memoir.

allow, let it be.

on things outside your control.

I have a friend whom for this piece, we will call F; a very lazy coverup for those who know both of us in real life. Don’t worry, I am not about to say bad about them — in fact, this piece opens with the fact that I am afraid to address F as my best friend because of my one-sided experience with the last person I crowned that term. I think F is God sent because I used to pray for this, and I confirmed this the day he said to me, “Allow.”

Allow.

The first time I heard the word “allow,” as a command and not in a sentence like “You’re not allowed to talk during the exam.” as provided in the Cambridge dictionary was during a local football match as a child. I used to play football when I could not tell gender lines, and it was so fun. It was simple. Whenever you were with the ball and trapped in a corner because of an opponent who would not give you space to move the ball back into the pitch, you’d simply step on the ball with one foot, stretching out your arms, still guarding, and you’d say, “Allow, allow.”

Allow, bro. Allow.

Last year in June, I decided to start writing my future self letters. I don’t know what the aim is and even now, I am not consistent, because I have so many things to write. I want to write myself letters, write memoirs for my medium page, write fiction that keeps getting rejected with complimentary editor’s notes, and keep a journal. It’s a lot of writing but there’s little to say and no choice but to repeat or emphasise things. This is an emphasising of a letter I wrote to my future self in November. The website will not let me prematurely read the letter until May when it is scheduled to be delivered!

Allow. Allow.

Who I was at the beginning of 2023, was, simply put, a mad boy. I was forced to grow up because of immigration. I was eighteen with insomnia, anxiety attacks and a large bald spot at the back of my head because anxiety and stress triggered trichotillomania, also known as trich, which is a mental condition when someone cannot resist the urge to pull out their hair. I used to tell myself I was mad. I was homeless and my friend, S, and her sister who were also Godsents offered me a place at theirs to stay. They were the sweetest beings seeing that I had just lived ten months with an unfriendly man. Even now I have not fully recovered, and this is the first time I am sharing this in writing, and by extension, publicly, hence I will not go into details. I had also lost so much weight that my body dysmorphia was raging, and to place an icing on the cake, S’s place which we would later move out of, had a bed bug infestation.

I envy people who can backslide properly because, for me, I put God in a box that season and kept him under my bed. Not so much so I could dine with the devil, but to just feel the pain I felt very well. It was surreal. I couldn’t believe I was struggling. Struggling used to be me eating Rice with Ofada sauce and Sprite from Mavise during my diploma days in Unilag because I had about five thousand naira left in my bank account and wanted to fit in with my friends when I could just call my father for more, get on a bike to Surulere to collect more funds from my sister’s allowance, or just take the BRT bus home to meet my mother. Struggling was many of those frivolous things until I was stranded miles from home in a country with no relatives.

After confirming the lucidity of the pain I felt in those days, I would open the box I had kept God at him, vent and scream, skip my classes and lay in bed and sulk. Retrospectively, I never left God because in a place where no one owes you anything, at least God who has promised you the best — the future and hope (Jer 29:11) — eventually has to keep to his words — for he is not a man, that he should lie (Num 23:19). Somehow, he just had to.

Just allow.

F is a fine boy, and then there was me who even after the winter had ended had to keep wearing a beanie because the bald spot from my trichotillomania episodes remained. I remember how the first time I slept over at F’s, I had to put my hand behind my head to sleep, to hide the spot; something he had definitely seen before. The second time, I tried to talk down about myself and my ugly bald spot and F said, “Allow,” and I immediately kept shut about it and obeyed.

Allow. Let it be.

Multiple times in the course of my friendship with F, he has commanded or suggested to allow things and let them be, and each time, it has pacified me and calmed me down like the pick-me girl telling her raging boyfriend, “Marcus, this is not you. Look in my eyes, I am here!” Or like an over-excited panting dog being told to sit.

Only God would send me a friend to remind me to let things be when I was panicking about the things that I could not control because a lot of the bible verses that keep me going can simply translate as God telling me to allow. As I have confessed over and over, not having control over things in my life, the future and the uncertainty of it, is something I struggle to let be.

Allow, Victor. Allow.

I was listening to one of Ty Bello’s spontaneous worship on YouTube, Eledumare Ti Se, and it led me to Isaiah 138:8, “The Lord will accomplish that which concerns me.” Let’s digest that. The Lord is not busy accomplishing the things that concern him (except for the fact that we are his concern). He is instead accomplishing all that concerns me. David must have had some heavenly intel to have written that; some audacity to say that about a God he had never seen. He truly must have understood the concept of allowing things to be, especially things outside his control.

My Grade 4 class teacher used to say, “That is your cup of tea,” whenever we encountered problems like not being able to see the words written on the board. It loosely translates, “That is a You problem.” I don’t think God would be offended if we read Isaiah 138:8, looked at all our problems and then told him in prayer, “That is your cup of tea!”

Allow.

If this is your first time reading one of my think pieces, you’re welcome. I write all over the place only to piece them together. I’m writing this piece to remind myself to allow this year, and maybe a little to motivate you too. For a while now, I’ve been going through shit. Shit is the baggage I can not mention until I overcome it because it is embarrassing for me, even though, communally, it shouldn’t be.

I keep daydreaming that I’ll step outside and someone would say I heard this was your problem, let me solve it. I keep inventing ways I think I can solve it, or God can. I keep trying to convince myself that since I am turning 20 this year, I am a man and should have problem-solving skills. But even in F’s absence, I should be able to rub my back and say, allow.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. Allow.

find me or my pieces here.