacko, but not as religiously and not as keenly. that being said, i was still intent on enjoying the experience. i was determined to sing along to everything, to dance, to join in on any chorus of singing because that, in itself, would signify a togetherness i was craving—with him and with the general crowd.

i’d never listened to the album prior to this, mind you, so i had approximately three weeks to “soak” the music in and learn the lyrics. i also couldn’t admit to myself that i had too much free time on my hands, because after a year of non-stop school that isn’t really a thing to admit—it would make it seem like i enjoyed pain. it was a challenging ordeal, because i didn’t completely understand some of the lyrics. and despite living in ghana majority of my life, the way twi glides on my tongue feels so foreign sometimes.

anyhow, i listened to the album many times a day. and where i didn’t understand, i had the lyrics explained to me. the day of the concert rolled around, we spent hours in traffic leading up to stadium. to say it was jam packed is an understatement. the concert only properly started at 12am—it was a delectable collection of sweaty, gyrating bodies singing in unison. the funniest moment, for me, was when one of my favorite songs came on. determined to join in on that aforementioned togetherness, i sang loudly. it was embarrassing really, because i butchered the lyrics and a few of the people turned to me in surprise to see where that atrocity originated from. i winced, deciding that i would lower my voice from there on.

anyway, back to the subject matter of why crying to black sheriff feels like a character flaw, because who the fuck cries to “but my body wants you.” me? i guess. in part because that song reminds me of the primal nature of want and need realized, the intertwining of body and soul. it reminds me that your body remembers, even after you have long forgotten.

sometimes i tear up because it reminds of simpler times that december. cruising down the streets of accra, hands interlocked, chattering about where to go next. it reminds me of the aftermath of the concert, when i pulled back the seat and slept as we were stuck in traffic.

perhaps because some days before that, when i picked my friend from the airport, i was gobsmacked in the middle of my learning the lyrics. and so at like 7am, because her flight from rwanda landed so early, we were cruising and singing along and she was saying how much she liked black sheriff too.

maybe it’s because this one day, while grabbing cocktails with my friend and her friends, a black sheriff song came on. and at that point it was one that i knew relatively well. so, i started to sing. and when questioned if i was a fan i couldn’t say no, not really, and go down the whole tangent of why i knew the song so well. so i just said yes.

i guess my point is that tearing up to these songs isn’t limited to the impact of the lyrics, but the impact of the time and place i listened to them in. of the memories that rush forward.

a moment past is a moment forever out of reach. the memory is there, delectable on my tongue, but it is only just a memory. and i am only a collection of every happy, crazy, sad, ecstatic moment i’ve ever lived. and maybe that is why i tear up, and why i cry, because it only takes a black sheriff lyric to remember that.

The year is 2020. It’s the summer after the start of COVID-19 and my friends and I can’t leave Hungary. Our flights have been cancelled and we’re boiling in the depths of a simmering summer. The air is moist, the sun sets late and we’re ecstatic.

It is the summer we decide to throw a tropical-themed party in my apartment. We name it Soirée. We have a few close friends over and we mix cocktails—blue curaçao, pineapple juice and Malibu become our party favourite. We talk and dance and drink until five a.m. The party ends because someone spills a drink and my friend slips and hits her head! She’s fine, but I shout for everyone to get into my room so I can clean the floor and then the party simmers down to lovers hanging by the walls and doors and walking home together.

It is not the summer I make it back to Ghana, because that summer is the summer after. That summer, though, I spend weeks falling back in love with my city and also with a boy. We are cocooned by our home. Until we aren’t. And then I’m back in cold, dreary Europe.

It is the summer my friend and I wake up one morning and hop onto a train to Budapest. It’s the summer I meet someone nice, but both our phones are dead. We stand outside the club and he makes me memorise his name on Instagram. The music from inside drums on and the air is humid. In that moment Budapest is my favorite city. I repeat the name to him several times; he’s convinced I’ve finally gotten it, and we part ways. I don’t remember it, and I never see him again. It is the summer, the morning, that Chadwick Boseman passes on, and everything comes to a standstill. The world feels fragile again, and it is on that sad note that the summer ends.

It is not the summer of 2025, because that summer I don’t even have a summer! I’m neck deep in the longest school year of my life. But like all things, that too ends. In January, I end up in Cape Town, and it is a dream within a dream. Cape Town is blue skies and blue waters stretching before your eyes, the two eventually meeting at this iridescent point. If you squint enough, it looks the palm of an angel.

My favorite day in Cape Town, I went to dinner with some friends. We were sitting in this very chic restaurant in Camps Bay, staring at the ocean as it lapped ashore. The sun had just begun to set, so that everything was encased in a soft orange hue. We talked into the night and ended up at an art gallery that had transformed into a club. Maybe in 2025 I didn’t have a typical summer, but I had a Capetonian one in early 2026, and that was so beautiful too.

I have four summers left until I turn thirty. That used to scare me, but it doesn’t anymore, not in the same way, at least. I’m excited for everything that life brings from here on. I’m excited to grow, to look back and recognise versions of myself I have beautifully outgrown—and still be proud of them. I’m excited for all the impending sunsets, for the chilled wine I will drink on a moist, summer night. For the conversations, the people and the places that I will bask in.

Maybe I don’t know what each summer after this brings, but I hope it is beautiful. I hope it is nostalgic. And I hope it is a great perhaps.

I’ve been running through the last couple of days with a certain urgency, as though I woke up one day and the full affliction of being twenty-six suddenly hit me. How do I vocalize the fear of having finally reached this stage of my life without sounding too repugnant?

I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing, but it feels like I’m not doing enough.

Part of why this has felt so urgent is that it is finally the year I finish medical school. Funny enough, I never thought this year would come. It has always seemed so far away and out of reach, drawing closer slowly but not with nearly enough speed that I’ve ever been worried. It’s like I’ve been waiting at a train station, and I could hear the train approaching in the far distance but never saw it, not until I blinked and it was already at my feet. Now, the train is here, but I fear I never really thought much about getting on.

“Omg wait,” I say to the conductor. “I left my luggage at home!”

Being a medical student has been my life for so long, and I’m petrified to transition to this phase of being an actual doctor. My life feels on the brink of finally starting. And what’s more daunting is the fact that I’m more aware than ever that all my dreams, hopes, and aspirations lie in the creases of my palms, and it is my sole responsibility to make them happen.

There is no better time than now, I guess. The only thing that seems to be helping this “quarter-life crisis” is a small notebook I’ve bought where I list all the things I’m trying to accomplish as they come. It has tiny things like “clear out closet.” But it also has much bigger things. These days I’m celebrating even my smallest wins. My boyfriend says to perhaps not call it a crisis because of the negative connotations of the word, but I know no better way. I feel like I’ve floated for far too long, and it’s time to be a bit more grounded.

When people you graduated high school with start getting married and having kids, it feels like some veil lifts from your eyes. If I’m being real, I thought we were all joking here. And I don’t even mean this just in a having a partner and kids sense, I mean it in an everything sense. I must’ve forgotten we are the new adults.

This phase is helping me be more appreciative of how different everyone’s journey is. Sure, my biggest worry right now is that my night waakye place has decided to go on a break, inadvertently destabilizing my Friday night routine, which consists of this very waakye and a glass of wine. What shall I do now? Of course, this is buttressed by thoughts of what hairstyle I should get next and what to wear to dinner for Galentine’s. I can recognize how, in the grand scheme of things, these aren’t such huge worries. But I’m also cognisant of the fact that in a good seven to ten years, I’ll be busy with mommy duties, my career, and planning my next vacation. Let me worry about my waakye now, abeg.

I love how writing gives me respite because in a few couple of words, I now feel like I must swallow a huge chill pill with an audible gulp of water. Maybe this is a crisis, but maybe I can be more appreciative of the peculiarity of this phase, of the fact that I will never have this version of myself again. Perhaps I should be kinder to her. She is, after all, trying her best.

there’s a certain mental lag, i think, that arises from waiting for someone to love you right and treat you in the way you think you finally deserve. there’s a certain validation, a certain need that we seem to collectively want fulfilled, and that craving seems to be sated only by romantic love.

the thing is, though, how many times have you completely felt loved in those?

i get it—we’re all living for the first time and we’re all figuring out how to handle our own hearts, let alone someone else’s. we’re such an intricate collection of our experiences and all the things, fortunate or unfortunate, that have happened to us. we have been the ones getting hurt or been the ones doing the hurting. either way, the truth remains that we are only human—and a human is too small of a person, too tiny an existence, to be completely filled by.

part of the realizations that came with being in my mid-twenties is that i suddenly became aware that all the love i think i need or deserve, i already have inside me. and, all the love i think i need to give to other people, i can give to myself.

maybe you’re willing to accept less from others because you’ve never tried to give yourself more.

in lana del rey’s did you know that there’s a tunnel under ocean blvd, she says to the ill-fatéd lover she sings to, “f*ck me to death, love me until i love myself.” sadly, that is what a lot of us do—we use the love that we receive from others to validate the fact that we are worthy and deserving of love, even when we don’t feel loved, even when we don’t love ourselves. in a similar way, black sheriff’s body dangles on what it means to need a person even when you actively realise they don’t serve you any longer. your heart is a lock, but your body has its own key. if somebody is capable of making love to us, of loving our bodies that have inadvertently “marred our souls” then it must be because we are all so deserving of that love.

admittedly, it feels insanely good to have someone finally see you. it feels good to be listened to, to be wanted, to have someone say all the right things to you. but, the truth is, you can say those things to yourself. you can slow down. you can try and see—truly SEE—yourself outside of who you are when you’re trying so desperately to be loved. you can listen to your hurt, get to know all your moods, your tones, your inflections. you can explore the things that truly make you happy. and then you can pour and pour into yourself.

i’m not going to pretend that i’m doing this perfectly. i’m messy and i have so many moments of self-doubt. but damn, i’m trying ok? especially throughout the course of last year, i had to pour into myself like i would pour into someone else, because how else would i ever look at myself as worthy?

in the past, i recall a situation where i realized my needs weren’t being met. not because the other person didn’t want to, but because they just couldn’t. and now, i realize that that hurt so much more than it needed to because even i wasn’t meeting my own needs. i was pouring into them and not into myself. if i had loved myself enough, perhaps i could have held more space for them and for myself. i’m not saying stay in situations that don’t serve you, i’m saying love is a lot more intricate, a lot more profound.

is a person less deserving of love because they crave it but never receive it, never in the right amounts, never in the right way? is the lover who denies them one step away from being their “god”? why does the denier have the upper hand when love was never meant to break us? why have you begged love to fall from closed fists? these are unanswered thoughts and lingering questions.

i entered the new year very much in love, very much at peace with myself and very much taken care of. but i also entered it reminding myself of one singular truth: that i am my own lover first. love has often begged me to neglect that, because i knew no other way, because my emotions have always been a fire pit and i have jumped into it wholeheartedly. i have loved until i was ash. and the thing about ash is, there is very little to show for it afterwards. there’s only really greys and blacks—and the feel of silver between your thumbs.

my resolve is i must always love and pour into myself more. i must go to war for myself. and, anything that threatens that, i must let go of—even if it means losing people or things i love. i cannot love others into oblivion. i cannot hang on the edge of a precipice, praying someone else doesn’t let go.

i choose instead to not jump into the pit. i choose to step off the cliff, out of the dangling air, onto the safety of the land. i choose to look at the person on the other end, gaze down at the plummet below, and walk to a garden instead. i choose to grow lilies and mangoes and cuddle myself to sleep. i choose to love myself until it is the only truth i have ever known.

Abla gripped the letter and dropped it abruptly as she read the contents. A spark had set off a fire that now rested in her palms—hot and heavy. The words were not hard to understand, the church had written a reasonable size of a letter with deplorable reasons, but reasons nonetheless. Attached was the cheque of her tithe she had sent in a month ago—one she wrote as she sat at the edge of the bed, legs crossed, picking at the fingernails on her thumbs.

It had just rained, so when the okada rider showed up at her door and she held it open, a cool breeze wafted through the open space. He handed her a small envelope, said “here you go ma,” and was on his way. The edges were smooth, and Abla adjusted her boubou, trudged into the living room and sat on her couch. It faced the tall, wooden windows. Beyond them, a stretch of trees remained rustled by the ever-growing wind.

It was also six months since she had last seen Tobi, since he had arrived from what he said was work but appeared too flustered for that be true, since he pulled out a file from his beige briefcase—the one she had gotten him for their three year anniversary—and held onto it. She knew something was wrong instantly. It was in his farway look, his posture. It was also in the way he didn’t greet her when he walked through the door, didn’t shout “my wife!” Didn’t plant kisses on her neck, her cheeks, her hands. Instead, he fingered the file tentatively and handed it to her.

On the first page was a picture of her, shirtless, draped on the edge of Hafiz’s couch. Her blonde braids were tied up so they fell over her shoulders and she had the largest grin on her face. She remembered that day well. She and Hafiz had ordered lamb ramen and eaten it over the soft glow of Titanic and white wine. She was shirtless because she’d spilled a bit of the soup on her shirt and Hafiz had chanted “take it off!” until she did—which was why she was smiling so hard.

When he handed her the divorce papers, Tobi had said it was “that stupid smile ” that had irked him the most. On the second page were text messages, “i miss you,” “i wish you were here,” “what time will you be here today?” By the fourth page, Abla knew her marriage was over.

Abla had been surrounded her entire life by marriages that didn’t work. And, jarringly enough, she was also surrounded by people who stayed. Women who toughened it out, who trudged on despite the craziest circumstances! A cheating husband? The mistress had charmed him. A husband who used up all the savings to gamble? It was the devil, surely. She knew one woman whose husband was caught in bed with another man and yet the husband went about his business while she showed up everyday at church to light candles for their marriage. Abla had promised herself a long time ago that she would never be like those women. And now, she was not a woman who stayed but had somehow managed to transform herself into something more grotesque, something she despised—their incompetent spouses.

She took one last look at the cheque and began tearing it into several tiny pieces. And then she walked into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet but didn’t think it through, because now tiny pieces of paper floated in the bowl—tiny boats, forever waning and waxing, carried by the gentle currents of the water. The beginning of the letter was precise, “we seek an immediate ceasefire in all your activities pertaining to the church following the recent change in your situation.” By change in situation, they meant her infidelity and pending divorce. She thought it was the weirdest way to put it. Why beat around the bush when they all knew the nitty-gritty of the situation? Besides, what did sleeping with another man have to do with her ability to serve the church?

II

It was also only a couple of days ago that her phone had rang, a shrill monotone ringtone, so she knew immediately that it was Tobi. At first, she decided not to pick the call but did on the fifth ring. He didn’t say much, had just wanted to know how she was—which she felt was a weird thing to ask, anyway.

“Coping,” she had said, as though perhaps her infidelity was a sickness she was recovering from. The trees were still on this day, and the sun peaked through the glass of the windows. And then, Tobi asked if it was worth it and when she asked him what was worth it, he said “what you have with Hafiz over what you and I were building,” and she did not know how to tell him that it was worth all the pain and humiliation and more.

And in that moment, Abla thought of Hafiz, and the first time they met and the skies that day, yellow with splashes of pink, the sun slowly dipping into sunset. It was a Tuesday, because she remembered she had tennis with Atsupi. She remembered clinging to her racket and she remembered her head—hot and heavy because she and Tobi had just had a heated fight and he had flung his phone across the room and after, it lay on the floor—a broken, kaleidoscopic thing. And, they had both stared at it and then at each other and she had taken her tennis bag and left. She’d driven fifteen minutes to tennis, cursing under her breath for ten of those.

It also happened to be the day that Hafiz, new to Accra, parked his car right next to her. It was annoyingly the day they had mistakenly double-booked the court, so that she and Atsupi were now hunched over the front office desk trying to figure out how this could have happened when they had been playing tennis here for three months at the exact same time, every single week. And then, Hafiz and his friend had walked in, and Atsupi’s incessant arguing had merged with the blowing wind in some sort of symphony so that as she looked at Hafiz, he looked so fucking beautiful. And, for a moment, she forgot where she was and the heat on her cheek and the anger inside her had waxed and waned into something ethereal, something beautiful.

And, she remembered the feelings of guilt also—because these were things she had never felt for Tobi.

“Abla, are you still there?” She heard Tobi’s voice call against the static.

“I’m here.” She replied, but wasn’t.

Instead, her mind again drifted to Hafiz.

Things were easy with him. He knew she liked white wine, so he had two bottles in his fridge at all times. She’d mentioned she loved lilies, so he had a bunch sent to her office every, single week. They didn’t argue, because he had established early on that he hated that. Instead, they’d write their thoughts on sheets of paper and take turns reading. He didn’t ever raise his voice, he always opened her doors for her, always let her pick his food off the menu so she’d have two options, always slipped off her shoes when they got back to his place and gave her feet a gentle rub. He was a dream within a dream, and she loved him.

III

Things had threatened to unfurl between them, though, when she said she could not leave Tobi. It was a little past midnight and they lay in his bed staring out the open window. A single white curtain flirted in the breeze, cascading out the opening and shadowing against the night sky. He was stroking her hair, she was dancing her fingers on his chest. Tobi had been out of town for the past week, so she spent sometime between her house and Hafiz’s place. By now, she’d grown used to the deceit, it had a familiarity in her life that she wasn’t scared of anymore. So much so that she had a space in Hafiz’s closet brimming with her clothes, had a spare sponge in his shower, never bothered to pack skincare because he had all the things she needed.

The room grew quiet, the air around them seemed to still.

“I want you to be my wife,” Hafiz had said, finally.

She laughed a soft laugh, because she figured he must be joking, half expecting him to start laughing too. But then, he didn’t, and his chest didn’t move and there was only the silence. And, the silence gave way to the darkness, so now they both lay there—soft and still things, encased by the steady glow of the moonlight.

Abla felt a lump grow in her throat.

“Hafiz…” she started to say, but drifted off because she could sense his gaze on her, could feel his ragged breathing.

“I’m already married.” She said finally, softly enough that it sounded like a whisper, but loud enough that she made sure he heard.

Her fingers had now moved from drawing light circles on his chest to crescent shaped moons. In her mind, his body was a blanketed sky. He caught her hand and kissed it gently before slipping out of bed and fishing through his nightstand to find a cigarette that quickly made its way to his lips. He stood by the open window now, so that plumes of smoke danced excitedly around the room.

Hafiz looked so beautiful standing there—blanketed sky against night sky, crescent moons dipping into fading stars.

“Abla. Stop it. Please.”

He leaned against the windowpane and took one long drag of his cigarette. He was half pleading, half resigned—like a man standing on the edge of a precipice he was ready to jump off.

“Stop what?” She asked him, pulling the cloth over her body, suddenly feeling exposed.

“Stop pretending like you don’t have to make a choice babe, because you do. It’s me or him, not both of us. Not me when you want. Not me when you’re horny. Or when you’re confused. Or when you’re lonely.”

He took several puffs and motioned at the empty space between them,

“Stop running away from this Abla,” he continued,

“You say he’s the worst,” eyes locked into hers, “you don’t love him anymore, I’m the love of your life, your days are better with me. So, leave him.” 

She stared at him, he stared back.

“It’s not that simple, Hafiz.”

“Why?” One more drag of the cigarette.

“Because,” he said with a sigh, “I’m not enough for you? This isn’t enough?”

The cold air sifted across her skin, leaving trails where she wished his hands would be. There was some truth to it, but she couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t show weakness, couldn’t let him know that he was tearing through the barriers she’d erected around herself. For one, he was enough. He would always be enough. But, she could never be enough. Not for him, and not for Tobi.

“No, because we’ve both known and understood what this was. We’ve known since that afternoon on the tennis court.”

“You weren’t wearing your fucking ring,”

Abla scoffed. It was loud enough that he seemed startled, snapping his neck mid-drag to look at her.

“So that’s your excuse?” Her voice was laced with a mix of frustration and anger.

“That I wasn’t wearing my ring, so what? It wasn’t a secret, Hafiz. You knew I was married.”

“I knew yes, but you knew too. You’re the one who’s married not me. And yet you let this happen.”

He paced back and forth, the smoke from the cigarette coupled with the white curtain against the backdrop of the night sky made the scene almost cinematic. Maybe he was a blanketed sky, but she was a crackling fire. And, the smoke cannot reach the heavens.

She wanted to prove him wrong, to argue and say that she had wrestled against it—that she had tried to resist the way her body needed him, how her heart steadied in his presence. But, that would be a lie. She had waltzed into this alert, with her eyes wide open.

It was their first real fight, and it wasn’t even a fight, not really. And after, he sank into her and she screamed his name and the walls were ablaze—wildfire dimmed by rain from the crescent sky. She loved him so much. But, the thing about love is, it is rarely enough.

IV

“Abla?” Tobi had said again, his voice echoing in the silence.

She’d forgotten about him completely, forgotten they were on a call, forgotten they were going through a divorce. She sighed and muttered an uncertain “mhm.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Tobi was like this, calculated, asking questions he already knew the answers to. He knew her better than anyone. They had met on a rather dull day. She was seated in her literature class, and when she glanced to her right there was a boy, not her type, unassuming. Later, when he asked her what her name was, she knew he already knew.

“I don’t want to keep pouring kerosene on an open flame,” she said.

And she meant it.

V

Abla had torn up the letter, but not the envelope. She left that sitting on the coffee table, right next to her clock. She stared at it. At half past six, the tiny boats had sunk. At seven, Hafiz showed up at her door, dressed in her favorite black shirt of his that tightened at the biceps. He stood before her crossing his arms, smiling the most gorgeous smile she’d ever seen. Everyone says that lust as the basis of a relationship isn’t strong enough, isn’t sustainable enough. But for them it worked. For them it was the glue to a tower that was bound to eventually come apart, but beautifully. And what else mattered? How many endings were a supernova?

They sat together like old times, a bit awkward, like the unspoken things had wedged tiny gaps between them. She didn’t tell him about the letter, communication was lost and she was admittedly, embarrassed. Yet in the silences, he held her, brushed his fingers against her skin, kissed her. They gazed past her open window, at the swaying trees and the gentle city lights cascading in the night, observed the tiny cars with their tiny beams and the tiny people sitting inside—which they could barely see, anyway. Somewhere in between, the silence maneuvered to a halt.

“We both know we can’t keep doing this.”

He said it so simply, and his fingers were still brushing against her skin and he still smelled beautiful, still felt like the perfect man she had met all those months ago.

She nodded. There was a silent acceptance. She noticed it the second he walked through the door. It was in his gait. In the way he looked at her, in his eyes. She felt the tiny gaps divulge into valleys, into islands drifting apart—their own personal Pangaea.

She nodded again. There wasn’t much to say, he was so beautiful yet so distant. Something she wanted, but quickly realized she did not need.

Maybe the fire cackles into an inferno, but the smoke still cannot reach the heavens.

A lot of people find this ridiculous, apparently. It wasn’t uncommon to see a trail of think pieces after each new episode premiered.

“Why is Conrad so obsessed?”

“He’s a handsome medical student with a beach house (we apparently can never forget about that damn beach house). Why can’t he just move on?”

In my opinion, he should have—but not because I think Belly’s boring or not pretty enough, just because I think she could’ve treated him a little better.

I can’t help but feel like there’s a lot of projection going on with these discourses. As a woman, it feels like you can’t be loved if you’re not a specific set of things. Amy Dunne’s monologue in Gone Girl describes this perfectly. “Cool girl,” is a complex set of things and these things are why she is wanted and kept. The overarching idea is that you have to be anything but yourself to be loved—and this is so easy to embody.

I can understand why this is the case.

In a society that capitalises so much on making us perpetually uncomfortable in the natural state of our minds and bodies, it’s no shock that we feel we need to look and act a certain way in order to be treasured and valued by a man. The cost of male attention, it seems, has always been the relinquishing of one’s true self. And after, we have to fill the shell of ourselves with palatable things.

Like Belly, I’ve never been the loudest in the room, let alone the life of any party. In fact, I’m quite awkward myself, and I like having conversations in small bits. Yet sometimes, I’ll engage in a social setting, and you’d never know. It’s because I’ve gotten so used to masking. I never wanted to be the boring girl! So I’ve doused myself in the cost of what it means to be interesting.

It can feel a bit audition-y. I can discuss everything from Fermi’s Paradox to the symbolism in Frank Ocean’s music—things I’ve once been deeply invested in. But the truth? I’d rather not. And I’m learning that’s okay. In fact, in most social settings I want to just exist. I’m also okay with being the girl who doesn’t talk much—the girl who is shy and a little reserved. I’m okay with being the girl who is boring.

Many think that Belly Conklin is not interesting or pretty enough a character to have two men pining after her. But, that is precisely the point. It undoes the notion of what we’ve been told a woman who deserves love is like. In reality, you should not have to fight to be loved—no matter how boring or interesting you are, how conventionally pretty or not. I’m learning that existing is enough, and it’s so incredibly liberating

.

sundays feel like the lover you can’t let go of. like a warm hug, a mug of tea touching your lips, your parents playing their favorite 80s jams through stereo speakers. sundays are church, african print cloth, kebab/fanice/meat pie outside the chapel doors. sometimes, sundays are your mother’s oven-baked potatoes and chicken wafting through the house. by the time night peaks through the sky, the fading smell is an acknowledgement that it’ll all be over soon. it’s a hot shower after a long day, it’s the candles you light up after. but, it’s also the gut feeling that your relationship is over forever.

mondays are the ex you’d rather not see who you keep running into at parties because accra is small! you don’t enjoy it, but you brace for it. mondays are getting out of bed begrudgingly and cursing under your breath. you miss your sunday lover, but here you are—ready to do a whole damn week again. here you are (maybe) accepting that you will do the rest of your life without him.

then tuesdays come along, the guy you date after the playboy broke your heart. on tuesdays, you are already acquainted with loss. the weekend is too far for resolution so instead, you’re left with a quiet acceptance and a hefty sigh. you get out of bed less annoyed than you were the day before. you don’t love tuesdays, but maybe you don’t hate them?

wednesdays are when you realize you’d rather be alone than have a rando fill up the empty parts of you. on wednesdays, the full affliction of acceptance has been released onto you. you are transformed from a shell of yourself to a robot that loves routine. on wednesdays life is good again (almost).

thursdays come along and you crave a kiss or a touch. the weekend is basically tomorrow so you pick up your phone to hit playboy up. he says he misses you, he’d love to see you again. on thursdays, you feel the comfort of the impending week’s end, and the sigh you’ve been holding in quivers down your chest to the beat of something delectable.

fridays are the playboy you dated when you were going through a phase. you know he’s fleeting, but you kiss him anyway. he tastes like cigs and tequila. you dance in frontback until 2am, and maybe you kiss him more after, who knows? fridays are a bunch of messy decisions, shots, the burger joint outside the club, your friends screaming to the loud music, a hip sway, a lingering look.

saturdays are just you, single and content. no pressure, just a book in hand, a back pressed on a cool chair and a glass of juice. if you’re ghanaian, saturdays taste like fufu. saturdays are rest, your phone tucked away, a beach/pool/garden. maybe you look up from your beach chair, and maybe you catch a glimpse of sunday’s lover walking somewhere in the distance—the horizon glistens, the sun sets behind him. you see him alright, but don’t flag him down. that too can wait.

What does society define the “good” woman as?

The “good” woman is not too loud. She is a contortionist, twisting and bending herself to fit in any space and situation gracefully. She is chaste, untouched and the epitome of sexual purity. The good woman is an unattainable marital and maternal figure lauded over the head of every young girl. She is who you should strive to be, replicate and emulate. And sadly, the good woman exists because she is subservient to men, but angelically and with little outward complaint.

Good women have served society in what we have been made to believe is the balance of things—but what is just, in practice, a perfectly orchestrated system to keep women second to men.

What is the prize? Society assures you that it will be a good husband and family, respect and security.

The price you pay? Subservience and subjugation.

The “bad” woman?

She has tattoos, piercings and a kid out of wedlock. Or worse, she doesn’t want a kid at all. She is sexually liberated, loud and opinionated. The good woman is quiet, but the “bad” woman? She is flamboyant in all the worst ways. She is society’s worst nightmare, apparently.

She throws off the laughable balance generations of patriarchy have tried to establish and keep intact. This threatens them, because she is afforded liberties stemming from as early as the first suffrage movements to all branches of modern-day feminism. She is independent, doesn’t rely on men and is single-handedly responsible for the declining birth rates and ALL failing marriages.

His Only Wife

His Only Wife is a novel by Peace Adzo Medie that explores these ideas perfectly. Afi, the main character, enters an arranged marriage with a wealthy man. This marriage precipitates a slow, liberating undoing of self. The thing about Afi and her husband’s mistress, Muna, is that they fit perfectly into these two dichotomies. They stand, heads held up high, at two ends of the spectrum. Here they glance at each other in disdain. Each perceives herself to be wiser than the next. Each perceives herself the true winner. But in the end, there is no victor and neither is better off. Neither wins except Elikem, who gets to have them both with little consequence, accountability or blame.

For Afi, when she comes face to face with Muna, it is a manifestation of all her greatest fears. She has always been a specific set of things, and these things have finally landed her the ultimate position—she is a wife. Not only that, but a wife to a rich, important man. She has been raised for this moment. She cooks, she cleans, she preserves herself for marriage

But, Muna does none of these things (or so it seems). And yet, there she is—a physical embodiment of all the love Afi will never be able to totally receive from her husband. The painful truth is, Afi is not merely his wife—she is a pawn in a chess match far bigger than herself, in the bigger game of societal expectations versus personal want and need.

Her husband wants peace in his family, and she is the tool he uses to achieve it. She is the woman he will laud around, whose hand he will squeeze in public, who he will strut around with. She kneels to his family members, lets them go and come as they please, conforms to tradition. But, she is also the woman he will never truly love.

The Madonna-Whore Complex

This dynamic isn’t unique to Afi and Muna; it echoes a much older psychological split Freud once named. Freud argues that desire and duty cannot be conflated in the eyes of some men. Rather, they are compartmentalised. Where long-term partnership and duty are envisaged, sexual desire is traded off and cannot be directed towards the same partner. The whore is wanted, but ultimately, not respected. The Madonna is trophied, but too pure to be desired in the same way.

We see this theme run through several literary works. In Chimamanda’s Americanah, we see this when Obinze has the ultimate trophy wife, in that she is conventionally beautiful and performs her duties as a wife perfectly, yet throughout his marriage he longs for Ifemelu. We see this again in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes, when Ali jeopardises his marriage to be with Esi—despite his wife having sacrificed so much for him, despite her being the ideal, Muslim wife. Yet, he abandons his duties as a husband for a divorced, Christian woman with a child.

Like Ramatoulaye in Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter, the “Madonnas” did everything right. They followed the perfectly written rule book line by line. Yet, as Ramatoulaye came to bitterly realize, each was still at a huge loss.

Why do more men need to read feminist literature?

What Elikem loves more, more than he claims he loves both women, is his life. A life that is perfectly curated and mostly entirely on his terms. A design most women cannot afford. And, what disturbs me most is not just the emotional violence of it all—it’s the fact that Elikem genuinely believes he’s doing his best. That he is, in his mind, a good man. That he can love Muna and marry Afi and remain blameless.

This is precisely why more men need to read feminist literature. Not as an academic exercise. Not to impress women. But because the stories that feminist authors tell—particularly those written by Black women—reveal the inner architecture of a world many men have never had to question.

More men need to actively educate themselves on matters pertaining to women. It is not enough to keep engaging in baseless conversation fed by the same tired, online rhetoric. It is one thing to read and read and read and then disagree. It is another thing to be empty headed and uneducated. Baseless conversation happens with the latter. When active, educated conversation can be had then we’ll be ready to talk again.

Our Next Steps

Muna is supposedly the woman he truly loves, but even so he does not fully choose her. Even so, both women are loved sparsely but never wholly. Society poses these dichotomies to teach women how to land a husband and then, how to keep him. But I think it is time the conversation is changed, gearing young women’s minds towards self-actualisation, drive and passion. Only then can we truly be set free.

Also, the idea of a good/bad woman is outdated, and it is time to permanently sweep it under the rug. In fact, let’s burn it. It forces us into boxes that shouldn't even exist, we become a set of things from two separate baskets, but never a mix. The whore and Madonna should be able to exist in symphony, because sexuality isn’t impurity. Also, it’s cacophonous that women are shamed for showing sexuality yet are simultaneously expected to be sexually available to men. The ultimate woman is the woman who chooses herself, who doesn’t have her wants and needs dictated to her, exists not for the gratification of the role society has meted out to women for generations and centuries, but for herself.

When Afi finds out that Muna is not all the twisted things Eli’s family have said about her—that she is simply a woman who they cannot push around, in an act of defiance, she finally chooses herself and leaves. Even then, the pushback is massive. Afi, in everyone’s eyes, has been a good woman. But, the moment she wakes up from this patriarchal trance, she loses the privilege all those years of good behaviour have afforded her.

That is how fast patriarchy will turn on you.

In a patriarchal society, neither the good woman nor the bad woman wins. For one, the price is social castration, for the other—subservience for the rest of her life. Patriarchy assures you that a being a good woman has some unprecedented reward against being a bad woman, but most women find that this is rarely the case. Cooking, cleaning and being good in bed will not keep a husband, because a husband is not a thing to be kept—he is a mere human.

The modern woman is becoming more than her role to men, and that is the route that we need to continue to take and preserve for future generations of women.

And, we need to form stronger communities with each other. There needs to be more conversation about how misalliance with the wrong man/partner can change the trajectory of a woman’s life. Marriage needs to stop being advertised as some sort of ultimate goal that will solve all life’s problems when for most women, it is really the beginning of them. When most men don’t even count it in their life goals. They count money, cars, houses and children to continue their legacy but rarely ever marriage. It is merely something that is done in the midst of all those other things.

We need to be more focused on our personal lives, our goals, hobbies, friendships. We need to stop seeing female friendships as placeholders until marriage, as things we will no longer prioritise were the right man there to sweep us off our feet. Because history has proven over several centuries, generations and religions that falling in love with a man will be the bane of your existence.

Yet, here we are. Fiending. Wanting to be chosen. And, I want more for us.

Author’s Note:

While I acknowledge that romantic relationships and marriage can be deeply fulfilling for many women, that is not the focus of this essay. My critique is directed at the societal structures that confine women to these roles, not the women who choose them. Likewise, I do not condemn homemaking or domestic life—those are valid and meaningful choices when made freely, not out of obligation or expectation.

Yet, since these choices can never be made in a vacuum can women ever truly be free—truly have choice? That is a conversation for another day.

Also, it’s important to note that celibacy/abstinence/all choices women make pertaining to their bodies and sexuality are equally valid, liberating and empowering. A huge flaw of sex-positive feminism is that it does not emphasize this enough.

The ground is muddy and murky, soaked with the remnants of last night’s rain. It’s the beginning of October, I feel a sense of forced renewal. Right now, I’m deciding between gob3 or waakye for breakfast. My feet dig into the soil, my shoes emerge defiled. When I get to the food court, which is really just various shacks with a collection of food vendors, I feel a sense of “ahhhh finally.”

I have this feeling in my chest. It’s a tug that lingers when I know my life is about to change. I decide on gob3 and then squeeze onto a bench with two of my friends. When I look up, there’s a myriad of people scarfing down their food. Of particular interest to me is a man with a tall mountain of waakye and all the necessary accompaniments. I can’t blame him, life is difficult and good food is an “affordable” oasis. I start digging in, I scoop up a little beans (which is already perfectly mixed with gari and red oil) and a huge chunk of plantain. It’s a delectable mouthful.

The way we all eat in unison—hand to spoon, spoon to food, food to mouth—feels a bit ritualistic. But still, I’m so happy to be part of this small community of people nourishing themselves for the day ahead. It’s been a depressing last couple of days. But the thing about being Ghanaian is that I always feel like a part of something bigger than myself. And, little moments like this snap me out of my depression quickly. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, I’m glad to experience even a semblance of joy.

Two days ago I assisted in my first C-section. It was, well bloody. This first time, hands on experience was probably the peak of my medical school journey, or was supposed to be, but even now I feel so empty. I’ve stopped talking about my depression to anyone, because it always feels like I have to explain why. And I have no reasons. Just that everyday I wake up and my chest threatens to collapse in on itself. And that feeling constantly metamorphoses throughout the day—sometimes a tiny gnaw, sometimes an earthquake. I’ve resigned to the fact that nobody wants to hear about it, so I don’t talk about it. I talk about it in past tense, “I was depressed,” “I was suicidal.” But never that I am. (This isn’t a cry for help btw.)

Back to changes. December is approaching. Fast! Which is good, because it means I’ll get to see some of my favorite people again. My brain keeps circling around all the possible what nexts, though. Next year by this time my life wont be the same. And from hereon, nothing will. Everything moves forward. I’ve realized this as I’ve watched myself experience new seasons—loss, love, pain, sacrifice. And each thing changes me but I never return to my old self. I am a version of her, but never completely her.

Sometime during the meal I feel the urge to be alone. So, I excuse myself and sit in my car to finish off my food. It is where I sit as I write this now. I like who I am when I’m alone. It means I can sit burdened by my own thoughts, no pretence.

The sky is clearing up, the sun peaks through the clouds. Heat returns, so I turn on the AC. Cold air whirs past me immediately, I stare at the vents, fidget with them for a bit, put my head against the steering wheel and sigh.

Sometimes a sigh is enough.

yesterday i suddenly hated the way i looked. this is odd, because most days i try to love myself, even on the days when life is beating me up. but, it was one of those things. i had my gynaecology textbook open, i was strewn across my chair and there was a heaviness in my chest. i was writing notes on my iPad and then a thought flickered across my mind—fast, in the way that oppressive thoughts usually do. a thought that doesn’t want to be held onto is a thought that scurries quickly by, like this one.

well, i looked into the mirror and i hated my braids so i got a pair of scissors and cut them out. i’m always hyper aware and psychoanalytic of myself and my actions so immediately that happened, i wondered if i was on the brink of a breakdown. they were ten stitch breads that run along the length of my head, just the way i like them, and their removal felt cathartic—like the weight i’d been carrying on my shoulders suddenly decided to let go. then, i hated the way my brows looked. i’d been growing them out because i was bored of the shape and wanted to experiment but suddenly, that didn’t really matter. suddenly i was in my car, on my way to my eyebrow lady and still the heaviness sat still in my chest.

i’ve been battling with myself in the worst ways possible. it’s been a good year, a transformative year, i’ve learnt so much about myself. but it’s also been hard sometimes. sometimes you have to accept that ties with people you deeply cared about are permanently severed—sometimes you have to carry that loss intimately.

if i could grab myself by the hand and dance right now maybe we would waltz into temporary sleep states. i’ve been thinking about temporary sleep states a lot, temporary resting places for our souls. a girl is tired. and if there was a place i could slumber quietly for a year, not a thought in the world, i’d like to go there. but that wouldn’t solve anything would it? i’d wake up and i’d still be broken.

gosh, can a girl rest? i’ve had such a long week. usually my long week is sated by the hope of a mai tai touching my tongue on a friday, by light conversation with a friend or two. my hopes of a cute little cocktail this weekend and a lot of weekends from now have been stepped on by my upcoming exams. to make matters worse i have an important presentation tomorrow morning.

i’m tired, but i’m ok, i promise. still: heavy sigh.

update: presentation went quite well. it’s a bit hotter now than it’s been for the past couple weeks. on my drive home, i appreciated the ac blowing in my face. it felt like the sweetest thing in the world. not only that, but the skies were so blue and the drive was beautiful. now, i’m splayed on my bed about to catch some rest, and i’m feeling markedly happier than when i first picked up my laptop to write this.

there are wars we cannot fight. and you are one of them.
i resign, i resign, i resign

or is it surrender? i surrender to you, to your love.

ode to the woman i am also becoming,
i’ve worn my sexuality like a secret for so long
i’m not sure who i would have been
had i been allowed to wear her on my shoulder blades.
i grieve her.
ode to the women we had the potential of becoming, our true selves—
ode to the women we became instead

the love i owe her, it’s easier to give to you,
ode to the teenage me
who fought battles she didn’t deserve to fight
who keeps fighting everyday to forget
and has never forgotten.
i have never been deserving of a heartache that stops, apparently

a body is a body is a body is a gun
at some point, i could not tell the difference between my brain and a bullet—
i am a living, breathing thing
but i am also a ghost.

i’m at a wedding. i love love, truly. but what i love more than love is weddings! small, curated weddings. colorful, whimsical weddings—any type of wedding is a wedding i already adore. today, it’s green and white decor. it’s small chops and beer. it’s people in matching outfits. i’ll preface this by saying the obvious—i’m at a very ghanaian wedding.

there’s banku on the menu, obviously. but i cannot eat banku here? fuck, it’s such a personal meal.

sure, there’s several people with a ball mounted on their plates. sure, they’re digging into it with urgency. sure, there’s angelina playing, and sure, this feels like a unity of some sort. everyone is dancing—gyrating limbs, noses in the air, feet in a trance. marriages are almost like cults in that way. but still, i cannot eat banku here.

for banku to be a thing that i now crave feels like i am betraying my childhood self. that’s the thing about growth, it makes you loathe your former self. maybe loathe is a strong word, but i wish i could hug her. i wish i could look into her eyes and tell her what she’s missing. my childhood self hated banku because it was a terror on her freedom. it was a thing she was forced to eat. and when that terror subsided to angst, to subduement, to realizing that she had the best combination of food on her plate—it transitioned from terror to trance.

suddenly, she was contemplating her next meal and the only picture in her head was banku. soft, hot, dripping from her hands like “manicure” in the words of santi (internal laugh).

i am a woman rotating on herself. sometimes, i am more. sometimes i am less. still, i am a steady rotation. still, i am a gyration. still, there is a widening gyre and there i am, right in the middle.

the best bowl of banku i’ve eaten was in my village, nestled somewhere in the volta region in a low valley hidden beneath the gaze of sturdy mountains. it’d been a long drive there. my dad greeted us, the freezer overflowing with club beer and malt. i remember this because i am obsessed with malt. the air was cool and there was food laid out on the table. when i slapped the banku onto my plate, dished out the okro, sat down and looked at the precedence before me, gosh it felt like the best day of my life.

vico argued that time occurs more in cycles than it does linearly. maybe that is why we are such people of habit, it is why we repeat our greatest joys, inadequacies and fears. it is why i love eating banku, but cannot stand to eat it here. in the gyre, yeats proclaimed that the falcon could not hear the falconer’s call. that may just be a lie. because when my friends and i were on the beach one morning, before i heard them call that the banku was ready, i knew it was. the aroma had wafted onto that beach—i kid you not! maybe that was my falconer, and i heard it loud and clear.

it was my friend’s grandmother’s birthday so we were in saltpond, on the beach, hidden from the gentle, barely-there sun by coconut branches. we stared at the horizon. maybe something stirred within us, maybe it was the vody, maybe we were more than our deepest fears. still, we stared on. maybe in the glare of it all, lost things can be found. and after, when we ate, i knew that i here i was—a falcon, but found.

right now, i’m in the food line as i type this. and i know i will not engage in sacrilege today. i’ve settled on waakye, still a meal that i adore but one that isn’t degraded by the presence of others. i’m feeling very nostalgic, love will do that to you. i miss my own love, but i am surrounded by it here.

as i fork into the waakye, i feel a semblance of peace. there’s plain rice on the side—something i wouldn’t usually get but is admittedly delicious. i’ve found peace in the fact that i won’t have to dig my fingers into hot banku today. i won’t have to glide it across some pepper. and then, i won’t have to shove it into my mouth.

yellow church

t. and i matched on three dating apps. at the time, i had a weird obsession with those. i had been single for so long and my growing disinterest in men meant that while i didn’t mind casually talking to them i was irked by the idea of something long-term and stable. i used dating apps to sate my need for connection, all the while lying to myself that this said connection was something i didn’t want or need. we were friends/acquaintances prior to this & i guess we both found it hilarious. like, ei, you again?

eventually, we decided to hang out, just for laughs. we went to draszé, it was this cute bar in debrecen’s city center. it was freshly post-covid (or so we thought), and restrictions were easing up, so we sat outside, social-distanced and downed some drinks. he had a beer; i had a long island. i remember being so enamoured by a little handbag he carried around. we spoke about our exes, cults and extraterrestrial life. after, we sat on the stairs of the statue by yellow church and talked about everything and anything. i found out that he was a writer, too. it was such good convo (i’m a sucker for good convo). but being a sucker for good convo but not good texting means that sometimes moments, no matter how magical, are just moments. i was a lazy texter after that, and the budding, flowering friendship dwindled until he became another friend i’d see in city center on a night out.

mixer

i want to run back to the very beginning. the first time we met it was the first friday before the start of the semester. i’d just flown in from Ghana the day before. i had fresh blonde braids and had just moved into a new apartment. it was delectable, to say the least, because most of my friends lived on the same street. one of these friends was t. (a different t). at the time, we were only just getting closer when she told me about this party with some of her zimbabwean friends and so, we set off into city center that night, had a drink at an underground bar with heavy speakesy vibes, and then proceeded to the party.

i remember the night vividly, because i was wearing a neon bralette, a windbreaker and some shorts. i had a thing for bralettes back then. it was approaching the end of summer but it wasn’t cold, not yet. the party was a blur; there was a large fishbowl drink that kept being passed around. i met him for the first time that day. it was his birthday and he was drunk as hell. but gosh, the way he greeted me—you’d think i was his long lost friend. i remember a set of warm fairy lights in his apartment. and, i remember his hug—warm and engulfing.

a certain summer after

after, we’d see each other in passing (like i said, nights out in city center type of friends). so, it wasn’t until much later, much after our draszé date, that he became someone i saw more than on random nights out. he had the most down-to-earth friendship group. they were funny, loved to dance, socialise and were generally very good company. when i moved into a new apartment sometime down the line, they were there—at my moving-in party. we chilled at mine for a bit, then headed out into town. it was freshly summer, town was bustling and we rotated around the various bars and clubs in city center.

after

this story doesn’t have a happy ending, i’ll warn you now. sometime in between all this i became severely depressed. i remember t. had reached out with a book idea, he wanted us to work on it together but i was too deep down a depressive hole to consider it. i eventually moved back to Ghana to finish medical school there. and, we were back to being acquaintances.

sometimes he’d reach out and we would have brief conversation. sometimes i’d forget to reply, or he’d forget to reply and the conversation would fizzle out. the last time we spoke we didn’t even really speak. it was his birthday, and i’d reached out to wish him happy birthday. he didn’t reply. after that, he’d cross my mind occasionally.

after after

fast forward. it was the start of february. i remember it was during my community health rotation because i was with my friend, also t. (but not the same one), when i saw the news. i opened up instagram casually that day and a mutual had posted a picture of him. it said rest in peace. i remember thinking it must be some sort of joke or mistake. t. saw me go through all the stages of grief in a span of five minutes. i texted the girls’ group—did they know what was going on? was this true? it was true. later that day, a tonne more of our mutuals posted pictures. his high school posted a tribute. there was a vigil later that week.

i’m not sure how to end this because i’ve reached that point of when you’re writing a piece and you’ve poured and you’re exhausted. thinking of the events of that day, and surrounding this, is making me all the more exhausted. i remember that day i fell into a deep sleep with similar exhaustion. and when i woke up, it was all very real and true.

i remember thinking to myself: this can’t be it? this can’t be the end of his story? there was so much life to live, so much to do. he was only a couple steps away from completing his degree in pharmacy. i was heartbroken. i could not wrap my head around the fact that someone i knew—someone who was so full of life & such an interesting and unconventional character— was suddenly gone. in those moments, i remembered the little handbags he used to carry around, his eccentric outfits, the conversations we had that day outside of yellow church and thereafter. sometimes, in his memory, i play so high by doja & glitter by 070 shake — songs that he’d sent me. i remember one of the last times i saw him, my friend t. (a different t., also) had a party at a barbecue close to my apartment. after, he helped us put the leftovers in my fridge before we headed off into town. the last picture i have of us together is in the elevator of that building, smiling. when i think of him, i think of that smile immortalised in my mind.

after he passed, i reread our old messages. i chanced on his old story idea. it was a microcosm of some cults we’d spoken about. maybe one day, i’ll write his idea into reality. but for now, i hope he’s resting well and comfortably, my dear friend from yellow church.

author’s note

all the people mentioned in this piece actually have first names that start with t.

i abbreviated the names for anonymity and realized it at the end. i think it’s beautiful how they’re all connected, even from something as small as the first letter of their first names. shoutout to all the beautiful ts in the world.

I was in the shower ten minutes ago. As I let the warm water run down my body, I thought to myself—“how lucky am I to be able to take a shower whenever I want?” I am incredibly lucky. I’m lucky to have people who think about me sometimes, who send me an occasional text. And, even though I’m the worst at replying, I’m so lucky to have people in my life who send texts regardless.

I wish I were more sometimes. To acknowledge my shortfalls is also to acknowledge where I fail myself each time. A lot of the time, I’m caught between my want to do things and my inability to do them. I’m stuck in a seesaw that knows no balance, one side always wins. I’m damned.

But I’m so lucky! To wake up every day at 6 a.m. and to feel the cool air of the rainy season on my face, because it’s cold enough that I get to leave my windows wide open. I’m so lucky that I get to turn on my heater switch each day, and then I spend an extra thirty minutes in bed before I jump into the shower. I’m lucky that I get to have boiling hot water on my skin, that I get to do as long or as short a shower routine as I please. I’m grateful for sunscreen, that I get to put that on my face every single day.

I’m grateful that I pick out my outfit and jump hurriedly into my car and drive to whichever hospital my rotation is at. I’m grateful when I make it there in one piece, and when I park and throw on my lab coat, sling my stethoscope around my neck and brace myself for the morning and afternoon it’s about to be, I’m grateful for the gift of life. I’m grateful when I get to speak to patients. I feel the sigh of relief hug me every time I say “do I have your permission” and they say yes. I’m grateful for all the mothers, and fathers, who let me examine their children. I’m grateful that I know what I’m doing, and even in the times when I stutter in my movements, I’m grateful that God snaps me back.

I’m grateful for the day’s end, when my logbook is signed and I get to hop back into my car and drive home. I’m so SO grateful when there’s no traffic, because anyone who lives in Accra can surmise how annoying, frustrating and jarring that can be.

I’m so lucky to be able to drive home and dream about what I’m going to eat when I get there, and how my evening is about to pan out. I’m grateful for the shower I get to take. I’m lucky to yank off my scrubs (or whatever I’ve decided to wear that day) and I’m grateful I get to take that long, hot, luxurious shower. Today, I used some body scrub. It smelt so good that I was so grateful for that.

I’m so lucky that I get to open my paediatrics textbook and read the topic on my schedule. I’m grateful that I get to call my best-friend later on, and I get to hear about his long day (which is almost always the same btw, but it sounds so delectable each time). I’m grateful that we get to watch Netflix together. I’m grateful for when I drift off into sleep, when there’s the obsolete sweetness of life squirting on my tongue.

i’m filled with immense gratitude. when i’m at the edge of the ocean i know God exists. i feel Her so strongly here. what is a fishing boat to the distant galaxy, if not a faint glimmer of a star in the night sky? who will we become when we know we are nothing, when we breathe for ourselves instead of an audience that never truly existed?

the sun is beginning to disappear, my friend has pulled on a sweater. we carry on staring at the waves. fishing boats glaze the horizon, the sea continues to drag on, we stare on in internal soliloquy. it has become chilly—dawn goes down to day, day subsides into night, everything we think will happen has happened but nothing—as anticipated—remains the same. still. my feet dig into the sand, i feel the same warmth here as when i am in love. i miss so many people at once.

sometimes i recoil at the thought, there’s only so many ways you can grieve a thing before the tears taste like coconut water.

i wonder if the process of falling is inconsequential to when a body hits the ground. will the metaphorical act of watching myself dissipate in love mean that when i stretch out my hands to you, you will take it? hold my sweaty palms between your fingertips, sweep me up in a warm embrace, sway me into the soft glow of the lamp, into the embers of the night?

which comes first? the fall, or the ground? the ground, obviously.

but sometimes i catch myself in the middle of the fall, and i gaze at the ground, and being in love with you feels like preempting the ground — but being content with the free fall.

so, i ask again, if i stretched out my palms to you, if i begged you to take it, if you could see the free fall, if you could see the tarmac, if you could sense the inevitable, would you take it?

which comes first, the fall or the ground? the fall, obviously.

i don’t know when love became elusive. all i know is there is the fall, and there is the ground, and there is you in the middle — utterly and breathtakingly beautiful.

my favorite time of the day is right before midnight — when my room has a soft, orange hue and the world feels incredibly still. today, there’s a combination of ambient sounds fluttering from my laptop. i am calm, and i am at peace.

this is a musing about nothing in particular. i have nothing to say — nothing groundbreaking, nothing thought-provoking, nothing that dissects my inner thoughts. instead, i’m giving myself ten minutes to hop out of bed and take a quick shower. to brush my teeth, to slap on some body lotion, and then to come back to my cocoon — to cuddle in this safe space of mine and stare at the ceiling and pretend they are the stars, because the stars are limitless. maybe, in between all this, i’ll gaslight myself into climbing down the stairs and making some chamomile tea.

it’s eleven p.m., the lights are dim, the moon is a halo in the sky above. if you spread your hands out just evenly enough at this time, you may fly. not in a witchy way, but in an icarus way — in a i-want-to-taste-the-clouds-way, in a i want-to-touch-the-sun.

happenings in my life? not much. i started my psychiatry rotation today. and, i have an exam in ophthalmology at the end of the week.

i watched a cool video on fentanyl by kurzgesagt and it sated so many parts of my brain. the narration was amazing, the visuals were stunning and the message was strong. after, i had to go back to watching a visual field defects video and the comedown felt eerily similar to what the addiction video described: how it feels for your brain and your neuro-receptors to go from something you like to something you absolutely don’t. in my case, it was the switch of these videos; for opioid users, it is the drug and the comedown.

there’s only so many ways you can fly. maybe today you will be a bird, tomorrow a plane, on thursday a soothing river that gazes up at the skies but never takes a leap. it rushes on with the certainty of action but gazes at the skies and takes in the damnation of inaction. in a kafkaesque way, maybe we will be damned enough to fly in an ocean of sky. in a human way, maybe we never meant to fly. and maybe i don’t want to fly, maybe i want to swim.