My birthday is in a day seeing that it’s 00:19 right now, maybe somewhere in the world it’s already the 7th February…. I’m turning… well the title gives it away. You gotta be a lil smart to guess this one. It’s not a complex hint but if you’re an old soul that doesn’t follow trends and this boujee language we speak these days it might be a lil tricky for you….HINT: BASKETBALL

I have a love hate relationship with this day and the hate is absolutely induced by people. For as long as I can remember, rather from as long as I’ve known that birthdays are important I’ve always gotten the excuse “oh my God I am so broke, wish your birthday wasn’t at the beginning of the month like it is“….the statement could be true but it’s so hard for me to react to that. Honestly what is a person trying to say that they understand that it’s my birthday and had I picked a more convenient date to be born they’d get me something? I mean I get it but if I got 1 maloti each time a person said that? Surely I’d have a lot of money to spend and spoil myself how I want to. I’m really just tired of hearing the same excuse over and over again each year. I really wish they’d wish me a happy birthday and keep it moving…the explanation is not necessary. Anyway…enough about the hate part…

Now I believe in numbers and I believe the number 7 is a good number…might sound cliche but I really do believe in it. I see it and have the feeling that everything is going to be alright. I really sound like a Chakra hun right now. I think about a lot of different dates and months in the year and I really wouldn’t choose to be born on a different date. I’m a 7th February girl and I am so excited about the new chapter. I hope it’s filled with blessings, I need my cup to run over this year. I want to see God’s greatness in my life. I really need him to show off with me. To use me to restore faith in the lives of anyone whose has been lacking. I need him to take control, to bless me with blessings I deserve

This year is a little different because in a few months I’ll be a degreed hun. Round 5 of 5 about to be complete. I think I need to write this everywhere until it sinks in that I’m going to be an LLB honors degree holder!! Now I’m not jinxing this and I know no amount of saying it out loud will jinx it because this is my path… the one God has chosen for me. And I believe that in this path he’ll be guiding me every step of the way and he’ll be opening the necessary doors and keeping harm out of my way. I’m a lil emotional typing this because this is a manifestation into the universe, a manifestation to God and I know he’s listening and he’ll make way.

So to the scared little girl inside, I’m doing this for you babygirl…to make you proud because the one thing you’ve always done is to believe that you can do this…. from the moment you were fascinated by the word “lawyer” in pre-school because you had successfully defended one of your classmates in front of the teacher from an argument that started on the playground… to your teacher letting you wear the cute little hoodie on graduation that signified that you’d grow up to be a lawyer. To you wanting to go to Harvard law school even though you knew it was out of reach to you being admitted to law school at NUL to you being in your final year and graduating in a few months. You’re doing good babygirl!! Sometimes I think that my pre-school teacher saw so much potential in me and spoke my destiny into the universe and now what I’m doing is fulfilling our wishes… I bet she would be proud.

So here’s to a beginning of a new chapter and great things ahead!!! Here’s to 23!!!

I really hate how my ideas and urge to write always comes up when I wanna sleep. It’s midnight and I was dozing into the kind of sleep I was going to enjoy but noo,my brain told me to come here and write this down because if I postpone it to morning I’m going to forget it….anyway ride along and read till the end…please and thank you

Anyway…I’m going to write about something I’ve been keeping in for quite some time…my spiritual journey….spiritual because I believe I’m more spiritual than I’m religious…

So uhm you know how we grow up and attend the church that our parents go to and it becomes the only church you know because you literally were raised in it? Yes same thing happened to me. I grew up in the Anglican church and learned the principles at a young age so much that they paved my way of life. I joined the youth groups there and enjoyed every moment of it. Became the leader at age 13 and as somebody with a dominating character I had fun, enjoyed leading and knowing that the younger members of our girls guild look up to me and trust me enough to guide them. Anyway I’m not here to tell you about my adventures as a member of a girl’s guild.

So I’m a good Anglican church going girl who abides by the rules and gets to the age of…lemme call it vowing loyalty to the church. I vow but to be honest I did it because I thought that’s what I ought to do at the age of 14 as everyone else at that age was doing it but after the vows church doesn’t feel the same. It feels like I’m viewed as an adult with certain responsibilities and for somebody who didn’t fully understand the depth of the whole thing I start feeling pressured. I went to church to avoid the questions of why I’ve been skipping church. It felt to me like I was there to check the attendance list as opposed to how I’d go to praise and feed my spirit.

After long introspection, I realized that my relationship with God is suffering…I felt empty like something was missing then I remembered how I’ve constantly seen girls who were in my guild leave our church and join other churches and despite how they were mocked for leaving, they always seemed liberated to me. So I start contemplate leaving too. But how do you leave when this church has been the only church you know. Not only have you grown accustomed to it but it’s literally part of who you are. The rest of your family if not the majority goes to this church and they’ve vowed loyalty to it and unlike you, they are taking their vows seriously. So you see that mentioning that you want to leave to your family will sound like you’ve committed a crime.

But since I’ve always been something of a rebel myself… the idea of leaving begins to be exciting and you know what I do when things excite me? I want to see them through and bring them to life. But question is…which church am I switching to? It wasn’t hard to figure because I went to a Seventh day Adventist pre school and primary school. This says to a certain extent I was familiar with their principles and some of their teachings have shaped me because spending nine years under the care of a church school does something. I mean I didn’t even wear earrings for the rest of my high-school years to varsity. To this day they hurt my ears if I wear them for too long.

So Seventh day Adventist church became the best option. I’ve experienced other churches yeah? but they didn’t connect with me enough to want to go back or maybe I wasn’t looking to stay so I didn’t look for reasons to stay. So then I visit Seventh day Adventist church with a neighbor of mine. I chose to go with her because she had recently switched to the church and to me nobody understood the position I was in better than she did. One Saturday I ask my momma to grant me permission to visit the church. She allows me on some it’s Church and you’ll still be closer to God there, however I can tell there’s a look that says I knew this moment was coming in her eyes. Anyway we leave with my neighbor… on our way there I’m both excited and anxious. We get to church and when I tell you that I felt like I’m home?? Believe me. It felt like they’ve been waiting for me to come home. For the first time strangers felt like family…it didn’t feel like everyone is there to do their business. The church had my heart… they provided lunch even!!! I was bewildered…like y’alls churches feed y’all…mind blowing!!! Although I got to understand why they serve lunch. During lunch I was seated in the corner with my neighbor and her buddies and while watching everyone interact and eat their lunch, I knew that is the place where I want to spend my time praising God.

The scenarios about what could be were exciting but I didn’t know how to break the news to my family… I “visited” the church knowing that I’m switching to it and the visit was more of me introducing myself to it. For several Saturdays I visited and after every sermon I felt fulfilled, closer to God than I was before and as a girl who was taught the importance of having a relationship with God, I loved what I was doing for myself. But the longer I “visited” the more questions of my absence were raised and as you can imagine it began looking suspicious. Anyway I still continue my visits until I decide to tell my mom that I’ll be going there for the rest of my days. She was cool about it. However the stakeholders in this issue were not my parents only, this meant that I owed them explanations but I wasn’t about to explain myself, I hate it.

Lemme circle back…..like any other relationship, my relationship with this church has a honeymoon stage filled with bliss and perfection, but you know what follows the honeymoon stage? The awkward stage where the thrill of a new relationship kinda dies down and you start seeing your partner’s flaws. It’s that point where y’alls favorite color is not the same anymore. Heck where you hate their favorite color. The relationship started demanding commitment but how do I give it full commitment when there’s some stuff I haven’t confronted that I’m still dragging with me. Either way I thought I’ve got this I’ll manage.

The more I thought I’ll manage the more it became a challenge… I was learning a lot of things and I loved learning, however the teachings were a whole different thing from what I know. They contradicted in a way…and at first I thought it’s nothing but eventually I was torn too. I started feeling like there’s two people at war inside of me…I couldn’t allow myself to transition into this new person and at the same time I was not the old me. So I started feeling like I don’t belong anywhere anymore. No one really talks about how hard it is to change and let go of the things you’ve known all your life.

The internal conflict lasted for so long and when I was about to make my best attempt at fixing it, I got a varsity admission and oh well here’s to the beginning of a new journey. So I never really solved it and for a long time I didn’t know what was wrong and right until one day I removed myself from the expectations that I thought were imposed on me and thought about what I really want to do with myself. I couldn’t answer the question of where I attended church for a long time. So now I’ve decided that not family or two of my churches can dictate my spiritual journey because it is a personal journey. A journey about me and no one else not even my mom. I’ve since decided to do what is best for me and going into the year 2022 I feel the need to fix my relationship with God and put effort into it. I don’t know how it’s going to be like but I have faith that it’s going to turn out really well. And the family I’ve been postponing breaking the news to?? I decided it’s not their business and I don’t owe anybody an explanation. So yes that’s the story about how I went from being a sweet church going girl to becoming a “rebel”….damn my fingers are tired.

I’m going to sleep now at 1 am. Hope this brain is happy

I’m super excited!!! Bet you can tell why, so as a way of celebrating.. I’m going to be sharing tips of which I believe will be very beneficial to the reader… especially if you’re trying to grow natural hair…

So I’m seated in front of my laptop watching some movie called I’m thinking of ending things.. not a very interesting movie cause I’m having a lot of what’s going on moments… and then I remembered that oh hey I abandoned a blog post in the middle of typing and giving out hair tips a month and a few weeks ago… so I’m back… to finish what I started lol!!!

1. KNOW YOUR HAIR POROSITY: I don’t know hey, but knowing my hair porosity really helped me to know how to take care of my hair considering that there’s a lot of dos and don’ts surrounding natural hair… so for me knowing my hair’s ability to absorb and retain moisture has greatly helped me to know which products to incorporate into my routine.

2. PROTECTIVE HAIRSTYLES: the best way to keep your hair healthy and your length retained is through protective hairstyles, these are very effective especially when you have a busy schedule that does not allow you to deal with hair every morning. Also I personally find moisturizing hair in a protective hairstyle much easier than when I’m wearing it out, also there’s really less manipulation on your hair when you have it in protective hairstyles.

3. WATER IS YOUR HAIR’S BEST FRIEND: drink lots of water and spray your hair with water before applying your hair products to it… that way the products will work as sealants to seal in the moisture from the water. Use water based products as well( the first ingredient of such a product should be aqua). If your hair is low porosity like mine, then heat is your best friend… use warm water or hot water to spray your hair as it’ll quicken the absorption process.

4. TRIM YOUR SPLIT ENDS: trimming split ends every 2 months or every month depending on what works for you does your hair a lot of justice, as the split ends are dead hair that only hinders your growth.

5. TRY NOT TO OBSESS OVER LENGTH: honestly though!!!, you’ll go crazy obsessing over how much your hair has grown. Not only will you be impatient and waste money on whatever product is recommended but you’ll also fail to appreciate your hair in every stage of it’s growth. Healthy hair is the goal, so volume first then length will follow because honestly our hair gains volume first before length.

6. DON’T OBSESS OVER HAIR: Do whatever the fckk you want with your hair, as long as you’re not damaging it, cut it if you want to, dye it green of you want to. It’s your hair, do what works for you. Go bald if you want to. Remember, it’s just hair… it’ll grow back!!!!

Soooooo… I’ve been contemplating this for a while now… sharing my hair journey. Then when I randomly checked my calendar; I realized that OMG I’m going to turn a year since I went natural!!!!! Exciting! Right?? So then I thought why not post something to celebrate so that whoever needs some hair info or advise or tips I dunno really… finds this piece helpful.

I don’t know how I’m going to go about this but I’m thinking I should start at the very beginning… so last year in the middle of November I decided that I need to cut my hair. It was kinda hard to let go cause I’ve grown it for 6 years but it had to happen cause I had damaged it with perm and it was now really weak and was breaking.

At first a perm seemed like a good idea because the curls were really pretty and defined also my hair really grew…but that growth was the calm before the storm because as soon as I renewed the perm things went sideways…. It dried out, started falling off but I was chilled because it still fell out with the first perm but the growth was still really amazing…it kind of looked like I had an artificial high puff holder when I wore it up.

This was the case until I decided to visit the salon to get it braided for the first time since my perm renewal. You know how they always straighten your hair before they braid it? Yeah they did the same with mine… I was shocked…maybe slightly hurt to see how it looked like when it’s straightened….obviously it was not what I had expected to see. It looked so weak and so little on the head.. knowing how much of a volume my hair has; I just knew that that’s not how it’s supposed to look…. to make matters worse; there was a girl seated next to me and she had the same texture of hair (well what I used to have) and it was very pretty and long and rich and there I was looking like I’m a victim of a rare illness… I was green with envy looking at her hair(shame on me)…..

I got my hair braided but I made a mental note to cut the hair as soon as I take down those braids because it had been confirmed to me that I’ve reached a point of no return so holding onto it is causing further damage… So 3 weeks later I took down the braids and I asked my hair to cut it…I remember she asked me if I was sure and I told her that girl I’ve never been as sure about anything as I am right now… I think she cut if down to 2 cms short and she kept saying “oh my God!! Look at you!! You are very pretty” I didn’t feel pretty until later on but I needed the hype!!

I send my mom a picture and captioned it ‘look, I finally did it!!’ I think she was a little sad but I had already cut it so there was nothing she can do about it… so that’s when my natural hair journey began… on the 15th November 2019!!! And since then I’ve learned a whole lot information about hair and in the next hair post I think I should write about hair tips or things I learned about natural hair this far!!

M

First of all, I envy her storytelling skills.. bet when I tell a story I get to the ending; the person I’m telling it to has had to zone out once or twice… so to tell a story and have the listener or reader interested in what you’re saying when you get to the end of your story the same way they were at the beginning is a unique super power.

She let us into her life by telling stories which if I were in her place, wouldn’t have told because of my notion..people don’t deserve to know me like that. I sometimes suspect that it’s just me covering up my struggles of opening up.. or it could be I’m plain out selfish with myself but I’m not admitting to anything.

I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions reading the book and at some point when I was on the verge of tears and I was thinking oh my God she didn’t deserve to go through that and at the same time I wanted to fight somebody…anyone at all… I had to remind myself that chill bitch she has gotten through this and has healed… stop trying to be a healer to people you cannot even contact to check up on.

I really adore her for sharing her experiences and giving a glimpse of her fears the way she did and most importantly for making me laugh and think girl you’re a badass he didn’t deserve you!!! To thinking wow love is a beautiful thing and I hope you’re content and lastly thank you for reminding me that I’m a black woman and for that I’m powerful and I never have to lower my standards or abandon who I am so people can be comfortable.

P.s if you haven’t read the book… I suggest you include it in your reading list and be sure to make it your next read.

Deep sighs…. Exactly a year ago I had this awful experience that I could say landed me at rock bottom; it was the worst of all the things that have ever happened to me….. hol’ up…..

DISCLAIMER: Due to personal reasons; I’m not ready to answer or comment on anything relating to what I’ve posted, no matter how curious or concerned you may be….whispers; I’m really sorry😅😚

…..Anyway; as I was saying…. ROCK FREAKING BOTTOM is the perfectly fitting Cinderella glass slipper word to use. Double Cringes* I should stop creating phrases; not cool.

Yes; I felt dead, although I’m not sure whether I only felt dead inside or my body looked as equally dead too. I don’t remember the events that led to this dark phase of my life in detail but what I know for sure is that I’m never going to forget is how I felt through out the experience; it was an awful consuming feeling so much that I think I might have developed a fear of feeling the way I did then to an extent that recently when I felt a similar feeling, I started panicking… taking caution and trying to guard my heart so as to protect it but most importantly my mental health.

I’ve come to the realisation that I was scarred badly….and I blamed myself for most of it. I asked myself how I got to that point and why I let myself down in that manner. Self-blame is one of the worst self-inflicted punishments there is… it torments you and keeps you up at night; and somehow your own subconscious is never on your side because it always has it’s arms folded while tapping it’s foot like an annoyed parent running out of patience.

Somehow it felt as though I’m standing on the side lines and watching my life unfold and deteriorate into this state of nothingness and somebody has taken my position in my own life and I can’t do anything but watch them ruin it. It was one of those intense phases where I stood in front of the mirror but some how I couldn’t recognise the girl staring back at me whose eyes used to be golden pulls of honey and had a smile that lets her dimple pop while the smile reaches her eyes.

I spend my days trying to communicate how I felt and maybe “talk to somebody” as it’s always advised but I felt more disconnected as I scrolled down my contact list trying to find somebody to atleast cry out to or maybe send an unusual text that’s unlike me and they’ll see that it’s a cry for help… I needed to be saved from myself. Ofcourse the scrolling wasn’t entirely a failure as there were these two particular contacts that I texted and poured out everything to… no concealment no sugar coating and no omissions… I won’t lie it kinda felt assuring… gave me hope that maybe I’ll feel better…

I didn’t…atleast not immediately after sending the texts… although my expectations were that I’ll take a deep breathe out right after and feel a whooolllleee lot better but that wasn’t the case. I was only glad that atleast somebody knows what’s up with me and that if anything happens; they’ll live to tell my story because at that point suicide to me was an easy decision to make like deciding to refill your plate after a really good meal of home cooked food.

But as time went by I adjusted to feeling dead, I smiled and concealed the pain perfectly and I’m pretty sure that my darling mom thought all was well with her loving daughter…. mom’s observant… a little too observant and that’s one of the traits I know for sure that I took from her. She notices everything and I know she saw that something was off with me but she respected me enough not to enquire when she realised that I don’t really wanna talk about it after her gentle trials of trying to know how I am feeling.

Beginning round 3 of 5 was one of the exciting things that kept my spirits uplifted and me looking forward to the next day…. I started to weigh my options and draw up what I’d like to call a survival plan… and realised that I have 2 main reasons why I have to keep going and that for them I’ll hold on a little longer. In the process of holding on, I learned that just like happiness; healing is an inside job; that I’ll have to direct my mind towards healing and think happy thoughts for the process to begin.

Indeed it is a process; somebody on twitter illustrated the process of healing in a simple way… she said; imagine your pain as a ball inside a box and whenever the box moves and it touches the walls of the box signifies the time when the pain one’s feeling is still intense. However…with each passing day the ball becomes smaller and doesn’t touch the walls of the box as often as it used to…and it gets small to an extent where moving the box almost makes it seem like the walls have broken down and have seized to exist as the little ball won’t be touching them at all; however there’s that particular day when the ball will touch the walls of the box and it feels like the process has been restarted again and the hurt feels raw and new as it did at first.

Basically on some high days I thought I’ve healed but on other low days it felt like it’s all new and I’ve went back to point 0. I realised that healing doesn’t happen just cause I’m tired of feeling low… it’s a process that takes time and requires you to be patient with yourself and let it happen at it’s own pace. Maybe with time the ball will disappear completely and it’ll be alright; after all… time heals all wounds right? Also when you’re at rock bottom you don’t have anywhere else to go but up right?… guess we could say I’m on my way to the top.

Thanks for joining me again!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Hey there!! It’s the girl who said she’s not a writer but a thinker I suppose…whatever that means . I think right about now you’re wondering why I included “again” in my greeting, I’m going to explain…I had (have) another site/blog that I started a year ago… which I believed I knew why I started in the first place but I guess somewhere along the way I lost track of the actual purpose for creating it… you know how they say when you get lost in a certain path you can always go back to start your journey on a different path? Yes that’s exactly what I’m trying to do here… starting over, although I haven’t entirely abandoned the blog for reasons having to do with my attachment issues…. that site is my first babyyy[inserts a whiny voice].Okay jokes aside, it’s my first blog and I really don’t have an intention to get rid of it, I guess I’ll just try to post different material on each site… if it’ll work, I dunno really but we’ll see.I guess this one will be a personal blog… how bout that? To give you a little tiny winsy insight to my life, maybe give you an idea of who I am… speaking of identities I remember that I haven’t introduced myself… okay I’m 21… a girl… in varsity studying… yeah that’s about all the introduction I’ll be doing right now…hopefully along the journey you’ll get to learn who and what kind ofa person I am… Maybe you’ll know my name as well, but for now you’ll have to wait and see….welcome to a thousand pillow thoughts. I hope you enjoy your stay here…. if you’re wondering why the particular name; I’ll tell you some day.. it’s a very ridiculous story but you’ll like it…. I think.

Side note: I don’t know why WordPress includes that quote at the beginning for each site… Maybe it’s motivation to keep writing… I left it there this time because the last time I removed it I got hit by a writer’s block for a year….it might carry good energy with it so….