Reflections On A Year II
It took Elon destroying Twitter to bring me back.
Image taken from my favourites folder, I think my friend Ebube took it.
At long last, I am back. I know some of you are excited, others are rolling their eyes and most of you are just straight up pissed. I have a lot of explaining to do but I’d rather just pretend like we’ve been talking all year, how about that?
The last time we spoke, I was reflecting on the mess of a year that was 2021 so I deemed it fit to come back and reflect on 2022. So, hold my hand, squeeze it twice and let’s take a walk down my memory lane.
There is a Zora Neale Hurston quote that is shared a lot during this period:
“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer them.”
To me, 2022 felt like a year that did both.
A lot of myself did not belong to me this year. I spent too much time doing things for others: work, school, and people. I floated through duties and obligations, rarely taking time to come back to me, to do things that I was pleased with. It’s not an excuse but that’s part of the reason I never wrote to you. It seems like I have spent this year just putting out fires and the smoke from these fires has kind of clouded my sense of self. The year reminded me that “self” is an active existence, you do not just find it and end there, every day—in the smallness and the excess—you have to choose to seek it.
Getting a job at the beginning of the year was a huge win for me. It felt like an answer in a year of questions and answers. I have mostly enjoyed work this year but I am constantly trying to do great work while not tying too much of myself to the job. I want to be able to leave the job and not feel like I lost an arm so I tried to deal with work the way Toni Morrison spoke about it: you are not the work you do, you are the person you are. To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of success—bad meetings on Fridays could ruin my whole weekend, a passing critiquing comment could send me into a spiral and on the flip side, a commendation could light up my day. I don’t want work to swing my feelings like a pendulum, I prefer my emotions elicited by people that I hold in my heart and art that stirs my core, not a corporate structure.
On the days I didn’t worry about work, I worried about school. The strike kept me away from school for eight months and during that time I thought a lot about how much school had broken me. Since my third year in this school, I haven’t had any real academic win. I am in a sustained emergency cycle, always trying—and failing—to catch up, learning is without the spark of curiosity I used to have and I stuffed myself with facts just to barely scale an exam. ‘Why am I doing this course?” I asked myself everyday as I tossed on a ward coat and floated round the hospital, mostly there for attendance. In the end, I don’t know how to quit things [we can argue about the pros and cons of this later] and there are moments I truly enjoy this course even though they are few and far between. If all fails, I will be here for my friends at least.
In some way, this year I existed on the margin of many friendships. Never fully there, never participating in the collective joy or sadness that a friendship gives you, forgetting that these shared moments are what strengthens bonds. So deep conversations became routine texts, distance that was only physical became more emotional and I began to lose fluency in the peculiar language that had been created in each friendship. In some way, I was the one that walked to the margins of these friendships. The constant internal turmoil about a lot of things was difficult to share, a lot of outward facing things in my life seemed to be working well so complaining sometimes felt like ingratitude. I can speak about beautiful friendships for hours, I can define them with words and paint vivid imagery of people holding themselves with care. But this year my words fell short of action; some days I felt left out, other days I let myself out. I tucked a lot of things in boxes in my mind and locked them in rooms that nobody had access to, what a dreary existence.
One of those things was my health. Since 2020 I have felt like I am sprinting towards death. My body has failed me in new ways every year: my eyes, my kidneys, my liver and my heart. For about two months this year, I went to the hospital about twice a week searching for an elusive diagnosis. The doctors were dismissive, almost tired of me as I sat and watched hallways empty because I was always the last patient to be attended to. The day I finally got a definitive diagnosis, my medically heavy heart felt so much lighter. There’s a kind of powerful relief that comes with knowing what is killing you. I went to the park and played like a child with some friends and then went back home now aware that the organ that raced in my chest giving me life could one day give me the opposite. Like I said last year, my misery doesn’t love company, it loves a comedy special. So, I filtered most of that experience through jokes; I never left space for sympathy, for the silence of care, for the hushed questions of fear. I haven’t still cried about it, I just throw my pills into my mouth every night along with whatever complex feelings I probably should process.
Anyway, away from the sad stuff, let’s talk about my love life this year.
Wait.
Okay, I lied about going away from the sad stuff, my love life wasn’t exactly joyful. This was a relatively calm year in that area, I considered going back to an old love, found a new one that I am letting go off bit by bit, and had a reappearance of a love that hurt me. I wish I fell in love fully this year, I wish I didn’t spend too much time in my head rationalizing things I should have discarded. Maybe next year.
I don’t ever know how to extract lessons from a year but I really enjoy looking back on my year with you. So now, let’s look forward a little. I want to be more receptive to care next year without immediately thinking of how to pay it back, I want to be there for my friends and even more for myself, I want to feel everything fully: smile from my heart and cry from it too, I want to finish the things I started this year, I want to be more consistent with this newsletter [I’m fashioning a plan as I write this], I want to write the things I like more frequently, I want to pass all my exams and I want to find peace in all my decisions. There’s a lot more I want but let’s just end it here.
This issue wouldn’t have happened without encouragement from that one friend on Twitter who reminds me of this letter every time. You’re definitely a highlight of my year, thank you.
Before I go, let me share my favourite films and TV shows I watched this year because I think I watched quite a lot.
Top 10 films in no particular order are…
After Yang
Decision To Leave
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Tár
The Batman
Nope
Top Gun: Maverick
Juju Stories
Triangle Of Sadness
Three Thousand Years Of Longing
I should watch more Nigerian films next year, fingers crossed.
Top 10 TV shows in no particular order are…
The Bear
Severance
The Dropout
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Derry Girls
The White Lotus
Interview With A Vampire
Industry
The Summer I Turned Pretty
This Is Going To Hurt
For the music I listened to you can listen to my top songs of 2022 in this playlist that Spotify created. Warning: there’s a lot of Beyoncé.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing this and I hope the reflections on my year inspire you to reflect on yours and look forward to the new year.
sending you love and hugs. Hope your year is all you need.