2023: A Year of Beauty
I’ve never known myself like I did this year. I’ve never loved myself like I did this year. This year, I learned to romanticize my existence, I saw myself — I truly saw myself. Not in the “My favorite color is mint green and baby blue” kind of way, but in the “My heart sings when I hear this song” kind of way, the “I love speaking about this topic” kind of way, the “I love how I feel when I wear this dress” kind of way, the “It doesn’t matter what people think about this, as long as I love it” kind of way. This year, I met Simi, and I loved her.
At the start of this year, I was not one to put so much intention into my happiness. I liked to believe that magically or luckily, happy things will happen to and for me. I believed that it was the universe’s job to make me happy, to give me everything I desired at every moment I wanted it, to send people my way, who would make my life more beautiful. I was wrong. Oh, I was so wrong. And it was so evident that I was wrong because I was never happy. When I achieved certain feats, I was never happy — I only felt relief. Like “Okay, we’ve done this, what are we doing next so we don’t feel so useless?” When I didn’t achieve feats, I felt a grueling pain in my chest that was so loud, I could hear it calling me a failure. A type of grueling pain that would render me almost useless and make me feel like my entire existence has been a fluke and somewhat unnecessary.
Sometimes, I would blame this on how I was made to see ‘success’ growing up. Like Simi, maybe you always feel a thirst to do and to succeed at everything, every time, because whenever you got second or third in primary school, you were asked if the person who got first had two heads, and whenever you got first in class, all you got was a handshake and “Keep it up next term.” Maybe it all started here and it grew into how you would kill yourself for scoring 58, instead of a perfect score of 60 at a Maths test in secondary school because you forgot to add a minus sign to your final answer. And you would cry, worry, be in pain and regret for days, and anticipate the next test, where you would make sure you got a 60. But before then, when people asked you what you got in Maths, you would reply with a sad face and say, “I got 58 because I forgot to add a minus sign,” not “I scored 58,” with a proud smile on your face. Maybe it continued from here and went with you to university, where you always made sure you had a perfect cgpa every semester, even though you never celebrated yourself for it, and the times when you didn’t, you called yourself a failure, you felt like something was so wrong with you. You tied your entire existence to achieving, to succeeding in a way you were meant to believe you could, and it went with you, influenced how you felt about rejections, about being told no to business proposals, about getting mails that started with “We regret to inform you…” It influenced how you felt after every success too. How when you achieved something at work or in your personal brand, you became quiet about it because you believed that what made true success was continuous success.
I blamed my view of happiness in general on my response to success, rejection and failure while growing up. And although it seems like a pretty good reason, it became an excuse. At some moment, as an adult, you decide that you no longer want to feel the way you do, or blame your unhappiness on your upbringing. That moment, for me, was 2023.
On waiting
Waiting is one of the hardest things to do. It is that space where you can’t go back, but can’t go forward either because it is out of your control to move, so you just feel stuck, for God knows how long. I heard an episode on a podcast titled You Can Rest Here hosted by Mazino Malaka, that you’re either waiting to become better or waiting to become bitter. For so long, I was doing the latter. I could not comprehend why it was so difficult to get the things I wanted now, in that very moment. It almost felt criminal and I felt like I was being cheated by God, like the universe never worked in my favor.
I guess what changed my perspective on waiting this year was gratitude. You see, your soul gets so drained when you have 99 reasons to hate the world and complain. You feel yourself sinking deeply into a pool of despair. But when you practice gratitude, waiting becomes easier, your life becomes more appealing to you, you learn to cherish the now. This was what I started practicing, and although it still gets a little difficult, gratitude makes it easier for me to not stay in that bitter place, makes it easier to snap out of it immediately I find myself drifting, gratitude makes it easier to recognize how good my life is.
On letting go
It is a beautiful thing to find people and things, and love them with your whole heart, while creating experiences that will transform into beautiful memories. You have those moments when you can’t imagine not speaking to them for days because somehow, your love for them is always. You have those moments when you’re having a conversation with them and you think to yourself, “Oh, I want this person in my life for a long time.” You make all these plans, have these dreams, imagine these scenarios, until one day, you no longer align with their stories and neither do they in yours. And then you think to yourself, “How could something so natural and sweet become so foreign, forced, and even unhealthy?” “How could someone I have all these memories with become suddenly nonexistent in my life?” “Where do I put this love I had for this person?” And that is where grief sets in. The longing after the letting go, the countless Why? and unanswered What really happened? You would ask yourself so many times, but you wouldn’t have an answer. You would ask yourself so many times, until you finally discover it was time to let go. This year, I realized it was about time.
On doing it unsure and embracing uncertainties
For someone who has been learning to tone down perfectionism, this has been quite hard for me to do, but it has gotten much easier, I’d like to think. You see, I liked to do things a certain way, and my mindset has always been that once I do things in a way, I would get a certain result, but boy, that became so unsustainable, draining and untrue! Yes, when I put intention into my work, it prospers, but what about those times when I’m nervous about a project or I am not in charge of how certain things turn out? Those are the moments of uncertainty. Like I could create a stunning business proposal and get turned down, I could meet all the requirements to apply for a job and not get it, I could write something I really love and imagine it would perform really well, but it doesn’t. I could do everything right and not get the results I wanted. In times like these, what do I do?
When I realized that hopelessly hoping, leaving no chance for redirection, obsessively planning and glorifying perfectionism not only left me disappointed, but also made it exhausting to live life, I decided it was time to do a lot of things unsure of the results, embrace the uncertainties of life and truly live. Where’s the fun in my life if everything is planned by me? Where is the room to learn?
On loving and seeing myself
We move so much in life that during that process, we forget to stop for a second to get to know ourselves or build our personalities. Reason why we sometimes find that we are the same people we were a couple of years ago. Yes, we have new experiences, new jobs, new loves, new friends, but we don’t do so much for our personalities. All this leads to is being shaped by external events and people around us. At what point do we explore all the beauty we possess inside and live it? At what point do we shift the focus from the things we do, the places we go, the friends in our lives, to ourselves? I realized this year that my life constantly revolved around work, family and friends. The thought that even I who owned my life was not an active participant in it was so unsettling. I didn’t have hobbies at the start of the year and I didn’t care to search for any, until it dawned on me how very ordinary my life was, how if I was to stop existing at that moment, all people would know me for was how kind I was to them, how good I was at what I did, but no one would have said, “She loved herself fiercely and it was evident in how she spoke, moved, laughed.” No one would have made reference to the time I mindlessly shopped for clothes just to wear them in my house or how I went out with a friend at 9pm and went to three different locations, laughing and enjoying the sound of my laughter. Or the time I didn’t care if I could dance or not, but just danced because I wanted to and it felt good to me. No one would have easily remembered me for spontaneity. “Yes, she was a joy to be with and her presence was calming, but what was she to herself?” Just a body? A vessel? A participant in the lives of others? Or was she her own one true love?
I decided to be my own love, to know myself, to live my life, to cherish my moments, to not always be so calculative, to love my smile, to love the sound of my laughter. And I really laughed. Oh, I laughed.
On romantic love and receiving love, wholeheartedly
I think I was almost oblivious to being single this year, if I’m being honest. Romance is so beautiful with one’s person, but I also think that to properly enjoy that, one needs to romanticize one’s life. I swore off situationships this year though because I like my life lol. The concept of situationships is so draining and insufficient, and I believe that I am too complete, too passionate and too full of love to receive anything less than unrivaled, unadulterated love. Even the ordinary thought of barely being with a person irks me.
This year, I also learned how to receive love from friends and family. I have always understood loving people and the need to be there for them, but I didn’t know how to receive love, how to ask for help, how to bask in the care that people show to me. It now feels almost natural to be the subject of people’s love. I no longer second-guess it, overthink it, or question people’s love for me. I guess this came with learning to love myself and seeing that I am deserving of love because it is so difficult to let people love you if you don’t think you deserve to be loved. I realized that the true beauty of love manifests in selflessly giving and wholeheartedly receiving.
2023 was my year of waiting to become better, my year of letting go, of doing it unsure and embracing uncertainties, of loving and seeing myself, of giving and receiving love wholeheartedly. 2023 was such a full year, the year I met Similoluwa and sat with her, enjoyed her and loved her.
2023 was a year of beauty. 2024 will be a year of beauty.
P.S: Thank you so much for reading my work this year. It means the world to me that you followed, loved, clapped, and shared my work at every moment you did. I cherish you and I hope this post inspires you to see yourself. Please clap for this post (up to 50 times) if you love it — I hope you do :) and share, x.
I hope 2024 is beautiful for you. You are deserving of everything beautiful.
