Category: Coping System

Anxiety, Coping System, Descriptive, Emotion, Late Night, Pain, PenPractice, Thoughts, thoughts, writing

Grey Clarity on a Cold Evening

I. Ogunbase

Life is funny, sometimes. A downright comedian when you truly begin to see how it operates. How it flows and ebbs. How it pulls and pushes. A Joker, to be succinct.

And whenever I said this, I’m generally met with momentary confusion and awkward reluctant acceptance especially after I add the caveat that I have at a ready for situations like this.

“Life is funny sometimes because all you can do is laugh… Because if you don’t laugh, well… then it breaks you down.”

Isn’t it interesting how one of the most important, underrated emotions that no one seems to talk about is “Disappointment”

I personally think its one of the stronger negative emotions. Not anger or frustration or pain or grief.

Disappointment. /dɪsəˈpɔɪntm(ə)nt/
sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one’s hopes or expectations.
“to her disappointment, there was no chance to talk privately with Luke”

Its a Thursday night (as of this writing) and I’m sequestered on a table at the corner of a beautifully decorated hall to celebrate a friends traditional Nigerian wedding.

The colours are cool; Purple, adorned with white flowers sets and green flowery background around the couples’ chair. A dance floor, white with gold trimmings with the print names of my friends. The music is loud and inviting. Different notes, different tones and the adults are all enjoying themselves in the centre, dancing their night away in joy and laughter.

The joy I feel for my friends, the couple, is immense. Its been a while coming, especially with how the pandemic has derailed everything.

And it is in this immense joy, that I find myself being disappointed.

Disappointed with plans.
Disappointed with Life.
Disappointed with people.
Disappointed in things.
Disappointment like grief.

This, ever-expanding sea of apathy and diet nihilism that I’ve fallen into but I’m not drowning. It’s not choking me. Instead, it wraps itself around me like a breathing apparatus. I can see through the ripples. I can breathe through the tube in my mouth. My movements are delayed but I’m not bound or restrained against my will.

And its because of this disappointment-like-grief that I have to laugh in the face of life being life. In the face of life being volatile. Because if I can’t laugh at the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of life, I lose the only defence against the apathy in front of me.

And that’s the one thing I can’t allow.

After all, if life ebbs and flows like the sea then I’ll be eventually washed up on a beach somewhere. Preferably with a cocktail in one hand and my wife’s hand in the other. Some summer wear to enjoy the season and a hammock so that we can gaze at the blue. And life would be good again.

Until the next tidal wave hits.

Coping System, Emotion, PenPractice, Poem, thoughts

Surface Ripples

I. Ogunbase

There’s a certain taste to it
A spice thats too much for any rational palate
The kind of seasoning that ruins a dish.

Its grief.

There’s nothing quite like it
Corrosive poison cycling through your heart
The kind of stuff that silently kills

You’re grieving

And nothing anyone says captures it
The sheer monstrosity of drowning in pain
Sinking below the surface of ‘alright’
Thrashing,
Struggling,
Gasping for relief
So a hand stretches to the dwindling light
As hope whimpers its final breaths

–

Then a hand breaks the surface
And grabs yours.

Anxiety, Coping System, Descriptive, Emotion, Late Night, Life, Pain, PenPractice, Poem, Shorts, Sleepy time, Thoughts, thoughts, writing

Responsible.

I. Ogunbase

Responsibility is light.
Responsibility is heavy.

Responsibility is as light as a feather,
The spring in your step propelling you further till you fly,
It becomes the wings on your back,
Lifting you past the clouds till you’re up on high…
It is the cool shades you wear when you step into a function,
It draws the eyes of admiration on you.
For you,
It blots out the stars till you’re the only star shining.
The brightness lighting up the dark sky so intensely,
It only made sense for everyone else to shield their eyes.

Responsibility is the twinkle in your eye.
The confidence in your actions that make everyone want to stand behind you.
The winning smile that lets you past the doors that once kept you.
It is the strength you never knew you had or wanted,
Equipped to lift the burden of others.
It is the hope of tomorrow,
The sunrise on another day.
The assurance that you are in a better place than you once were.

It is freedom.

And it makes you cry.

Tears of joy, yes,
But not without merit.

After all those years of waiting, you’ve finally gotten here,
And it is everything you’ve wanted.

—

Responsibility is heavy.

It drags you off the edge of a cliff,
And lets you hit the waters with no mask.
So you gasp for air but the lack thereof doesn’t kill you.
You just suspend in viscous space,
As the liquid sears your lungs and makes you cry out for relief.

It is the bags beneath your eyes because you haven’t been sleeping.
How can you?
When it is knocking on your walls,
Questioning every decision you’ve made and
berating you for the ones you didn’t make.
So it renames you as “Negligent”

“You thought you had the right stuff but you don’t” It says.

Responsibility is a duty.

It commands. Never requests.
It punishes when you fail to reach the criteria it sets before you,
Even if the rule-book to your actions have been hidden from you.
It demands the entirety of your being,
Gifting you a burden that you can’t give to anyone else.

It gives you the option to ignore it,
Of which it incrues an interesting amount of interest on it.
So that when you return,
You will find your responsibility ripe with profits that you really don’t want.

Responsibility is not kind.
It is not cruel nor is it wicked.
It doesn’t love you and won’t give itself to hate.

It simple requires your best “you”.

And sometimes, that’s not enough.

Anxiety, Coping System, Descriptive, Emotion, Late Night, Life, Love, Pain, PenPractice, Poem, Prose, Shorts, Sleepy time, thoughts, Uncategorized, writing

Sleepless

I. Ogunbase

The room is cold. Harsh. Unforgiving.

But it’s safe here.

It’s home here.

Everything freezes in here. Left to hang in the air like unsaid words and unresolved emotions. It’s much better in the long run.

It’s better than the fires outside that are licking the frame of the door, begging that I open up so that they can engulf me in their responsibility.

In their warmth. In their potential for great things spanning countries and changing lives around the globe.

Their fire for making everyone around happy and content that I’m not a popsicle like the rest of them, but the rest of them are here and I can tell they are cool.

But this is better. Much better than playing with a natural energy source and watching it consume me. Why would I risk being burnt alive? What’s the endgame there?

Success or cremation? And they think I would risk it all for that?

So yeah, this is fine.

This is fine.

I agree my fingers might be numbing off from inactivity and the general lack of engagement for it’s better this way.

It means I won’t be able to carry anything after a while.

That said…

It is very cold…

Anxiety, Coping System, Descriptive, Emotion, Late Night, Life, Pain, PenPractice, Poem, Shorts, Sleepy time, thoughts, writing

Sleepless

I. Ogunbase

I am tired

From the moment I decided to wake up from whatever dream I was having

Tired because of how long the previous day had me feeling

Tired because of the hours spent overnight thinking

Tired because the thoughts in my head prevent my resting

So I wake up tired.

Headache banging, my impromptu alarm clock with no snooze button

Mouth dry and clammy as my body has redirected the liquid to its exit by my eyelids

Exhaustion caused by the mental alchemy of turning depression into physical defects

The shot glass remains ever empty, but I can’t deny the impulse.

The thought of the brief release as it wrecks my nerves.

The bitter aftertaste as the burn travels down my throat

So I look up, past the clouds, with a sincere hope that my Creator is looking back at me.

“I’m here… I’m lost… When you can please holler back at me…

Because the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer and I’m not coping properly…

And I’m using all I have, to do all I can, but things are not as it should be…

I know I’m not the best, I don’t think I measure up to the rest, but please turn your gaze back to me…

Because I’m tired…

…oh so tired…

I’m getting tired of being me”

Coping System, Descriptive, Emotion, Life, Pain, Thoughts, writing

Insignificant Spec of Worry

I. Ogunbase

For a long time, I’ve always thought Adulthood got clearer as one navigated through the madness it entailed. I figured, one would encounter a rough map or a vague set of guidelines which would make the whole experience more streamlined…

I guess…

As usual, however, I’m proven wrong and my thought process is seen as naive.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, longer still since I’ve cried out of anger and hurt but even those tears have failed to convey the message across.

That I’m tired.

I’m tired of everything.

Everyone seems to have an idea on how everyone else needs to behave. Always. And it’s become so deeply pervasive in society that opinions and impressions are enough to ruin your future prospects without even missing a beat.

And life would eat you up as everyone else walked over your dead corpse, without so much as batting an eye at your lifeless figure. The only record of you being a statistic.

But it’s society, right? Society molding you into the average human needed to turn the work wheel into another day, earning the pisspoor paycheck that companies reluctantly give due to their contractual obligation to the government.

It… It hurts worse from family though. Because it’s usually from a place of love, as they try to advice and protect you from the evils they’ve seen of the world outside.

The evils you can see with your own eyes.

The madness you’ve decided to tolerate in your own fashion because you deem it suitable enough to not give you a bother but the family can’t allow that.

You figure that you can just slip into their shoes and do as society does but family and society forcibly remind you that you’re different from them, so you have to act different from them. That you must adhere to rules you don’t understand and tradition you find issues with.

The young wide eyed boy suddenly dull to the environment around him as he wonders why he should even care.

I used to think that when I grew up, I’d be very much myself, with my own quirks, working alongside everyone else with the only difference being our names but I’ve been proven wrong.

Repeatedly.

They say my identity won’t have to change, I just have to change how I do stuff, even when said stuff are not the things that I would want to do on a normal day. Having to conform because it assures my future progresses as smoothly as they hope it can.

I’ve stopped blaming them. Long ago. After all it’s not their fault. We were all unfortunate enough to be born with a darker shade of skin that would set us back in more ways than one.

The deep and dark realisation that no matter how hard you try to forget, you get reminded that you’re still not an equal.

You’re just a diversity statistic.

Maybe this is what it means to be depressed.

Either way…

I am tired.

Coping System, Descriptive, Emotion, PenPractice, Prose, Shorts, Thoughts, thoughts, Uncategorized, writing

Anti-Climatic Whimsy 

I. Ogunbase

I do this a lot.

I dress my worries, concerns and ‘sigh’ stories in a series of unnecessary literary complexities because it has become increasingly easier to over-simplify the thoughts that race through my mind than to call them for what they are.

Nuisances

The thoughts, not yet spoken, bouncing around like a soda can about to be opened, and yet when the metal seal breaks it’s metal skin, instead of the expected rush of carbonated oral explosion, all I am capable of in that moment, is the gradual hiss of the sounds needed to ease off the pressure off my mind.

Carbon dissipates as the mind regulates back to norm, the coke losing the taste of what attracted its consumer.

I spend so much time navigating the whimsical nature of my mental landscape, as I and I argue the philosophical nature of the world I’ve been born in, often lamenting at how long the discussions take, and how little they manifest in reality.

Dreams upon dreams of change that I remain unsure as to whether or not they’d manifest in my lifetime.

One minute lost in the lands of Horizon Zero Dawn, marveling at the sight that a room of 100+ developers had managed to create, and the next minute, I’m sorting out the plans for my future, my scope, size and possibilities, seasoning the plate with relationship and familiar plans.

The world grows ever colder as the fires of hate burns brighter than ever. The broken branches of alliances being used to stoke the cold flame. The west and the east remain locked in a quiet battle as governmental figures joust with their words, their citizens being used as bet or worse, bait.

The rich acquire more as the not rich bleed the remains of their monthly gain into the pocket of the tax collectors and insurers. The healthy condemn the health service, hoping for dismantling even as the sick look towards the service that reminds them that they too are human.

We are taught that we are different, even though the we bleed the same red elixir of life when we are cut.

Truth is dismissed, regarded as a tool the media utilizes to control, as the people mistake facts for opinions. Lies become the standard of honesty, on the account of being able to “trust them to lie, hence implying i can trust them notwithstanding“

 Fragility is one of the traits that represent humanity, in its delicate definition allowing humans to break… And be put together again.

And with our fragile hearts in its protected frame, we toss, pass and shoot like a game of handball, hoping that our hearts never quite touch the floor, but instead, make it into the court of whom our attraction is pointed towards.

Yet.
Emotional landmines litter the wall of life like a battlefield, waiting for victims to step on and watch their fragile hearts explode in pieces.

Then we spend the days/weeks/months/years carefully putting together what we saw break down. It’s frustrating, it’s hard, its delicate and tender, sore from its misuse. But we took, day in and day out at working to ensure we are protected for the next time, because we didn’t learn from the first time.

And still.

Even with all our hard work and sleepless, pillow wet nights, there always exists a missing piece to the full puzzle.

The eternal evidence that we will never really be whole again.

And that hurts.

I live in a world where my skin acts as the unwanted filter to whether or not i get particular  life choices. Like an RPG game, where I’m hindered from progression via a pathway simply because I’m of the wrong race. 

But we deal. 

We buckle down and adhere by the rules of the land. We assimilate and confirm because it’s easier. Or so we’d like to believe. 

It’s easier to listen.

It’s easier to not be eligible to buy a house because I’m not eligible for a loan of sorts.

It’s easier to work twice as hard for a position even though i already possess more qualifications than my counterparts. 

It’s easier to be shot dead simply because i appeared more threatening on account of my height and my skin colour. 

It’s easier to be profiled before speaking, then re-profiled for having a good grasp of the nation’s language, culture and art. 

And yet, I’m still hated on account of me being black. 

And then there’s you.

The average person trying to make ends meet, and better yet, achieve those childish dreams that made you colour books and play dress up.

I’m only a voice in the corner of the internet, having whimsical conversations with myself.

But you.

You can be great.

Heck, you ARE great.

Now i don’t know if anyone has told you lately, but take it from me… Me, the written calligraphic words on your screen.
I believe in you.

Go be Awesome.

Coping System, Emotion, Life, Prose, Shorts, Sleepy time, Thoughts

Sunset

I. Ogunbase

​The time is past sunset now, the dark blueish tint enveloping the night sky above.

It’s a Sunday. Stereotypically evident, by the lack of cars on the road, and the orange glow of lighting in everyone’s home. It’s the day to cut back. Society would have you believe that should be a Saturday but it’s a lie.

Sunday is when you rest. Sunday is when you reflect.

In a few short hours, the subsect of the world of which it remains night goes quiet as the mind relegates to it’s battery saver state, preparing for the morning wake and the subsequent actions that follow. Clockwork really, as the body gets set back into its routine of making money and pretending to look busier than they actually are in hopes of making more.

Typical stuff.

When I was younger, I used to fantasise that I’d be sitting at the edge of a building, or beachhead or balcony, watching the sunset in the horizon. This…dream would usually be populated by close friends and a girlfriend, conversing, laughing, socialising and eventually being comforted by the silence of being next to loved ones, as we gaze into the distance of where our deepest dreams lay accomplished. The sunset would usually be in its earliest position, the orange glow bathing us in that warm hug of loving goodness, just before it dips below the horizon.

The sunset is different now. My fantasy having being transformed by life experiences, the orange tint is absent. Now? It’s just me at the edge alone, sitting with my eyes closed.

It’s relevance in being open is useless here.

After all, what’s there to see but the dark purple mix of warm and cool, painting the sky in the uncertainty of what the future might hold. I had once believed that my path onwards would be one taken together with a group of like-minded people, walking hand in hand.

My naivety has been cruel to me. I once led myself to dream that we’d all congregate in years time, together on that edge but even I knew that to be a lie.

Maybe it’s time I get up from the view before me and return back to the house.

Coping System, Emotion, Life, Pain, Poem, Thoughts

Little Miss 21

I. Ogunbase

Hello Ms 21.

Look at you all grown…

It’s funny how, over the years I’ve,
raged, argued and butted heads against your stubbornness.

Because, goodness me, are you difficult.
But I love you, nonetheless.

It’s funny how, you’ve brought me joy and sorrow,
tears and laughter,
fights and fun fights…

I mean, we have had our share of childish antics,
and we’ll probably have more crazy fun,
especially now that you’re grown.

“Little Ms 21” is now an adult,
ready to take the world by storm.

[Laughs]

Happy Birthday, Girl…

—–

I miss you, Ms 21.

Thinking of you, all grown…

It’s funny how I think, over the years we would have
raged, argued and butted heads against your stubbornness.

Because, goodness me, were you difficult.
But it made me love you all the more.

It’s funny how, you brought me joy and sorrow,
tears and laughter,
fights and fun fights…

We had our childish antics back when we were young,
but that was a long time ago,
when you were still here…
and now you are gone…

“Little Ms 21” would be an adult now,
ready to take the world by storm.

[Sighs]

Happy Birthday, Lil Sis.