I’m a normal person. Yes, I know. If you’re so normal, do you have to announce it? When I say that, I mean that I am a young woman who laughs about silly things with her friends, who cackles in the faces of people who say “Let’s have an intellectual conversation.” “Abeg abeg, it’s not that deep. It’s never that deep,” I’ll tell my friends.

I laugh about my grief, I laugh about heartbreak. If I have to talk to anyone about my dad and they find out he’s late, I'll laugh off their bumbling “Oh sorry, I didn’t know.” “It is what it is,” I’ve responded on multiple occasions. Biko, what is “it”?

I laugh about everything. That’s not to say I don’t cry. I cry, sometimes. When I watch an emotional film, I will definitely cry. Some might even say I cry more about things that are not real than events of my own life. It’s just fiction after all. Then I come out and laugh to my friends about crying over a film. So I am a normal person who mostly only skirts on the edge of things that are too deep. Then I pick a pen, or open a blank document and it all comes tumbling out. The words are there, they want to come out and it becomes a conscious effort to block some out. “That’s too much,” or “I don’t want anyone who reads it to know that I thought about this and that and so so so.” Unlike in physical situations, where actions are unfolding at breakneck speed, where there’s a performance that I might not even be consciously aware of, where my built-in blockers automatically filter out my actions, in writing, any filtration that happens does so consciously. I can stop the words if I wish but afterwards, I have to sit with the knowledge that I have censored myself and there’s nowhere to run from that.

I have heard this phrase “To be loved is to be truly known,” said in different forms, languages, paraphrases, but the sentiment remains the same. Love, I’d agree, is to be read from page to page, studied, like a cherished book with fraying edges. One thing I’ve realized is that the knowing, the sincerity with which I carry myself into love–romantic, platonic and all its forms–is the same that carries me in writing. Make no mistake o, this is an extremely uncomfortable realization. Writing is my sincerest form of expression because even in fiction, there’s some part of me lurking. Always.

For me to be true to that, for my words and my works to complete their life cycle: to be released from me, to take form, to be witnessed by an audience, I am learning to let go of shame. It is not an instant process. Sometimes I am able to let go and pour my heart into words, then I hold on to it, unable to share. A lot has gone with the wind this way, lost forever. The ones that I still have, I will share here. There will still be some that I write and might still want to hold on to tightly. When my clutches loosen, they’ll join this archive. There are things that will go on forever unsaid to someone else, and some might make it to my journal but the interesting anecdotes, the funny ones, the vulnerable ones that visit on days when I don’t feel like laughing, those I’ll share here and maybe, just maybe, there’ll be a line somewhere in there that resonates with you.