I'm Just Trying to Survive the Times

One day, I will figure out how to start the newsletter in a way that does not make my brain fart, but until I figure it out, you will have to bear with me and my foolish intros. Hi, my name is Itohan and I am a 22-year-old girl with a midlife crisis. You might think to yourself that “Itohan, 22 is too young to have a midlife crisis”, but we are in Nigeria. Google the average life expectancy of a Nigerian woman and see something. When you account for the increase in femicide and the fact that my brain is always trying to take my body out of this world, 22 doesn’t seem so young to have a midlife crisis now, does it? Exactly.

Now, what is my crisis about you might ask? Everything. Walahi, 10 is happening and everyone is expecting you to just move on and adjust and all the other things, but I am fucking petrified. Every day the US dollar, pound, euro, and even the Canadian dollar are in a competition for which one will give me a fucking heart attack first. Currently, the US dollar is winning. Over a thousand naira to one dollar FOR FUCKING WHAT? It’s giving me a headache, and it’s sending my brain into a tizzy.

Last week, I wanted to make Jollof rice and I realised we were out of tomato paste. Everyone and their mum on Twitter had been making noise about the Gino Party Jollof mix, so I decided to try it out for myself. I sent my kid to buy two sachets because my mum usually buys stuff like tomato paste in bulk and she’d buy later when she goes to the market. I gave her money to buy 2 and she bought it for 120 naira each. When she came back, I told her to buy one more because I’d never tried it before and I’d much rather have one sachet extra than not have enough mid-cooking. By the time she came back, she told me the seller said it was now 130 naira per sachet because the one I bought before was old stock. Within five minutes, the price had increased by 10 naira. Now, imagine what’ll happen a week from today. A month? A year? Is that not enough to send someone to their early grave?

I’m scared and I am writing to tell you that if you are scared too, it’s okay. There is no guarantee that anything will get better. There are wars going on in various countries and it’s contributing to a worldwide economic collapse. We have a housing crisis, a poverty problem, terrorism, and to top it all off, a fraud for a President. Typing this is me coming to terms with the fact that it is not okay, and everyone keeps trying to “push through it” but I am tired of pushing. Why is it when it is my turn to be an adult that things start getting out of hand? When I was younger, I imagined a life where I’d be able to travel with my friends and experience various cultures. Now, I can barely even move within Lagos state. The amount of money it costs to go from my house in Egbeda to my office in Ikeja used to be able to take you from Lagos to Ibadan. Do you know how insane that is? Because I think it is absolutely bonkers.

The worst part of it all are the coping mechanisms. I have refused to think for the past couple of weeks. I have muted words like dollar and exchange rate on Twitter and I refuse to create budgets because it reminds me of just how scattered everything is. Someone once asked how people can do this sober and I do not know, but I want to try. My cousin used to tell me “One day, you will realise that where you are currently is worse than where you were running from.” So in as much as the drugs and the alcohol and the sex and the unhealthy social media usage seems like the way to run away from it all, one day you will wake up surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol; sweaty, with breath that stinks and surrounded by piles of clothes on your floor. When that happens, you will realise that the money you’ve spent on these vices could have been used for something else. Then, you will realise that you are slowly sinking into addiction. Then, you will realise that you might risk permanent liver failure, that your memory doesn’t work anymore and you have lost almost all the people dear to you. Then, you will realise that there are other ways to survive. That we do not have to push through and we have solace in community. You will complain to your friends about prices and you will find alternatives to expensive ways to hang out. You will cry when you need to and rant when the urge consumes you. You do not have to push through, but I will tell you that it does not have to be at the expense of your mental and physical health. That we will get it right.

This week, I called Eli and I cried on the phone. I didn’t really have anything to say, I just needed to get it all out of my system. My friends are leaving the country, Musk has shadowbanned my Twitter account so I can’t even use that as a means to escape and I have sat down with T and made a budget they’re determined to get me to stick to. We’ve had difficult conversations about money I always refuse to participate in and they have reassured me that I do not have to do it alone. I am loved at home and home is the community I have created for myself. You are loved at home too and if it seems like you are not, I will tell you that you are loved in the community you have created with me.

T tells me I am foolishly optimistic and it is one of the things they love and hate about me. That’s their business because my optimism no dey go anywhere. When we realise that we do not have to push through, we will hold the neck of the people in charge and demand that they do better. We will hold our leaders accountable and look out for one another. We will realise that we do not need to lie and cheat and steal because there is enough for all of us, we just need to off the people holding it all. See, I am just trying my best to get through the times. I want a simple life, nothing too fancy. I want to be able to see my friends and buy my people nice things once in a while. I do not want a life of luxury, I am happy with a life full of little joys and sighs of contentment and it is attainable, everyone just needs to get their shit together.

Do I want you to have hope? Absolutely! Do I want you to be scared? Yes, please. Most importantly, I want you to be angry. I want you to be angry because I care and when you are filled with so much care, anger consumes you. T told me (God, again?) “Itohan, you are a very angry woman and that anger sometimes translates to passion, but you carry a lot of anger around”. It’s not like I have a choice now, do I? So, in as much as I am trying to survive, I am asking that you do not listen to anyone who tells you “It is well” or “It will be well”. I am asking that you say a big fuck you to the people that say “It will favour me and my family” and lastly, I am asking, begging you to be angry as fuck because we need the anger. It is the only way we can survive. When we are angry enough as a collective and remember that we are more than they are, we start to get somewhere. I want us to get somewhere. I want us to be fulfilled.

This newsletter and the anger that comes with it was written in Arigbajo, Ogun state. On my dining table and with a heart filled with lots of love and a tremendous amount of rage.