‘Dirty Computer’ saved my life.
I still haven’t fully subsumed all its meaning, but it’s spoken to me, spoken to me in a way nothing has for a long time.
You have to be all that you are and apologetically so.
I genuinely believe this.
Sometimes it means letting people you love go, it means pain, it means growth too though and are you really alive if you stop growing?
I sometimes wonder if I have no purpose. No responsibility and no meaning, if I don’t exist for something?
This is where the core of my depression and pain comes from. It’s nihilism. It leads to darkness.
The point of living? After losing my faith; I lost my convictions and I’ve had to build them back brick by brick over time to reconstruct meaning to my life.
However, I say this, but then i ask myself, did my faith ever really give me peace? Or was it just a bandaid? An illusion? A system? A system to make sense of all I didn’t understand.
If you have an inquisitive, introspective mind like mine. A mind that continually feels, a mind that urges itself to continuously do so even when it would rather not to. Then you may understand what I mean, when I say a mind like mine is lost without purpose, without direction and can end up being pulled in too many different ways to count. It means to exist in a constant state of flux, an ugly twisting labyrinth of possibilities and ideas, which means there is no centre, there is no foundation, there is no stability.
I’m only sure of how I feel. I can’t always process these feelings though.
An older relative of mine asked me what I believe in?
I said, I believe in me. I lied. In truth, I am ever in hope of myself. A sure conviction, is not what I’m experiencing. I just hope, that I am what I can rely on and that I am the only one I can come to fully understand. Also, that I’m the only one who has the means to do so, ultimately. My absolute power only exists over myself and my autonomy. So I am the God of myself, if I’m ready to embrace all that Iam and harness it.
I constantly have dialogues with myself on what I am vs what I express and how these can be so conflicting?
Another friend of mine is battling with the concept of race. He wants us to see ourselves as souls. Pure. Individual sparks of energy and existence akin to an electron. Unpredictable and ever-changing, but powerful and important.
I told him I can’t shake the cloak of race and I’ve decided to no longer do so.
The construct, however pervasive, is now part of who I am. My experience is undeniably ‘Black’ and I have to operate in this world. So no matter how I see myself, even as pure or as raw as a soul, with no packaging, the world sees me differently and I am of this world, after all.
I understand the need for faith systems. I think they are cultural expressions, philosophical reasonings and a necessary element of societal organisation, that helps humans make sense of their inner-conflict and conflict when in contact with those around them.
They provide clear answers to unclear and difficult questions.
There’s a peace in that.
There’s a safety in knowing, or at least feeling convicted that you know or can come to know, within and according to a certain framework. A framework developed over time, which with all its shortcomings, contains much wisdom, much truth, hence why it still resonates with us today no matter how dated it is.
Sadly, as much as my mind yearns structure and understanding; I’m also poignantly aware that some things do not happen and do not exist to be understood. Not in one lifetime.
I can work towards an understanding about all things my entire life and will die still having questions and still not being sure. Not truly, in any case.
I’m learning to embrace this. I’m learning to make peace with it.
So for lack of a system, structure and understanding, which people have continuously developed over time, what am I left with?
I am left with knowledge. However, this knowledge is also incomplete, untrue at times, messy and corrupted by vested interests, which do not seek to empower everybody, but a select few.
You may think as somebody who is on a journey of accepting that things must happen, because they should, it reeks of defeatism in ways.
This is not true.
I just feel acceptance comes before change.
I first have to accept myself and the world for what it is, before I can go to any tangible lengths of changing it.
Is it narcissism to want to see a world that reflects my inner desires, wants and needs? Maybe.
But as I said, I believe in myself. I believe my intentions are pure, good and well-meaning. I believe I will walk a journey and life that only seeks to do better by my fellow man and all living things, with that being said.
I no longer want to hurt myself, to be conflicted, and as I believe each individual is a microcosm of the world around them; I believe if I find peace, then all I express and do will bring forth peace to the world around me also.
This, I feel, is true freedom. I think youth carries the purest freedom. The rawest sense of wants and needs, that manifest as impulses, which life and age erode with time.
Which means we are in a race. Not with others however, but ourselves.
We are in a race against time. We are at war with complacency, weariness and losing ourselves completely to only exist for others and for ideas of things which do not exist.
Why contend with the idea of a perfect, personified God that judges you, when you can face yourself? Maybe, because facing yourself is harder? Maybe, because you fear yourself?
We have modern day philosophers and prophets. It’s important we identify the right ones. It’s important we recognise the new form which evil takes. It’s insidious and runs through everything, as it runs through us too.
Pain can unlock great capacity for love or great capacity for evil.
Pain is where we form ourselves and from pain, destruction and conflict, can come rejuvenation and a chance for a new paradigm.
I think the world is going through a lot of pain right now. A lot of loss. I can feel it, as it weighs on my spirit too. The world is sadly giving into the evil expression of this pain. As we hurt ourselves more and now, in the age of the internet where we operate in the knowledge that we are doing so, we also hurt those around us too.
It’s harder to shift from an evil manifestation of pain, to a loving one. Love requires more vulnerability, humility and acceptance of not knowing and not being sure, in a world that demands we are the opposite of all those things to be successful.
I do feel this means we are all overdue for a correction. I just hope that the destruction doesn’t hurt more, than it saves.
I don’t have all the answers, no. I don’t think I ever will, for that matter.
I do feel that I exist to exist in of itself, now. My purpose is to simply do so, to exist to the fullest extent I can muster. This calls me to be me, fully and unabashedly, in the hope that I will contribute good to a world drowning under the weight of self-harm.
As I work towards a clearer sense of who I am. As I move to embrace myself more and bring my outward expression in line with my inner-self. I hope I come across the right people, the people who make up for my insufficiency.
Thank you, Janelle. Thank you for expressing your truest self. Thank you for existing. Simply existing has inspired a young Black British Nigerian girl, just trying to learn how to be young, black, wild and free, also.
