All the Wishing Stops Here - by Oluwatobi Kolawole

I tell myself I can live with being the villain, that the weight of a coarse personality is something I can bear. It sounds brave in my head — the way defiance often does. But some acts, some stances, only survive the safety of imagination. Out here, in the noise of real life, courage feels thinner. I’m learning not to hide behind the easy thought that I’m a bad person. Still, there’s a sliver of remorse that won’t leave. I don’t know how to be what people want me to be. Most days, I want to be left to the noise in my own head — the mess, the ruin, the comfort of my own chaos. It feels like the height of self-destruction — wanting a world so quiet that the only voice left is your own. Just something still, something untouched by the noise of being known. I crave the silence, the smallness. Small talks, nothing more. But no one ever keeps it brief. And maybe that’s fair. Maybe conversation is what keeps us alive — the reaching, the being heard, the listening that reminds us we’re not alone, even when all we want is the hush. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that nobody has it easy. Life keeps pressing you against the wall, and somehow, you learn to stay there — still breathing, still pretending. You smile through the wreckage, make small talk with your own exhaustion. You tell yourself there must be other ways to live, but the world keeps handing you the same ache, dressed in new days. So you wait. Not for better days — no, that dream feels too heavy now. You want days that come and go quietly, without your chest tightening for reasons you can’t name. When the emotions come — sudden, heavy, relentless — I wonder if this is how everyone else survives their days. It can’t be ordinary, this constant reaching for something that never sits still. The mind stretches, desperate. The body follows, falters, gives you away. And then, somehow, the face you wear — the one that’s meant to hide it all — becomes the loudest part of you. You’re exposed. Spent. Almost beyond saving. It shouldn’t be this complicated. But someone has to listen, even when I’m not speaking. So here you are. And maybe that’s all I’ve ever wanted — for someone to see me without asking what they’re looking at. The walks, the stares, the way I drift when I think too long. How I care — too much, too loudly. How I give a fuck, maybe too many. How I move through the world like a prostitute of feelings — always too deep or nothing at all. So raw that people mistake it for distance. I just want it all seen, magnified under the right light. Not judged. Just understood. It’s been a year of lessons. If you asked, I’d say the biggest one is this — Perfect love is just friendship with moments that burn a little hotter. All our labels, all our attempts to name it, only rinse the magic out of it. Still, I worry I’ve grown a deeper kind of toxic. Because if I heard that a lover, unseen for twenty years, had tried to die, some cruel part of me would wonder if it was because of me. Too self-absorbed, too self-aware — a dangerous mix, the kind that smiles at its own ruin and calls it introspection. Still, I learn solipsism from the women around me, and when I choose to live without a sense of dignity, I take my lessons from the children. Their ruthless responses, their desire to grieve in sad or disappointing moments, and their right to be tired in public. I can’t even be tired in public. You start to believe your pain is singular — a kind of heartbreak the world has never seen. Then you read. And realize that writing is how we confess our sameness, how we remind one another that suffering isn’t new, just newly ours. Sometimes, I go searching for the lives of people who might have lived mine. I never find them. I want a manual, a blueprint, something that tells you how to endure with grace, how to keep standing without falling apart so loudly. But there’s no map for this. Only the slow, lonely work of finding things out on your own.So here I am, caught between two fears — being understood and being misunderstood. It’s strange how both feel like exposure. I’ve said it so many times that no single version of me has ever come out whole. Everyone sees a fragment, and maybe that’s all they’re meant to see. Still, I listen. I read what they have written, the critics, the casual observers, the ones who say I had sold them a dream at some point. It’s ironic, I know — but I love their words. The way they turn my life into a study. Their conclusions, however wrong, always taste a little sweet. The comments are honest, and I think that’s what matters. The honesty that comes with opinions. Here, in the darkness of my own mind, I wish things were different. That I’d pick up when the phone rings, that I’d reply to the messages from the ones who mean well. I wish I didn’t make caring for me feel like labor. But that’s as far as my wishing goes. I’m here. And everything is too loud — the world, the worry, the sound of my own silence breaking. I just want it all to stop long enough for me to hear myself again.

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