The Inbetweeners

They say that you haven't failed, you've simply found one way that doesn't work. Or that Eddison said that "I haven't failed, I've just found 10000 ways that don't work." Or that neither success nor failure is final or fatal. Or, to bring it home, that failure is just part of your 'come up'. But I think we, if not I, gloss over the fact that failing at something feels shitty. Perhaps it's my depression talking, but failing at something is soul-crushing. Yet, when we look at the highlight reel of our lives, we view failure in light of what comes next (which is, hopefully, success). From a biological perspective, this makes sense. We tend to forget things that hurt after a while (for example, I have forgotten what it felt like to be burned by the oven whilst making chicken nuggets). But what happens when you are met with failure, after failure? What do you do when your failure begets more failure? To contextualise, a little bit about me...

Before I begin, I'd like to preface this post wit several notices; My keyboard is slowly dying on me, so certain keys don't work (in particular "g", "h" and the apostrophe symbol. In the editing process, I did try to fix what I could ( unsponsored shoutout to GRAMMARLY for being the OG ), but if I didn't et them all, please be understanding. Or you could have some fun with it, and pretend you're Maura from Love Island :)  Second, as you read this, try to be empathetic and understanding. Read it completely , then comment  with respect . 

I recently posted, what I thought to be a relatively benign, status on Facebook. It read; Condoms should be sold; sanitary pads should be given for free. Sex is a choice. Menstruation is not...young girls are suffering. I posted this because I had, recently, read an article in the Daily Nation that said that young girls are resorting to prostitution in order to be able to afford sanitary pads. Prostitution, for me, is not the issue. The issue lies in the absence of a state mechanism to help these girls get the resources they need and the ubiquity of those mechanisms worldwide. It lies in the general treatment of menstruation by social bodies (governments and doctors for example), which informs the absence of the necessary mechanisms.  Hence, the status spoke to me; because there was evidence of this suffering. Yet, soon after I posted this, two people raised the fact that one should not be provided, for free, at the expense of the other and that both are equally important. As...

Hello one and all! As I write this, I am 40,000 ft in the air as I fly back to University, numbed by the exhilaration and fear elicited by flying and a healthy gin and tonic, and I can’t help but reflect on the state of Christianity and Christian culture; particularly about the inheritance, into Christian culture, of certain notions about disenfranchised groups in society. Now, all this was brought on by a documentary series called The Ascent of Woman (available on Netflix and comes highly recommended by me). This documentary focuses more on the creation of “woman” as a social construct, than on her biological formation and I am thoroughly enjoying it. As I rewatch the first episode, titled Civilisation , an important point was raised; about how the women in Ancient Greece were treated as well as the women in Afghanistan at the height of the Taliban. With this treatment, social notions about the inferiority of women accompanied and justified this treatment. For those who weren’t...

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...

I've now been home for a week and what I like to do is catch up on the political situation. I don't like doing this when I'm away because most of what I read rarely reflects what the people I know feel about it. In an attempt to appeal to the masses, it is clothed in an awkward neutrality that fails to tap into the humanity of the shared political experience. Also, perhaps rather selfishly, I believe that if I don't see it, it hasn't happened (you are now free to depict me as an infant who has yet to understand object permanence). But, as I watch and read the news, both local and international, I'm aware of the same things I always have been; the preference and, perhaps troublingly, the deference shown by the international news sources and stories, and the condemnation of tribalism in African Politics. Now the former, I've grown used to, but the latter really bugs me. Simply because, it's treated as a uniquely African problem; particularly by t...

Can I just say something for a second, Why are these young ones in such a rush to grow up? I could answer that question for them, but the situation was different for "my generation". Though we were in a rush, we were spared growing up online from a very young age. We were at the genesis of social media, whilst they are living in the era of its popularity. Though the internet will remember some  of my mistakes, it will definitely remember all  of theirs. It is for this reason that the right to be forgotten has been codified in the new General Data Protection Regulation, or why, in the new Green Paper released by the British Government, greater efforts are being made to guarantee the internet safety of young users. But for me, it's not the fact that the internet will always remember, but that for many people, this is okay. Privacy is no longer positive, in that I have to let you in, but negative , in that you are already in and I tell you when,  and where, to stop. W...