EVERYBODY HURTS

Hmmmmmmn.

We are still raw from the pains and destructions we witnessed this week. It hurts so much, way more than I can put into words. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I typed the paragraph above over an hour ago and I am still unable to put the words in my head into typing writing. So, I have decided to share with you my therapy, which gets me through everything life throws at me. MUSIC. Music, sweet tea and fresh flowers always make everything better and I would strongly recommend either or all of these three whenever you're feeling blue.

A particular song comes to mind today because the words, melody and everything about it are so soothing. It's "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M. This song will most likely make you cry but you will feel better afterwards because you are not alone. We are all in this mess together and we will overcome together. 

The lyrics are below:

When your day is long
And the night
The night is yours alone
When you're sure you've had enough
Of this life
Well hang on
Don't let yourself go
'Cause everybody cries
And everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone (hold on)
(Hold on) if you feel like letting go (hold on)
If you think you've had too much
Of this life
Well, hang on

'Cause everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts
Don't throw your hand
Oh, no
Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone
No, no, no, you're not alone

If you're on your own
In this life
The days and nights are… 

HANG ON AND STAY STRONG. 💖🌹🌹🌹🌸🌸🌸🌻🌻🌻🌺🌺🌺💕

Kept Up By The Monsters They Created

This week has been one of the most trying weeks I've ever had to go through and trust me, I did not coin the user name @survivor17 without having really gone through some major stuff in life, but this week took the absolute biscuit. Between having three family medical near-crisis, the protests which eventually turned into an absolute nightmare and the president's awful speech last night, I think I was almost about done with everything.

Skipping the family medical near-crisis, while being EXTREMELY thankful for miracles as usual, I'll go straight to the protests and outcomes. 

I have not the words.

You see,  20-10-20 is the Black Tuesday we MUST NEVER forget in Nigeria and worldwide if we must be honest. What started as peaceful protests across the country in a bid to try to end or at least curb the insane police brutalities happening across the country especially in the Eastern and South western parts of the country, quickly spiralled into chaos and ended in sorrow, tears, pains, and blood.  💔💔💔😢😢 

All most of us wanted was for peace to reign and for young people to be able to live without the fear of being snatched randomly and tortured by the same SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) that should otherwise have been keeping us all safe. Alas, some unscrupulous elements in the society chose to have war, unrest, blood and all the horrors of hell instead. A bunch of unknown yet heavily armed soldiers went to the toll gate in Lekki (Lagos State) and opened fire on UNARMED citizens who sat there singing the anthem and waving their flags. It felt like a full horror movie was playing out right before our very eyes. Thank God a brave young lady called DJ Switch was on scene to share the horror to over a 100,000 of us all via her instagram live. 

I have not the accurate words to describe the horror I saw and heard that night but I'll try. There were absolutely terrified but BRAVE people singing the National Anthem with trembling voices and just the national cloth-flags to protect them, people bleeding out from gunshots wounds while wailing in raw pains as the weeping but unharmed tried to prise bullets out of them with rusty pliers sterilised with sachets of cheap alcohol, people taking their very last breaths right before our eyes, some injured being carried to safer distances with the hopes that ambulances would arrive in time to save them, and so many more that I  I shudder to relive now. I watched it all LIVE on instagram. Lord!

It was the stuff nightmares were made off, that Black Tuesday.

How could any sane human being, let alone an elected government have ordered a hit on its own citizen, even moreso harmless ones? It beggared belief and still does. I simply cannot wrap my head around it all. I was shaken to my very core and absolutely broken by what I witnessed. They didn't even let ambulances through to help the injured for hours, still they kept shooting at intervals till morning. It was horrific.

By the next morning, naturally tempers were flying all over the place and people came out really angry and started targeting certain establishments they felt were owned by the person they assumed was behind the attack. I mean they didn't just start attacking his supposed businesses but they were practically lured and goaded into doing so by some cowardly instigators who fed off the chaos. It felt like a scene out of a zombie movie as people came out in droves to destroy and burn properties of anyone with perceived affiliation with the government. 

The larger end result of this were miscreants and hoodlums (read this piece which I wrote SIX years ago) who had clearly had enough of the economic divide and situation in the country over time also joining in the melee and as such gave way to murder, arson, jail breaks, looting, destruction, sexual abuse, robbery, and every other evil you can think of. A lot of this occurred regardless of the curfew imposed by the governor of the state. People went stark raving mad and acted like monsters who had had a taste of rare human blood and longed for more. 

I couldn't stop crying for two days, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. I was numb. How could this happen to our beloved nation despite all we have tried to do over the years to keep things on track and make them better?  😰😰😭😭😭

I started to feel a bit better yesterday evening after I got two funny caricature videos. They cracked me up and I was glad I was able to laugh amidst the despair. This however only lasted for a short while until I saw a fresh video from that Black Tuesday night. It sent me spinning into near depression as I relived the horror afresh and broke out into a cold sweat while quelling panic attacks. 

You see the things about all I've written about is that it isn't even close to half of what I have been through this week at all but I will move on to the last bit which was the president's speech last night.

Per the speech, I absolutely do not have the heart nor words to fully describe the emotions that went through me before, during and after it. Oh wait, scratch that last bit, I know what I went through after it and it was a firm resolve not to wail in despair but to restrategize my outlook on life and a sweet sense of comical hysteria because if I had not chosen to find humour and laughter in my pains and anguish last night, I would have completely lost it.

So here I am, another night of being unable to sleep at all for fear of flashbacks from that Black Tuesday and absolutely frightening nightmares for when I do drift off. I keep wondering that if I feel as awful as I do now, how are those BRAVE ones who stood firm in the face of death feeling now? We all need counselling as a nation but that's another story for another day.

I want to say God bless Nigeria but even my tired is tired. 😓

I wish us all well and I pray the souls of the dead find the rest they require after they seek justice out. 🙏🙏🙏

Keep being #AllHeartsAlways in all you do and where you find yourself. 💖💖💖

 

Enough Already #EndSARS

The revolution revelations over the past few days has weakened me mentally and I honestly don't know where or how it would all end. I have been crying randomly for the last two days and the tears just won't stop. 

I came on here to write and pour out my mind but seeing that my last post can't be so much different from what I'd come to write about made me more sad. I am tired of the injustice meted out to Nigerians daily. I am sick of it. I have been saying something must give and it seems the time is upon us at last, albeit at a grave cost. 

There has been ongoing protests all over the country for the past few days as thousands of Nigerian youths take to the streets calling for an end to SARS. Those who were created and paid to protect us have turned into killing machines over time. SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) is a unit of the Nigerian Police Force created to covertly trace, track and arrest armed robbers but alas, they have completed deviated from their calling and moved on to carrying out highly nefarious and gross acts of irresponsibility at the detriment of the Nigerian youths. There are endless reports of them raping, harassing, killing and maiming people. They carry out raids and extort innocent citizens in the name of keeping peace. They target seemingly rich and young Nigerians especially those that use high-end phones, who have tattoos and/or dreadlocks, etc regardless of what these young ones actually do for a living in real life. Too many people have been killed or are still languishing in prisons as we speak because they fell victims to the raids carried out by this killer squad. 

Well, the youths have had enough and have taken to social media in protests and also to the streets all over the world. The hashtags #EndSARS #EndPoliceBrutality #EndSARSNow and #EndSARSProtests have been trending for days. We are tired and have had enough. No one (OLD AND YOUNG) is safe from these guys and almost everyone has a story to tell about their cruel acts, ether firsthand or by third-party experiences.

Unfortunately, the government has not said anything the people want to hear so the standoff continues. 

Already, a young student named Jimoh ISIAQ,  was shot dead by the Nigeria Police Force this afternoon in Ogbomosho. He was a victim of circumstance because pictures taken just before he was killed showed he was not with the protestors but was a mere bystander. The Nigerian Police fired live bullets at peaceful and unarmed protestors. 

I don't even have the right words now and the tears won't stop so I will stop here for now. I would appeal to those of you with the President on speed dial to call him and let him know how grave the situation is. This is not the time to be an ostrich and bury our heads in the sand hoping this would "fizzle" out. He needs to address the country, allay our fears and anger and #EndSars.

#EnoughIsEnough

Who The Cap Fits

The past couple of weeks have been absolutely exhausting for me as a woman, even more so a black woman, as a citizen of Nigeria and as a human being as a whole. I have watched several videos and read several gut-wrenching stories of inhumane acts on fellow human beings especially women and they broke me. I have seen such cruel unfeeling racist attacks on blacks and the retaliations. I have read accounts of sordid rapes and the unthinking and absolutely mad defense of rapists by rape apologists that has made my blood boil as I literarily saw red in fury. I have tried not to let all the madness going on around me get to me mentally and that in itself is a day's job in one.

Bob Marley's lyrics in Who The Cap Fits keeps ringing in my head as I sadly realize that nothing has changed since the decades ago that he wrote that song. Truly, man to man is so unjust and it's hard to trust anyone these days. I look at my kids and I worry about them. I pray evil is forever far from them and while I thank God for giving me strong and sound kids who can hold their own, still I fret and worry. It does feel like the whole world has gone absolutely bonkers.

How do you deliberately jail an innocent person and go home to sleep peacefully? How do you lure a girl, lady or woman and violently rape them? Age is no barrier for these rapists as I have read of rape cases in the past week that involved females of all ages ranging between SIX MONTHS old to SEVENTY EIGHT years old!!!!!!!!!!! How does the tears of another, whether caused by you or caused by another, not move you one bit? How are you comfortable in the face of injustice, racism, pain and murder?

What has dulled the conscience of human beings and drained their milk of kindness?

I don't have all the answers to how to fix things and make the world right again. I can only do my part and if we all do our parts in our own corner of the world, perhaps, just perhaps the world can become bearable again. Do not ignore the things happening now, thinking they are far from you. the world is getting smaller and the internet has connected us all, one way or the other. Today it's them, tomorrow it could be you or your loved one. you are as complicit in your silence as are the perpetrators.

Do right by humanity.

There's Hopeful And Then There's Archie

I had an appointment yesterday and was running late and rushing to get ready when a notification popped up on my phone. I went to Facebook to check it out and it turned out to be one of, if not the,  the most touching and inspiring videos I've ever come across.

A man walked into his session for American's Got Talent audition and blew everyone away with his story and his performance. You see, Archie Williams had been WRONGLY but DELIBERATELY imprisoned for 37 years in Louisiana, USA for a crime which he did not commit. In 1982, Archie was accused of attacking a woman and even though he insisted he was innocent with all evidences supporting his claim, he still went to prison for nearly four decades for it.

His is a painfully heartbreaking story of being a fall guy for a crime he was no where around when it happened. The fingerprints found at the scene of the crime did not match his at the time and THREE people testified that he was at home at the time of the crime but that did not matter to the judge or juror who sentenced to him to life imprisonment without parole, before he was freed in March 2019 thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization that works to put end to wrongful convictions.

When the host of the show asked Archie how he coped with being locked up for almost 40 years, he replied saying  “I went to prison but I never let my mind go to prison.”

He further said that he would “pray and sing” during “dark times,” and would watch American Idol on television from prison, hoping that he could compete one day. How incredible it was to watch that day and dream come true for Archie as he delivered a powerful rendition of Sir Elton John and George Michael’s 'Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me', which all four judges praised glowingly.

I had goosebumps watching the entire video. His story moved me to tears as I felt all sorts of emotions course through me in  their entirety. I was so angry on his behalf for all the lost years and things he's missed out on, I was livid with the justice system, I was baffled at how God let it happen, I was sad for what he'd been through, I smiled through my tears as he performed with his whole heart and soul, I marveled at his strength and positivity which got him from 1982 to this point, I shuddered at the unspoken in-between stories he'd yet to tell and for those he can never speak about on his journey. Archie's story shredded me of all emotions and I tried to put myself in his shoes over the years but couldn't quite fathom it all. I wanted to hug him so bad and tell him it would be alright after all but his strength pushed through his performance and I felt like he knew that already.

One thing stuck out for me the most through this rollercoaster journey I embarked on for those nine minutes with Archie and the thousands of people in that hall with him. I realized that life can be cruel and unfair but it is still up to us not to give up or give in to the pressure. Never let the sun go down on you as you journey through life.

Just keep pushing through no matter what.

You will be alright, eventually.

Love......



Lovely day, Daily Love

Happy valentine's day. Before you fanatics have a fit on whether this day is for pagans or whatchamacallit, take a deep breath first.

Knowing how topsy-turvy the world has become when it comes to the amount of hate-crimes against humanity we read about everyday, I think it is just as well that we have an entire day on the calendar set aside to celebrate LOVE and LOVERS.

So please cut us some slack and allow people show and display their love for themselves.

Do have a special and beautiful valentine's day. Remember to love and show love every single day though.


Cheers.



New Is New Whenever New!

Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooo everyone, especially all ye faithful blog visitors of mine. :) I cannot believe it has been this long since I last posted on here. Sigh. *covers eyes in shame o*


Anyway, I'm here now and I wish you all a very splendid and prosperous new year. Yes, the new year starts whenever I say it does and I say it starts again now. There's no rule that states we have to be stuck in a rut for always.

Well, here's to new and beautiful changes in each of our lives. So much has happened to/with me in the past six months but the one thing I have taken away from it all is that life is too short so I MUST live! Not merely living but living right and living well.


Cheers to 2020!


I will do better with writing and blogging this year. :D