THE RISING OF THE PHOENIX

DEPRESSION

If home is where the heart is, where do we go when we can’t go home? I posted this on my WhatsApp status sometime ago and Doris my best friend replied and said “You wander.” I paused for a minute to think about it, about what I do whenever I can’t go ‘home’. I realized that I have been wandering and settling and losing and starting the cycle over. I just wasn’t self-conscious about it. I have had my own fair share of wandering—wandering and searching for something, someone, anything, as long as I could have them to call my home, because I have been lost, abandoned, rejected, forgotten and couldn’t go to the place where my heart is, my home.

In my phases of lost and wandering, I had a direction, I didn’t know where I was heading but I knew what I was leaving, I knew who was not accepting me, I knew why I was stranded. I have always had some sort of bearings to my emotions until May.

May 2022

I woke up one morning and it felt as if my joy had ousted from my soul, and the fort which held me together had dissipated into thin air. My sanity came crumbling down and for the first time, I was lost without a sense of awareness. I couldn’t place a finger on why I felt so much grief and sorrow. I would cry day and night because my soul was grieving something—I didn’t know what! Tragic urh?

In May I thought about this a lot. I thought about all the days I wandered, because my home wasn’t receptive of me.

Darkness walked into my life and took a seat, that depression was so dense that even my coping mechanisms became worthless. What is a living thing without a coping mechanism? Especially in this crazy world we live in. I became a living dead. It is one thing to be dead and another to be dead while alive. The latter, is not a thing I’d wish for anyone, not even upon my worst foes. Somewhere between my mind and my heart was an empty ocean, sterile and completely bereft of life. I had no grain of light left inside of me, I was ready to leave, I was terrified of the raging silence that stood still beside me at night, I was frightened but mostly of my own self.

I found comfort in the dark and in my sleep. On nights I could not sleep, I stayed up, completely futile and watched the night while away in its lull gentleness. Some nights, I wrestled with myself to keep me here.

A memory of fear

I have a memory of my grandfather and his wife (my father’s step-mom) beating the life out of me. His wife after wrestling with me on the floor and had planted multiple slaps on my face, instructed my grandfather to go for the machete, they laid me on my uncle’s Carpenter’s bench and held me bound, after spanking my behind for a considerable amount of times. I head my grandfather say “this is the time to kill her”. Out of panic I raised my head and saw my grandfather hold the machete up, waiting for only God knows when to finally execute me. I remember a teacher from the school near our house come to my rescue. My childish mind could not fathom the idea that my grandparents were capable of a thing like that. I have lived with the trauma of having a machete held over my head by people I loved. I have come to believe that their intentions wasn’t to kill me but to scare me. But how do you fix a childhood trauma of fear imbedded by family?

The Rising of The Phoenix

Introduction

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being…

Carl Jung

This year so far has been a year of solitude and reflections for me. I’ve spent most of my days in bed, alone, and with my thoughts as company. I’ve had an epiphany, some shallows have deepened and some blurs have been made clear, now I see, now I understand, now I feel, now I know, now I know why.

***

THROUGH THE INFERNO

There’s a lesson to learn,

This lesson will break you, it will change you , it will make you, it will leave a mark on you. You will always have to refer to this mark to keep you on your toes. Until you learn this lesson, you’ll live in denial, love the things you hate, Do the things you shouldn’t and even die when you should live.

This lesson will teach you when to keep and when to kick. It will teach you how to smile with your eyes too. It will teach you to come with your heart on your way home. It will show you how to pick up your flaws and make them the perfection of your imperfections.

This lesson will fall on you, you’ll have no other choice than to embrace it. It will show you the way of humanity, it will teach you to be empathetic, it will teach you to be generous, it will teach you to be considerate and to be human.

This lesson will teach you to be kind to yourself too.

note to self

***

You’re a villain in someone’s story

One of the few things I have learned is that if you don’t tell your story, people will tell it for you, from their own point of views, from personal observations, from hearsay, and from their own understanding. Very often, the people who tell your story are clueless but tell it anyway, because you don’t.

When people tell your story, they miss something, tiny details of what it truly feels to be you. They miss the life of the story, the joy, the pain, the misery, the love, the spice, they miss the constant shambles of your life, the actual core of the story because only you were there, only you lived it, only you knows how it burnt, only you can tell your story the way it needs to be told, only you.

Today I tell my story, from the ashes, broken, refined and beginning.

This is the journey of the Phoenix, watch her rise from the ashes.

…Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I’ll rise.

Maya Angelou

GLOOM (A Memoir)

My Mother’s Grief

My mother told me about her grief. How she has managed 12 years without the love of her life and how she intend to live the rest of her life without him.

She is praying for the Lord to touch her. She desires the anointing to heal. She intend to go into ministry and to remain widowed for the rest of her life. So help her God.

One cruel thing about death is how sudden it happens, the shock it come with. One moment you’re with someone and the next, they are gone. Death burdens you with a torture of thoughts, it make you scout your memories to see if you could fine a moment or the possibility that you were given a clue, or a tiny cue that you knew, that they knew. You wish you knew, so that you could have at least made good use of your martyr tendencies. Death maims you with guilt, the guilt of simply not being able to do anything to save your loved one or to share their last days with them in a much better way than you did.

30th September 2010 was the day that changed her life–our lives. We knew that “unfaithful” day was going to be the beginning of a new life as dad had just returned home the previous day from the prayer camp where he had lived for months. We knew change was coming but we didn’t anticipate this kind of change.

My mom said she didn’t believe he was gone. He looked like he was only resting his eyes. She held him in her arms without fear because she was certain that he would wake up when they arrive at the hospital. She had hope. Even though Dad’s Doctors couldn’t revive him, she still hoped. Even when she was sent home, she obliged quietly because she hoped that her love story wasn’t over. Because that was not what she meant when she said “till death do us apart” –she meant old and weary not 16 short years after marriage. Still, she had faith and held on to that. Until Grandpa returned from the hospital without dad.

Grief has a sneaky way of telling on you. Exposing all your secret tears and thoughts.

Whenever I look into my mom’s eyes, I see her grieve sitting on her chest. I could tell how lonely she feels, I see how she coils herself in bed when she sleeps, I see how she sits quietly gazing at the emptiness life has created for her. I see her. I wonder what she pictured her life to be. I wonder what her dreams were before and after she got married. Of course she didn’t expect to be widowed at her mid 30’s. I wish I met her inner child. I wish I knew her smile before she gave it all up.

That is what grief does to you, it makes you wish for things you’d never have.

I can imagine my mom wishing for a hug, a cuddle, and to be made love to one last time by the man she loves but she can’t have that. And it’s been 12 years and counting.

My mothers grief is eternal 

The most dangerous kind of grief is the one you have in silence.

My mother told me that she cries from time to time. In the middle of the night when the heart of the city slumber. This broke my heart in so many ways. Death has taken so much from her, even sleep, and her freedom to express emotions. It must hurt to not be able to wail, shout and break things. It must hurt to sob in silence, alone with no one to comfort you. It must really hurt to grieve in secret.

My favorite picture of mom and dad

A poem for mom

Woman I see you 
A million miles away in your gloom 
I see how you soil your hands burying your joy
I see you how you hold on to dead things 
Because letting go feels like betrayal
Woman I see you 

I don’t blame you for choosing to love the way 
you love
Because I too would rather hang myself with these memories you hold on to.
Because letting go would mean forgetting 
And I don’t believe neither of us will ever be ready to forget the best good thing that happened to us. 

You are not alone.
I see you.

GLOOM (A Memoir)

Part Two

My Mother’s Grief

Introduction

My father was my rising sun; free, hopeful and generous. My father was the rock on which my feeble back leaned. He was the comfort in my heart, the joy of Sunday nights. He was what I looked forward to at dusk. When sickness came like an earthquake, shaking our world, my rock shook and shredded his edges, my rock grew weary and my back slouched. My infant mind did not know to cry because my rock taught me hope. He would usually say that the sun always finds a way to rise after cloudy days. He was light at the end of the dreaded awful tunnel, his light once lit my path till he was taken from me, then everything went dark. My once luminous world was replaced with a gloomy universe.

He was my first love—mine. He also had his first love—my mother.

My dad and mom on their wedding night

My mother was intended to be what we’d describe today as a ‘rebound’, a ‘gift’ my grandfather promised my dad after he got his heart broken by one of the hot girls from Osu (a suburb in Accra)

Marriage was arranged. They had not met but my father took the pain to know this woman who was supposed to recuperate his soul. He would lurk around the corners of Labadi (a suburb in Accra) to stalk his supposed wife to be. She was a pretty young business woman, gracefully voluptuous, fair and wore a smile warm enough to melt a volcanic rock. She befitted her name;Rose. There was something about her that made him keep coming back every night to stalk. He fell in love at a distance with this alluring woman.

He already knew her before their engagement—she didn’t. She didn’t know who she was going to spend her life with but she let her budding curiosity comfort her. She was chaste. She didn’t know anybody and has not known anybody else since then. He was her first and still remains so.

Rose has decided to remain chaste since her husband died. It’s been 11 years and counting.

In Memory of Mr. John Kwasi Okutu †

GLOOM

Part One

Letters To Yesterday

The last letter

Desmond,

They say, there is no grief as grave as a silent one

I learned this the hard way; that a writer’s inability to write is not always the case of a writer’s block, sometimes, a writer’s inability to write is from a place of overwhelmed love wandering the hearts of strangers in search of whom to call home. Other times its from a brokenheart finding peace in the comfort of silence. Some other times, it is from a sister’s longing to hold her brother for one last time—and tears between the lines of an essay cannot fill the well of pain or lift the weight of devastation in the heart of a writer.

I have struggled many nights to put a pen to memories of you, whenever I try, my emotions come crushing down and my body fight. These were mere coincidental feelings until recently when I had to write you this letter, I had a fever, sleepless nights and a veneer of a writer’s block. Then I realized something I have always known; there’s nothing coincidental about how you grieve.

Death didn’t only steal you from me, it also snatched my innocence, and my trust and left a girl who was barely a teen, paranoid. It scarred my chest with a mark I would never forget. I have lived a decade of inwardly moping over this pain and the remorse of my innocence. I hate myself for being so clueless when I should have known that you were taking your last breath, I should have trusted my instincts and stayed by your side through it. However, what relevance is there to write home about “should haves” ?

I love the way I love because I am scarred and scared of losing and of missing a tiny moment of love. I love the way I love because your death taught me the value of time and how brutal it is to love. The aftermath of 3rd November 2009 sowed a seed in the spaces of my broken heart and it grew into a giant tree with slouched branches each with a mark that says “never ever leave” , “hold on tight” , “look over your shoulder”, “something bad is about to happen”, “be scared”— and beneath this tree is where I take my rest.

I never said goodbye because I don’t believe that a soul as pure and graceful like you cease to exist. It is beyond my reasoning that a child, with innocent eyes like yours knows the deepest and darkest thing— and when it called your name, you responded.

Your death left a scar where i would easily remember.

But I believe in reincarnations as much as I believe in deja Vus. I am acute with the belief that you’d come back to me and I’ve been waiting for that day like christians await the apocalypse.

Love, Jem❤️

In loving memory

© Desmond Ohene Kuma Okutu

Grief stage: Bargaining

GLOOM

Part One

Letters to Yesterday

Upon The Somber Grass

Dear Gin,

I have a myriadfold of questions reducing to ashes inside my head, a million question summed up to a single word “Why” and I find myself doing the devil’s bidding with my idle hands asking and waiting as though there is hope that answers will fall from the ceiling as I stare hard. History has found a way to leave a mark on me again.

I have lost. My dear friend like to convince me otherwise but only I know this place, and how desolating it is to know that I can never have you. I have lost by my own hands and I am not surprised that I did, I’m only disappointed at myself for breaking us, if there ever was a “us”. My first therapist once told me to leave a letter for someone or something broken from me, as a technique to enable me move on. But how do I move on when everytime I close my eyes, you appear like you own this space.

I remember when I first met you, it was amber and gold, and there was never a day, I didn’t wake up smiling, when you first appeared in my dreams you turned my daydreams into something possible and made me believe that nothing could die. And I’m jealous very jealous that you look at someone else thirsty, which made me wonder if I ever stood a chance to rail stars in your eyes. Now I don’t get to dream again and silence can’t have it’s moment without reminding me of your touch, it felt like parting remarks, like poetry on the lips of birds. Your fingers reached out and touched my soul, it felt like a deja Vu in space. When our eyes met for the first time, I could swear I saw something true but now that you’ve parted brass rags with me, I would only live with these memories hatched into my soul like a forbidden scar

But I’m grateful for the lessons your tongue taught me when it touched mine, it taught me to have all the sweetness I could have, it taught me that reaching to grab what I wanted is bravery, it taught me that the reality of losing is worse than the fear of losing, it taught me that I could hold on to something and appreciate it even if it lasted for the shortest time there’s ever been. It also taught me that instead of leaching I could embrace and have anything. But lessons can’t be learnt if you don’t first lose or break.

They say poets mooch over pain like a living thing gasping for air, look at me hugging the very thing I was running from. I have so much love I want to give you and that, is the exact essence of grief—an overwhelmed love with nowhere to go. You find yourself here because you’ve come this far. You’ve become a muse, that I only get to imagine and wonder what loving you would feel like and the only way I could love you is by putting a pen to it.

I’m going to leave this somber grass to grow but first, I’d like to make amends for all the misery I caused you, for all the times I stretched you and for hiding when I could show all my shades like the rainbow. I’m sorry.

So I write you this poem as a parting token

If there ever come a night,

you wake up restless

Beware, that a nightwalker once loved your sleeping face.

If you ever wondered what you

meant to anyone, remember that you remind me of a kite dancing in the sky, wearing freedom like a birthmark.

If you ever miss me, you’d find me in the stars and at the point where the sea meets the sky.

You’d find me singing with the sun while it set for the moon.

And I’ll be here, missing you back.

To Gin with love

I wish you infinite Joy and love

For your peace and for my sanity.

Goodbye love.

Jem❤️🦋

Grief stage: Acceptance

GLOOM

Part One

Letters to Yesterday

The Confrontation

---

You should have waited till my roots were firm enough to hold my being. 
You should have waited for the storm.
I guess you didn’t see it coming because you were busy packing out of the world leaving me in it.

My boat sank, the anchor could not hold, I could not sail through, I left the paddle to save my face from what the world made of a girl without a father. I hid, from stretched hands of bullies who constantly reminded me of how you left without goodbye.

I needed some time, some nurturing, some couching on how to live this cruel world without you in it. I needed to know how to be a bedrock on my own.
But you left right before my eyes, in the midst of hungry wolves.
I chased you up but my feet failed, the path you tread,  I could not sojourn with those week legs of mine.

When my eyes tear,  I hate you!
Why did you start what you could not seal and lit my weak emotions on flames?
Why did you leave?
To wreck my walls, or to break my balls?

You chose to stand faraway  on the other side to watch my struggle through raging tides and still demanded that I walk this life whole.

My bow froze at your sudden exit and looking up became a lesson I had to unlearn.

You should have waited for the branches to grow.
But now,  I’m sure you see,
the spore you left  beneath the willow,
It did not rain,
the blazing sun burnt off my grace.

DADDY!

---

Grief stage : Anger

GLOOM

Part One

Letters to Yesterday

Dear first love,

It recently struck me on how much I’ve grown by age and how barely I’ve been a child, I just realized that I missed my childhood because I was busy being an adult and now that I’m all grown up, I keep reminiscing on the few childhood memories my mind could let me on.

As children like to tell themselves stories of their feeble imagination, my childhood fancies were about you coming home. I envisioned you walk through the front door and came back home, and all these stories about your demise turn out to be one outrageous expensive hoax but of which I forgave because I get a happy ending. So I created a window in the world of my mind, sat at the window and waited for you to emerge from the fog. I waited on clouds and sunshine. Each morning, the thought of you coming through this blurry illusion of mine was what kept me suspended in the oceans of my sanity and at the same time drown in this grief hole.

I remember when I dreamt about your return, the same way as I have imagined it. You filled a vacuum of emptiness in my soul, your touch was as real as rain drops on my bare skin and your voice the same as I’ve known it to be. I wished I hadn’t woken up from that sleep because as a matter of fact, I don’t mind an eternity of seeing you alive in my sleep. The days that followed after I had that dream were a rollercoaster of several imbalanced emotions. The hope that my dreams could come true and the knowledge that my dreams were merely instigated by my routine thoughts of you were what embraced my morning–a devastation I couldn’t lose a grip of.

Eventually, the sun set on my hopes, but not on my dreams, you still appeared in my dreams and lived your life with me while I slept. It felt to me as though my dreams gave you the permission to live. But I suppose you know what happens when the sun goes down— darkness took over my world and transformed my hopes into something larger and deeply darker – fuss, rage, silence and excruciating pain. It’s been over a decade, but you know the thing they say about grief, it has no timeline. So teach me how to mourn through this anger I have hanging around my neck.

Love.

♥John kwasi Okutu †

---

Grief Stage : Denial/Anger

Twenty&Six (Ep.6)

What am I doing here?

I was born in a thunderstorm
I grew up overnight
I played alone, I played on my own.
I wanted everything I never had
Like the love that comes with light.
I wore envy and I hated that.
I found solace in the strangest place
way in the back of my mind
I saw my life in a stranger’s face—and it was Mine. I had a one-way ticket to a place where all the demons go
Where the wind don’t change
and nothing in the ground can ever grow.No hope, just lies and you’re taught to cry into your pillow
But I survived. I’m still breathing, I’m Alive.

An excerpt from the song Alive by Sia

Over the past few days,. I had convinced myself that the Journal Twenty &Six has come to a halt and I had said all that I needed to say. I wanted to write a story, a new story altogether, one that doesn’t involve so much of me. Why? I’ve had feedbacks that my journal was getting boring and I needed to filter, take a pause and be that writer who has so much to say to please her readers. Why haven’t I written a poem in such a long time? Writers block? —that was hard to tell considering all these ranting and raving mad voices in my head fighting to be heard.

I wanted to say something, I need to, but what? What is there to say aside this darkness raging inside me. The battles I keep fighting with myself daily. The demons that has taken root of my soul–of who I am. How disturbing relatively connected I feel to the song “Alive”. (If you come to think of it, I’m barely alive)

I’ve said it before, that Sia wrote that song while thinking of me. It’s like she had a manuscript of my life in hand while putting those lyrics together. But have I survived? Or am I still living it.

And I have questioned myself severally on what I’m living for. And that right there is a red flag of depression and suicide alert.

What am I doing here?

When my eyes go wandering in my head, what do I find?A heart clinged on to yesterday’s stories of lost memories.
Love that isn’t there—Love too hard to take and desires that shouldn’t be there.
A grip of impossibilities held on by fate, my fate.

Living a life that isn’t mine. Doing the very things I said I wouldn’t, effortlessly. Trying to mend the broken pieces of yesterdays wreck. What am I doing here?

The attempt to right my wrongs has rendered me helpless in ignorantly wronging all my rights. Then for a second, I just realized that numbing, writing and wanking aren’t enough therapy.

Come to think of it, this post is pointless, because I’ve not said anything in particular, I only admitted I have battles, which I’m not ready to share, or more so afraid to share, over the fear of being ridiculed of my nakedness.

Then again I found peace in hiding.

Twenty&Six(Ep. 5)

One Lesson

Selflove has always been one of my greatest challenges in life and so has been in the lives of many others. It actually easy to give love and so much of it to others than yourself.

I have lived over two and a half decades and I’ve come to learn this widely—that no one cares about your insecurities.

If you ask me…

Insecurities are feelings we inflict on our own selves, a feeling of lack of our own self-satisfaction imposed onto others.

That’s how you find yourself looking for approval from others over minute details about yourself. The truth of the matter is that no one cares. Trust me, no one.

People may point out your flaws because they have their own and mentioning yours somehow makes them feel a lot more better about themselves. But if we should dive deeper, you’d realized that no one is actually paying attention to how wide the gab in your teeth is or how protruded your belly seem. No one cares about your physical scars and no one should because it doesn’t harm anyone.

Whenever I take a trip down the memory lane, reminiscing about how embarrassed I was about certain parts of my body, how much I disliked my voice and my laughter. The many times I tried to curb the sound of my laughter and hid my body in baggy outfit and restrained from certain activities because I lacked the confidence to—it hurts. It hurts that I only learned this now, that the people I was head over heels to please didn’t really care about it and those I thought were looking weren’t paying attention at all. It’s been a journey of wasted emotions of self-bully. Yeah sadly.

Those who actually take time to ridicule you are pathetic bullies and don't deserve even the small bits of your emotions.

As a matter of fact, most people don’t have the intellectual taste to wear their flaws the way you wear yours. Your confidence is somehow problematic to them and so is theirs to other people. It’s a collective chain of disservice to one’s own self.

perfection is subjective. Our idea of perfect differ from one another.

Life is too short to be insecure of anything about yourself. Life is damn too short to care about the opinions of other people in relation to perfection, your perfection as that.

Life is way too short to spend your time patching, and fixing, and poking yourself because someone said so.

Henceforth, I’m going to live this life I have shame-free of flaws. You should too. Live the best version of yourself–whatever that means to you.

After all, who cares?

Nada.

Twenty&Six (Ep.4)

Broken Things

An ex lover once bought me a wrist watch, a black glass-touch watch. It was the first time someone ever gifted me something. I watched him buy it, I didn’t expect him to give it to me because I didn’t think I was worth something that expensive. (The feeling of unworthiness is a sin 🤣🤣🤣)

I never wore the watch because I feared that it might fall off my hand and break so I gave it to my mom for safe keeping. I routinely called my mom from school to ask about the watch ( I was in senior high school by then.)I was paranoid and had trust issues–well I still do. The first person to break my trust was my dad, we were so close and yet he didn’t say his goodbyes before leaving me (Story for another time) I felt betrayed and abandoned.

I remember I got back from school and demanded for my black jewelry, my mom will stush me anytime I ask about it. One day I was innocently going through her things when she wasn’t home and boom, there it was, my beautiful black watch, this time it wasn’t so perfect anymore, it had a fault, it was broken. (Believe me, I threw a tantrum like a toddler) I later learned that the damage was caused by one of my younger siblings.

Well, that wasn’t the only thing to break in my life, I’ve lost a lot of things. I’ve lost faith, I’ve lost people, and I’ve lost a part of me along the way. I’m broken—you can say that.

Recently, I lost a friendship. Even though apologies have been made, the one thing I know for sure is that we’ll never go back from here. Hearts have been broken into many unfixable pieces and a beautiful thing has hit rock button.

I know all about the “what’s meant to be will be” phrase; that is not what I want to hear when I’m mooching over broken things. We Invest so much into something, you lose it and society tells you, it’s okay because you can’t have everything–honestly I don’t want to hear about how some people are just passengers in our train of life. Not cool.

I have come to believe that, things don't just happen coincidentally but rather our decisions and choices author our fate—it's not always about what's destined to be.

The world has come to point where we’re being demanded to apologize for being yourself. Living by the “norms”and doing what’s expected of you. You can’t have freedom is you’re not fighting for it with placards and red bands.

I don't know how this piece turned into a revolution but I hope you caught the point. 

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but if we’re being realistic, what doesn’t kill you maims you, drags you through an agony of pain—a rollercoaster of regrets and remorse. What doesn’t kill you sooner eventually kills you anyway.

I have the conviction that, life has its own messy ways in dealing with us. Not all broken things can be mended, ironically there’s always a missing piece in collecting broken things—you never get to be the same again.

Love takes its toll every time it don’t work,one door closes and another opens but it’s hard to let go when your heart’s broken. I’ll give you my trust, can you give me your word?Come take my heart of glass and give me your love. I hope you’ll still be there to pick the pieces up ‘Cause baby I’m fragile..

An excerpt from Kygo& Labrinth’s – fragile

Twenty&Six (Ep. 3)

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

I used to find comfort in writing when i’m into my feelings, it was facile to find my words at my lowest moments. It has always been the trick, pieces written on bad days always come out the best.

I’ve had a crappy week and i’ve been sleeping a lot. Earlier this year I had a terrible couple of months and it felt like the world was draining the life out of me for its own pleasure. However I found a way to to deal with the crappiness. I stopped writing and began to sleep. I realized it was easier to sleep than to write down anything. It was a cinch to escape having to go through that pain in the process of trying to write it all down and the only time I didn’t feel pain was when I slept.

Sleep has become my coping mechanism and very handy.

I only discovered recently that it actually has a term. Emotional Numbing.

Emotional numbing is the mental and emotional process of shutting out feelings and may be experienced as deficits of emotional responses or reactivity.

Mayra Mendez, Ph.D., LMFT

Initially I was unconscious about it, until I realized it was all I did when I’m not working.

They say poets have a beautiful way of housing pain. It’s like a garment we put on.

I carry a lot around, and this past few weeks have dealt with me in a way I could never imagine—honestly not what I expected. I’ve lost so much (I’ll fill you in my next post)

Past decisions knocked at my door and left a package. The truth is you don’t really move from the past,it follows you, sometimes you don’t realize it until it taps you on the shoulder. This got me thinking of what I could have done better and what I should do better.

I feel like I’m only existing through this life and not living at all. I don’t have a life. At least I have a clear image of what life should be for me and this is not it.

While emotional numbing blocks or shuts down negative feelings and experiences, it also shuts down the ability to experience pleasure, engage in positive interactions and social activities, and interferes with openness for intimacy, social interests, and problem-solving skills,”

Mayra Mendez

You wouldn’t know I’ve had a crappy day if I don’t tell you

Twenty&Six (Ep. 2)

Rewriting “Myself” Truthfully.

Growing up I loved my name. My first name (Jemimah) was so rare you wouldn’t find two people with my name in the same town. My middle name (Nana Dokua) didn’t really seem like a name I wanted to keep but it was a special name, only my father mentioned it right. He had so much pride in my name that he rarely called me by my first name. He prided in me, his first and only daughter.

I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. I mean really, no fear. If I could have that half of my life — no fear.

Nina Simone

I want to live freely, do things without second guessing or look over my shoulder in search for prying eyes. I believe that people have two sides, the good side and the bad side, embracing both sides only makes living much easier. I want to live a life without fear of judgement. Everybody deserves that. Everybody deserves to go through their phases of learning and unlearning. We should all be allowed to live, name our own mistakes and own them. Everybody deserves that level of freedom and more.

I believe we all have our demons which we must all stand against.  

An ex-lover once told me that he’s not responsible for my emotions (for hurting me) and that he cannot be blamed that I am the way I am–broken. Shredded into many pieces, he said he could only love me and not what I’m made of ( Meaning he would not love me wholly) So I felt sorry for burdening a kind young man who dimmed me fit to love with extra baggage of my complicated scars from past experiences. ( I only recently realized how pathetic I was then)

I am a mixture of many things (A multifaceted somebody) some of which will marvel close relations, even so, I’m still discovering hidden trails in me which I didn’t even know existed. Many women live in me, some of which I haven’t encountered but feel them. I feel them in my gut calling out for me to free them from the dungeon of unworthiness, fear and pain.

I am art. I love my body and my mind.

My body is perfect, not entirely snatched but perfect. I love how every part of my body speaks to me. My boobs calling for me in the middle of a cold night, making me aware of her needs. My belly wants to go out bare wearing beads that match my skin tone. My legs haven’t been shaved since I got that scar on my thigh. We’ll talk about my hips in the future.

My mind is my favorite place. It like a fountain on rocks in room temperature.

I have fallen so many times, however I rise.

Who am I ? 

I’m on a journey of self discovery. I’ll let you know when I arrive.

I lost my smile in my sleep

Twenty&Six (Ep. 1)

Missing

In less than 24 hours I would be at place where I imagined to be old, riped and ready. . My infant mind had a perfect picture of what 26 should look like.I imagined myself with a career and as a new bride.

But here I am, feeling small and young, more like 20 years and 6days..(with just ended numerous complicated relationships)I’ve been  thinking about what my life would look like with my father in it. I am certain I would’ve been a singer or a song writer,  a good student and definitely an over pampered girl. My father taught me how to speak up. Anytime I stuttered or bowed because I couldn’t find my words, he’d say “lift your head and speak up” and after a frail attempt to speak, he’d gently say “that’s right, but louder“.

He was my first love, he led me towards my spirituality, he’s desire for righteousness was enviously appealing. I memorized some of his prayer lines and held on to them like an inheritance. However I couldn’t bring myself to say those lines or pray in that way because It tasted like a foreign language on my lips. I lost some of the faith on my way here.

• 

John Kwasi Okutu (My father)

Talking about faith, I battered mine with worry. I spend most of my days wallowing over bad days, words spoken, silence and petty things of no relevance. I’m a clear description of what people call “Over-thinker”

I have been looking for God in dark places. He is Omnipresent, He is here with me in the dark-that, I allow myself to believe. I have been waiting for a sign in broken vessels. I have died so many times and lived a few times too.

If you should ask me of my aspirations... 

I want to be an object of change, to give hope to the hopeless. I want to be the reason someone found their faith again-a living testimony of triumph over a seemingly hopeless situation. I want to be the cue of light in dark tunnels.

We are all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattered by life’s trivialities; we’re eaten up by nothing. – Bokowsi

From the book; The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

I’d end by saying, I’m getting closer to my death. It’s my birthday tomorrow, a year older and also a year closer to death. (My mom won’t like this paragraph, but thanks to “I-don’t-know-who”, she can’t read and certainly not on social media 🤣🤣) It is my wish to put a smile on that beautiful face of my mom. One thing I know for a fact, is my mom’s undying love for us(my brothers Bismark and Gilbert).

I have an identity. My name is Jemimah Nana Dokua Okutu (Akosua) and I’m a cockeyed optimist, stuck with an overwhelming love and a dope thing called hope and I can’t seem to get myself off it.

Questions

How did you get here?
How did you arrive here alone? How did you come?

How do you find solitude in darkness when your demons come lurking?
How do you find malaise in the light?
How did you survive life as a loner?

Do ravens come by often?
How are you clothed with love and still not recognize it?
What does peace mean to you without the blue sky?

Why do you give so much and take less?
Why do you give more but have very little?
When did you sell your soul to grief?

Why do you burn in so much rage? Why are you burdened with so much hate?
If answers could be found in liquor, would you go looking for them in every bar down the street? Would you take solace in a barren land inside your head? If answers were beneath the sheets of every man’s bed, would you be the most famous coquette there’s ever been?

Maybe this is who you are or not.
Your skin has become a language, that draws people closer and the rue that throws people out. Your “beautiful” is such that, if the sun ever goes down in your eyes, people would bow at your feet for light.

But first, tell me, how did you get here, with darkness as thick as a rain cloud, accompanied by vague, chaos and so much chaos.
How?