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- Sometimes, I feel like my friends—and even you, dear reader—get tired of the constant switches in my mood.
Sometimes, I feel like my friends—and even you, dear reader—get tired of the constant switches in my mood.
It's the reason I couldn't write earlier in the month. What was I going to write about? I was just tired of talking about my feelings and how I was doing.
Grace Iderima
May 25, 2024
Regular programming.
Lately, I've been reading my own newsletters and I'm really fascinated by how my mind works and what I like talking about. Whenever I'm reading it, I usually go, “omg, I'm so cool”, and I'm being serious. I'm really jealous of everyone who gets to experience me as not me. (if this makes sense), like they're not me, in my body. They're just people who see me through their own eyes.
If I wasn't me, I would be fascinated by me. I would text myself everyday and send me money, “here, Grace. take NGN 500,000 for being so cool. you're such a superstar. I'm in awe of you”. Ohmigosh.
Anyways, sorry for that. I had to pay a quick quick homage to myself—thank God for me fr. Hello, my fans. It's currently 4:14AM, May 23 Thursday, and I have an exam by 9am. It's a practical exam, Dispensing, <shivers>, I have no expectations and thoughts, I just want to write it and be done with it. I don't want to think about it. It's also my last practical exam.
You know, after the last newsletter, I just realised that I've only written 4 exams so far. Four! Today's exam will be the fifth one. The point is, I've only written 4 exams and I'm already feeling so tired, like I was so shocked. Just 4?! Ah. I'm supposed to write 11 exams.
5:11 PM, Thursday, May 23
The sleep I just woke up from will go down in history as one of the things that saved me, even though I slept like someone who was done with exams. No regrets though.
My dispensing exam was okay, as okay as it can be anyway. I actually started the exam feeling so unsure of myself and my life, but I ended up finishing the exams and answering all the questions. So, yes, good. It's now crunch time (it has always been crunch time), 6 more papers to go. Theory courses.
Before I settled down to write this, I was thinking about how in pharmacy school, you never have time to appreciate yourself, it's always “yes, you did this, but you still have this other thing though”.
For example, we're writing 12 courses (we didn't write exams for one of them, we're supposed to write a report for it, the field trip something, and it's actually 13 courses if you're counting the entrepreneurship course we did too) and when the results comes out and you pass all 10 courses and fail 2, you still feel useless and like shit, because well, you failed 2, you're writing 2 again, and you have 2 more slots now, and if you fail more than 2, you'll repeat instantly, you don't even appreciate yourself for passing 10 courses. It's like it's useless just because “you still failed anyway”.
Why is this song so good?! I really wanted to like her new album so much, but I honestly couldn't get into it—but this song is so amazing!
This is for the course I have on Friday. It's an 81 slides document and we got it like a week before the beginning of exams or so, and I honestly thought it wasn't going to come, but here we are, so like I said earlier, it's crunch time.
3:09 PM, Friday, May 24
I have terrible anxiety right now and I just finished reading a medium post which left two things in my brain,
“There are times when consolation is mockery.”
“Maybe I’m overly anxious lately. Maybe it’s why I am always sleepy and tired. Maybe my body is trying to shut down. Or maybe I’m just lazy. I’ve always been lazy. Wait, no. I have not. My work rate is super high up there when I am to accomplish some tasks, like hate.”
I think the reason I feel anxious right now is because I plan too much and think too far ahead, I can't just relax. Also, I plan my life too much around what “I’m supposed to be doing”, if this makes sense. Life is not always 1,2, 3, and 4, in that exact order, and I shouldn't try to figure everything out at once, but it's easier said than done, so sigh.
With the way I've been reading books, I just remembered how I picked up a book last week or so, I wasn't exactly reading it, I literally just opened it for 5 minutes and my father just walked in and was like,
Grace's father: “are you okay? are you sure you're okay?”
Grace: “yes, I'm okay”.
Grace's father: “I’m not sure you're okay, it's like there's something wrong with you. If you're okay, you won't be reading these books. You have all these things to read (pharmacy books) and you're reading sToRyBoOK, you're behaving like you don't know the course you're doing”.
And then, I felt like shit. Actually, more shit, because I was already feeling like shit, that's why I opened the book. It made me remember the time I just started the course and my parents wouldn't give me breathing space, always talking about reading and reading and reading. Everything I feel concerning this course is basically as a result of all those things. My anxiety concerning this course, especially.
Anyhoo, I think that's why I keep reading books—well, apart from the fact that I genuinely just enjoy doing it—it's a form of rebellion. Not physical books, of course, because my parents would see it. I also just remember how whenever I get a new book, my parents would ask me why I'm buying sToRyBoOKs when I'm doing pharmacy and should be reading pharmacy books.
It's even more crazy because even during the holidays, my parents would talk about reading for the next semester. It's like clockwork and I can barely do anything else, apart from reading. I also think all these things affected how I see school, like this happiness sucking machine, even in primary school and secondary school. I think at some point, I stopped making an effort because I didn't want to do what they were telling me to do, which worked for me in primary and secondary school because I did well without putting effort, as well as I can be anyway. Of course, this backfired in University because my anxiety increased and I couldn't get by without putting effort and I didn't want to repeat a whole class. So, yes, high anxiety and the struggle between wanting to do well and not do well doesn't exactly mix.
6:43AM, Saturday, May 25
I just finished reading Oma's recent newsletter, and well, it's amazing how there are different ways to describe how I've been feeling for the past 3 months.
It's a collection of quotes from different books and all, also, she said something about her favourite medium writer being Oluchukwu and he's my favourite, too. I can't even begin to tell you.
There's a particular quote that made me go, “this reminds me of second semester”, it's both sad and annoying, but it is what it is.
“We have still not reached the end of our trials. One more labor lies in store—boundless, laden with danger, great and long, and I must brave it out from start to finish.”
There's another one from Oluchukwu,
“Sometimes, I feel like my friends-and even you, dear reader- get tired of the constant switches in my mood. I`m always a downer. It must be excruciating to hear complaints all the time.”
Yes to everything. It's the reason I couldn't write earlier in the month. What was I going to write about? I was just tired of talking about my feelings and how I was doing. These days, I don't even think too much about it and I'm tired of talking about how I'm feeling, I just let myself be.
Of course, I realised that I didn't have to, I didn't have to talk about what I didn't want to talk about. Nobody was pointing a gun to my head and making me talk, and that's why we are here. One of my biggest life lessons is; you don't have to do anything. It makes me breathe free sometimes.
I woke up this morning and I was thinking about how I haven't had a proper conversation with anyone in a while. I have no idea what that means.
Books.
I started a book yesterday, but I read half of the synopsis before starting the book, and then, I went back to the synopsis and I saw something that ruined everything for me because I had already started and I didn't need to know that.
I was really sad, but at the same time, I was like, “if that was the direction the book was going to go, I probably wouldn't have liked it much anyway”, so I DNF the book, and I'm currently bookless.
The name of the book's Sweetness In The Skin by Ishi Robinson.
Synopsis:
A winning debut novel about a Jamaican girl determined to bake her way out of her dysfunctional family and into the opportunity of a lifetime.
Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home).
When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin’s grandmother dies, she’s left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up—as lazy and conniving as ever—the household’s fortunes take a turn for the worse.
Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam, so she can free herself from her household and reunite with her beloved aunt in France. In a moment of ingenuity, she turns her passion for baking into a true business. Making batches of sweet potato pudding, coconut drops and chocolate cakes, Pumkin develops a booming trade—but when her school and her mother find out what she’s up to, everything she’s worked so hard for may slip through her fingers. . . .
Sweetness in the Skin is a funny and heartbreaking story about a young girl figuring out who she is, what she is capable of—and where she truly belongs.
I'm so sorry, but the whole thing about the deadbeat father just threw me off, especially as I had already started and I didn't like him, I thought I wouldn't have to deal with him, only to find out that he came back?! The grandmother died?! Omg. Immediately no.
This is not a spoiler, it's literally in the synopsis (🌚).
Check out the book if it checks your boxes though. What's today's lesson though? Always read the full synopsis or go in blind. Really blind. If you've started the book, don't go back to check the synopsis.
I started another book and DNF it, it's actually for the same reason as before (and more). I checked out the synopsis some pages into the book. I started it and there was a sort of countdown and I started wondering why they were counting down and if someone was going to die and then I read the synopsis and saw something that made me go “????” especially as I have read some parts of the book.
First off, the name of the book is Dominoes by Phoebe McIntosh.
Synopsis:
A tender and provocative debut novel about a mixed-race British woman who makes the shocking discovery in the days leading up to her wedding that her fiancé’s family may have enslaved her ancestors.
Dominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before the wedding of a young couple. Layla is a mixed-race woman—with a Black, Jamaican mother and a white father she’s never met—and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can’t believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. But the commonalities between the two outweigh their differences; funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon.
Layla’s best friend, Sera, isn’t so sure—about Andy, or the fact that her best friend is engaged to marry a white man. As Layla’s wedding date approaches, Sera prompts her friend to research her heritage more, and in the undertaking, Layla makes a shocking discovery: It’s not just possible but extremely likely that Andy’s ancestors enslaved Layla’s in Jamaica, and that the money from that enslavement helped build his family’s wealth.
What seemed like a fairy-tale romance is suddenly derailed as Layla begins to uncover parts of her history and identity that she never could have imagined—or had simply learned to ignore. The task takes her to Jamaica for the first time, where she meets family members for the first time, and uncovers truths about her family’s history that will change the way she thinks about herself and her future. As the clock ticks down to her wedding—four days, three days, two days—Layla must make a decision: commit to the man she loves or expose a shameful history that has gone unspoken for far too long.
Conversation-starting, open-hearted, and unforgettable, Dominoes shows us that only by fully confronting the past can one hope to move forward.
I don't know man, but you're a BLACK WOMAN—although, they described her as black woman who's white passing (reviews), I have no idea what that means. They also said something about her being biracial, I don't know, but moving on.
You're someone with BLACK origin and you're getting married to a WHITE man, but for some reason, you find out that your WHITE fiancé's ancestors enslaved your ancestors and that's shocking? You're literally black. Isn't that what white people do those days?
I don't know man, but when I read that part, I was just like, “that’s it? You're literally black”, that’s like a high possibility. Also, from the reviews I read, I think I'm not going to like the FMC and her best friend.
Anyhoo, I feel like this book is going to make me so angry at the end, but I'm also tempted to read it, just to see if I would hate the FMC as everyone in the reviews keep saying, but no.
I feel like this book is going to be like These Impossible Things. I loved it, but it made me so mad. I was angry at the end, and to whom? It almost felt like I needed to see the FMC in real life and have a chat with her. She pissed me off a lot.
I started another book, the name's The Most Likely Club by Elyssa Friedland, I think I'll finish this one. I like it. Also, I just realised that you're witnessing me pick and drop books, I don't think I'm okay too.
I tend to read a lot of books back to back when I don't want to think. Just read someone else's story. And it's thrilling too, I never know what to expect, I think I should stop caring about synopses and go in blind. Also, did I tell you? My plan this break is to read, read, and read. A little writing and sleeping here and there. Basically, to not exist and just occupy space.
Anyhoo, so far so good in the book. I like the friends, although I don't get one of them's deal. I'm wondering what the ending is going to be like, but I'm just taking it slow and reading it when I can.
By the time you get the next newsletter, I would probably be done with the book, but I probably wouldn't start a new one. I have 3 exams next week. What a wicked world.
Anyhoo, this is the end, I actually didn't know the direction I wanted this newsletter to go, I just wanted to write, but here we are. 3 days after the previous one. Let me know what you think and what you're currently reading. Wait, let me make a list.
Write back, I want to hear from you.
Let me know what you're currently reading. Also, if you ever check out a book I recommend, write back to mee when you're done. Even though it's one I hated.
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Bye x.
“He’d gotten off the phone and had lain in bed awake, feeling stuck and sorry for himself.”
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