Check out my new Gawker essay! I submitted it on a whim, and am super excited they published it. Please comment, share, and spread the word! --AL.

"Last week, I attended a screening of Ava DuVernay's Selma about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1965 voting rights marches of Alabama. 

Desperate for inspiration, fresh off my second rejection from Sundance Screenwriters Labs—this time, unlike last year's form letter, a lovely e-mail from the program director praising my "empathy" towards the story's characters—I took the subway uptown to the Academy Theater in Manhattan. 

A light rain fell as I pushed my way into a modern building at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, the East Coast home of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the lobby, a lone security guard manned the front desk while a mousy-haired woman handed attendees tickets to the post-screening dinner." 

-- Iquo B. Essien, Selma and the American-ness of the Academy

In Lagos, at the end of each conversation comes the question: So you've moved back?
No, I reply. I'm just here for a few weeks (or months, or through Christmas).
Oh, I see, they reply, eyes glazing over.

Then the conversation stops as though there is nothing really left to say, no reason, as I will not be there long enough to make the saying relevant, the connection meaningful. I am not here and not there, but rather in a purgatory that is not really a place. I would like to be able to say, yes, I have moved back, or no, I will not, but cannot say either with any conviction. Instead, I respond, I am thinking about it, with the close-lipped, tense smile of someone who is stuck.

I have not really lived in New York for years. I am here physically, yes, but not alive. I am working and going to the gym and buying groceries and hanging out. After spending several years storing my belongings and living out of suitcases (to save money, I think), I now live in my own apartment with a giant closet in which I hang the most beautiful clothes. I have a lovely living room and kitchen in which I sometimes entertain friends. There is always music and laughter and joy.

Yet it is often with great reluctance that I return here from Lagos or most anywhere else I visit. Places where people do not live such regimented lives, packing themselves into crowded subways and yet trying not to see or speak to one another. I am aware that I do not have many of the things I would like to have in my life--like stable employment and a family. I do not know if New York has anything to do with that, or if it is just me. Sometimes I cry when I get back here, although I do not know exactly why. Maybe the tears come from feeling like a ghost--here in flesh, yet somewhere (anywhere?) else in spirit. Or maybe I am just lost.

But it is Brooklyn for now. I have been back over a week and still my suitcases lie on the floor, clothes spilling out like vomit. I do not know whether to hang them up or to simply stare, as I do, wondering if I should zip the bags up again and leave. I think if I did New York would not miss me at all. It is a quandary. --AL.

I watched a film this week, Still Alice, about the slow deterioration of a 50-year-old woman named Alice, played by Julianne Moore, who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

At a point she records a video journal to herself, to be watched in the inevitable event that she can no longer answer a series of questions: What is the name of your oldest daughter? When is your birthday? What street do you live on? 

They are innocuous bits of information that most of us take for granted until life robs us of the ability. But to someone trying to hold on to memory, they are everything. The video journal urged Alice, once she could no longer  answer, to kill herself--a morbid thought, but understandable, given the circumstances.

Having watched my own mother's slow deterioration and death from cancer, the film stuck with me. (At a point, Alice even says, "I'd rather have cancer." People wear ribbons and feel sorry for you, not embarrassed that you can't remember a name or form a thought.)

Though I have spent many years exorcising the trauma--penning a memoir, Elizabeth's Daughter, about losing her and finding myself through writing--my mother's death left an indelible imprint on my psyche that remains. It is interesting to me that I chose writing, and have spent weeks and months over the past 10 (11? 12?) years in solitude trying to figure out exactly how I felt and feel about it.

It is the kind of rigorous self-analysis that begets an isolation that can be both a blessing and a curse.

To sit with sadness and write, alone, is difficult work. I find that what's missing for me, until the book is out, is a witness. Someone to hear and see what I have felt and feel. It is the thing I have wanted most out of my life that has been the most elusive, largely why I write and make films and generally try to express myself: I want to be heard.

And there is a curious silence in solitude that feels like invisibility. It is an unbearable thing. All my thoughts and ideas lying unseen on the page. Even the words I write here will hardly be seen by 10 or 20 or 30 human beings. And I imagine this is why I want to publish a book: to make a real thing. Something people can take home and flip through and ponder over, making my thoughts--and me, by extension--more real.

But I acknowledge, deep down, what I really want is for the people closest to me in my life, the people who love and care about me, to see and hear me. I suppose it is the fear of losing this that makes living on, for Alice, so unbearable. I hope that, when the book is finished, people will understand me, know my story. It is a kind of obsession now, to do what my mother could not in the time she was given.

But the point of this blog, what I really wanted to say, was that tonight, while thousands were marching for Eric Garner and bearing witness to injustice, I made a video journal. Not anything like the video blogs I have been trying (and failing) to make over the past few months (having recorded several that I ultimately deleted). I spoke to myself to witness this moment now, to honor the past, the pain, and hope for the future.

I realize now the problem with the video blog, why I have been failing, is that I am trying to make pretty what is a difficult process: writing a book and making a feature film. It is often lonely and ugly and filled with piles of rejection letters. There is no glory. And what little you might expect will inevitably fade. People may think you brilliant for a time until they move on to someone more brilliant. Or they will tell you your story is not that interesting and nobody will buy your book or pay money to sit in a theatre and watch your movie.

There are days I lie in bed and can't get up (most notably, after a pitch to an agent last year). There are days I don't have the courage or self esteem to write another word or make another phone call. There are the days when I wonder if I can apply for that most prestigious screenwriting lab another year and face the inevitable rejection. And the days when I am irrationally afraid of opening my laptop and greeting the pile of work ahead of me.

And yet you go on.

So tonight, my message is that we all must have the courage to witness ourselves--to stand in our truth and language our lives. Yes, we must witness each other's struggles, but we can and should start first with our own. Years after my mother's death, but still before the harvest, it is the only thing that has kept me sane. --AL.

P.S. Read about how Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice and turned it into a New York Times bestseller.

I turn 33 tomorrow. It sounds so old when I put it like that--33--not as breezy as 30 or 31, or even 32.

It reminds me of one of the opening scenes from Waiting to Exhale when Savannah, played by Whitney Houston, says to her meddling mother: "I am sick of you telling me how to live, who you think I should love and marry! I'm 33 years old and I live alone and I may have to accept the fact that I may live alone for the rest of my life!"

I remember watching the film when I was just a teenager, back when 33 sounded like a pitstop between adolescence and death. I couldn't imagine life in my thirties, could not see myself as a grown woman in Savannah's shoulder-padded power suit, talking on a phone in my own office, working as a producer at some obscure television network. (I wanted to become a doctor then, would not have imagined myself as a writer or filmmaker.)

Aging was a black hole into which I would reluctantly disappear, too murky to envision myself as a middle-aged woman married with kids, although there was a vague image of myself as a Maya Angelou-type grandmother serving up home-cooked soup and advice to anyone who passed by. It irked me that I couldn't imagine the intermittent years, between youth and old age, when I was no longer young and foolish, but not quite wise and established--a time for growing up and learning difficult life lessons.

Losing my mother at 20 was hard--thrust into premature adulthood, coping with end of life issues decades before most of my peers. And losing her within days of my birthday and hers (we were born two days apart) has made each birthday since feel like a wound reopened and examined. Am I who she would want me to be? Am I who I would like to be? Am I happy? Is this the life I want for myself? 

The only blessing in losing her has been an opportunity to ask myself these questions at least once a year.

It has meant not making certain choices, like marriage, to people I only passably liked, to give myself an opportunity to live my best life. I have not acquiesced to the societal and cultural traditions that so confined my mother. As much as she loved being mine, I am aware that she left many other dreams unfulfilled, which is why I have consciously tried to pursue my own. I likely come across as one of those outspoken, passionate, willful women who cannot be caged. I do not believe in patriarchy or authority, am not in the least bit male-identified.

And deep down, I'm not so unlike my mother after all. Despite having raised a family, her greatest fear was that she would die alone. But in the end, my sisters and I stood around her bed holding hands, watching her take the last breath. Her eyes passed over us, taking in our faces, and with a great exhale she was gone.

It was one of the most formative experiences of my life, one it has taken many years to fully understand. And as I get older, I am starting to outgrow the old knee jerk reaction I had to marriage and motherhood, accompanied with a visceral reaction similar to retching. I can see what a blessing it is to mother, to plant seeds that blossom long after you leave the earth. I can see myself wanting a family and life partner, even entering an institution, like marriage, that has always seemed so antiquated to me.

And having watched Waiting to Exhale several times in the nearly twenty years since its release, tomorrow will be the first time I can also say: I am 33 years old and I live alone.

I was forced into it when my sister moved away earlier this year, after which I sat on the couch and cried, realizing I did not like being alone. Having grown up with a big family and plenty of friends, I am quite good at camouflaging it. But independence is something I have had to fully experience in order to make a real choice about it.

I think that every woman should be able to stand on her two feet, pay her own bills, buy herself flowers if she wants to. As my mother always said, you cannot expect a man (if you're so sexually inclined) to do anything. I go home to Nigeria and see the ways in which more limited economic, political and social opportunities for women translate into a kind of childlike dependency on men that cannot be good for personal or societal development. I am grateful for having escaped that insidious trap.

But I also think companionship is important, making a genuine connection with another human being. I understand that the kinds of life lessons learned through compromise and communication cannot be learned on your own. It is a balancing act. I am aware that I'm entering another phase of my life simply because this is not something I understood ten years ago.

I am grateful for reaching 33 in good health. Onward. --AL.

"I think the absence of thoughts about things you should have feelings about," my therapist said yesterday, "has a significant meaning."

I stared at Dr. Brown, puzzled.

"How useful is it to imagine thoughts about things I have no thoughts about?" I asked her.

She took her time to answer, choosing her words carefully.

"I think that you are burying the thoughts and feelings you might have--whether they be anger, envy, jealousy--so that you do not have to confront them. You put them somewhere so that you do not have to deal with them."

I nodded, unconvinced.

Dr. Brown is a psychoanalyst, through and through. Usually everything she says--like, how we feel about ourselves has its origins in childhood--makes sense to me, but yesterday had me puzzled.

What she meant was: the thoughts I do not have, about things I ought to have thoughts about, are just as important as the thoughts I do have about everything else.

Is there something wrong with not having feelings about some things? I wondered. I have enough thoughts about the thoughts I do have. Why do I have to think about the thoughts I'm not having? 

We had a long talk and I left still wondering why I would wonder about the thoughts I do not have. Honestly, I would be quite happy not having any more thoughts at all about most things and moving through life with a zen-like awareness of the present moment, no emotional baggage from the past, nor anxious feelings about the future.

That is the thing about therapy. It is great just as long as I do not end up gazing at my navel wondering why it is shaped one way and not the other. Being a person of strong opinions, perhaps it comes as a shock to people when I don't have a thought at all about something that might be significant. But who is to say what is significant to me?

I have had a lot of feelings about a great many things. I am the grownup version of the young girl who would sit in her bedroom having long fantasies about a future in which I was beautiful and popular and loved. Though that future never materialized, I took those dreams and became a writer (and filmmaker).

I do not worry about the thoughts I do not have. There is enough here already. --AL.

My sister packed her things and moved out yesterday. That left me, her former roommate, the sole occupant of a 1-bedroom co-op apartment in Brooklyn. For reasons still unbeknownst to me, she bought a big house in Charlotte, South Carolina--or is it North Carolina? well, somewhere down there--in the South, where people smile at each other, talk slow, and are not assailed by the oppressive noise of screeching subways and police sirens.

For months, since she first stated her intentions of moving, I had been acting as though she were only joking.

But when she made an offer on a house--the first one, that got rejected by the owners--I asked her, "What will you do in Charlotte?"

"There's more space, it's quiet, I need to settle down," she replied. I stared back, wild-eyed, as though she'd picked her final resting place.

At 33, my sister is a year older than me. Don't get me wrong, I can't imagine growing old in New York. But the way I am now, single and unmarried, living here makes sense. I can go out when I want to, meet cool people or see an interesting art exhibit, stay home when I don't want to deal. It has all the dance classes I could want, the subway never stops running, and there's always a bar or bodega or cafe open when you need it. I did not plan on living here this long--ten years already--but I can't imagine where else I'd go.

So while my sister was off buying a huge house with a backyard patio, I dug in my heels--finding myself quite alone at 1PM yesterday, sitting on the couch, feeling suddenly lost.

The strangest part was my reaction--tears. I had always thought I wanted to live alone. Growing up with a huge family, I shared rooms with my sisters until I was almost an adult, and had always had roommates in college and in New York, where I moved a year after graduation. There were always extra people under foot prying into my business, eating my food in the fridge, wearing my brand new clothes to a sweaty, swing dance party (true story, freshman year roommate), or feeding their pets with my silverware.

Secretly, or maybe obviously, I have wanted to strangle every one of them. Have dreamt of the day when I no longer have to share anything, but can have my own bathroom, bedroom, pots and pans. And yet I have never lived alone--with the exception of a one-month writer's residency at Hedgebrook and, after my sister kicked me out of her apartment the first year we moved to New York, a one-month sublet I stayed in while finding a more permanent living situation.

Somewhat paradoxically, I have often insinuated myself into places in which houseguests, friends, family, and strangers compromise my privacy. And in each of these cases I have tried, most successfully, to carve out a tiny, inviolable personal space. There is no limit to my ability to employ the silent treatment and naked aggression to make others uncomfortable enough to back away. In fact, I can remember, during a semester exchange at Spelman College, not talking to my roommate for three weeks (she was an irritating debutante, enough of her already).

So well practiced am I that at times in shared spaces when I wish to be warm and welcoming, I find others (mostly my sisters) surprised and/or suspicious. And so I had always thought I just wanted my own place--to decorate the way I want, invite over friends without asking first, and leave my writing notes out trusting they will be there, in the same spot, when I return.

But it was not until yesterday that I finally realized there is a difference between having personal space and having a place all to yourself. I don't like living alone. I like having company more than not, even if it means I want to strangle them sometimes. And perhaps my sister moving, leaving me alone in this apartment, in this city, has helped me to understand myself better. I realize that I did not want her to go because, subconsciously, I knew it would force me to face this single life I have created--at once freeing and stifling.

It seems somehow cooler to be disaffected and disconnected, your own person. And I am quite good at it. I have often thought of cash in a wallet as passe, or looked upon married or pregnant people as old fashioned. But it would be great to have a companion, or a family. It is an idea that sounds as comforting as it does oppressive.

And yet it would make this apartment feel so much more bearable.

I feel a deep restlessness these days. Ambivalence. I do not know where I am going or why and sometimes when I am reading something off my computer I forget mid sentence and start doing something else. This has been happening more and more lately, leading me to wonder whether I am going senile already at 32. I say the age and it seems like a great many years to be on earth, 32, with no idea if I am doing it correctly--that "it" being, namely, living. Some days I think I have lost sight of something very important. I do not know what it is, but I walk around with this emptiness that wants to be filled.

Maybe it is God.

It has been so long since I have thought myself religious. I settled for spiritual years ago and stopped going to church, taking up meditation. But it comes and goes, like the forgotten lyrics to a favorite song. I am trying again, daily, this month. The first few days, the whole time I sat meditating I could not stop thinking over my to-do list. It isn't working, I thought, frustrated. I did not feel any closer to peace or Zen or understanding. That scared me. I wondered whether I had simply forgotten how to connect to something greater. Whether I have been "of the world" too long, lost in material oblivion.

But the past couple of days I have at least been able to go several minutes at a time in blissful nothingness, present to the silence, to the full-emptiness. And in it I feel alone. Like God is not watching. It is a difficult thing to sit with. I am conscious of having asked for certain signs and things that never came, of feeling silly for making those requests, and contenting myself with the knowledge that when the thing comes it will be in God's time. I am still waiting, but losing patience.

Perhaps it is for love or a new job or a new body or a baby, I do not really know. A change.

And I am conscious of having said to myself, if none of these by 40, then I will lose myself completely. Will stop hanging on and go proper mad, running with the wolves or the bulls or whatever people like me do at middle age. I have tried to be conventional, have tried to be unconventional, have tried loving with all my heart and none of it, living like there is no tomorrow or as though the end is very near. And I still don't know anything. I am trying to hold the knowing and the not knowing in me simultaneously. I think this is what is meant by acceptance. It felt impossible at 15, unbearable at 20, and somewhat inevitable now, at 32.

I am not old; but I am not young anymore. I am neither fat, nor thin. I am not alone, but I am single. I am not successful, nor a failure. I am not rich, nor poor. I am not happy, nor sad. I am both an optimist and a pessimist. I am a constellation of experiences that at times make perfect or no sense at all. And so sometimes I am full of the knowledge of where I am going, what I am doing and why; while at others, I have no idea at all.

I used to concoct these grandiose theories of my personal destiny, but I have chosen to take a more realistic view now. It is the only thing that stops me from getting hit when I forget which direction I am supposed to be going in while crossing the street. I tell myself, Think only as far as the next corner, then turn. It is the unfortunate day when I cannot figure out where I am going to begin with, when I dress myself completely and cannot muster the will to go outside.

A woman I spoke to this week put it another way: You have to be ready to get on the bus whenever it leaves. But I do not know which bus I am waiting for, why I should get on it or not. I did not expect to feel this way, ambivalent, now. I was so much more certain in my youth.

There must be a change coming. I do not know what it will be. Perhaps I will not recognize myself afterwards. I suppose then, this blog will serve as a reminder that that I did not know, but was still ok. That God was watching.

I recently read some letters by the late, great playwright Lorraine Hansberry on display at the Brooklyn Museum. She wrote lists of things she loved, hated, and regretted on her birthdays.

There was no rhyme or reason for which years they picked, but I found her writing so illuminating. At the age of 30, she liked “the insistent penetration of autumn sunlight” and also:
     
     the fact that I have changed
     have stayed the same
     have grown more self-conscious and -- at the same time --
     become less aware of myself
     mushrooms, out of the can
     The first drink of scotch
     the second
     the third

Today isn't my birthday, but I wanted to capture what I think right now about all these things. That is the thing about writing, it creates a time capsule of the present. :) --AL.

MY LIST

I like: Sneakers and jeans. More than I really should at my age. I like them because you can go anywhere at any time and be ready for anything that comes your way. I always end up running--to catch the bus or a train or just because. And it helps to have a good pair of sneakers on.

I love: Writing in my favorite coffee shop in Brooklyn. Sometimes in the afternoon when the place clears out and I'm really getting in a writing groove, a really good song comes on the radio and it becomes the absolute perfect place on earth. I also love to travel, meet new people, cook, sing, and to fall asleep on the beach when the sun's just right. And I love a good adventure, which gives me all the material I need to make art.

I hate: Violence. In all its forms. Especially the mundane, everyday forms of spiritual violence we inflict on ourselves and other people, like the ones we love. I realize that, no matter how much I hate it, sometimes I'm guilty of it, too. And I hate talking about my feelings, although I'm getting better at it as I get older. I prefer logic to emotion, because at least it's solid ground. There are simply too many feelings. I also hate celebrity. It's an insidious concept, that some people are better than others. It breeds classism and differential treatment. If I had the power, I would do away with it.

I regret: All the time I wasted being angry at my mother. It was only adolescence, but I did not know our time together would be so short, that she would die before I got a chance to tell her how much I really admired her. I think she knows now that she's on the other side, but it would be really great to hug her again. I also regret not becoming a musician, and all the years I spent feeling deeply unattractive. I look back and realize I never looked that bad, I just got teased a little bit and thought that meant something was wrong with me. And I regret that, though I've spent my life surrounded by people, I've also been somewhat incurably lonely. Lastly, I regret that I have so many regrets.

I am proud: That I've finally gotten up the skill, courage, and determination to finish this book, to put it out there, and become who I'm supposed to be. Lupita was right; inadequacy is seductive. I'm also proud that I'm almost done with my second degree. It's been a really tough road and maybe I should have given up a long time ago, but I think it means something that I stayed the course. And I'm never going back to school again.

I should like: New York City, but I've grown weary of this town after almost 10 years of living here. Sometimes I wonder where I'll end up next. I believe that people and places come into your life for a season and you should enjoy them, give and get the most you can, and then figure out what the next thing is. I keep getting stuck on my next thing, though. I don't really know where I belong, though, have always been a bit of a wanderer.

The truth is: I'm not really a writer. I mean, I can write, no question about that, but it isn't my heart's joy. That being said, writing has taught me the discipline it takes to create art. And for that I am ever grateful.

I am five (or six or seven) years in to this memoir project and just today realized what I am writing. I have been talking about the book for some time now, but it takes awhile to sit with it, let it marinate in your bones, and have an epiphany. What I realized is: There were the people who stayed after the Biafran Civil War, and those who left, like my parents. I am writing about the latter. It is an interesting kind of experience contextualizing it, understanding where I fit in. It somewhat blew my mind for a minute today, but I am glad to be able to articulate it succinctly now, having spent so much of my life on this project. Writing a book is hard. There is the writing that, for me, comes before the understanding, the organizing and consolidating. Then there is the process of figuring out what it all means. Then you go back and add in the context as best you can (at least, that's how I do it), once you figure out what the framework is, how to see your life as a push-pull of historical, social and political forces. Then of course you have to make all the inner voices you have been over the course of five (or six or seven) years sound like one. It takes a lot of patience and more wisdom than you can imagine. I am writing the beginning last. I had thought I had already written it, but I realized that I hadn't, so I am doing it now. And now I think it's really best to write the beginning last when you realize what is at stake. This is not a roadmap, these are just my thoughts. I applaud and appreciate people who know where they are going when they put pen to page. But I think if I had put that much pressure on myself and even sought to articulate the project in these specific terms before starting it, I may not have written the first word. So it is okay. The work is coming. I am here.

I am 10 the first time I remember being asked this question, Do you have a boyfriend? We are sitting at a church table for religious education on a Saturday morning. It is our first session and we are getting to know each other. The teacher tells us to write a secret about ourselves on a slip of paper and fold it up. I cannot remember what mine said, perhaps that I played the violin, or some such. She collects the slips and opens one at random: I HAVE A BOYFRIEND, she reads, and asks us to guess who wrote it. 

There are only two girls in the class: me and Kisha. Everyone turns to me. Do you have a boyfriend? they ask. I say no; they are surprised. I should have one, I am told, because I am pretty. I look at Kisha, who giggles into her palm. She has not come clean yet, and I realize they do not believe me. She has a nice smile, round cheeks that squeeze her eyes shut when she laughs. I wonder whether I am prettier than her. Is that why they all guessed it was me? No matter how much I deny it, my cheeks flushing red, the others do not stop peppering me with questions. Finally Kisha confesses. She asks me why I don't have a boyfriend, says I'm supposed to. 

It is the first time I remember feeling there must be something wrong with me because I do not have a boyfriend. 

More than 20 years later, I still do not have one. At times it is a badge I wear--single black female, like a rallying cry. I have a Bachelor's and (almost) Master's degrees, attended an Ivy League(ish) school and am well on my way to a brilliant career. For women like me, I am told, eligible men are an endangered species. 

Yes, in fact, I have been single for the majority of the past two decades. I am not emasculating or threatening, at least, I don't think I am. I just have never been in a stable, long-term committed relationship. There have been deaths and grief--frequently enough over the past ten years, beginning with my mother--that have greatly affected the way I relate to other people. I am always looking for the exit, for what's wrong with me or the other person. In all cases, I have found something that has made me leave. Then there is the knee jerk reaction, before birthdays and holidays, to get out of something I am in so I do not have to feel disappointment at what someone fails to do or say. 

I think it is hard, having grown accustomed to not having one, to have a boyfriend now. To meet someone you like, to get to know them, and keep trying even when they get on your nerves. What if they hurt you? Leave you? Die? With planes disappearing mid-air and buildings blowing up in Harlem, I have started avoiding construction sites. I will not date a policeman, fireman, or soldier. I will not date someone who climbs rocks or mountains or shoots guns, real or fake.

To make it harder, at my age, most people assume I should have a husband already. How does that work? I wonder. I have not had a boyfriend in years. When I have had one, I have picked the wrong guy, stayed for the wrong reasons, left for the right ones. I consider myself lucky that I knew enough not to marry any of the men I dated. I could have been an adequate wife to any one of them, just as I could have been an adequate doctor. 

But I am looking for something more.

I neither know what that thing is, nor do I understand what I mean by that. All I know is I keep meeting better versions of myself as I age. More confident, more self-aware and loving. I feel more beautiful, especially given that I never remember feeling that way as a kid. I am kinder and more patient, less selfish than I used to be. 

I am thankful to the handful of men who tried to be my boyfriends, to the ones who flat out rejected me, and those who were merely passing the time until someone better came along. I appreciate how much they taught me about how important it is to like myself, to not run around mad looking for someone else to complete me. 

All of that said, I am genuinely scared sometimes that I will never meet someone. Not because I have any trouble meeting people, or carrying on a conversation, or being asked out, but mostly because I am no longer merely happy to be chosen, as I was when I was younger. I should be with someone equally special who also treats me well. Sometimes I worry that I will never meet this person or, if I do, that they won't pick me to walk with them through this crazy world. 

I would probably be a good girlfriend now. And maybe, one day, even a good wife and mother. At least I no longer think there is something wrong with me because I'm none of these things. And I think that is a start.

Love,
AL.

(Disclaimer: I realize that this is a blog, but it is really a message to myself. I needed to send it into the universe, so thanks for reading.)

there is a question i have asked frequently ever since i was a little girl. that is, who am i? i suppose this stems largely from being born in the west to nigerian immigrants. without the luxury of being born in my parents' place, the question begs an answer.

i live at the nexus of over a half dozen cultures. there is white america, black america, brown america, immigrant america, akwa ibomites in america, akwa ibomites in nigeria, nigerians in the diaspora, and of course nigerians in nigeria. i have always held it up as some miraculous thing, having access to all these cultures, but it is a major task to remain conversant in all of them.

at some point, tiring of the politics of black america, i can simply say i am a cultural outsider and don't understand what they're on about (i used to do this alot as a kid, in fact, i hardly understood some aspects of black culture although i secretly wanted to be "cool enough" to be black).

at some point, tiring of the politics of being an akwa ibomite in america, i can simply pronounce my name in that weird way that sounds like 'spoon' instead of 'song' and pretend i don't know how to say good bye in ibibio. this is much how i walked by the 'concerned citizens of akwa ibom' group three weeks ago, protesting kidnappings near the UN. although i came to join them, they looked like a bunch of crazies shouting on the street with their placards raised, while a passerby shouted back that akpabio's built so many good roads and how could they possibly jeapordize the success of the state in this way. i was happy to pass by unnoticed.

and tiring of politics in general, i can always sit among a gathering of my white friends and pretend to be somewhat cultureless and colorless. (it is the path of least resistance, and yet the one i shun the most.)

but who am i really? i tried going through all my blogs to find a place where i say definitively who and what i am and found nothing. a part of it is i love personas, am intrigued by the way other people project their realities on to me. there are friends who've known me for decades and have been told on several occasions that i was born in the u.s.of.a. and still don't believe me. i am a sleeper cell, in their eyes, who will one day take over america and redistribute all her resources appropriately to the developing world. or i'll simply take over hollywood and move it out of country, hire native nigerians (and maybe indians) to run it and say to hell with white people. (i am not that interested in hollywood. i might also respond that the nigerians and indians would label me as not being 'authentic' enough and reject the offer, not before chopping all the money and running it into the ground, of course.)

so what does it all really mean? are place, race, culture, custom, and nationality everything? or are they relative? i have always fancied myself a bridge between cultures and it seems that, despite the many internal questions that still prevail, this is finally becoming a reality. i'm now the family historian, of sorts, and the first person people think of to ask obscure questions like what year my mother came to the u.s. from nigeria. (it was my uncle, her elder brother, who asked. he's also the one who brought her here.)

they place their hope in me, marveling at how i am able to simply plop myself down in akwa ibom and not complain about the electricity or have a care for what's going on in the states. some of them have never thought of going back, but secretly long for the courage. i imagine that, as a person who craves an existence that is not relative, it has been very important for me to create a space for myself there. perhaps also why i am an artist, so that i can live and create any- and everywhere.

if i could only choose one thing to be, it would be an inspiration. appropriately so, my life now seems to be less about 'who i am' than my chosen purpose and what i represent for other people. i am not sure whether to raise disclaimers about being their great hope, or to simply embrace it and rise to the occasion. i only hope that i will be able to express the pluralities that exist within me in a way that i do not misrepresent myself.

i have no answers and certainties, only questions and relativities. i exist as a being in the flesh, but perhaps am closer to a concept than a reality. i think it would be easier for me and those around me if i was some other way, but it wouldn't be authentic to who i am. such is life. --AL.

lately my hair has become an issue. my aunt says i will never marry, at least not a nigerian man, if i continue to wear it in dreadlocks. she was fine with them last christmas, when i arrived in uyo with locs halfway down my back--it had been years since she'd seen me--but this year, coinciding with my 29th birthday, she wasn't having it.

"can you see the front of your hair? it is not neat," she says, her eyes pinching together as she inspects the kinks at my hairline. we are sitting on the couch in the parlor watching tv. she has spoken out of nowhere, as though the matter has been pressing on her heart. i am stunned, mute, do not dare mention that my hair was twisted only a week before and actually looks better than it usually does. that would only encourage her.

"it is not the same here as it is in the states," she says. i nod. at least she hasn't mentioned my nose ring (again).

"do you see how her hair is?" she points to an actress onscreen, a nollywood beauty, with a head of freshly braided extensions. "see how smooth it is?" i'm not sure whether she means silky or fake, but i take smooth to mean all that my naps are not, and nod again.

"i can see that you have tried. the back is neat, but the front will not do." her eyes are sympathetic. i am ashamed, wish to hide my face, my hair.

"but how long will you continue to wear it this way?" her eyes are full of concern. she speaks as though i am afflicted with a mental defect and cannot see the level of disrepair to which i have fallen. "all that is left for me is to find you a husband. your mother is gone and you are my daughter now, so i must tell you these things: beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

i take her to mean that no man will ever find me beautiful this way. that i would have a better chance with straight hair.

my hair is nappy, but so what? i wear it as it is and it feels good. had gotten tired of relaxers and extensions and pain. when my mother went bald from the chemo, after trying out various styles, she refused to wear a wig. i realize now that she taught me a very great lesson.

if my hair is unsightly compared to those naija princesses with the impossibly long weaves (and blue-tinted contact lenses), i still prefer it.

but i would like to test out my aunt's theory. vow to wear dreadlocks until (at least) the day i marry.

and if that day never comes, she wins. --AL.

up late last night wrapping up this fulbright. man. i have put so much energy into this thing that i really hope i get it. but i think the lesson is learned anyway. it was a lengthy, and involved process of writing the grant proposal, personal statement, drafting the writing sample/script (i might share some of it on here since i had a devil of a time finding good samples online when i looked), not to mention getting the recommendations, affiliations, and transcripts. in the end, it amounts to a synopsis of my personal and creative development thus far. and with the word dredging i've been doing, it sort of feels like i'm excavating my life.

that's me, above, at my first birthday. today is my 29th, and i'm a lot taller and less weepy now, planning a grownup dinner party with friends and then going out dancing. i feel good. better than good. it occured to me yesterday that, if i had a million dollars, i'd be doing exactly what i'm doing now. so i must be blessed. and lately i've noticed that i don't care as much what other people think about me. showed up to my friend's traditional ibo wedding in queens last weekend in a dress slightly too short and low-cut, but didn't feel too self conscious about it. looking forward to more of the same--confidence, that is, not cleavage--in the coming year.

two days ago was my mom's birthday, and about a week before that the anniversary of her death. october's always been a tough month, but it didn't feel so heavy this year. i think the fulbright application was an engine keeping me going. it's now less than a week to my naija trip, when i'm supposed to work on some kind of memoir essay collection about my mom and me. to visit and revisit places that were important to her, to me. i'm not sure i'm ready to do that--in fact, it took a great deal of prodding to sit myself down to read the beginnings of the essays i already started--but i'm surrendering to the divine force at work. it will carry me there and back safely, perhaps will carry the muse also.

travel mercies.

excited. ambivalent. melancholy. joyful.

all at the same time.

we had a death in the family, and spent the weekend at a memorial.

i also found out that i won a ticket to lagos for a future leaders seminar.

life always seems to happen all at the same time -- something good and something bad, a bit of joy and sorrow.

it seems the key is learning how to hold and acknowledge an emotion in your hand, to know the shape and texture of it, but also be willing to set it down and pick up the next one as it comes.

in life as in writing, i suppose.

i'm fast becoming one of those people who stops and stares at a puddle of water, noting how the sunlight bounces off its ripples and waiting for some bit of divine intuition to strike me. it seems silly and indulgent and maybe even childlike, though i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. i've always taken myself a little too seriously, ever since i was a little girl, and so any hint of levity, for me, is progress.

my latest favorite thing is watching the visualization bars when i listen to music on my computer. it's intoxicating how all these different bars of light activate different parts of my brain and essentially massage them into activity after i've been staring at a white computer screen way too long waiting for the words to come.

i've also recently taken to writing at the schwartzmann library on 42nd street. painted on the ceiling, gilded in gold and copper leaves, is a picture of a blue and lavender and violet sky filled with stormy clouds. when i look up, for a moment i am not sitting at a long, oak desk, in the freezing air conditioning, writing this or that thing.

my yoga teacher did a meditation on waiting this week. she talked about how we're all so used to rushing ahead, getting disappointed when things don't pan out on our schedule, instead of waiting patiently and intentionally for our wishes to arrive.

i suppose i am now figuring out what to do while i wait for the muse, instead of pushing on in spite of her absence. it's funny how it seems like nothing is really happening, when in fact everything is happening, all at once, while i wait.

this was just an aside, and perhaps unnecessary. i have actual things to say, but later. now back to writing.

i am just back from a big fat nigerian wedding. i must say that it has become very time-consuming being a professional akwa ibomite. but this was the most fun I have had at a wedding in a long time, so i can't complain. great food, music, dancing and people--congrats to the newlyweds!

i'm posting one of my flipcam vids for you all to enjoy the ashebi women dancing in the bride and groom. i keep asking my aunties whether i must be married before i can also wear ashebi, but i can never get a straight answer. --AL.

i'm in baltimore for the akisan convention. most come to find a mate, but i think i'm just here to have a good time and take a break from a very hot and hectic nyc.

yesterday was one of the most emotionally draining days i've ever had. my boss fired me. by e-mail. effective immediately. i saw the door and could have walked through it, but instead i found myself ramping up that naija charm and by the end of it all he "un"fired me.

at times i'm not sure whether i'm my own best friend or worst enemy. i have never been too keen on abusive relationships and i find myself, suddenly, in a very dangerous one. serenity, serenity, serenity.

I attended a wake keeping in the Bronx last night. A close family friend of ours lost her father, a chief, and called for a party in lieu of a memorial service. A high table, dancing, and copious bottles of cognac for libation. Akwa Ibomites came out in full regalia, gelees and all.

I was not going to go, had some reading and critiquing to do for my writers' group meeting today, except my entire family showed up so I could not stay home. Not forgetting, of course, that this family friend had been so kind and generous in the past.

When my mother was ill -- knowing what I know now, I can safely say dying -- this friend arrived at our home in Albany with a plastic bag full of still frozen bonga fish. She wore a flowing caftan and silk headscarf, had just taken the bus up from the city.

I watched her thaw the fish in the sink, helped her collect spices from our cupboard while my mother sat waiting in the living room. When she finished cooking, she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of my mother's chair and fed her a bowl of delicious soup.

Though many people shuttled my mother back and forth to chemotherapy appointments, it is only this woman that I remember truly helping: she fed her. Not long after, when Mommy could no longer swallow without significant effort, and would spend over an hour staring at her dinner plate, I realized the significance of this small gesture.

I don't think I have ever told this woman how much it meant to me. Perhaps paying my respects to her late father, no matter how peripheral my presence last night, can demonstrate something to that effect.

Death has a way of informing about life. Until then, I never knew how special it can be simply to feed someone. Maybe I could stop by one day with a pot of soup and return the favor.

I spent a bit of time looking for my passport today. I realized that I hadn't seen it in a couple of years, which became an issue since I'm trying to book a flight to Nigeria. I found it more easily than I thought I would and, like I suspected, it's expiring soon. It's slightly depressing that I haven't used it more in the past ten years since I renewed it last.

I went to Ghana in 2001, the summer of my sophomore year of college. I have this crazy video of myself, rehearsing with a dance troupe in the dead of night in a suburb of Accra. A lone lightbulb casts a triangle of light across a cement enclosure lined with a fence, flanked with a battalion of drummers. I am whirling around in the middle of a circle of dancers, my hair in a short afro, wearing a gauzy black shirt over a floor-length skirt.

I forgot my change of clothes that day, the last rehearsal before my plane ride back to US. I had gotten lost on my way to the enclosure, coming from a different part of town than usual. I was wandering through the darkened street, when a pair of headlights approached me, and a kind taxi driver offered to help me find the place. We drove around madly for a half hour, before we stumbled upon another black woman wandering the streets who was also in need of a ride.

It turned out that she was a Stanford alum, though a decade older than me, and a former member of Kuumba Dance Ensemble, also like me. She had a video camera with her and agreed to come with me to rehearsal and tape us, so that I would have something to show for my time spent (I took no photos of rehearsals out of respect). My karma restored, we found the enclosure. Cut to me whirling around in the dark, the vision of which now simply amazes me. I am trying to remember this young woman I once was, the steps I took along the path to get where I am now. Wiser, I suppose, but in many ways missing my youthful bravado.

All of this to say. There are various colored stamps inside this tiny book with my picture in it -- Belize, South Africa (a couple of times), Brazil, Ghana, Botswana, Nigeria (a couple of times) -- but there are far too many empty spaces for it to be expiring. Maybe it is my own will that has expired? I dreamt of London and Paris and Havana and Marrakesh, but perhaps I lacked the courage to do more than dream. When I was younger, I did not dwell on dreams and I did not plan; I simply left.

I met a woman at Hedgebrook who has lived everywhere in the world, from Yosemite to Amsterdam and Kenya. She took her first semester college tuition, twenty years or so ago, and traveled cross country with it. She hasn't stopped since, although she recently purchased a home in New Jersey and is now, from what I gather, reconsidering it.

She does not know this, but she is my hero. I think there is wisdom in stones, especially those that roll -- gathering no moss, being shaped by time and the earth and universal flow. There is a natural order in remaining in motion, in seeking disorder.

I only wish I could say this to her in a way that she would believe it. I think she may feel flighty and haphazard about her lifestyle, but I think that life is full of expiration dates -- on relationships, jobs, leases, countries of residence -- and one need only know how to recognize and respond to them. The truly courageous and unstuck people simply let it expire, and move on. That said, I don't think most people do.

I certainly have expired on many fronts, but am hanging on for dear life. I have wanted to do some drastic thing with my appearance for some time now, be it cutting my locks, or dying them again, getting a new wardrobe, but I inevitably find myself still feeling awkward in my skin. I have wanted to simply move anywhere else in the world for no reason at all but to encounter my own difference in that environment and thereby discover myself again, yet find myself straggling here in NYC. I have wanted to really be a starving artist, instead of a gainfully employed professional sneaking her writing in on the subway and on her lunch break; but for some reason, here I sit, and here I stay.

I don't know what any of that means, but I do think expiration dates can be used to reevaluate the status quo. If it hasn't been working for you, let the universe help you change it. For now, I definitely need some more stamps in my passport. That much I know is true.