Tired, and Somehow Still Here - by Oluwatobi Kolawole

There are no rules to living, are there? So, somehow, everyone — myself included (and I must remember to include myself; I keep forgetting I count too) — is permitted to cave under the weight of it all. Anything. Everything. I want to be allowed to be tired in public. Here, beneath the hum of white fluorescents, the air feels sterile and watchful. The hallways stretch too long, too bright. A fire extinguisher clings to the wall on my right, red against all this white, like a small rebellion.I’m sitting across from an emergency sign. Fire Hose Reel. Beneath it, another commandment: Emergency Exit. The letters bleed red, insistent. Then black on white — calmer, but still sure of itself: Do Not Block This Exit. Keep Clear At All Times. It feels like the entire building is speaking — gently, insistently. And truth be told, I do want to be clear. At all times. Easier said than done. Still, I tell myself not to think about anything outside the medication I’m waiting for, the tests I’m supposed to take. Blood tests. They call it blood sugar count. Whatever the name, it all folds into one quiet truth: blood will be sucked out of my body. I’ve never liked the sight of it and said so often enough as a child, as though repetition might earn me exemption. It didn’t. And now, even after existing long enough to know better — or maybe just long enough to pretend better — I still hold the same testimony. But there’s a script I’ve learned to follow. Masculinity insists on a certain stillness. The kind that requires a straight face while the needle is being inserted. A practiced calm as the blood leaves me in measured silence. A performance of nonchalance that has become, somehow, indistinguishable from acceptance. It feels terrible. My lip is cracked. The cuts in my mouth refuse to heal, stubborn things, as if they, too, have decided they’ve had enough of mending. I can’t talk. Can’t smile. Even the smallest movement feels like betrayal. Every tilt of my head sends a pulse of pain — sharp, deliberate, like it wants to remind me it’s there. Something is humiliating about being held hostage by your own body. Now that I’m thinking about it again, I should’ve carried a school bag. Something plain, unassuming. Not this fine Montblanc work bag that screams I have things figured out. Maybe that’s why the doctor is smiling like that, recommending avocado and almonds as if my wallet is padded with plenty of money. What happened to rice? Beans? Spag? Egg? No? She says there’s nothing wrong with those, that it’s all about portioning. Portioning. I eye-rollingly nod, and then decide to scribe all her words into a journal I came with. I take deep breaths. In. Out. Slow enough to keep the room from spinning. Across from me, a pregnant woman is showing her friends the new glow of her skin, the kind that seems to come from somewhere deeper than lotion. Excitement swells around her, bright and contagious, the way light fills a glass. She’s saying something about a cream — maybe cocoa butter, maybe something fancier — but I can’t place it. I’m just watching her laugh, and for a moment, it’s enough. Her joy hums through the air like music I don’t quite know the words to, but I hum along anyway. For some women, pregnancy rearranges the face — softens what was once sharp, swells what was once small. Sometimes it leaves them a little undone, like the body forgot how to return everything to its rightful place. So yes, this one — this glow, this aberration — is worthy of celebration. She looks radiant, untouched by the undoing. I’m happy for her. Truly. Even if my happiness arrives slightly late, wrapped in envy I won’t name. I shouldn’t be here. I tell myself.I just finished reading an article about sugar consumption in Nigeria. That’s not what it’s titled, and it’s really about something else — how the big import companies have been failing since the government decided to try its hand at backward integration. A neat phrase for something that doesn’t seem to be working. The numbers are what they are: we can only meet seven percent of our sugar demand. Seven. Reading that should keep me going, should remind me I’m not imagining things, that this heaviness has a source. But instead, I feel the same dull ache pressing at my temples. It’s becoming clearer every day that the policies, the bills, the promises — they’re not meant for people like us. The price of sugar has doubled, maybe tripled in some places. People have switched from buying in bags to buying in spoonfuls. Still, somehow, the companies are smiling at the bank, declaring profits even as they record exchange losses on letters of credit, casualties of the Naira’s slow collapse. In saner climes, heads would roll. Here, they just bow to receive another handshake. The air here is feeling too familiar, but the feeling within my tummy feels even more familiar. Last meal was a while ago. Akin to the same feeling as when I last knew a woman. A day with the lord can be a thousand. Time widens with activities, and sometimes you can’t even remember the last time you felt good. The baby won’t stop crying. The sound pierces through the room, thin and relentless, like something trying to claw its way out of the air. I think a needle just went through his tiny arm. No amount of Baby Shark doo doo doo is enough to quiet that kind of betrayal. His mother had probably smiled before it happened, promised it wouldn’t hurt, that it would be over before he knew it. But now, his cries tell the truth she couldn’t bear to. In this place — this building that smells of antiseptic and keeps a quiet record of death, of diagnoses that don’t end well — pain is the only thing freely given. Days like these remind me how inadequate I am. The kind of day that presses on you until you start to believe solitude isn’t a process but a place — one you’ve lived in long enough to start calling home. Years ago, there was a woman. A lover. She once placed my fevered face against her chest and whispered, Sorry, my husband. In a typical Yoruba way. She is married to someone else today. Still is. Life, it seems, follows a timetable none of us agreed to but all of us obey. At least once, I was her husband. Today, I’m not. You don’t have to agree. I remember someone else once calling me lover after a few minutes of talking over ice cream. Vanilla is melting faster than our intentions. Her last words still linger somewhere in the folds of memory: I’ve made a personal decision to set that boundary. Maybe later, when I’m in a different headspace. When I’m ready for a relationship. But for now, I’m not. I nodded, maybe even smiled, the way one does when pretending to understand the language of self-preservation. Still, I was once a lover. So deal with it. Home now. And there’s that small, unspoken exhale that comes with being back in my own space. The kind of familiarity that doesn’t need permission — where even the toilet knows your ass, and the doorknob, your touch. It’s silly, maybe, but it’s mine. Tomorrow will come with its lists and reminders, medical appointments dressed as obligations, capitalism waiting at the door with its clipboard of concerns.I’ll go, and I’ll return, and I’ll be tired again. But here’s the thing — I’ll be allowed to be tired. And maybe, that’s enough for now.

Other insights from Oluwatobi Kolawole

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons