Lately I have been battling the contradictions that mark my life. I have been fighting the push and pull discourses and wisdoms that speak on the way of life. I find myself desperate to make the right choice. Popular or not, it should be right.
I want to make a choice that wouldn’t have me shunned. In its longevity, I want to make a choice that never ceases to be. Sometimes it might be disregarded, but its truth and reality recycles every time.
I feel so trapped by my time on earth. Not in a depressive sense, but I am not so far off. I am battling an existential crisis marked by a conflict between the world and I.
I am crying to belong without dishonouring myself. The truth is, lying to yourself is impossible. Unless you shut inner voices that erupt each time you take a wrong turn; how is one to lie to themselves?
How is one to speak on a firm stance in a contradicting world? My high-pitched but secluded arrogance often believes I can speak on my grounded stances. But my humanity simply refuses to comply.
See, I am human. I am a fallible being. Contradictions marked by weak emotions, ungovernable desires, and deceitful thoughts taint my truth. My flesh is thirsty and my mind is insatiable. All these justifiable traits demand a seat on the table. An audience in the world.
I hate the need to negotiate myself to the world. Ironic how the world isn’t exactly holding a gun to my head. If anything, the world is forgetful and I hate that too.
I hate being an afterthought, but I shake at the thought of assuming a decisive position. I can’t decide if I am coming or going. And yet, I hate when the world makes a choice on my behalf.
One day, sitting in the dark thinking about the things I would never dare do, I smiled at the main reason I was even thinking about these things. It was because they were all so familiar.
How could I love such people? My opposites? How dare I smile with them just to sit in the dark and judge them? What is it about me that makes me think I am better when I can count as a coward who suppresses her worst traits?
At least they have the freedom I long for. I am a fraud who questions the truth.
The truth?
The truth weighs me down. That’s the thing about me. I know my truth. Even in my silence, I know my truth. I hold it in my tongue and I pierce what opposes my truth with my eyes. I do this until my being can’t take it anymore.
My mother’s voice echoes in my heart. Intellectual texts live in my mind. And my loved one’s sentiments awaken and shock. But the truth remains mine again and again.
The truth is hard. Perhaps that’s why I hate confrontations. Because the truth has no space for ifs and buts. It shames and frees you simultaneously.
Could this be why I bare contradictions? Because speaking the truth in my life would mean no more room to create, destroy and re-create myself over and over and over and over again?
I detest whoever and whatever planted the idea of being ‘final’ in me. Now I take changes in myself as testaments to how fickle I am.
I think I am meant to be contradicting. What’s wrong with me is what’s wrong with the world. I feel I should give myself more chances to fail. It is quite important I afford myself infinite chances to start over and over and over again.
It is important I do away with shame. Shame wants to taunt my feelings. Shame gatekeeps my choices. Shame calls my contradictions a fraud. Shame frowns at change.
I should stop caring so much about what I think about myself.
I should learn to co-exist with my deluding choices.
I should accept every contradiction as a part of me.
I guess life is an existential crisis.
The self is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth.
– The Poet Robert
The bittersweet is an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world.
– Susan Cain
Ndinae K
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