It’s Not Ok To Kill Yourself

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…” – Terry Pratchett

Dearest Darling,

It can feel suffocating to be different and even more stifling to constantly hide that difference from the world, always pretending to be anything but who you are. I can imagine how utterly lonely depression must feel for you darling. I know you must feel like maybe you’re wasting space and once you leave, the world could be a happy place without the shadows you imagine you cast everywhere you go. I can imagine you isolate yourself so that no one knows how ‘strange’ you really are because you feel like they couldn’t possibly understand the depth that is ‘you’ so why bother? I’ve heard that you sometimes feel physical pain when you try to do everyday things like shower, eat, work, interact; basically live. I can imagine that when you try to see the future you never go past a few minutes because you don’t think you have the capacity to amount to anything and even if you could, you simply don’t have the strength to. I can imagine you seek escape in drugs, alcohol and even cutting yourself when you feel ‘dark’; but darling; can you see how temporary that ‘escape’ is? Don’t you always come right back to yourself?

I can also imagine you not only surviving but thriving. Darling do you know that you are gifted? That you are talented than most? You know the place you escape to in your head when the world becomes much; do you know that the world you exist in would love to read about it or see it? When you spend enough time alone and your only companions are the voices in your head, you learn to be your own source of entertainment. You have narratives in your head that can be put to script, you have visions in your head that can be put on a canvas, you have words in your mouth that can be put together as poetry. Darling; do you know that you still have the power to change your story? When things get so bad; CREATE. Pour that darkness into your hands and create something; take up a craft that you can throw yourself into when you feel low and just keep creating and releasing the inner you. You’ve got to listen to the beat of your heart, what’s it saying to you?

There is no need to romanticize death; i can imagine it is dark, sad and lonely; why replace one form of loneliness for another? All will not be well in the world if you leave; there’ll still be global crisis but have you imagined how many thousands of pieces your mother’s heart could break into? Have you imagined the silence that will follow if you left? The guilt everyone would feel over what they could have done differently? Do you know that some people around you could be devastated so much that they never recover? Do you know that by killing yourself you give the people around you courage to do it also? Can you imagine your little brother killing himself months after you leave because he had a bad day?

“Shine so brightly that you illuminate a pathway for others to see their way out of darkness…….” -Dr. Stacey A.

It’s not ok to kill yourself my love. You try to LIVE. One day at a time, you keep trying. You find a silver lining and you follow the trail until you find who you are or who you are meant to be. Stay. For your family, friends, admirers, lovers(past, present, future), for the people you are yet to meet, the experiences that are yet to happen, for the people you could inspire and help by sharing your story, for yourself, for who you could become; stick around and find out honey. Find someone to talk to. You’ll be surprised who is willing to not only listen to you but to help you also. What ripple do you plan to leave behind when you do go? STAY. FIGHT. LIVE. SURVIVE. THRIVE.

DARLING, IT’S NOT OK TO KILL YOURSELF.

Suicide may or may not end the chances of things getting worse; but it most definitely eliminates the possibility of things ever getting better.

“You needn’t die happy when your time comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from the beginning to the end …”
—Stephen King

STAY.

Love x Light,

N.

 

 

 

Photography by Gregory Crewdson

Another day, Another tragic HashTag

#NICEFRANCE

There’s so much pain in the world; it’s impossible to distance ourselves from it anymore. We can’t say oh it doesn’t really affect us; it’s happening in Nice, Orlando, Dallas, Minnesota, Louisiana, Lagos, Chibok, Kano, Niger-Delta and the list goes on and fucking on.
When will we wake up and smell the coffee? It’s not happening around us yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen one day. Why must we live in fear of not knowing? Not know when the next shoot out will be? Not knowing when next Boko haram will strike? Not knowing when the Fulani herdsmen will start to kill more simply because they’ve taken a liking to it.
The world is going to shit at home and at broad. Right behind our homes; but it’s all ok because they haven’t reached our street; our brothers haven’t been affected, we only hear it on the news! We feel bad for the day when the hype is up and once it dies down we go back to worrying about why A is talking about you to C behind your back. We go back to fickle mundane everyday living worrying about basic ordinary things; living in mediocrity not wanting more and not wanting less. Wanting just enough to get by. When will our cries turn to solutions? When will we start to be pro active? I’m not saying one man can change the world but a hundred men working individually can at the very least make an impact.

I don’t have the answers but i want to try to do something more, to volunteer to a cause with a greater purpose.
I feel helpless. I cry for strangers but truly; what are my tears to a mother that’s just lost an only child? I weep for the world, for all the bloodshed, for people that never lived because a madman thought their lives meant nothing, for the depressed and the oppressed. I weep because I want to do more, I want to be more, I want to help, I want to save someone, I want to save everyone and I truly need to find a way to do so and not just let this be a night of passion what yields nothing.

Promote peace and love. Be your brother’s keeper, look out for those around you, love your neighbors, be aware, spread the awareness, let go of all that anger and hate, volunteer, be of help, self educate, be better, do better.
We need to stop killing each other.

Love x Light,

N.

Care Free West African Girl

There are people in my life that call me free spirit simply because I go after the things I want when I want them. There are people in my life that call me irresponsible because I go out of my way to get the things that I want without considering the consequences. There are people in my life that call me lucky because even when the weight of the world is on my shoulder; I hardly cry; I laugh, I dance and I appreciate the little things. There are people in my life that call me strange because they have never seen me cry; they say I laugh even when the world is collapsing all around me and that’s unusual. There are people in my life that call me soft because when I care, I care deeply with no common sense left for self. There are people in my life that call me hard because I hardly care.

There are people in my life that call me needy because when I latch on to people I don’t know how to let go until I have no choice but to let go so I can hold on to my sanity. There are people in my life that call me cold because when I let go of people they might as well have never existed. There are people in my life that call me blindly ambitious because once a dream is planted in me, it must be sown, nurtured and developed. There are people in my life that call me deluded because once I get into a dream planted in me, I can’t see any other reality until I sow, nurture and develop that dream. There are some people in my life that call me bold because I constantly leave my comfort zone in search of greater purpose and meaning. There are some people in my life that call me a coward because I don’t stay in my comfort zone long enough to forge healthy sustainable relationships with the community.

There will always be someone somewhere with an opinion and an interpretation of how you choose to live your life and the decisions you make. Listen to what they say if you must; but know this darling; you have to be completely liable for the way your life plays out. You write your story so you best be happy and comfortable with the person you see when you look in the mirror. You could never look in the mirror and see the people that tell you who you are and who you ought to be.

I’m just a Care Free West African Girl trying to survive in a world that was designed to break people before they’re re-made whole, trying to cope with the reality that I have to be lost before I can find myself, trying to understand that I have to go through chaos before I find my peace and stillness, trying to accept that I have to fail countless times so that I can one day succeed. I’m just a Care Free West African Girl trying to live.

Love x Light,

N.

 

Photography – Alejandro Cerdena

The Art That is Love

…A SOURCE OF CALM IN A CHAOTIC WORLD

“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

– Henri Matisse (1869–1954), French artist, Notes of a Painter (1908)

I believe Love to be a form of art. To be interpreted by the creator.

There’s the love that comes in an instant and fizzles out just as passionate.

There’s the love of the moment; the love that happens because it’s convenient; The love that you carry on even knowing that there’s a time stamp.

Then there’s a love that’s LOVE. The love that gets you reading up on the signs on love; trying to make sense of the feelings you are experiencing. If you have ever googled symptoms of love then you know what i mean.

Which is true love to you?

What makes some one type of love more true than another; in other words what is true love?

To say one love is true is to imply that another is a lie. If love is such a powerful feeling how can it ever be a lie? A Lie is an untrue ‘statement’; to hide what truly is.

What love is right? The love at first sight? The love that is convenient or the love that grows?

How many loves can one truly have? To me, Love will always be true to the definition of William Shakespeare; Love is that which alters not when it all alteration finds; a simple sentence with complex depth.

Can we have many loves but one true love? Is there a limit to this? Is it dependent on the individual? I love so many because i’m me; because i’m capable of truly loving.

Is there any reason to love? A poet once said I love you simply because you are you and I am me. How many times can this realistically happen? Are we doomed to love time and time and time again simply because love exists? What happens when you find a true love that already has a true love? Are we always going to be our true love’s true love?

Love to me right now is the lack of words to describe the feeling; you try but you find no words just enough to explain why someone is your 7am thought as the sun comes up, your 9am thought while you clock in to work, your 1pm thought while you have lunch, your 5pm thought as you drive home from work, your 10pm thought as you get ready for bed, your 3am thought whilst you wait for sleep to come because you simply can’t stop thinking about ‘the one’. But you show the love in your actions; in the light head sensation you get when you see the ‘loved’, the anxiety you feel when you think of them, the queasy feeling when you talk; the clumsiness when you’re walking to meet them; trying to perfect your looks and trying to keep your feet sliding fast enough all at the same time.; the way you feel when you’re with said love interest, the way you look in their eyes and there mirrored is exactly what you feel printed in them without words being necessary. Knowing that your love is enough even if it is unrequited because you don’t love to receive love as payment for yours; you love simply because it is out of your control, no if’s no but’s and no maybe’s.

And that is how you know you’ve got them under your skin….

There are so many mediocre things in life; love should never ever be one of them.

Love x Light,

N.

Is Your Life As Perfect As It Is On Instagram?

“The wise do not buy into other people’s perceptions of who they are and what they are capable of. Instead, they bypass a person’s public persona and see who they are in their highest expression. When you see actions taken with integrity, instead of words only, you will then know a soul’s worth.”
― Shannon L. Alder

I’ll be the first to admit that I mostly post my most exciting days on social media. I’m super excited when I’m traveling, shooting, going to a fancy place because ofcourse I can post it on snapchat or Instagram and have people see this really cool thing I’m up to but I also write and post about some of my misfortunes on here; if you’ve read my previous posts I’m sure you’ve seen one of those. For the most part, most people never post their bad days on social media, I never post the days I feel blue and I’m in bed all day, I never post the days I feel confused about my life path, I never post the days I get bad news, I never post when I’ve just cried over one thing another because really whose #goals is that?

It is so easy to get consumed by what you see on social media these days; people start to envy others because of how ‘perfect’ their lives seemingly are. There is no such thing as a general definition of a perfect person or a perfect life. Perfection according to whom? Perfection is a myth; it is impossible to be a perfect person and/or live a ‘perfect’ life devoid of change, wants and needs long term. We are all human beings; it’s delusional to think that the people that post only fabulous experiences live absolutely fabulous lives 24/7. They are still trying to figure life out just like everyone else.
Here are 5 reasons not to feel pressured by what you see on social media
Firstly; you only see the good stuff like I’ve pointed out above. Most people don’t post the negative things that goes on in their lives. They want you to think they’re having an awesome time enjoying life so they post ONLY what fits within that storyline
Secondly; with the numerous filters, photo apps today I’m sure I can edit a photo and look like Rihanna. Have you guys seen the flower filter on snapchat? It’s AMAZING; I legit look like an angel with it. It’s silly to be envious of someone with perceived flawless skin because you really don’t know what they look like in reality (really; take a closer look at my image for this post)
Thirdly; has anyone ever known a friend in reality and you follow them on social media also and you could completely swear that it wasn’t the same person? I know a few people that I always side eye when they tweet or post photos because they don’t do QUARTER of what they tweet so I know they really do it for the hype. Never feel pressured by what could be a false persona
Fourthly; really why do strangers that don’t contribute to your livelihood have the power to make you feel pressured anyway? We often put self created pressure on ourselves, sometimes competing or trying to live up to people we follow and in the grand scheme of things; it makes no sense really. Do you. Nobody has the right to make you feel pressured about life.
Fifthly; the people that tension you may in all honesty be tensioned by you. You never know. do you my love. Be selflessly pure and authentic
Most people actively go out of their way to build a lie on social media when really they are not their tweets or even their photos for that matter. Don’t let the illusion someone else has set up make you feel like you’re missing out on life or not living up to your full potential. Nobody posts about their abusive relationship, failing businesses close to bankruptcy, difficult children, insecurities and all the dark stuff. Filters don’t exist in the real world; you can’t just airbrush that breakup. So; DO YOU! Be grateful for the experiences you’re lucky enough to create; be careful what your #goals are because you just might get it with all the dark stuff you don’t see. Most people in this era measure self worth based on social media and social media popularity; people start to have anxiety, self doubt and reduced self esteem when they measure and compare their success/accomplishments with their online friends. Here’s my advice to you love; STOP. Nobody ever posts the full picture (unless you’re a Kardashian); be the best version of yourself. MORE about you; LESS about online friends that might as well be fictional characters. Work hard, create your own success story and FLOURISH. Some people use social media in a way that increases their finances, inspires other people to be better, increases life wellness, influences others to chase their own dreams; if you must emulate anyone; emulate those ones.

Look closely at the picture above; there’s reality and then there’s the edited cleaned up version that we deem acceptable to share with the world. DON’T PLAY YOURSELF believing everything you see.

This is not to say you shouldn’t post the things that make you happy; please do so by all means! Just don’t break yourself trying to keep up appearances on social media like those super cool girls that fly private jet to a ‘secret location’, rocking their Aunty Funmi hair and red bottoms; it may be their reality but is it yours?
May your life be as amazing as you pretend it is on Instagram

Love x Light,
N.