The Lying Truth
Coincidences. Voices in my head. Too many thoughts, too many events, to keep calling them coincidences.
The ceiling being my brain. The beliefs I have held onto for years. So many years that they became the truth. The lying truth.
I have always found it fascinating how the mind works. How we can convince ourselves of something so deeply that it ceases to feel like a belief and begins to feel like a fact. How a lie, repeated often enough, can become the most convincing truth we have ever known.
The other day, something finally clicked.
I was treating every thought like gospel truth.
And there is something rather absurd about that, because my brain has always been so willing to believe the worst of me. Negative thoughts arrive, and I accept them without question. But let a good thought dare to surface, let it suggest that perhaps I am deserving of something wonderful, and suddenly, my brain becomes a courtroom. Evidence is demanded. Every possibility is scrutinised. Every reason why it might not happen is presented.
When did that belief carve itself so deeply into my brain that my subconscious began fighting every conscious thought that dared to suggest otherwise?
The lies we tell ourselves. The lies I told myself. Over and over again, until my brain accepted them as gospel truth.
And now, I find myself wondering: why is it so difficult to believe that good things can happen to me?
Not the everyday good things. Those, somehow, my brain manages to minimise. I am talking about the life-changing good things. The kind that alter the trajectory of your life. The job that changes your tax bracket forever. The opportunity that makes everything you have ever imagined suddenly feel within reach.
The kind of good that makes you look at your life and realise that, somehow, everything has changed.
It is as though I am trying to reach for something that is already within sight, but the moment I get close enough to believe I can have it, it slips away. Or perhaps I am the one pulling away. Perhaps there is something terrifying about wanting something so badly that the possibility of not having it becomes unbearable.
I want to believe.
The internet calls it being delusional. I want to be that. I want to be delusional. I want to be delusional enough to believe that I am deserving of good things. That I do not have to spend my entire life convincing myself that I am worthy of them. That perhaps, just perhaps, the universe is not conspiring against me.
I want to believe that good things can happen without my brain first having to approve of the possibility.
It is a peculiar thing, wanting a life that other people seem to be living while simultaneously watching them grow tired of it.
The other day, I watched Harry’s speech at his concert. And while the fame, the love, and everything that comes with it have brought him so much, there was a part of him that seemed to want to slow down. Which is funny, because there he was, standing on a stage, living what I can only describe as my dream life. And yet, somehow, it seemed as though he wanted a moment away from it.
I suppose that is the thing about dreams. We romanticise the lives we do not have, while the people living them are allowed to have complicated feelings about their own realities.
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Adela wants to manifest going to college. She wants higher education. And here I am, with higher education already spoken for. I am a lawyer. A prestigious career, if I choose to fully pursue it. A perfectly respectable life waiting to be lived.
But my heart craves the stage.
Being on it.
Sad, right?
Some days, the thought of it feels hopeful. Almost tangible. I can see it. I can imagine it. I can feel the possibility of it. But most days, it feels so far away that I wonder whether I have mistaken wanting something for being meant to have it.
I want to be that Kenyan who tells other girls who dream of being on stage that it is possible for a Kenyan artist to go global.
Ambitious much?
There are so many Kenyan artists doing incredible things, and I do not want that to be lost in what I am saying. But I want it global. I want East African music to be part of the conversation. Not just amapiano. Not just Afrobeats. I want Kenya to be part of the music conversation in a way that makes the world stop and listen.
I want to be part of that.
Lord, I want to be so big.
The Met Gala. The enormous award shows. The celebrity gatherings. The stages that seem to exist in another universe entirely. The kind of rooms I have only ever watched through a screen.
Put me there.
And yet, I am paralysed.
Paralysed by the very dream I spend so much time yearning for. By the possibility of becoming the person I have always imagined. By the desire to be the best one in the room. I hate it most days. I hate how something that brings me so much joy can also make me feel so inadequate. I hate how I can want something with every fibre of my being and still struggle to believe that it could ever be mine.
God, it feels so far away.
It feels impossible.
I want it to be possible.
I want it to be my reality.
Lord, I want my brain to see it as a possibility.
I want to believe.
