The Inbetweeners

There's something incredibly ironic about my quest to embrace more parts of myself. As I become more comfortable with my mind, accepting the many ways I have limited my potential and forgiving myself for this gross lack of faith, I have not extended this same level of acceptance to my body.  I will not, and so far have not, allowed my body to change – as bodies are wont to do. My actions affirm that I'd rather be hungry, and anxious but thin, than healthy and happy but slightly bigger. My actions affirm my deeply ingrained fatphobia and hatred of fatness more than my words could ever condemn them. They show me that while I am closer to understanding myself, I am no closer to loving who I am today than I was several years ago. They expose my fears and my willingness to succumb to the suffocating familiarity of those fears, rather than risk the possibility of more rejection.   What's funny is that this – the level of control I exercise over my body – is new. Upon reflection...

I spent an hour doing nothing yesterday, and it was weird. Except, I wasn't really doing "nothing." I suppose it is a bit unfair of me to characterise my activities as "nothing" simply because they were not economically or personally productive. But that's what it felt like. The time I, unintentionally, took for myself yesterday, I spent observing the world around me. I basked in the sun. I played with dogs. I looked for shapes in the cloud. I mean, at one point, I was, literally, smelling the roses. And this is weird . It's been years since I took the time to simply be in my environment. And even longer since I allowed myself to respond to and appreciate that environment.  This permission came because I know I have the time. But also because I've been conscious about rethinking my patterns and my life. I'm trying to be more deliberate about identifying and communicating my needs. As well as more intentional about my leisure time. The result is...

How do you remedy a lifetime of self-neglect and denial? How do you stop minimising yourself and your accomplishments after decades of the very same? Put simply, how do you back yourself when you never learned how? I wish it were as simple as finding a new comic book or series to watch. I suppose, in many ways, it is.  At the very beginning of this journey, you shop around for a series that speaks to your values. You cut yourself some slack and allow yourself the grace of change and adaptation. After you've found what you're looking for, you take time to bask in the glow of your new love as you begin to invest in your relationship. You start to follow pages related to the content on social media, as well as specific stars themselves. You begin to research the origin and evolution of your content. You go about getting stuck in the fandom; joining subreddits and Twitter community spaces. At this point, you experience your first crisis of faith and navigate your way through this b...

I’ve been journaling, in an attempt to respond to my emotions, not merely react to them, and yesterday something weird happened. As I wrote down my prompt for the week - What do you love most about yourself? - I felt anxiety trickle down my spine. I didn’t understand why seven words could trigger fear and apprehension. But as I began to reflect on the question, my response justified itself. I could not think of a single thing I loved about myself. And in my silence, the question stared back at me in silent condemnation and, perhaps more unnervingly, gentle concern.  How could I, a 26-year-old, not know what I love most about myself?  Why could I only cite traits, memories and ambitions that my friends and loved ones loved about me?  Have I really spent that long shitting on myself, that I survive on external validation?  Good GOD, what would happen if that validation were to vanish? If I were to live life in a way those around me deemed unworthy, risky or, otherwise,...

In an attempt to justify, and perhaps excuse, the next 24 hours of non-productivity, I have decided to write a post. Almost in a stream-of-consciousness way. But instead of examining why I feel the need to earn relaxation, today I'm not entirely sure what I want to talk about. I could talk about pride, and how it holds us back. Pride makes us unwilling to ask for help, or admit mistakes. But, I don't want to.  I could talk about how we are the enemies of our own progress.  At some point in the last couple of days, I realised I am not the child I was. As a child, I was fearless. Not because I didn't understand failure, or hurt or pain. But because I decided life was worth living in spite of them. Yet, at some point, I lost this understanding of life and became a coward. At some point, I let someone tell me that life isn't worth the pain. Or perhaps that pain isn't worth life. And the result is present-day me: a woman who will never have it all because she is too ter...

Gosh. I really didn't think I'd be writing about this right now. Mainly because I thought we had more time. More time to live. More years to experience. Many more decades to make mistakes. Turns out, we only have 7 years . 2556.75 days before we cross the point of no return, and the damage we have done to our planet is irreversible. Just over 61,000 hours to accept the responsibility past generations have negligently left on our laps. 7 years. And given the current state of the world, I really wish I could believe we could forestall the inevitable. But I don't. We could barely get on the same page about a pandemic; a moment in human history when we knew what was expected of us. What hope do we have on getting on the same page about climate change, and what it takes to solve it? Especially when, perhaps, the most effective solution demands a complete disruption of our capitalistic society and its' drive for short-term profits over long-term sustainability. What hope do w...

Hello!  Guess who's back? ME! I've had a bit of a busy October; filled with emotional highs, nights I, literally, can't remember and depressing lows. There was one day when I experienced all three (which was great ). In that time, I wish I could say I gained insight or appreciation into my life; at least not the kind of insight I'm willing to immortalise on the public internet. Nor is it the kind of insight that is particularly new, novel or groundbreaking.  If anything, what I learned was the value of time and a break is just the space to think and figure things out. Not everyone has the privilege of this break; of knowing that they can afford to reflect, without it impacting their ability to pay bills or their ability to cope with the world. I barely afforded myself this privilege in October because it was forced upon me when I snapped. Even in that state of pure exhaustion, I did not have the time to think. I merely focused on recovering to the point of economic prod...

Today, I write to kill time.  It is August 9th 2022, and I am currently standing in line to cast my vote. Every step I take, brings me closer to passing judgement on our candidates. And, as a result, I have barely moved an inch. Almost as if the powers that he know they have performed poorly and wish to forestall such judgement. In fact, my line has gotten longer somehow. So I write in an attempt to redirect my frustration and kill time. And today, I will be writing about purpose and voting. But not on the purpose, or necessity, of voting. On Voting : Voting is messy. Not the act of casting a ballot, but everything leading up to it. Procuring the election technology, establishing the guidelines, enduring campaign seasons, waiting in line and hoping to God the register has your details. Consequently, voting is a lot of work. Perhaps even a thankless task. Simply because every voter knows that my vote will not oblige my representative to act a certain way. Nor will it determine the o...

Anxiety is the reason I re-write a sentence a million times over; eventually abandoning my thoughts in favour of carefully managed silence;  I jump from thought to thought; afraid to commit to one out of fear that it will bind me.  I stare out at nothing, while every possibility, every fear, every hope flits through the open road of my subconsciouness, all at once in a chaotic sequence of order. I shut down when asked how I really am; because how can I unleash the flood of emotion on an unsuspecting innocent? How can I ask them to take on a burden I have neglected? How can I demand more of them, than I am willing to give myself? I can't believe in myself; why should I when there is always someone better than me, faster than me, smarter than me, more capable than me. Anxiety is the reason why I will never be enough, not even for myself.  I find comfort in sameness, routine and predictability; Anxiety is the reason why the search for these things defines my life. Anxiety is...

  To be honest, this week has been a bit of a blur and of perfectly warranted anxieties. To extract what I have learned would be like wiping crude oil off a bird's wings. But I will try? Delivery matters. I listened to two people delivering the exact same speech and was reminded of the difference between communicating a speech and merely saying it. The former conveys the implicit meaning the words attempt to capture, while the latter expected the words to stand on their own merit. I know this to be true, for music because it is something I struggle with. Due to my perfectionism, I want the presentation to be technically perfect, forgetting that the purpose of music is to express the spirit, not just communicate the text. This is a lesson I keep forgetting, so it was nice to be reminded. I am not where I want to be. Not who I want to be. But equally, not so far removed from that ideal that I feel pressured to change substantively. The dissonance between my ideal and reality is, rat...

I have been thinking about this particular subject for a while. In a move ridiculously characteristic of me, I was reluctant to start because of the implications of whatever conclusions I drew would say about me. But as there is no wifi, and this is on my to-do list, let’s begin, shall we? There’s an episode of the TV show, Girlfriends, in which one of the titular girlfriends, Toni, rejects a man with darker skin. This man was her type to a T - sinfully wealthy, but she rejected him. When asked why, she said that she didn’t want to have kids darker than her, because they would have it worse than her. Implicit in her argument was that the best thing she could do for her future children, the best thing she could pass on was lighter skin. This got me thinking; is that truly the best thing she could have passed on to her children to ensure their success? While the answer is no, it’s more complicated than that. It’s no secret that people of colour with lighter skin  have it easier. Pas...

 Here's what I learned this week; Intelligence is a muscle that needs to be trained, exercised and challenged. Unfortunately, I have not been directly doing so. Yes, when I watch the, more than, occasional commentary video I am training my intelligence, much like the walk to work can, technically, be counted as exercise. But the primary purpose of that consumption is entertainment, not education. So, I need to be more intentional in training my intelligence. From next week, I'll end these posts with a commentary on what I learned from a paper I read, a documentary I watched or podcast I listened to. I hate, absolutely fucking hate, the idea that African nations were given democracy. We were not given democracy, we fought for it. We bled for it. We die for it. It was not a gift from the colonisers, who set up their colonies for their political and capital interests, not for democracy. No one has ever been given democracy. Even the Americans, the self-proclaimed bastions of democ...

Happy New Year! Let's talk about some lessons, shall we? I often find myself wishing for a reset button. Or the ability to make multiple clones of myself so that they could live out every option, take every path I was availed. Or the knowledge of all Aileen's in all the universes. I figure, it's the only way to make sure I don't make a mistake. To guarantee that I have "NO RAGRETS" by the end of my life. But this often means when I reflect on my life and the choices I have made, I focus on what could have been and yearn to return to the moment I made the choice to choose differently. Which means, I don't know how to live with, and move on from, my mistakes. I dwell on how I should have never made them in the first place. For example, when I make a mistake in an essay, I start again. I don't salvage, I burn and begin anew. But that doesn't work with life. I wish it did.

NB: this was written as a stream of consciousness, so I apologise if some bits are repetitive or slightly incoherent. I didn't edit it too much because I wanted the aforementioned structure to shine through.

I don't think of myself as an "angry person."  I can barely remember instances of pure unadulterated anger at a situation or a person. I struggle to maintain anger as an emotion - as it often turns into sadness. I set the threshold for my anger far too high (i.e. anger is only acceptable if someone I care about is hurt, or dies etc.) Above all else, I have never, ever, felt that I was allowed to be angry .  When my dad died, my anger was chastised and excised out of me, and replaced with fantastic petulance. When I was wronged, I was always reminded to be more empathetic and reserve judgement until I could speak to the other person. When I saw individuals using their class or race privilege in Africa, I was simply told it's not worth it. You could look at these anecdotes and think that the people around me were trying to teach me to let go of my anger and empathise with the recipient of that anger (an oft-ignored aspect of criminal justice, in my opinion). I don'...

July 25th As I write this, I am trying hard not to panic about my day ahead or, failing that, trying not to succumb to the panic and spend all day in bed. I am anxious because I have no plan, nor do I have the balls to do the difficult work of trying to make a plan. This is not to say that I don't know what I want out of life (which is another issue altogether), but rather that I don't know how to get there. A part of me hopes that this is a part of life and that not all who wander are lost, but I am a person that likes knowing what is next. I've always taken the next step, k nowing that there is a step to be taken.  Now, I can't see the step and I have no idea where I am going.  I know I want success, but I don't know why I want it for myself because every time I do well in something, I immediately feel like I don't deserve it or like a mistake was made. I know I want to be strong, determined and tenacious. I know I want to be assertive and I know that I need t...

I can't remember what it feels like to imagine. I am not sure I have ever had an imaginary friend, nor have I ever attempted to picture or dream something (or someone) outside the realm of what actually exists (put simply, whatever I can imagine now generally obeys the laws of nature). I don't know when that happened, but I am sure that I struggle with imagination. Now, this is not to say that I have aphantasia, the inability to conjure up a mental image, because I can, when asked, basically  picture an orange or a rainbow. Remember, my imagination obeys the rules of nature, so I have  But rather that, I struggle with the more creative, aspirational or abstract elements of the imaginative practice. I think I struggle with it because I lack faith in my own visions. In a "Tinkerbell-ian" sense - i.e. I do not believe and, therefore, I cannot fly. At some point, I adopted a mindset inclined to value what I could assert what was real to others, not what could be real for...

Hello! I'm back and this time, I will attempt to be less melodramatic and more reflective (or in the very least, inject melodrama into my reflections or vice verse).  Clearly, when I, last, wrote about my failures, I was hurting. Truth be told, I've never been rejected from anything before. Like Ariana Grande, "I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it." Not because I was spoiled though. Some of it was sheer dumb luck. Some of it was using my belief that if someone told me why they said no, we could work on the objections together to propel me towards the eventual 'yes'. But, truthfully, most of it was cowardice. I never asked for anything or tried anything that even hinted at failure. As such, I never learned how to believe in myself, never learned to back myself and, relevantly here, never learned how to pick myself back up. A perfect example of this would be my past romantic entanglements; I never, explicitly , showed interest in a potential partne...

Do I seem like the type of person that you can easily walk all over? Like the type of person whose purpose in life is to be used; to be a springboard for others in preparation for bigger and greater things? Do I seem like the type of person unworthy of genuine affection? Be it by my own hand, or an inability to recognise and relate to my brand of humanity? Perhaps I am being a bit, melodramatic reader. Don't you think? What could have led to this harrowing portrayal of sadness you ask? Well, dear friend... good ol' fashion, character-building rejection. See, most people take rejection a lot easier than I ever will or ever could. For me rejection is a mark upon my conscience; it signals to me that I am not wanted and it feeds into my pathological insecurities. Especially when the rejection comes in the wake of emotional vulnerability and honesty, which is a rare colour on me.  Rejection tells me that it's better to be silent than to be vocal about how y...