Benedicta

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Benedicta

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT GRIEF IS

~2.7 mins read

I have always described myself as an introvert. Maybe because I was made to think that these are the people like me, who don't talk much, who can't deal with the crowd and who can't stand all the outside noise and would withdraw into themselves like snails withdraw into their shells at the slightest touch.

But everyday I sit down and tell strangers my situation before they even ask me, and in a moment where I am supposed to be pulling away and holding it all in, I see myself becoming more expressive, creating friendships and building trust. And just maybe these are the things that have been lacking in my life.

Nobody tells us what grieve is. At first I think it is what humans do when they are sad. Only now I am beginning to see that grieve is deeper than sadness. You would be near correct if you call it an overwhelming despair.

This is that kind that you can shake off easily, it is not what a single evening stroll can take away, it is not what another job can distract you from, it is not what your friends can even talk you out of. It is what you feel and feel deeply that only you know that only you can bring yourself out of it, but first you need to know why.

That is where the problem is, that you would never know why. And you tell yourself if I could just see why this is going on this particular way at this particular time I'd be better. But at that moment everything eludes you. And life itself seems so small at this point that it looks like you could just run your two palms together and crush it or just put it under your feet and stamp it and everything ends.

Grief swallows the largeness of life. Then you'd understand how easy it was for Heroes to commit suicide because at that point life seemed like a small dot in the middle of a large space of emptiness. It's easy to get rid of it because it is man's nature never to see the beauty in anything small.

And up till now I don't know if what we refer to as grief is the struggle to understand that dot and what is it doing in the midst of emptiness, or whether it is the total surrender to the emptiness itself that we become a part of it.

When you wake up each morning and try to shake yourself up but nothing is interesting anymore. This is when you look at all the people in your life and start to understand that grief is the worst form of loneliness.

Grief is exhausting and they call it a phase of life. But this phase even if it lasts for just 3days runs so long that it almost as if it's completing a cycle that is unending.

Whether grief is the absence in our hearts as we mourn the death of a loved one, the abrupt end of a relationship or bitterness that lingers on after betrayal, I don't know.

Whether it is the anger of expecting so much or the regret of even trusting with all your heart, I don't know.

But in times like this we must find hope. Hope sometimes is hidden in failures and digging through all our failures to see hope could make one lost it even before it's found.

That is why you need someone to help you do that job. Have a friend that can help you dig through your failures when you can't.

While we blame society for a lot of things, we ought to know that it is society that keep us alive.

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Benedicta

YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAST TOU ARE YOUR FUTURE

~1.6 mins read

I really don't like it when people don't think they're responsible for themselves.

When things go wrong they blame every other person aside themselves. They blame the system that it wasn't designed to favour them, they blame their parents for not giving them the best lives. They blame their relatives for never coming through for them, they blame their schools, they just go on dividing this pie chart that reveals how everyone and everything is responsible for their life. But they refuse to look at the center. They never hold themselves accountable for anything.

My heart breaks for you that you had to survive a broken home to grow into who you are, I am saying sorry to you because of the trauma it left on you but then you didn't have to repeat the same pattern by bringing in another person into your life when you have not completely healed.

So when you start breaking hearts and inflicting pain on these people you start to blame your childhood trauma when obviously it was your choice not to take care of yourself first. Not to fill the empty parts of you and mend the broken parts of you before trying to fill up another person.

How can you blame the system for your failure?

Okay since you already know that this is what the system is, the most bizarre thing to allow happen is to let it fail you. How can you explain to us that you knew the plate of food was poisoned and still went ahead to eat it and tell us not to think that you wanted death for yourself?

Exactly, since you know the system so well, what measures did you take to make it work for you?

What I am asking is what did you do differently?

Before you blame them ask yourself what you had done differently from your father. What have you done differently from your teachers, what have you done differently from the previous generation that failed you.

That's the problem, we keep thinking and talking about what we could have done if we were this or that. But the real talk here is now that you are you what are you doing differently.

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Benedicta

ACT OF RANDOM KINDNESS

~1.0 mins read

When I met this girl I didn't like her. She talks too much, like way too much.

Funnily she loves being around me and if you know me you'll know tough love cos I don't know how it take it easy on People and I have very little patience when I'm irritated.

So I always throw her jabs. Very hurting words just to keep her at Bay but she didn't care.

Until one day she stopped talking and I think I did it. But I didn't do anything. She's just not a talker, infact I talk more than her.

In that period when she talks too much she was actually in so much pain.

And talking was an outlet for her. It helps her cope with all that's happening.

I didn't know about all this because when I used to be depressed, I don't talk. I read instead, I know I'm seriously depressed when I start reading 600 pages a day.

Maybe if she had told me talking was a coping mechanism for her, I would have endured it. But then again, why do I need to be told to be kind and accommodating towards another human being.

Whatever thing helps you get up from depression keep doing it because some people never get up from it.

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Benedicta

IT'S EITHER YOU WIN OR YOU LOSE

~0.8 mins read

I will never understand what people refer to as the middle-class. If you ask me I'd say the middle-class is a well decorated poor man. It is a mirage. It is what a group of poor people tell themselves to make them feel good about their situation.

It's worst for the middle-class because there's nothing there for you, since you're not too rich to afford some of the things you need and neither are you too poor to benefit from charity.

When I was in secondary school, the intelligent students get head boy, head girl , and all the heads position, then the very rough students gets labour prefects, game prefects, etc. The students in the middle gets nothing because they are not too good to get the head boy position neither are they too bad to get the labour prefects position.

The first way to win is to take away middle from your mind. It's either you're good or bad, hot or cold, rich or poor, tall or short, fat or slim, married or single. There are no in betweens.

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Benedicta

LIFE WOULD MAKE A MOVE ON YOU

~0.5 mins read

Life takes unexpected turn sometimes. Most of the times the turn is not in the direction of where we want to go.

These are the days we didn't see coming, those are the nights that becomes too long.

In such a moment even a man that swears there's no God would find himself mumbling words of prayer. Just wanting a little bit of rest because darkness has come for his soul.

Even though we know that moments like this would not last for forever but we are still in grief because we don't how much more we can bear.

Everything will be fine. No matter how long the night is morning will come.

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Benedicta

WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO

~2.9 mins read

We just want to do something isn't it? We just want to do anything that doesn't make us feel like we are useless.

But as it ever occur to you that there's a specific thing we are supposed to be doing at every point in time.

Just take a moment and think about all the happy people you know or have come across, you'd realise they all have one thing in common. They are all doing what they are passionate about.

Many times, we are just holding on to things that don't mean much to us. And that is why we go through series of emotional fallouts, from feeling sorry for ourselves to feeling stuck and trapped to feeling sad and angry then feeling frustrated, etc.

It's hard to put up a positive attitude when you're not passionate. Truth is whatever thing you're doing starts with the mind.

I remember when I used to believe that happy people are happy because they have it all going on but not until this moment it struck me that they are not happy because they have it all going on, but they have it all going on because they are happy.

You have to make the decision first in your heart to be positive about life.

And to stay positive means you having a purpose and goals. When you are doing something just because you want to be busy, you easily get tired.

But when you're doing what you're doing with a purpose in mind, you discover that you just become a high flyer because you keep setting the pace and others would have to stuggle to catch up each time you raise the bar. The beautiful thing about this is that you do that effortlessly with all joy in your heart.

Purpose is what let you never to settle. As you keep accomplishing new goals, you set greater ones and you start working towards it.

Now many people are not happy with their jobs and they cannot be fully productive because they are not passionate about it.

They are not doing well enough to be inspired to go to work every morning neither are they doing bad enough to get fired.

In such cases, these people are just doing all they can to hold on to the job and not really buying into the vision of the company.

Likewise many relationships we see today. Just holding onto their current partners for the sake of having a relationship.

The relationship is not doing well enough to move into a deeper level of intimacy and trust but on the other hand, not doing bad enough to warrant a break-up.

Purpose is the fuel of life and passion. If you can't see any picture, you can't paint anything meaningful.

The Bible even says write the vision upon paper that he may run that reads it.

In other words when the purpose is clear enough, whoever sees it would be willing not just to take a step but to go the extra mile.

So if you find yourself in a place where you do not know what you're doing anymore, or you're currently losing interest in everything and everyone. What you need is to find where your passion is and not to sit down to complain about your sad life or spread ulcers to everyone around you.

The value of your job, spouse, family, life, etc is what you can get from it. For instance when you're holding a $100 with you right now the value of that money is what it can buy. It's value is what you can exchange for it.

But if you refuse to buy anything it does not mean that the money is useless.

So it is always up to us to decide what we want to get out of our family, job, the people around us, there is potential in everything and everyone only if we pay attention.

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Benedicta

WHAT IF YOU DIE TOMORROW?

~1.9 mins read

It's the thing with us, we make plans for every other thing but we do not talk of death. Death is the future we do not want to talk about. But there's no bypassing it whether you anticipate it or not, it'll surely come.

We are just so busy these days. If you don't have children to tend to you have meetings to attend, you have classes to prepare for, you have a parents to impress, and the list is unending.

Then sometimes admist all these I ask myself "what if I die tomorrow, would anybody care?"

These people you're doing all this for would they not replace you, quickly enough to have everything going on ?

All the exams and degrees becomes useless, and how I so wish that people can inherit degrees at least it'd be worth it.

When you think about how quickly this world closes people up once they're gone, you would be focused on yourself, because you will realize that your first assignment in this world is to be who you are and every other thing that follows is a bonus.

The only thing you can leave behind that will forever have your name on it is the investment of your personality.

Your cars can be re-owned, house can be sold, the money in the bank can be possessed by someone else but how you know your value is be taking stock inventory of those things in your life that nobody can take away from you or after you.

And I am speaking for facts because the true networth of a man cannot be repossessed.

What is that thing that is peculiar with you? What is that special flavour that only you can bring? That is what makes your existence worthwhile.

A man's greatest loss would be to leave this world without ever living. Do not change, do not shrink, do not try to make them comfortable by being who you're not.

Maybe that's why you're drained because you have being playing a role that doesn't fit you. Talking with people that you have no business talking to, doing things that you have no business doing and living a life that you're not even equipped to live.

Start living each day of your life as if it's the last.

That person you're talking to right now, talk to that person as though they are the last you'd talk to in this world. Do anything you're doing as though it's the last thing you'll do in this world.

Bless this world with the investment of who you are daily.

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Benedicta

YOU'RE NOT CINDERELLA, DON'T FORCE IT

~2.7 mins read

First of all this is very unlike me. I don't usually put my life out there but here I am.

Few days ago I turned down a marriage proposal and it's not easy on me.

Was I dating him? No

Infact I didn't even expect the proposal. We've been friends for quite a time and we're really close friends. You know that kind of close that you get a phonecall at 2AM asking you to come online just to talk.

Do I like him? Yes, so much

He's everything I like in a man. To me he's just perfect then someone would want to ask why I said no, honestly I didn't even know why I did what I did but this evening everything started making sense to me.

I have to say this before I proceed further. This man is way beyond my league in every sense, he understands on another level, believes on another level, he sees differently, financially he's way beyond my level too at least for someone who earns $800 a month in Nigeria, just think it. He's been on vacation to three different continents and it surprises him that I have never crossed Nigerian border, it showed in the way he asked me "...even to Ghana".

Now a girl can fantasize about all the good things she can get out of life with such a man by her side. He's able and willing to do anything for your happiness.

But then he isn't mine because I can't impose myself on him but I'd never thought I'd say No to a guy like him but he did.

As I heard that question over the phone I paused and it was almost as if my whole world was at a pause too. Did he just ask me if I'd marry him, God! I couldn't believe my ears and I had to wake up if this is a mere dream. " I'd give you a response later" I told him and ended the call.

As I ended the call I thought I was supposed to scream, to be happy and feel good about it but I didn't scream, I didn't feel good about it too so I just shoved it away but it refused to go.

Then few days ago I woke up that morning and placed a phonecall. As he answered I told him that my response is no and I wouldn't marry him. I could tell his heart is broken with the news but my heart too is broken by my response too. I'm not happy rejecting him wasn't what I wanted but somehow I had to.

My biggest fear in life is making a decision I'd regret or take steps I would one day wish I had never taken. I just want to be happy in life. Is that too much to want ?

I wanted to say Yes. I really wanted to but if I did then I am not totally honest with my true self because I would be saying yes from my place of need, my place of lack, the places where I felt inadequate and hoped he'd fill, I would not be saying Yes sincerely from a place of purpose, love and meaning.

How did I know this?

It is because of my fears of saying No. If I say No to this man would I get another man as decent as this? As fine as this? As rich as this? And all those questions I asked myself made me know my stand. I don't want this man sincerely.

So since I am not CINDERELLA why trying to force the shoes to fit?

That's why I said No and I hope I find everything I want out of life.

And I hope they make me happy.

Select a Category

Benedicta

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT GRIEF IS

YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAST TOU ARE YOUR FUTURE

ACT OF RANDOM KINDNESS

IT'S EITHER YOU WIN OR YOU LOSE

LIFE WOULD MAKE A MOVE ON YOU

WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO

WHAT IF YOU DIE TOMORROW?

YOU'RE NOT CINDERELLA, DON'T FORCE IT

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