Everyday For A Year…
A few days ago, a friend shared a medium article of a female writer, Khadejah, who wrote on Medium every day, for a whole year. Now, as an aspiring writer and future renowned novelist (I am a dreamer), I was inspired and it made me decide to take up the challenge as well. I will write every day on this app for a whole year InSha’Allah. Even if it is a few lines. Even if my write-up doesn’t make much sense. I will click PUBLISH every day.
I searched deep within my soul to find the perfect story to begin this journey. For some reason, I felt my first post for the next 365 days, Insha’Allah, had to be monumental or had to make some sense to me. Luckily for you my dear readers, I internalize a lot of things and I am quite introspective.
Today, the 12th of August 2021, is the anniversary of my parents’ wedding. My parents would have been married for bl**dy 26 years! That is more years than I have been in existence. Unfortunately, my father passed away the year their marriage would’ve clocked 20. Two decades after being married to my mum, my father bid the world goodbye. It is a bittersweet memory that I will definitely share someday. My mother married my father at my current age. How did she completely trust a man who was 12 years older than her? I often wonder. At my age, I feel I have not lived enough. I have not grown enough. I have not traveled enough; I mean the Italian pavements are begging me to walk on them! 26 years ago, when my mother was making the decision to marry, I wondered if she felt like I felt. I once asked her, and because my mother is as honest as they come, she tells me like it is. She said and I quote
“I did not fully understand the responsibility nor the enormity of what marriage was when I settled down with your father”.
That is a loaded statement if I ever heard one. Now, I will not go into details of my parents’ marriage online but, what I can divulge is, their marriage was not perfect and now as an adult, I can tell that marriage held my mother back from reaching her full potential and following her dreams. I do not intend to let history repeat itself.
I am a go-getter and a bit of an overachiever. As a Muslim woman from northern Nigeria, it has been a bit hard navigating and negotiating my wants and needs around the socio-cultural expectations of women within my society. For the longest time, I have been the only woman in a room full of men. Oftentimes, I wonder why I can’t just be like other women; content in what life throws at her and willing to aspire to marriage and having kids as much as my womb would allow. Don’t t get me wrong, I will marry someday, probably even sooner and I do want children. But, I am so sure of myself and I know marriage and children will not be self-satisfactory alone.
I want to work. I want to change lives and be an impactful member of my society. I lay awake sometimes wondering about children bereft of parents or any guardian wandering the streets. I wonder about women who have no one to stand up for them; someone to protect them and their interests. I think about men, especially young men who have been conditioned to be providers right from a young age, as the patriarchal system dictates, and have to wake up every day with the pressure to prove themselves. I think about the systematic discrimination that people regardless of creed, color, ethnicity, or sex face every single day. With all these never-ending problems and so few solutions, I wonder how I can be comfortable and content with being domesticated as just a wife and mother.
I will write every day for a year because I find comfort in writing. Plus, writing is for me, and just for me. My ability to write whatever is empowering and it is devoid of any sociocultural box anyone might put me in. Writing is a form of escape and someday when I have that elusive family, I will be satisfied that writer is another label I get to bear along with wife and mother. I hope along the way, I inspire people to not only write but to pursue whatever tickles their fancy!
