Dear Aloaye

Dear Aloaye,

There is so much I want to say to you. So much, too much. Every version of this letter has started with this string of words. Every year before this one, I have had a lot on my mind, a lot to say. This year, I have a lot to say but I’d rather be silent. No, I have not lost the ability to wrap words around my thoughts. I am writing to you from the twilight of a very interesting year for all the wrong and right reasons and all I want to do in this moment is sit in darkness and be silent.

This letter features some spoilers. I have not done this before but it’s best to know what the future holds before you go up against it. Brace yourself.

Sometime in September, I was on my way home, in the front seat of a very rickety danfo bus. Surely, that’s a tautology. All danfo buses are rickety. But I digress. At some point, the bus developed a fault which the driver had to get down to fix, but not before asking me to place my foot on the brake pad of the vehicle. In that moment, the lives of at least twelve people were hinged on the presence of my foot on the brake pad. Heavy is the foot that marches the brake pad, yes? A lot of people would have died if I had taken my foot off and sent the bus careening down Lekki-Epe at 8pm. I have never been more acutely aware of my relevance in the grand scheme of things and the potential ripple effect of my actions or inactions.

I like to think this year was one for perspective, for taking steps back to understand why things happen and what may result from them happening, which is a long-winded way of saying “cause and effect”. This year was one for understanding that sometimes, things change regardless of your best efforts to make them stay the same. Friendships like businesses can become restructured and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. For understanding that people are made up of several parts and you have to adjust appropriately in your best interests. For understanding that beginnings are beautiful and there’s absolutely nothing wrong about endings. Dusk strangles dawn and vice versa and that’s just life.

This year has been one of my best years. It has also broken me in more ways than one. This year has cost me a lot. This year reminds me a lot of that scene in Avengers where Tony Stark valiantly fights Thanos, only to end up with the latter saying, “all this for a drop of blood”. In several moments, I have been Tony Stark quivering under the weight of duty, trying and failing and only ending up with a drop of blood. The good thing is blood is a very precious fluid and that in itself is a reward. I like to think I have drawn more than a single drop of blood.

My last letter to you featured one of my favourite quotes from the Great Gatsby. “My life has got to be like this. It’s got to keep going up.” This thing about quotes like this one is that they don’t give you context for the work ahead. They just roll off your tongue. Growth is difficult. Ascension requires effort, grit, loss. This is easily the year in which I have gotten stuck in and worked the hardest. It has paid off and also cost me in spades.

You’re not where you want to be. You feel like you’re supposed to be somewhere else. Well, say you could snap your fingers and be wherever you wanted to be. I bet you’d still feel this way. Not in the right place. Point is, you can’t get so hung up on where you’d rather be that you forget how to make the most of where you are. Gotta take a break from worrying about what you can’t control. You just gotta live a little. — Passengers.

At the end of the day, everything I have to say comes down to this quote from the Passengers movie. Aloaye, if you are anything like me, which you are, you are living without brakes, experiencing people and events without really being in the moment. Like going to the beach without getting your feet wet. Spend time with your nieces and nephews. They are growing so fast and gifts from Miniso and Bookshop House are not a substitute for quality time. You are going to feel the urge to use work to dodge reality. Don’t. Live in the happy and sad moments. Life is beautiful.

I’m hoping this reaches you before the end of 2021. If it does, go to Benin for Christmas. See Mrs. Esezobor for the first time in ten years. If you don’t, it will be too late. Find a way to reach out to Aunty Gloria, she put you on the path of writing and doesn’t know it yet. At some point in the future, you will feel the urge to reach Endurance, don’t ignore it.

In a lot of pictures from the year this letter is written from, I am wearing black outfits. This wasn’t intentional but it sure is fitting considering all that happened in the course of the year. This is the one year where the landscape of my life has changed at very dynamic speeds. In more ways than one, this year has been a drawn-out farewell ceremony. At funerals, at airports, at weddings, at send forth parties. I have said more than my fair share of goodbyes and had them said to me as well. I now have more friends on the other side of the Atlantic than on the side I live on. From experience, it’s hard enough to navigate a friendship with someone on the other side of the Third Mainland Bridge, throw the equator and time zones into the mix and it becomes more than a little tough.

This year, I changed jobs, and it took me everything to hand in my resignation at my last job because my colleagues had in so little time gone from being coworkers to being a close substitute for family. Changing jobs has meant I have transitioned from big fish in small pond to small fish in big pond. I have no regrets, at least not the overly lingering kind.

If there is one thing, I have learned this year for the umpteenth time, it is the fact that people are going to assume, even from a distance, that they know you well enough to know what is right and wrong for you. Assumptions are typically unsafe but nothing will deter people from taking certain actions in your best interest, regardless of the uninformed positions these actions are taken from. Aloaye, my advice to you on this front is simple. Learn how to fight. Fighting is not always violent. Sometime fighting is something as simple and strategic as drawing boundaries and having difficult conversations. It may be as basic as drawing an imaginary line in the sands of your life and saying “I don’t want to go there, but if you start it, I will finish it.”

This has also been a year for very difficult events and conversations. At times, it has felt like the Universe took the I cannot afford to not do difficult things” line from the last letter a little too seriously. This year, I have learnt once again that loss and life are intertwined. I have gone from friend to acquaintance, partner to ex-boyfriend, colleague to ex-colleague. If you are wondering if it gets easier, it doesn’t. But as always, it is worth it.

Aloaye, forgive yourself. You will disappoint people. Work on reducing the margin of error. Work on time management. This life thing is hard, and it is easier to live without the burden of guilt. You cannot be everything to everyone. In the moments where you become aware of this shortcoming, forgive yourself. Yes, you may in certain ways be the answers to people’s prayers, but you are not God. Get out of your own way. Don’t be so hard on yourself. People are going to assume you have the ideal life, you are better off not living up to their standards or trying to convince them otherwise. Extend some kindness in your own direction. You don’t have to have it figured out. Lowkey, most of us are winging it.

Random nugget? I’ve got you. “Don’t be under pressure to come out of every negative situation with a positive story to tell”. “na me fuck up” is a good story too.- Twitter.

What’s the plan moving forward? To continue to put in the work. At the office and everywhere else. It’s funny how work is something we associate with professional lives alone. Putting in the work is just as important everywhere else. These days, I am optimizing my life for competence and friendship. If there’s one thing the last few years have taught me, it is that this life thing is hard, even harder to do alone, which I have had to do for the greater part of the last six months. I am going to say that at times, it has felt like I was navigating life without my right hand. No, I am not going to talk about the breakup. I am immensely grateful for the people I have in my corner, the jokes, the conversations, the honesty, even when I was deflecting -those things kept me afloat. I hope you find love, warmth, hugs and people, in no particular order.

I started a Substack this year, easily one of the best things I have done since the last letter. It’s doing quite well. Let’s see what happens by the turn of the year. Will this be the last edition of Dear Aloaye? I have no idea. We’ll see when we see.

At the end of it all, I am immensely grateful for the year I have had. This is why I’ll be closing out with one of my favourite quotes from the Assassins Creed. “It is a good life we lead, brother…The best. May it never change…And may it never change us.”

See you around.

You.