It is almost the year’s end, five years after 2020. An odd year with an odd number, one that everyone tried to rationalise away. For me, it marked the beginning of paying attention to details I had once ignored. The kind that do not announce themselves. The quiet shifts. The moments that feel small until they shape you.
I write this with emotion close to the surface and not because I am unravelling, but because I have learned restraint.
I had five pieces waiting to be written before today, each born with intent, and somehow they left before I could hold them properly. That absence taught me something: not everything that comes to me needs to be chased onto the page; some things ask to be contained.
This is about me, but it is also about life as it passed through me.
I made countless decisions trying to keep up with momentum. Trying to prove movement meant progress, yet only one decision stayed long enough to quiet everything else.
Go back home.
At first, it sounded like surrender. Later, it revealed itself as clarity. Home became less about place and more about regulation. About returning to a version of myself that did not need constant expansion to feel alive. I realised that what I was chasing did not need to be caught. It needed to be felt, deeply and slowly.
Honestly. If you know me, you know I speak in parables. This year is also one I had to live in before I could understand.
Five years away from my truth. Away from myself. Away from versions of life that could have been built into something impressive. Some futures looked good from the outside. Stories that would have read beautifully, but distance has a way of exposing what does not belong. Five years later, I understand this: five times is still not too late to return, to move with urgency and not desperation, and to make haste while containing the details.
This year, I experienced seasons without work. Seasons where independence was not empowering, just necessary. Where I had to structure my own days, motivate myself without applause, and accept that creation sometimes happens in silence. I built things. I tore things apart. I gave life to ideas and destroyed others when they no longer aligned with who I was becoming.
All these processes taught me discernment. I learnt that not everything I can create deserves to survive, not every opportunity deserves my energy, not every person deserves my smile. Containing the details meant learning what to keep close and what to let dissolve without grief.
And now, I.
I am no longer scared to witness life. I have seen enough of it unfold unpredictably to trust myself within it. What remains is caution. A deliberate care in how I receive experiences. A refusal to absorb chaos simply because it is offered.
Peace, I have learned, is not something you chase across years and locations. It remains abundant when you stop running after life and start creating within it. When you stop scattering yourself across possibilities and begin tending to what is already in your hands.
This is not an ending. It is my way forward. It is a life lived with intention, with boundaries, with awareness. A life where I contain the details so they do not consume me.
Maybe if I tell myself it will not be okay,
Then it will be, but is it not?
This, and many more,
Are truths I have failed to accept as time continues to build on itself.
All within me,
And all I have seen, are stronger versions of myself I did not know existed.
As I free myself,
I fall, and not to the ground.
In love, In the rhythm I string.
Look what my heart has found,
Within my strengths.
Nene's Corner 