I'm Just a Girl Who Lost Her Dad

In the last newsletter I wrote, I said I'd never write another newsletter talking about my dad's illness. God heard that and went “Oh, no dad for you then” and my dad passed. Everything from hearing the news to planning and dealing with the funeral took a toll on me. It affected my physical and mental health, it strained my friendships and relationships and it fucked up my sleep. It's all still relatively new and every day there are new hurdles to face, but I'm learning so much about myself. Unfortunately, some lessons are only learnt with loss.

If you had told me in the beginning of this year that I would lose my dad, I would not have believed you. Unfortunately, it is the reality I exist in. It’s been difficult adjusting to a new normal, but it is all one can do in this situation. The days it hurts me enough for me to cry about it, I cry. On the days I can’t cry, I visit my friends and crack “my dad is dead” jokes. I am grateful for the community that has held me down because this is the most difficult thing I have had to deal with this year.

There’s a lot around burying a parent in Nigeria. There is even more when you are the only child. You will spend money you did not know you had, you will be aware of things that never worried you and you will grow up whether you want to or not. My dad left me as his next of kin, so my mum has been keeping me up to date with the running of the house as well as other things. I learnt how to buy light and I am now aware of when our dstv expires because I have to pay it. “Head of the House” is one of the worst things I have heard someone refer to me as, but it is a title that has been dumped on me as a result of condition. They have also referred to me as my “mother’s husband” a couple of times and I refuse to break down how wrong of a statement that is.

Speaking of my mum, we’ve gotten a lot closer. She’s all I have and I’m all she has so we might as well spend whatever time we have left together on Earth having a good time. I try to remind her that although I have to grow up a lot more than I hoped for now, I am still the child and I want to believe we have a good middle ground. She does her thing and I do mine and we somehow meet each other in the middle. The same thing goes for my relationships with my friends. I am trying to spend more time with them because I do not have the strength for frequent over the phone conversations. I am exhausted more days than I care to admit because the loss took my ability to sleep, but I am working on it. I’m taking my meds and trying to have a healthy and busy lifestyle that will allow for me to sleep.

In general, you might think I am handling it pretty well, but all I can say is that I am handling it the way I know how to. I am throwing a lot of the energy I would have spent grieving into other aspects of my life and then when something reminds me of why there is a sadness that never really dissolves, I stay in my hole until I figure out how to climb out of it. It means I spend a lot of time with myself and my feelings and I am learning to enjoy that time with myself. I’m slowly introducing myself into the concept of doing things for and by myself and it’s not as bad as I thought. I’m funny as hell and sometimes all I need is myself and I to have a jolly good time.

Also, I don’t know which planets are doing what, but I’ve been in a very reflective space. I’ve been thinking and plotting. Maybe it’s because it’s the second half of the year is coming or because I am clocking a new age, but whatever it is is really putting things into perspective for me and I am very grateful for the newfound clarity I am getting in certain areas of my life. Let’s see how that works out for me.

My older and wiser tip for this newsletter is for you to fill your life up with activities you want to take pictures and videos of. Document as much of your life as possible and fill your life up with things you enjoy. Hang out with your friends and buy the new bottle of perfume you have your eye on. Life is short and you can’t spend it working as hard as you do without having fun. I started attending raves and the likes and it is a great time. I am challenging myself to go bowling in July and to finally take myself to eat Korean food. Every month, try to fix something in your calendar that’ll give you joy and schedule a delivery at least once a month. You deserve abeg.

Elsbeth (TV Series)

I haven’t seen The Good Wife and although this is a spin-off that follows one of the characters of the show, you don’t need to watch it before watching Elsbeth. I came across this show on TikTok one day and I begged T to watch it with me and they liked it too. It made for a lot of good laughs and we binged the entire first season.

It is a story about a lawyer whose name is Elsbeth (who I think is autistic). She’s sent to New York to act as an external observer of the police to make sure they don’t arrest the wrong people. She, however, ends up solving the crimes and pissing off a lot of detectives along the line. It is funny, quirky, and extremely entertaining and I love how there’s an underlying p that all the episodes help us to make sense of.

I love police/detective shows and one thing this one gets that not a lot of them do is that the stories are usually lighter and the cast is genuinely hilariously silly in their actions. Give it a watch if you want a good laugh, but be warned, there’s only one season available.