Lonliness/Redemption

It's 3.20pm, a Saturday and I feel so alone.
If I was in London right now, I'd probably be at Ridley Road market or just chilling. But right now, my life seems to have taken an indirect turning much to my discomfort. Remember those emotional upheavals I mentioned the other day on the blog, well, I am feeling it right now.

Over here in dull, gray, monotone Arnhem I feel so alone. I have no one whatsoever to speak to when I am feeling in doubt. I feel like a plant wilting. A plant without no oxygen. I feel aimless woah, where did that thought come from? If anybody asked about me they would describe me as a sunny, optimistic, look at the bright side of life Taiwo. But now? I feel worthless. It's bad enough that I don't have anybody to emphasise with me, but most importantly, nobody who I can communicate with and talk about my true real feelings. The 'person who shall not be named' is the last person who I want to talk to right now. Maybe it's a real culture clash, because I talk about my 'feelings', he choses not to at times. See, when we used to have arguements and such, I felt a level of safety, because at least I was able to go back to London and lick my wounds and regroup my feelings, but now, I am in the eye of the storm and there seems no escaping for me at all. There is nowhere for me to go. I have no money, nothing to call for my own. I am literally stuck in this nightmare and I cannot see a light at the end of this tunnel for now.
I am 46 years old and I feel that the sacrifices that I have made over the years have been futile. I know that I am an intelligent woman, but I feel that I haven't truly thought through all of this. I decided to take the olive branch but abandon the buds.
I can't speak the dang language, and I am just, in a sense, utterly miserable.

How do I feel right now? Dazed, shut down and depressed. Only a miracle now can save me... Do I step out on faith or adhere to my prayers and hope that Spirit can hear and receive me?

As my lonliness swallows me up I will keep on keeping on... but it's so HARD.
Hmmm, just a BAD day overall, and I know that I am venting.

The Musing and Words of a UK African Woman Living In London: Freewrite - 'Desert'

The Musing and Words of a UK African Woman Living In London: Freewrite - 'Desert'

Freewrite - 'Desert'

There is so much that I need to say. Let me just start and say that I have decided to rejuvenate my blog. I intend to write in it at least once a week. I have commited myself to this notion and I am going to try and stick to this.
I understand that I have left... no, abandoned my blog. I see the last time I wrote in it was six months ago. Well, my life has taken a different fork in the road, but I will blog on this later on.

After leaving London and moving to Holland, I have a lot of time on my hands. I realise that I have to take advantage of this time, because, at the end of the day, time waits for no one, and most importantly, I'm sick and tired of procrastinating when it comes to my creativity, I need to take a good look at this, because I feel that I am just wasting what God has preordained for me. He has given me a voice, but due to my on and off procrastining attitude, I have been pretty lax hence the stagnation of my writing. Currently, I am in the midst of a a lot of emotional upheaval, but as I stated, I will blog this next time.

I've just started reading a book that I brought ten years ago in New Jersey. The book's entitled 'Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer's Life', which is written by Bonni Goldberg.

The book is divided into two hundred studies, and the gist of the book is to use these studies as a companion, as such, to your writing. The author recommends that you do about four or five studies a week, but really, it's up to the user to schedule how many studies that can be used.
Basically, these studies can be used to begin journal entries (I guess blog entries in the technology age! lol), as warm ups or sketches before getting down to the 'serious writing', to dig deeper for ideas for a piece or to help develop characters for a novel you may have started. Thus, to 'prompt'ideas for your creativity.


Now, this is what I need. My writing has cobwebs over it, so I definitely need an MOT to kickstart my creativity back into gear again. This is the book to do it.

My first exercise was called 'diving', which is sometimes known as 'freewrite'. This writing exercise lets you write completely uncensored. So, in other words, for anal folk like me (lol), I don't get to look at my grammar, comprehension or punctuation. I just write and write and write without stopping. So, that's what I did. I wrote without stopping. I wrote from instinct and intuition. I came up for air after I completed on A4 size page. It was painful to look at my flow, because after reading my conscious flowings, I said to myself that I was being 'real' with myself - this always seems to happen when I undertake this particular task.
I got to chose a subject and I chose 'desert'. I was able to use this word in many ways. My pen flowed on the A4 lined sheet and this is what I came up with. Please bear in mind that I have taken poetic license to correct and edit my original piece, but this is it in essence:

Freewrite - Desert




"I feel that I have deserted my dreams and desires. In order to compromise my soul, I've deserted the path that was preordained to me.
This desert is an oasis of hopelessness, of an unfulfilled wish; a stuttering dream that has strangled the life force out of me. All I have to offer is tears and a sense of bereavement. I'm left abandoned and feel bereft in this emotional desert. Everything is all jumbled up and a sense of confusion is overwhelming all of my senses. I feel dull and lethargic. I feel suffocated by the lack of misunderstanding of where I currently find myself. So, what do I do? Do I just succumb to these ascending feelings or do I just put my head down with the rest of society and tell myself that everything is a-ok? This desert is now taking over my dreams. I feel desireless in this desert. The person who I daily see reflected back in the mirror is not me - at all. It's like I have morphed into another person. The effervescence behind the windows to my soul have gone flat and I'm not sure for how long. Truth be told, I do not really recognise myself anymore. I am just a shell of my former shelf. A cliche I know, but I feel that my life is a cliche at the moment. Right now, my life is an ellipsis. The space that I feel right now is a void that I trying to understand. Trying to make sense of this emotional desert. I feel empty and at loss. This desert is threatening to consume all of my thoughts and overwhelm all of my logical thinking. This desert is leaving me thirsty for the life that I once had. I have no money whatsoever and I am having to depend on somebody else emotionally, financially, mentally and I feel right now that I am being misunderstood with the above values from the person who I thought that I could depend on. It's hard to communicate with someone who just doesn't 'get' you, but I will have to write about that at another stage.
This desert is a vast landscape of nothingless. I feel that I have become a failure in my dreams that I once had and cultivated."

Wow... as I read the above words over, I felt a realness and an uncensored (albeit adjusted a little bit in terms of grammar etc) to make some sense. This is how I REALLY feel. I'm tired of masking my feelings up. The words and emotions that I have wrote and conveyed may change over time, but the thing about freewriting is just to go with the flow, and that is what I intend to do on this blog and with my future writing.

Adios for now...