This thing called Change
If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.
I used to think about how I looked in the eyes of any guy I liked. How did he perceive me? Does he like how quiet I am? If not, I can be loud. Anything for him, as long as he likes me.
But everything is changing. I am beginning to question if I even like any guy I have a crush on or if I am being swayed by proximity.
Are his nails well manicured? What does his breath smell like? Does he have a mind of his own or does he mindlessly echo what the world says?
Does he have goals? Am I stimulated by his thinking? Can he hold a conversation? Is he willing to learn?
It’s crazy. This impressionable young girl is growing into a woman. To have a mind of my own. To love a thing and be unapologetic about it even when the majority thinks otherwise. To laugh boisterously in public spaces and not conform to the kind of laugh expected of women. I grew up in ABA where people laughed wholeheartedly and boisterously, even when they faked it.
I have always laughed loudly but for a brief period, I started becoming conscious of how I laugh and wondered if my gums were showing. An acquaintance once told me I laugh like a car on ignition. It made me laugh the more.
Now, I don’t cover my mouth when I laugh, I laugh how I laugh. How I have always known to laugh. It doesn’t look conventionally feminine in pictures and I don’t think I care. I don’t want to.
This change is pulsating. I feel like a flower coming to full bloom. Like the child inside of me has been released from her cage. It’s exciting.
I used to think I had lost the act of reading. I recently found out that was false. I only stopped reading books I enjoyed and focused on books I was expected to read as a businesswoman. It took me a month to read Peter Thiel’s Zero to 1 and three days to read 343 pages of Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah plus 30 minutes to read Dear Ijeawele.
I have completely fallen in love with me again. It feels like I am courting myself. I no longer shut down the human desires I feel, instead, I relish them, I enjoy them, and I acknowledge them. While I am careful not to indulge them because of my Christian faith, there is this mischievous part of me that keeps rearing her beautiful head. In response, I say to her Zukwanike which means Rest in English.
It makes me tingle with joy that I am learning not to suppress these emotions. Months ago, having them made me feel dirty, now I soak myself in them.
This change is beautiful.
I have come to the obvious realization of my beauty. That I am not beautiful, not because my mother said so, not because men said so, not because women said so, not because children said so but because I say so.
I looked at a picture of me taken early in the morning, bare-faced, and wondered how for so many years, I have thought of myself as not beautiful. I never thought I was ugly but beautiful? Nah. I choked at the thought of it.
Here I am, in my 20s enjoying the sight of my body and my face. Always fascinated by how I got to know the things I know and how smart I am.
Is this what they call self-glorification? I like it. I love it.
