Romanticism

 

In the beginning, I believed that I would write much more during this long break, as I had during last year’s. This is not the case. I have been expressing myself in ways other than writing: amateurly designing websites and drawing and cooking. These have been very transformative, meditative and wonderful. Cooking, especially, I feel. Most of my writing has been in my personal diaries, both physical and digital, and my other, much more personal public blog. Writing of me shouting at myself and shouting at others, unrefined and under-researched. Creating another, lesser known, blog and becoming increasingly insecure about my writing really makes me shy away from opening the Blogger website. Even now, I am writing on Microsoft Word, but that is because the internet at my internship office is not working.

The last post I made on this blog was not announced because it was so embarrassingly honest and awful. I am conflicted on whether to leave it up or not, but I will pretend not to care, for now. An update: I have taken it down.

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I try not to desire to live alone, because I feel as though such solitude is a self-locked prison. My ideal future is living in a very modest house with a loved one or multiple loved ones. I fantasise often about cooking in a small kitchen with my lover or my friend(s) with fresh ingredients from a garden or farm. Recently, I have been dreaming about living with my maternal grandmother for a year, working in the farm with her, learning my language and transforming into a more grounded individual. I know it would be incredibly difficult to live a life so unidentical to my current one, but I am willing to endure the hardships necessary for me to mature into the person I envision mself to be. I have full confidence that my life would not improve if I do not overcome my fear of chickens through forced proximity and learn to grow cassava.  

Trudging through the thick, murky and muddy path of researching and writing my final year project, all the while memorizing yet another set of cases for exams, all the while enduring the antics of my Faculty members would drive me to an inch of my life. Living in the village would give me this life back, tear me away from the superficial and detached nature of the society through which I navigate and enrich it. I would love to live there for some months after graduating from university because, after studying something as life-sucking as Law, it would sober me up.

I am not naïve or misguided enough to cover my eyes to the limitations and disadvantages that village life would come with, to ignore the benefits that modern life has blessed me with. However, I prefer living a life that involves developing a deep and direct relationship with nature and the world that grows us around, as opposed to living a life that involves a thick wall of separation between me and the soil that provides my food and the trees that give me oxygen. It is a lifestyle adherent to my usually boasted of ethos.

Most importantly, I want to know my language and my tradition and my village, no matter how ugly or unattractive or discriminatory it may be. I may even contribute to a positive change. My ancestors cared for this space so that I may enjoy, I want to be able to boast of contributing to a practice as infinitely large as passing down land. There is a weird and unnecessary separation between me and my culture, I scorn my parents for not drowning me in it as a child. It didn't help that I went to a secondary school that boasted its very British curriculum. I feel it is shameful. 

I have asked my parents to go. My mum is confused and my father believes it will be good for me. The only things that scare me are being so far away and disconnected from my lover and the fact that my grandmother's food tends to be tasteless.

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I have started to wonder what running away from my home would feel like. I wonder if I'd be able to make it. My naivete, sheltered upbringing and lack of skill would greatly weigh me down. My privilege is smeared across my face and embedded in my walking step, I may look like the perfect candidate for a kidnapping (as a random man on the road was so kind to inform me). I want to live a life where my father has no control, influence or view. I imagine how it is to strip my life of everything it is composed of, until it is little more than death. Sometimes I fantasise of a misfortune that "liberates" me. I know that I can only do this because my family surrounds me, and my home protects from the rain and the harsh cold of the night. This is why I can pervert the reality of suffering into some fairytale of "liberation."

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Thank you for reading, I am grateful to have a little bit of your day.

- MM