After 48 hours of travelling with no chance to sleep, I came back home to Stockholm... had a meeting while in bed (thank you Skype), talked to one of my best friends and passed out for another 8 hours.
Still in crash mode, I decided to watch movies on Netflix. Now if you know me, the last few months I have rarely watched anything on any screen other than writing business plans, trying to make a micro viable product, and sending emails about my future.
But today, I watched Nappily Ever After and something hit me.
The natural love interest, who has a child, said to the main character, "I have a daughter and I'm not in the position to [mess] up ... so get yourself sorted."
At that moment I recalled a similar interaction. When I first moved to California, running away from being a scientist. I went on a date. Well although I knew it was a date, I had only one thing in mind, I need a surf buddy. Immediately this person and I clicked but something was missing. He had responsibilities far greater than I did at the time. Meanwhile, I wasn’t even being responsible for myself. When we realised this, we parted ways on a friendly note. But now watching this movie, I can understand why this happened. I was absolutely not sure of myself at that time. I thought I wanted a friend, he knew he wanted more. How could I be ‘hanging’ with someone when I am not sure of myself? I was in transition. Cue videos of black women going from relaxed hair to natural hair.
Now I am sitting on a balcony in Stockholm, my home, and realising (thank you Sanaa Lathan and Netflix) that being with anyone even as a friend when you are in transition is not fair. I have always been a half something; a half student, a half friend, a half lover, a half… When I started surfing this was made evident right away. Recall that time in Newquay when my instructor told me that my mind was not where my body was. That day I was ruminating over if I should stay in academia. With all the beauty at Towan beach, I couldn't even enjoy it because I was fighting in my head.
I guess I threw myself into surfing because I didn’t want to be half anything anymore. I couldn’t tell you that at the time. All I knew was that I was tired of being afraid.
I think that my greatest fear was not the open ocean, but the fear of being whole. To become whole, is a lot of work. It is a lot of FaceTime with your core values and a lot of moments of pain and insecurity wrapped up in vanity. Tearing it away is even more painful but the satisfaction of stripping away all those negative influences is comparable to riding a wave, especially when you feel you are at the edge of a cliff and are about to let go down the line.
I guess what I am saying is go through the mud. Go through the dirt that is who you think you are, and really find who you are. I am loving the Abeni I see now, she's a whole lot of Abeni. I have energy beyond my understanding to find out more about myself, to wake every morning at 5am and drive 78 Km (while in Cali) to surf and then to come home and work my little brain off to achieve something I never dreamed of. As I have no plans for an exact future, I have only one thing in my mind: To keep on finding the pieces of me to be whole.
Look I don’t have this life figured out yet. But one surf, one step, one meeting, and one song at a time… I feel closer.