January is slow beginnings, browsing through Pinterest in search of mirrors, and portals, and other things that connive with my desires. January is for listening to Tropic Morning News by The National, seeing my close friends leave university, and falling in love again with the ones near me. I sacrifice sleep for school and my screentime decreases dramatically. I eat a lot of fruits. January is also the month of having too many needs and not enough money; the month of strategic choices. In January, I teach people how to do things — branding and content marketing, and how to start. I also write. I write like a fever.
February feels like a rush of water. Crystal clear — taking me out from under. I am pushed into my washing machine reality of things (again) and watch the weeks melt into themselves. Life is hard in February. I watch the walls of the apartment I live in break down — no light, no water, and I’m forced to depend on the human collective. I teach more in February, each week a different classroom. My hands surprise themselves in their capacity to yield and to let go. In February, I fall in love with a knife. My newsletter, 20 Something, gets 5000 subscribers. At work, I get a raise. Exam anxiety curls itself around me like a snake.
March is both desert and forest rain. It is long hours spent memorizing cases, and sections, and the opinions of jurists and philosophers; then overnight readings soaked in energy drinks that engage in tiresome arguments with my desire for sleep. March is long walks under the hot sun, starved desires, an exercise in prudence. It is severing ties, and a hundred hours spent questioning why life enjoys taking such sharp bends, like a reckless adolescent behind wheels. Then sometime after the middle of the month, the rain falls and the month slows into a song and I’m holding A Secret History by Donna Tartt in my hands, and watching movies, and spending time with the people that make me happiest. March acquires a new taste, a feast for the eyes and the mouth. So many things flood my senses in March, I nearly forget myself.
April is held with anticipation, like the first grandchild of her family. I set out time to do things that give me great happiness and joy: painting, watching my friend DJ, attending church with friends, practicing early morning pilates, and drinking Tiger beer with Sprite. April is also an overwhelming month, and so the days fly by like the pages of a book with a broken stem. I only remember to pause on my birthday — and what a beautiful day it is! Dancing salsa on the patio, eating tiramisu and pasta in the company of people who give my life colour. April yields a reconciliation with certain details of my life that induce worry. In April, I learn the importance of inhale and exhale. I also learn a great deal about love, and its cleansing properties — I am carried on the backs of people who love me and truly want the best for me.
May is a flurry of activities, a forgotten scarf on the ride back home. It is listening to Sunburn by Dominic Fike and having a strange, yet comforting sensation that I haven’t listened to all the songs I am ever going to love, seen all the movies I am ever going to love, or met all the people I am ever going to fall in love with. May is planning and executing, letting go of fear and throwing my weight in. It is coming to terms with my human frailty, and allowing my body to be just that — my body. It is being part of Founders Connect: Builders Summit and seeing just how far dreams can fly if they are followed with raw horsepower, and the right team. It is friendship, and love, laughter and great results.
June is quicksand — falling like a toddler, then learning how to walk again. It is seeing Marketers Therapy 3.0 take place and pinching myself for many weeks, wondering if any of what happened was real. All those people in one room, sharing and listening, and learning. A certain kind of magic that follows me for days. June is the beauty of people talking about me in rooms I’m not present in, people believing in me more than I believe in myself. It is silly mistakes, like stabbing my feet with wineglass, an injury that leaves a scar I might carry with me for the rest of my life. It is listening to great music — Tems, more Dominic Fike, and The Beatles. Final Year Week happens sometime within the month and I have the time of my life piecing together outfits — becoming a magician.
In July, I experience a physical pain that colours my memory of the month so intensely that it’s difficult to remember anything else. It’s everything — bleeding knees, tetanus shots, spirit on open wounds, hospital visits that hurt more than they fix. It forces me to slow down, to learn to walk again, to sit with a pain I feel in every movement, to be mindful of my nutrition because I want my body to heal so fast — goddamit! July is also the month of final exams and the preparation that precedes them. I stifle the excitement in my bones, rein it in as I read company law and evidence. It threatens to topple me over. Rema drops HEIS and I listen to it everyday. Friends return to me from faraway places and I embrace their momentary warmth.
August is everything I have lost returning back to me: time, connection, the sweet taste of satisfaction. In August I am a stretched catapult, pushing my faith to heights it’s never been. I graduate from school on a monday morning, and crash out on friday. “But what if I fail?” I tell my mother. “You cannot fail. You and your father have a grace that makes everything work out for you, even at the last minute.” I hold onto it. In August, LMUN 2024 holds (finally) and it feels like a dream made flesh. For the first time, I understand with stark clarity the confidence that comes with seeing your efforts prove worthwhile. It emboldens me. I declare August the most beautiful month of the year for all it gives me.
September is the sweet clasp of a friend’s hands around my waist. It’s oscillating from art gallery to art gallery with a loved one by my side. It’s laughter, and singing, and dancing, and watching movies, and discussing our thoughts and aspirations on the ride back home, and making up for lost time. September is also the month for learning to go out alone, and explore my very personal passions, gemstones, poetry, jewelry. It’s recognizing that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to give up and walk away. Choosing not to sacrifice your sanity on the altar of trying harder can be hard for a professional tryer, but it’s necessary. It’s recognizing that sometimes the best way to love a person is by taking several steps away from them. It’s falling madly in love with House music, and dancing my heart away at raves.
October is coming home to myself. It’s the sober realization that the year is coming to an end, and a lot has happened, really fast, too. October is falling in love with reading again — I’m thirteen once more, wanting to be distended from the world so badly that I fall into the pages of books with reckless abandon. In this month, my loved ones remain a constant presence, in ways that hurt and heal me. I watch people walk out of my life and balk under the effort of closing the door behind them. I watch AESPA music videos compulsively and lose myself in YouTube video essays. October feels like a slice-of-life film by the countryside — peaceful and a little boring, but in a really good way.
November buds activity, and I get whiplash from getting tugged at different ends. Art exhibitions, and museum dates, conference panels and video interviews. In November, I am exhausted from working three jobs and feeling like a cloth wrung dry. I bide my time, patiently, the same way a coconut on a tree waits to be filled with water. In November, good news fills my mouth. I finish school with a 2:1 and my mother’s eyes look like stars when she says, “I had already made up my mind that you weren’t going to; you were always so busy.” In November I read Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and spend a lot of time thinking about the incidents that rumple the fabrics of our lives. Do you think about them as well? My body rebels endlessly; fevers, headaches, flus, and I shush her like a dog. Not yet, not now.
December is the life-cry of a newborn, years after waiting. Before she arrives, I spruce up her cot with things; bite my lips in furrowed anticipation, make plans and laugh. In December I am devoted to a vision of a better life — one that doesn’t have me sitting on Slack channels for fifteen hours. I write down all my plans: experience Lagos at night, attend one or two concerts, spend money, and have dinner dates with friends. And then the Universe lovingly takes the pen from my hand and guides me. She makes some edits, crosses my ts and dots my is. I get to visit my family in Abia state and spend three weeks with them, for my grandmother’s burial. Coming home to them also means coming home to myself. I am dry soil upon which water is poured. My hungry eyes, my grateful heart. I make new connections with old loved ones. I sleep well for weeks.
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2024 is the sound of twin knives before a fight — the way they slice against themselves, iron sharpening iron, music for the wind. The nicks, and licks, slices and cuts, will only come after this sound has been made. So also the fatal stab, inviting victory or death.
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For the concrete: 2024
