Living alone diaries #3; Family talk, Peaceful days, and Psychedelics.

Hey guys,

If you’ve read the past two journal entries, I just want to say I love you and you make my heart full.

Anyways, today was a work out day — leg day, to be specific — so I did that, showered, ate and all that. I’d planned that after breakfast I would go and get the stuff I ordered from Jumia, because they sent me a text that my items are at the pick-up location (not door delivery because where I live is kind of hard to describe), but in typical Jos fashion, it’s raining.

So fun and cool.

Now I’m sat in bed writing this.

I’m going to Lagos soon for Eid, and I’m kind of dreading that whole experience. I have a large, dispersed family and as I said in the last entry, we aren’t really close or anything of the sort, that coupled with the exhaustive respectability politics (I’m Yoruba btw) and hyper religiosity of my family makes going home, especially to Lagos (where I’m actually from), more of a huge chore than a relief.

Aren’t you supposed to be excited to go home?

I think the last time I was excited to go home was primary school, not even kidding.

Navigating such a large family is majorly exhausting; there’s mother and father and stepmothers and step siblings and siblings and aunties and uncles and all the other relatives that pretend to like you when they see you (even though they don’t even know your name and couldn’t be bothered to try), but really, they’re just waiting for father to reach his hand into his purse.

Since becoming irreligious my relationship with my family has gotten worse.

Now, they don’t know I’m irreligious (don’t tell them), because that would be a whole other can of worms, I’m not ready to open, but having to pretend to pray and go through religious ceremonies is the most exhausting thing.

2020 lockdown was horrific for me because of this very reason.

Maybe I’ll go in-depth into my spirituality in another journal entry, would that be interesting?

No turning back now though, Father has already sent the booking confirmations for my flights.

And with how the prices of airfare have gone up, I’d feel horrible letting the tickets go to waste.

Lmfao, like I have a choice.

Just read everything I’ve written now and damn, there’s almost no cohesion.

Anyways this is not a book so I don’t really care.

Family, especially for Nigerian Gen Z, can be tricky.

I think this is mostly due to the gaping generational divide and the exponential growth of the world itself. Unfortunately, a lot of Africa is still under developed, and for a generation that is so connected, where it’s so easy to see how life is in other, more developed countries, it’s doubly frustrating for us to have to endure blatant underdevelopment.

The world is so globalized now that it’s easy to reach out on the internet and find a tribe of people who have the same ideals and standards you do, thus, the concept of family is widening beyond blood and marriage; people are coming to realize that family, much like gender and community, is a social construct — you can choose your family.

I feel like everyone in my generation is so awake, there’s just a lot of things we won’t overlook anymore, one of them is abuse from family. We see now that just because you’re my blood, does not make you my family.

I am definitely one of those people.

My family has never really felt like a family at all; mommy and daddy gave birth to us. End.

It’s never been a reassuring word to me (when referring to my blood relatives), and to be honest, I don’t really know what that feels like.

I think this is the reason I’ve decided never to get married or have kids. Because when I think of these things, I feel nothing (plus, children really irritate me).

Why am I bringing a child into this world when I don’t want one? Why would I get married when I can simply love someone and they’d love me back and we’d be alright?

Although, the not getting married part of this does stem from watching my parents’ marriage over the years.

Again, a story for another day, hm.

Its Thursday now.

I think the peace that comes with living alone is arguably the most gratifying aspect of the whole thing. Coming from a home where, if my father didn’t see any of the children for point-two seconds, he’d start raving about how we were all lazy and slow and slept too much, and where there was always some lengthy and serious prayer the cleric recommended we do at some annoying hour, or my Mother calling for an odd chore, my only respite used to be nighttime. That was the only time where I could hole up in my room and read a book or comfortably use my phone, without feeling guilt, and ignore my Father’s incessant ringing of the bell (In true royal fashion, he’d bought a little electric door bell and had us hang up the speaker in front of the children’s part of the house, in his words; “I can’t be shouting, and I will never come to your rooms to call you physically, that is beneath me”).

I digress.

The joy of living alone is having your time to yourself; waking up when you want to, planning and structuring your day and activities how you want to — planning is obviously a big thing for me, if you hadn’t noticed — and let me tell you, it is glorious.

This kind of peace is the reason I didn’t take my father up on his offer to “influence” my youth service placement; being at home feels about as comfortable as chewing rusty nails and sipping cement, so I decided to take my chances to get as far away from my family as I could.

And it worked.

Take this as your sign to do that thing you’ve been wanting to do, no matter how out of your comfort zone its is, no matter how scary it seems. Worst case scenario, you will cry and wipe your tears.

Anyways,

I just finished this beautiful romance novel, it’s called ‘Sugar Daddy’ by Lisa Kleypas.

It’s a beautiful book; Lisa has a comforting, lilting way with words.

Contrary to the title, its not raunchy or overtly sexual or anything.

Read it.

I kind of fell off reading romance novels, not for any particular reason, but for the past few months I’ve been consumed with psychological thrillers and the likes. Dan Brown and James Patterson have kept me awake a lot, bless them. So, when my friend sent me three romance novels, I decided to give one a whirl.

Romance novels are the major reason I decided I love writing.

I used to steal my mothers (quite adult, hm) romance novels. They were Harlequin Candlelit Romances — that was what the series was called — and they enthralled me like nothing else, then I fell in absolute love and adoration of the Twilight saga, omo, I was as spell bound to the series as main character Bella was to vampire love interest Edward, and as I read more and more, I realized that I saw a lot of my character in Bella’s; her constant anxiety about how people around her felt, her love of literature, her preference for solitude, her quiet self-containment.

Safe to say, I was hooked.

And I actually still am, I can’t even lie. I go back and read either twilight (the first book) or new moon (the second) sometimes because — I’ve almost memorized the words — sometimes, reading an old book you love is like meeting a good friend for coffee. There’s a comfort there.

Books have always had such sentimental value to me.

I think, when I actually get a house, one of the first things I’ll do is stock a library.

Unrelated, but this week I think I’ve over spent my budget slightly, but its almost the end of the week already, so I’m not too bothered about that.

It feels like this month is incredibly long but also very short, I don’t know how to describe it. Crazy.

Anyways, I’m not sure ill have anything else to write before I publish this on Monday, so I think I’ll sign off here.

I’d rate this week a mediocre six out of ten. I don’t really mind that, actually.

As long as I’m not having a mental break of any sort and I’m eating, I’m good.

Okay hey guys little intermission here before the end; I had the worst MJ trip of my life yesterday (this intermission is being written on Monday, the day I'm also posting this). Keep in mind that MJ and I have been friends for a while now, but yesterday, I don’t even know what happened. Felt like I was going into cardiac arrest while having a panic attack.

Omo.

I love how I’m just here on the internet admitting this when I could quite literally get @rr#$t#d.

Lovely stuff.

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