Something Light: Not Really
When I started the last piece, I was gonna go deep and shed some weight. I ran out of time. I had been wrestling with the idea for a few weeks now. I think the thought initially hit me late at night then I forced myself to sleep. I think I had a nightmare and woke up in the middle of the night. I woke up to record a voice note about it and sent it to my mom.
I had to search 6 different keywords just to find that picture in Unsplash.
- Mom and son — no black ones
- african mom and son — mixed parents showed up
- Nigerian mom and son — nothing Nigerian
- African mom — nada
- Nigerian mom — nada
- black mom — TADA!
I promised to return to plow this ground, so here we are.
My mom is awesome.
If you can find a picture of a happy, content person running through memories of deep-felt love. That is me right now.
When I think of my mom, I don't have searing affection. I don't feel a whirlwind of emotions overtaking me. In fact, this part might shock you to read.
If my mom died today, I would not miss her.
Let’s park here for a second.
I say things that shock people but I don't say them for attention. I don't say them because I am trying to be extreme.
I take great care in being precise when I use words to articulate my thoughts. My goal is not to make sense to anyone. It is simply to x-ray the object or ball of thought that my subconscious is downloading in real-time.
I use words to paint what I receive and stick to the words that more accurately capture that thing, that inspiration, that idea, that feeling, that thunderbolt, that experience.
Of course, I don't want my mom dead.
Of course, I will miss my mom.
Of course, it's very morbid even processing things like this.
Of course, I am not trying to invite loss or death.
My father’s mother just passed away a few months ago.
She was just buried less than a week ago.
So no, I am not entertaining my mom’s death. I hope and pray and desire she lives long and a full life.
“I love my mom more than life itself.”
My mom and I talk on average once a month. Sometimes we talk more often than that depending on the season but generally, they are infrequent deep thoughtful updates.
I hear from my mom every day. As the good content queen that she is, her WhatsApp is more active than Barack Obama’s wife. She is leads a community of holistic health people. She is deeply spiritual and shares things she encounters in her life sojourn frequently.
As far as one-on-one conversation, we don't talk often. She has 5 kids, 6 including my half-sister who she loves as her own. We are all over the world, in time zones, and a very busy life. She is in the last months of her career before a forced retirement as a hospital administrator.
All that really to say, when I share something with my mom. It is usually important. It's usually, drop everything mom and pray with me. Drop everything and process this with me. Pray on this and schedule your next check-in with your boy because we are due.
I generally don't call her. At one point, I tried getting into a rhythm and schedule with her that I have with my dad and it was just painfully frustrating. So I just waited for her to call me. She is one of the few people in my life who when that call comes through from her, I know what time it is.
HAHAHAHAHA!
When my mom calls, it's like the universe is telling me it's time for my deep cleanse or ear wax. Because she will check my spiritual pulse, check my physical pulse, check my emotional pulse. She does it without making me feel like I am sitting in her doctor’s office.
It's a beautiful thing to talk to my mom. She is the one person in the entire world who knows me better than I know myself. She is so cute when my mom needs money. She doesn't know how to ask. It's one of the cutest things.
Let me digress real quick.
Momsy needs money right?
But momsy also doesn't have a long time to talk because she has to be at work or has to go pray etc.
So she calls knowing we have a lot to catch up on.
I can always hear her struggling between checking in on her son whom she wants to talk to and presenting her predicament without directly asking me for money.
I would give up so much just to walk in my mom’s shoes and understand how she became who she is. She has dealt with a lot of trauma and she just gracefully wakes up every day full of love and ready to take on the day.
Somehow, she arrived in this space where she only asks God for money; and she lets God move people and things to align for her favor. I can always tell when she is in one of those situations that she is trusting God but feeling the need to nudge God’s people to come through.
I usually just listen and let her make her no case and then do the needful.
She knows me.
She is like that best friend that doesn't need maintenance. We pick it right up every time. There is a deep understanding and a deep affection. Her love language and mine are so fitting. She knows how to love me and I know how to love her. I think she is the one that allowed me to accept that love doesn't need attention.
The people I love the most in my life, I don't talk to them often but I will give my life for them. I have struggled with that over the years but I have come to terms with it.
“To love you is to take you for granted.”
Please! Dont go blaming my mom for why I am messed up! HEHEHEHE… I am working on it.
The reason I wont miss her is simply because she is not in my schedule. I dont have any triggers to call her. She is not in my routine, I could go a year without thinking of calling her because I have delegated the initiation of communication to her.
But, the day I need to talk to her or the day I have a dream like I did or the day I want her praying of covering or the day I want to tell her that I found my wife… Fill in the blanks. I will break down and lose my ability to function.
I just process loss differently.
My life is so regimented and routine, its ridiculous.
I wake up and I am 27.
I wake up and I am 35.
The Scoop.
I want to talk about something different from ass and female attention and wife.
I want to talk about something funny.
I want to write about happiness and good news.
But this is not fiction.
I was thinking about my marriage the other day. Infact, I have thought about it a few times.
The overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude.
I see myself crying.
Even now, I feel tears in my eyes welling up.
I don't really cry. It is something of a gift, I have prayed for.
So you can imagine how moving this thought is for me.
Because it will be a day when I am walking out amongst people that I love. People that I grew up with.
People that exposed me to adulthood.
People that made me an adult.
People that I have read my dark thoughts.
People who see me for who I am.
People coming to celebrate a day that today feels like will never come.
People who know the miracle it is to have such a day.
From here, my marriage day feels like a barren woman giving birth.
It feels impossible that someone will know these things about me and choose to spend the rest of their lives with me.
It's like Beauty and the Beast. I’m not sure who will be the Beauty and who will be the Beast hehe.
Anyway, I recorded the voice note and it took me many days to sit down and begin to write. If I am being totally honest, I ran away from writing it. I have had a few thoughts like it since my previous last post where it is a deep inspiration or idea or reality but either the consequence or the sheer disgust of looking into that particular mirror.
One of my mentors yesterday asked me… when are you going to write. Go sit down and write for 30 minutes and if nothing comes out so be it.
As soon as he said it, I was in between getting ready for a basketball league game. I knew I wouldn't have time to flesh it all out but started writing.
I had to go but I am glad that I did.
I really don't know where I am going with this one but I repeated the exercise. Sit down and write. Sit down and deliver to yourself on the promise to sow into that fertile land.
Speaking Love to Hate.
Dolapo, hate is a very strong word.
It is a word that I ideally do not want you to use to describe yourself.
Dolapo, Its important that you separate the stories you tell yourself from the truth.
The truth is… I’d rather you hate yourself that you are indifferent.
But I’d prefer you dont hate yourself.
i’d prefer you direct your hate with precision.
Hate the parts of you that you want to improve.
Hate how you treat people that love you romantically.
Hate the parts of you that have knotted and swollen.
The parts that are like blood clots in the way of your progress.
The parts that are pegged to memories that are buried deep down yet pulling strings very evident in the way you act.
I want you to have hate.
To hate medicority and everywhere in you that you have settled for what is available.
I want you to hate the things you do that are less than the best version of you.
I want you to hate the fact that you bite your nails.
I want you to hate the addictions that have once taken over your life.
I want you to hate the way you sometimes allow your dick make decisions that your soul will regret.
You can hate these… you can hate even more things about you.
You can hate the way you do not invest time into those you love.
You can hate the fact that you do not call your mother often.
You can hate the fact that your relationships with your siblings are cold and distant.
You can hate the fact that you feel a certainty that you were made for more, more impact on lives yet you feel like most of your days are spent earning a living to barely survive.
You can hate the fact that you are almost the same age when your dad married for the second time and you are yet to find love.
You can hate things about yourself, you can hate facts about yourself, you can hate behaviors that you exhibit.
“But like love is a choice, hate also is. Dont choose hate of YOU.”
When love was chosen.
The beauty of love, the beauty of deep love, the beauty of love that lasts is the presence, the evidence of hate.
“Love that has no reason to hate is not worth dying for. I choose to love myself even in the face of things that I hate about myself.”
Shout out to Skila — you know who you are. He said and I excerpt:
I must say though, that it really is simple (not easy) to not self sabotage as @Emil Ovbiagele has stated.
Choose to Love yourself, and I’ll start by reframing the approach and relabelling some of the things you tag on to yourself.
Like — I hate myself. You do not. At least, I get no indication that this is the case in your very specific context, given the little I know.
Say it long enough and you’ll not only see things you hate, but actually believe it true.
God forbid!
Selah