#whoiseniola

[whoiseniola]

There’s a sense of lack in my Sunday mornings. As I watch the church-goers from my window, wearing their Sunday best with a sense of certainty, their world-views intact with a fort surrounding it.

Yet, I look at the remains of my world, the rubbles and the floating dust. And I feel a sense of peace. I can rest, with permission from the same force that imploded my world. I can fuck up - and that, today, is being kind to my humanity.

[whoiseniola]

she wrote... she smoked...

Slow dancing in my room, with the light dimmed low, Corinne Bailey in the background singing mellow blues. A joint lit and a glass of wine as I write some sections of my thesis. 27 years old, fully paid PhD, black woman, an orphan. So many odds…

I feel acutely connected to all the other black femme academics that have gone before me, with a joint between their fingers. Weaving together the words on the page as they fight the material and immaterial hurdles of academia.

[whoiseniola]

I thought about him a lot last night…

about how much comforted I felt by him, how his hugs and falling asleep in his arms felt, how much love I felt towards him. I asked himself if I was in love with him but i was reminded of how he said “you’ll know when you are” and that picture is so ironic in my mind. I don’t know who he is when he’s in back in his normal life and I want to preserve this connection that we had. Untainted love, passionate and raw…

I did love him for the weekend, I’m so reluctant to use the words, to express my feelings in such a way, but I must recognised that I felt a lack when he left. A good lack, one that I didn’t feel the need to refill.

I lived that and I’m so grateful for the universe for gifting me with this type of love, this type of passion, a love so intensely requited. I am grateful.

I feel at peace, I feel like I’m operating from a place of abundance.

[whoiseniola]

"my blackness..."

My blackness is one that I have the joy of discovering each day, outside of the shapes and moulds that I expect of it. Instead in the ways that it chooses to defy. Not out of obligation, or survival but out of choice. It opts in for freedom.

[whoiseniola]

hi

dear tumblr,

who thought we'd reconnect? 7 years have past since we're really engaged, i've completed two masters, seen both my mum and dad pass on to infinite peace, moved countries twice, reshaped my understanding of the Divine in that time.

see, you're really special to me, because in coming back to you, i came back to nostalgia, to laughter, to radicalness. i came back to a me that is so distinctively different to present-day me. do i miss her? i don't know. do i mourn her? i'll get back to you on that. but thank you for reminding me that who I am now is who I aspired to be 7 years ago, at age 20. i had no idea that i would be her, but i know 20 year old me would mourn how much she says goodbye to in order to become me. i know its more than any 20-something should have to say goodbye to. but she will be surrounded, she will be loved, she will experience more deeply than she thought possible, until she is emptied. how you come back, i can't say i really remember, trauma tends to have a way with your memory, but as the cliché says, she will find joy again, even if its a small as a laying down in a comfy position, she does find peace again.

me? i get by now, well, i more than get by. I'm learning not to take life personally as she ebbs and flows. she ebbs and flows not to persecute me, nor to reward me, she moved independent of my wishes, of my reactions, and my movements. yet there are wisdoms very profound that can be learned from those displacements. as an proficient over-thinker, i cannot help but be plugged into what these lessons might be, but i'm taking it easy on myself. I've departed from the self-flagellant thinking gifted to me by my judeo-christian past and will await until the desire for learning and wisdom is refilled in my heart.

I am grateful.