26–07–2024.

right here, right now.

I think that the worst part of having a carryover in uni was beginning my career under Tinubu. At least with Buhari, boys still saw small change. This is absolutely ridiculous. I’d have laughed if I wasn’t buying eggs for ₦200.

Yesterday, I read all the birthday letters I have written, and it was funny seeing how I have complained for 6 straight years. When I started, I had just turned 19 and I woke up with the urge to really put my feelings on paper. It wasn’t something I intended to continue, but the tendency to pass across feelings – and complain has followed me since, getting stronger each year.

And so, as I sat down to write this, I wondered what feelings I should pass across. Obviously, this meant interrogating myself honestly to unearth what I am truly feeling and honestly? I feel old.

I know it’s a common joke – exaggerating your age to mourn the gradual progression of time and the “loss” of youth. But, I do feel old. My bones feel like water has washed over them for more years than I have lived, and it has made them hollow so that I hear the echo of time and experiences and pain in them every time I walk.

But, at this moment, at this table, I exist – right here, right now.

Gentle breeze flows in from the window and the standing fan carries it across the room. The sun is beginning to creep out of the sky bathing the fence outside in a warm light. I hear birds, although I cannot see them from here. I assume they’re perched somewhere on the fence, tittering in the barbed wire.

This is life – the constant interchange of light and sound that colours our existence, the collaboration between nature and the works of man’s hand. And right here, right now, it is playing out through me.

The work of my hand – capturing this moment, and documenting in real time – is borne of the work of my heart, designed to feel and marvel at all around me. I am a creature built to observe and to ponder upon my observations.

Right here, right now, I see it all as it is meant to be – me existing in nature, and feeling at peace with it.

Obviously, when the day sets in and activity and phone calls set in, this feeling will change and bend to fit in with the obligations of being human. But right here, right now, I am alive.

I sat at this table to really go in-depth about the past year and how it has been difficult, even the past month – the past week. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I feel grateful right now.

For birds, for football, for warm sunlight, for my friends, my family, my salary, for literature, for Bridgerton, for wireless mice, for music, for desire, for a heart that beats okay and feels too much, for the sensitivity that defines me, and guides me through it all.

For growing up, and becoming my own man, for my woman, for my path that hasn’t been straight but in whose curves I have found and lost pieces of myself, for word games and jigsaw puzzles, for a mind that has somehow found a way to keep going, for bluetooth technology, for the ability to pause, for pondering even though the haters can’t stand that I ponder, for this unintentional but reliable tenacity that keeps me going, and guides me through it all.

For this magical life I continue to conjure out of nothing, for the ability to complain, for the fact that the pills didn’t work and the knives weren’t sharp enough to end this – to end this moment, for the possibility of moments like this, for hugs, for kisses, for laughter, for winks, for my locs, for food, for the inside jokes that hold me and guide me through it all.

For metaphors, for similes, for onomatopoeia, for run-on sentences, for dashes, for commas that have kept this going, for language, for this gift of words, that defines me and guides me through it all.

For right here, for right now.

Happy birthday Oluchukwu. May each moment and memory carry you to the next.