I wasn't going to put out anything until next year. But my writing often returns to me in weird and urgent ways and I've wanted the speed with which I am writing this blog post for some time now, I am just typing everything out, unfiltered. 

This year has been a very slow writing year for me. I wrote things in small and large amounts, but I didn't put out a lot of it because I felt it was not ready. I even wrote a whole chapbook of poetry and just hated the quality of the poems, I kept asking myself, 'Roseline, is this debut material?' I have done an audit of my writing and publications this year and I am a little unfulfilled. But unfulfilled in a way that still leaves room for grace because I am a fifth-year law student struggling to get my grades up, while still fighting with the fluctuation of my physical and mental health. 

This year has tried me in many foundational ways, but I am sitting here in my parent's house, under a noisy ceiling fan, staring at the empty bottle of cold maltina I just gulped and watching my parents laugh about everything and nothing and it just occurred to me that as much as I want to say this was a sad year, I am deeply blessed to breath and witness life in this way.

The mere fact that I am surrounded by family, that no matter how bad things get, I can always find home and haven in the best people and places. There were family & close friends who held me through pain and loss and minute joys. Acquaintances who left me with compliments that lingered and elevated my aura like subtle vanilla notes on expensive Arab perfume. Situationships that showed me exactly the kind of love my body and soul abhors. Health scares that taught me to prioritize myself and take a step back from everything when I am overwhelmed. Family and personal crises that taught me what it means to drag the hem of God's tunic, till heaven has no choice but to release virtue and healing.

This is the year I was bad with money. A year where my finances moved steadily and simultaneously from buoyancy to brokenness in split seconds. It's the year that money showed me shege to the point where I had to start reading about finances and how to make my money work for me. Shout out to Money Africa! Bad as e bad, I know 2023 will be my money year. A year where I would experience softness, ease and premium enjoyment ( how I will make this happen, I don't know. But we move!)

I guess all I am saying is, 2022 forced me to learn. It's taught me that although routine and planning and structure give me anxiety, I must plan and have a routine to build the life of my dreams. I am learning not to rely on my brain to remind me of meetings and events when I can put everything on a calendar.

2022 taught me that I must be sensitive to the life experiences of others, even when I am going through a rough patch. That I must be conscious about warmth; to enable my loved ones not to start walking on eggshells around me. Truth is, the people you care about may never tell you how the depth of your pain builds a barricade and stops them from being themselves with you. They may never want to share their losses or wins because of the gloom you let your challenges create around you. Life is happening to everybody! Just in different measures and thresholds.

2022 taught me that the Holy Spirit is real. That God is real. That Jesus is real. Real to me. That God is resident in my heart and wants me and understands me beyond organized and performative religion.

2022 taught me that time is resilient. Like this year flew. Everything was happening everywhere all at once. It's why my expectation or wish for 2023 is to breathe. I held my breath a lot this year. I ran away from people, responsibilities and things and kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. My life was monotonous, not much thrill. I have learnt upon reflection, that there should always be space for fun in all facets of life. So live a little. Be goofy. Do childlike things.

2022 taught me that I want love. I want to give love and I want to receive it, romantically. Love that is me and my person, skin to skin, heart to heart, no pressure. You may not understand the courage it took to admit this to myself, if you know me, you know how much of a roller coaster and closed chapter this used to be. 

2022 taught me that I am unkillable until my purpose on this earth is done. 

2022 taught me that I am all surrounded. I really won in this friendship thing. I just thought about my people and the calibre of heart and grit is too golden. I really love close my friends and I want to be rich enough to spoil them soon.

There is a lot more to be said, but this is already a long read. See you in 2023 and please subscribe to my newsletter here 

If you see any typos. Blame Grammarly and my Motorola keyboard.

Just two days ago, I sat down to examine the chaos that has been my life and it just dawned on me that I can name a thousand reasons why God should not make sense to me. I even saw a video on TikTok where a former fervent Christian itemized dozens of reasons why she stopped believing in God and I cannot lie to you, she made very valid points. I have seen people lose faith because of loss and pain. I have even had moments where I held my faith to light and questioned the potency of it. 

I don't even know why I am making this post, if not to tell you that I have tasted a life where my faith in God was not the center of my being and I felt like a fish out of water. When I say faith, I am not talking about organized or performative religion. I am not even talking about being a churchgoer or posting scriptures on the internet - I am talking about the fierce and unflinching belief that there is a God, and that God knows exactly who you are by perfect love, purpose, and design. I cannot even rationalize it to you, I just know I am not an evolutionary science experiment or a product of the big bang theory. I chose to believe that I come from a perfect entity who gave life to the nullity of this world. It's easier that way. 

Belief is powerful, it helps you power through. For some people, it helps them make sense of grief - to understand that a person they care about, has found peace in a place that is beyond this world. It can be a painful, yet hopeful thing. For me, it is in my heartbeat. As I breathe I know it, as I wake, I know it, as I move and love and grief and cry, I know it. I know there is a supreme being and He exists beyond my intellect or contradictions. It's almost like a burden. I have not been able to pray or study the word as I would like to lately, but today I did, and I just found myself shouting, 'God you are so real, it hurts.'  Not that His existence is hurting me, no. It's just… I am fresh off a sea of doubt and this sudden wash of truth that has overwhelmed me feels surgical to my heart. 

A series of events led up to this, but one of them is my writing. I feel more like a child of God when I write. It doesn't matter what I am writing about, it can be murder, sex, love, or history. I just feel like a god when I turn letters into stories and sentences. 

I don't pretend when I write to God.

I say - hey God I don't trust you today because I am tired of life, help my unbelief.

I say - God, I am horny for no reason and if this body is truly the temple you say it is, help me worship my way out of this raging desire.

I say - God, I am jealous of my friends' progress, teach me to be happy for them, for I am not a witch.

I say - God, I don't like my body today, why didn't you create me without extra skin?

I say - God, I am not one of your strongest soldiers, is it not enough to bleed every month, why not take this severe pain away?

I say - God, representation matters,  some people make serving you look like suffer head, I need more examples of your fervent daughters & sons enjoying this life.

I say - God,  am I a rebel for believing that men and women are equal?

This type of honesty keeps me grounded. Because I am baring my heart in its broken and contrite form and you know what God does with a heart like this. He balms it with answers and courage and hope and love. I don't have all my answers yet, but what I have is peace, that I am led by light. That  I am on a journey with the God of all heavens and earth and my answers are in the number of steps I am ready to take with this God. 

This post is already too long. I just came here to say that if your faith is failing start with honesty, no matter how brutal, God can take it. Don't pretend because you don't want to look like a bad person or question God. Tell him exactly how you feel. It's therapeutic to talk to God. God would meet you exactly where you are. 

I have more to say. But later. Talk to me in the comments. 

I write to complete creation; to lend my hands to the moulding of this temporal space I am made to dwell in. 

I make sentences because my father left me with a head pan of letters and a shovel of words. He named me a builder and asked me to draw light from darkness, to invent and cement a storyline. He threatened to throw my birthright to the dogs if I do not create a soft landing, a base, an accessible megaphone to allow for koinonia among my brethren.

 I write with the audacity of a god, an heir to an empire the king left at foundation level and ascended into divine space. I write because I carry a yoke on my fingertips, a light burden that unearths itself in a form devoid of emptiness and ready to give the world shape. 

When I write, I am obeying the last wishes of my grandfather, a gentle spirit and king in a small village in southeastern Nigeria. I like to believe divinity sent him as my forerunner to deepen and uproot languages with his tongue, to travel across dynasties, and baptize royalties with moonlight stories so that I can be worthy enough to unbuckle the straps of people who have walked through timelessness. 

They say writing flows in my ancestry; that my mother and the mothers before her wrote on sands, that they registered shivers down the spines of men and scrawled threats into the palm wine keg of the drunkard who dared to beat them even before paper was invented. I write because I want to summon them, to make them have breath in this new world they are not accustomed to; to continue their legacy.

In this world full of limitations, writing is my escape route, my oxygen of confrontation, and my freedom lounge. When I write, I embody the temerity to call things that be not as though they are. Like a true daughter of a royal father, I give breath to clay and dare them to turn to dust.

I have the power to create life and take it, to transport bodies across continents from my favourite armchair and sprinkle diverse traits over the characters I have formed.

 When I put my pen to blank paper, I feel like a god with the bravado to build anthills in the savannah, to come out boldly and declare that the beautiful ones are not yet born, to look at the yellow sun and slice it in half, to behold the severity of chaos and still declare that everything good will come. 

I evade prosecution with my words. How I can boldly declare my sister a serial killer without facing the full wrath of the law or look the future in the eye and tell it that tomorrow died yesterday. I write because I can reinvent, alter time, build up, and tear down.

I write to remove the thorns of misogyny for daughters like me who will walk through tough paths on their journey to becoming unbreakable. I want to give them a weapon to bruise society when it tries to shrink them; to make them reject the suffering type of comfort that keeps them in anxiety with its claws around their necks.

I write to squeeze the necessity out of darkness until it is drained to comprehend the light. I write because, in a country clouded by bad judgment where I can be stoned to silence or death by anything that dares to fall apart, it is not my time to die. 

I wrote this essay as a student at SprinNG & it was edited by my Mentor Ìbùkún

Art by Laura H. Rubbin

Here is my version of the lord's prayer