God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts – Sylvia Plath

 

i.

Your head is a floating mass of choices. You halt between ifs and if nots. Between perspectives and acclaimed universal truths and most times, you feel like a ship without an anchor drifting aimlessly on open waters.

You are standing in your room and staring at your mirror as you contemplate whether you should wear that black dress or the red one. You can’t count the number of times you have switched between dresses but your leg aches because you have been standing for hours, trying to see which one you should wear. Eventually, you settle for another silvery dress not because you are sure you want to wear it but because you are running late.

As you stand in front of the mirror, you randomly remember when Tife dragged you to the restaurant last week. You couldn’t make up your mind on what you wanted to eat. Before you got into the restaurant, you were sure you wanted jollof rice but the next moment, you cancelled your order and requested eba and egusi. As the waitress was leaving, you asked if they had spaghetti. You had seen the waitress look at you in disdain and Tife staring at you in confusion. You had cowered under their intense gazes because you were afraid of being judged. Eventually, you had settled for meat pie and when you began to eat, you wished you had picked hamburgers instead.

When you were six, your mother had asked you what you wanted for breakfast. That day, you had skipped breakfast because you sat in your room contemplating if you wanted noodles or something else. The next morning, your father had scolded you. He had said you were the first daughter, and that you had to lead your siblings by example. But how could you lead people when you couldn’t even lead yourself? When you had no sense of direction and couldn’t make up your mind on anything.

How?

 

ii.

Last night, Abeke sat you down under the stars and looked straight into your eyes. She told you she was sorry for you. Sorry for the life that lay ahead of you if you did not change and become decisive. You told her your indecision wasn’t your fault. That every option appeared wrong and appealing at the same time and made you unable to stick with a particular thing. This was the truth even if she didn’t believe you.

She didn’t know but hers was one of the many comments you had received. She didn’t know the world never ceased to remind you of your problem. They had told you they hated people who were unable to make up their minds on something, people whose minds drifted between different things quickly. People who were as unstable as water. This made you understand the world was never made for those with flippant minds. Rather, people who understood what they wanted to do with their lives and stuck with it, those who didn’t live by trial and error like you did.

Tobi understands how the world works. At 21, he had been to Beijing for a conference and now, he is pursuing his master’s degree at Nsukka University. He is the only one you can confide in because he’s seen you in your moments of highs and lows, and has seen you cry and laugh. He is the only one who understands you in this cold twisted world.

That day, you sat with Tobi and complained to him about how indecisive you had been over the years and how every right choice you thought you made became dumb the next moment. He smiled as you spoke and told you everyone struggled to make decisions. He told you to take it easy because no one knew exactly what they were doing, that they were just taking life as it came because no one had ever lived before.

But you did not believe him, you had seen several people who knew what they wanted to do with their lives. Edwin, your schoolmate who had always wanted to be a lawyer, now studies law at university. Pelumi was now a software engineer and Chiagozie had become that successful entrepreneur. They knew what they wanted and pursued it with everything in them.

They had their lives figured out, so what was Tobi saying?

What?

 

iii.

Today, your mother sat you down with fear in her eyes and asked you, “Ugbede, What course do you want to study? What do you want for your life?”

You had looked at her with that same fear in your eyes simply because you didn’t know the answer. It’d been four years since you graduated from secondary school and you hadn’t applied to any university yet because you couldn’t decide on what course you wanted to study. Law appeared just as great as French. You liked criminology and sociology. Literature was a great idea but so was international relations.

After many pleas from your mother to just pick any course, you go for literature because you tried to convince yourself that you are fascinated with the works of Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Defoe. After all, you have spent hours at the national library, leafing through the unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath and checking online archives for classics.

In your lonely moments, when the world seems to have faded and you’re alone in your cramped hostel on a cold night. You cry bitterly because you feel lost out on everything. You weep for the future that awaits you. You fear you will never make it in life because you’re surrounded by a lot of choices and you can’t make up your mind on any. But your tears are useless because as soon as you wipe them, you realize that your intense love for literature is dying and you are beginning to like product design.

So, you begin to take product design courses on Udemy after classes. You plan to ditch your literature degree after you graduate and become a product designer.
You start your courses with so much vigour and tell yourself happily that you have found your path in life but soon, you realize that your zeal for product design is dying and now, you just want to learn crocheting and sell crotchet pieces on Instagram and Etsy.

But each day you crochet zaps the energy you had for crocheting and fills your heart with love for painting which you decide to give a try. But after many months of fumbling with canvases and easels, you ditch it and decide to just finish your degree and figure out your life later.

Three years later, after you graduate with first-class honors in literature, your mother thinks you are ready to face the world. “So, masters or marriage?” she asks.

You sigh and refuse to give her an answer. You are not sure of your next step, you just want to breathe and not talk about your dreams anymore because you don’t want to be called confused. At 25 upon graduation, you have not been able to make up your mind on what you want to do.

 

iv.

It’s a cool evening in Belfast and you’re seated at your favourite coffee shop thinking about the last five years of your life and pondering on the paths you never took. Maybe you’d have found fulfilment in them or maybe not.

The smell of burnt coffee seeds fills your nostrils and you inhale sharply while you stare at the intricate leaf design on the cappuccino that the barista served two minutes ago. Outside, the snow falls and the streets are almost deserted. You look through the window, smile sardonically, and take a sip of your coffee.

After years of your mother guiding you on what you should do, you’re now a PhD student studying traditional poetry and you’re almost done with your dissertation.
You now teach creative writing to some international students and while your mother and Tobi celebrate you because they think you have figured out what you want to do with your life, but you feel a void. You’re not sure if this is the life you really should be living.

One part of you wants to resign, and study to be a doctor, and the other, wants you to be a digital nomad and tour the world.

On cold days like this one, when your head is a sea of thoughts, you take evening walks from your university to this coffee shop to clear your head and gather lecture notes for your students the next day. But today while you work, you notice a man staring at you. You suspect he’s in his late thirties and looks very familiar, then you remember that you saw him here yesterday

He waves and when you smile at him, he walks to you, requesting to sit near you and talk. “So, what’s your name?” he asks, flashing a million-dollar smile.
“Ugbede,” you reply. At least that’s the only thing you’re sure about. Your name.

Matthew, as you discover, is an ardent listener who is also great at conversations. A very cool-headed guy, who has never been married, is opinionated and knows exactly what he wants in life. He’s happy with his job as a music professor and plays golf every evening at the staff club. He doesn’t do social media and likes to talk about world politics.

You both hit it off and you discover you both love Novo Amor and the movie, Five Feet Apart. Before he leaves, it’s nightfall already and so, he asks you for your number so he can keep in touch.

Mathew calls you almost every night and you talk about a lot of things – your childhood, treasured moments, and everything in between. For the first time, you find someone like Tobi, someone who understands you and gives you a shoulder to lean on in the moments of your despair. You confide in him and tell him your deepest fears and he assures you that you’ll be fine.

The days fly by swiftly and you don’t realize how hard you have fallen for him. You find yourself thinking about him often, you can even recognize his perfume and presence from a distance and you look forward to your next meeting. And when the day that he asks you to become his girlfriend comes, you say yes because you’re whirling in sweet feelings you’ve never felt in a long time.

Three months later, you’re seated on the sofa at his cozy apartment when out of the blue, he asks you to marry him. You stare at him awestruck and realize at that moment, you will never say yes to him or anyone.

Because at 30, you’re not sure you want to get married. The thoughts of marriage sicken you and excite you at the same time. You fear you will get married today and lose interest tomorrow. You also fear you will never be able to raise kids because you will never make a good mother.

And so, you stare at him and just watch the confusion on his face until you leave. And as you leave, a new awareness dawns on you. Some people live like they have a manual on how the world and their life works. People like Matthew, like Tobi, like Chiagozie. They know what they want out of life, pursue it doggedly, and get it.

Unlike you, these are the people who the world was made for. But you, you’ll never figure out what you want in life, you’ll always halt between opinions and still be unable to make a choice.

You will always be indecisive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash