I Know You Are Tired of Pretending You Are Fine

There is something nobody tells you about growing up in Nigeria. They teach you to be strong before they teach you to be honest. By the time you are fifteen, you already know how to fold your fear into something smaller. Something that fits in your pocket, something you can carry without anyone noticing the weight.

Anxiety is not always loud. Sometimes it is the way you re-read a text message four times before sending it. The way you lie awake rehearsing conversations that may never happen. The way your heart moves too fast in a room full of people who are simply living, while you are quietly managing a storm no one else can see.

I want to sit with you in that for a moment. Not to fix it. Just to say, I see it.

You might have grown up in a home where emotions were luxuries. Where "what is wrong with you" was asked as an accusation, not an invitation. Where softness was something to outgrow. And so you learned to perform okayness so well that sometimes even you believe the performance.

But underneath it, something in you is exhausted. From the constant, invisible labour of holding yourself together in a country that never stops asking more of you.

You are allowed to put it down. Not permanently. Just long enough to breathe. Long enough to remember that you are a person, not just a function.

That is enough for today.

All my love,

-DandelionPrecious from MANI