My roomie, Angelina - by Quietly Loud

A few days ago, I woke up and did my usual weird thing, I grabbed my small mirror and started checking my face. I don’t know why I do it, but every morning that’s just how it is for me. Like one miracle will happen overnight and I’ll suddenly wake up with my face clear of pimples and dark spots. I wasn’t wearing my glasses that morning, so I took my mirror to the balcony. The sunlight there is always better. Our bathroom is connected to the balcony, and for a few days now we’ve been having water issues in the hostel. So we store water in buckets outside near the bathroom. As I stepped out, I noticed something inside one of the buckets. Without my glasses, I squinted and thought, “Ah ah, wetin be this? Na cockroach?” I was already imagining the stress. Because if there’s a cockroach inside that water, nobody is bathing until we find another source. So I went back inside, got my glasses, and came back to check properly. I found our roommate. Angelina. Swimming for her life. At first, I just looked at it and thought, “Naso today wan take start?” And somehow, the first thing that came to my mind was, “You go suffer today sha.” But she wasn’t weak. She was swimming with full determination moving her hands and legs, scratching the side of the bucket, trying to climb out. You know that energy when someone has decided today is not the day they’ll die? That was it. It was around 7 a.m. when I saw her. I just looked and said in my mind, “Okay, continue. I shall see you later.” Then I went back inside, lay on my bed, and spent the morning doing absolutely nothing productive. Just watching movies, pressing my phone, existing. My roommates woke up too. Everyone greeted Angelina and went about their business. Later, around 12 or 1 p.m., I went back outside to use the bathroom. And that was when I saw it. ANGELINA was still swimming. Still. I was shocked. I counted the hours in my head from around 7 a.m. till noon. She had been there for hours and was still fighting. At that point, I wasn’t irritated anymore. I was impressed. And it made me think. I don’t even know how long she’d been there before 7 a.m. She could have fallen in during the night. But somehow, she had refused to stop trying. What exactly was she trying to achieve? She probably didn’t know if escape was possible. She probably didn’t know if anyone was coming to help. She probably didn’t even know if all that effort would change anything. But she kept moving. She kept trying. She kept believing there was still a way out. Eventually, she passed away. Let me not lie and turn this into a motivational speaker story–she drowned and died. But before she died, Angelina taught me something, she taught me perseverance is a crazy thing. A lot of us give up too quickly — on business, on dreams, on people, on ourselves. Sometimes just because something is hard for one week, or one month, or because things aren’t working the way we imagined. But she fought for hours. No assurance. No rescue plan. No guarantee. Just pure stubbornness and the hope that somehow, somehow, she would survive. And I kept thinking, if we humans had even half of that stubbornness, maybe many of us wouldn’t quit so easily. What made it funnier was that this wasn’t just any random guest. Angelina and her distant cousins have been disturbing us in this room. Eating my spaghetti, my rice, helping themselves to my spices, even chewing my bathing soap like they bought it with their own money. Paying no rent. Contributing nothing to the household. Just unofficial roommates moving mad. So yes, I had every reason to hate that RAT. Yet there I was, standing by the bucket, watching it struggle, and somehow seeing myself. The fear. The struggle. That refusal to stop trying even when the outcome looks obvious. Maybe that’s what stayed with me most — the way it kept moving like it believed there was still a chance, even when there probably wasn’t. And somehow, I think that’s how many of us are living too. Just swimming. Tired. Confused. Not sure if we’ll make it out. But still moving, because maybe, just maybe, this thing will work. And at this point, I’m probably just yapping. <img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/IMG_20260517_093950_086.jpg" style="background-color: transparent;"/> But that’s exactly why I created this profile. 😒 And it’s not STUPID! So yes, this is all I have to say. A rat died in our bucket of water. And somehow, I found a life lesson in it. I might as well become a therapist or counselor, hmmm… 🤔

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