Britney's Back Bitches!

The Great Return

It’s been a minute since I’ve made a post. I’ve embarked on a journey of self actualization. I’ve been levitating in this liminal space of the old me dying, in a coma and the new self, constructing a novel form. This has been the happiest time of my life. With a new prescription, I’m able to view the series of nouns in the landscape that is my life. These nouns, accompanied by a bit of mysticism, skepticism, logic, and reason provide the glue for my understanding. Shit was terrible till it just wasn’t. 

As I’m typing, I have stickers on my face. No, not the star pimple stickers. It’s actually a rainbow, a sunflower, pizza, and “I’ll be there for you”. In this period of self actualization, it’s really been about loving on my child self. In this liminal space, I’ve concurred that I am the adult my child self always marveled at. The one who she crossed her fingers for,  wished upon shooting stars for.  I am the adult my child self, saw in the magazines who had this unattainable beauty that the golden rule fails to measure.  I am the adult that my child self saw when listening to Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely. I am the adult my child self saw gyrate and grind to, in the blue note in her favorite song. I am the adult my child self gawked at with immeasurable grace, elegance and cheekiness. 

The rigid discipline, the whore for routine I am, reading and now writing extensively has been enthralling. I returned to school, for starters with the commitment of being a writer and academic. Being the child of Nigerians that I am, if I commit to anything, I MUST be the best. There’s no half assing or side stepping. If this is what I am to do, I must immerse my brain in knowledge, be sedulous in study to further the craft and perfect my technique. 

I ran away from being an academic for a long time. It was an occupation folk I deeply respect always saw for me. I used to adamantly say “Fuck the Ivory Tower! They engage with the general population as petri dishes, unable to connect and truly value”. Now here I am in my favorite tattered orange tab Levi Jeans, Ayi Kweh Armah’s Eloquence of the Scribes, in one hand, Red Eye in the other, ready to shake shit up!

It took me a minute to find my voice and climax to the way it sounds. (Which also reminded me of the time I masturbated to the thought of myself, which was a sublime experience,  I highly recommend.) I wanted to sound as eloquent as Baldwin, as deep as Hurston, as poignant as Chekhov, as observant as Marukami, but as much as they are literary luminaries for me, they are not me! I am not them. I’m ADE. And I have prolific and peculiar things to say. I have stories little me, (I’ll be making a lot of reference to my beloved often) always wanted to read. So this heralds my great return or rather celebration to the process of self actualizing.