I like to think the narrator in The Pursuit of Happyness said that you never really attain happiness, you just spend your whole life pursuing it. That is the reason why most of us change location, I believe; to chase after happiness, with the hopes of grasping little, separate fragments of it, in different flavours.
At least that was it for me; that craving for something different, a different location quite far from home, to give that taste of freedom every writer wants, to aid the finding and becoming of yourself and to take more out of life, as much as it has taken away from you. Abi?
But since I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that I have gone through these whole series of madness that relocating serves, in the bid to find myself, let us assume that this is you.
So you find your niche after few years of writing for passion and writing for gigs, taking on different hats and putting words together for different audiences. You’ve finally found your one audience you feel more connected to, but to solidify this bond, you need to breathe in the air they breathe, drink the same water and share bus rides with them. So like Darey you pack your bags one Sunday morning and ask for blessings because you’re leaving home to start life as a full blown adult, with a whole big bag of passion and something close to half a million naira you plan to start your life as an adult with. Oh! And your laptop too. How did we forget that!
Fresh guy!
You will find two more gigs to add to your writing, normal normal, because writers are broke people and you cannot afford to go broke, but first, let’s find you a house in your new, little town quite far from home.
Now this is where the madness begins, because more than half of the ‘something close to half a million’ you brought will leave your account and hang mid-air while trying to get an apartment. So it is no apartment and no extra money to get the one that suits your taste. The type befitting of a writer who knows what she’s doing. The one that gives the illusion of a soft life, where you join the 4am club, wear white bathrobes, because for the first time, you were meant to finally have running water and a shower in your home. You’ll get yourself a mug too, to sip coffee and write motivational quotes on sticky notes for your mini fan base, the tiny little followers on LinkedIn, the people who scout for your status every morning you drop a quote, longing for something to believe in, just like you. Ahh, lets not forget the ones who view your stories on Instagram. You have to look it. Because that is what your mentor says: you build your life to look like you are a professional and that your writing skills are pay you, just so you attract the right clients whenever the time to take on jobs comes. You have to look well enough to pass on the notion that writing pays you well enough to fund your lifestyle; fake it till you make it, baby!
Pheew!
Now that half your money is gone, you’ll fully understand what Darey meant when he released that song, because you will be squatting at a distant friend’s cockroach infested house and you will use what is left from that money to get a very strong insecticide; original ota pia pia, the cereals you eat, foodstuff for the house, a cute white desk to prop your laptop and books and a small swivel chair, a white mug and a flat white ceramic flat. Just how you like it; for the aesthetics. This is the cute part.
Now the ugly part is that this friend will snuff whatever little hope is left in you. She will scoop your milk from the konkom in ways you have never scooped it before and your oats will no longer last you a month like it used to when you still had your own place. Come on! You’re trying to put on some weight here!
She will wear your boyfriend jeans even when it doesn’t zip because the waist size isn’t hers and she will stretch out your body-hugging tank tops. She will wear all of your slippers out and will tell you “what are friends for, if not inconveniences?” of course, not without you blowing kisses and laughing on her way out, while you’re typing away at your desk.
That desk!
She will leave chocolates for you on the desk before she goes to work, lots of chocolate so you can munch on something while you work, but she’d also leave her bra and her trousers and her earrings, alongside garri encrusted mugs; hers and your favourite mug, on that desk.. And you will realise. You will realise that moving away from home will bring on battles you never knew existed
But maybe it is because you had not yet attained that stage of emotional intelligence that made one realise that when people pray “for the strength to change what needs to be changed and grace to accept what cannot be changed”, what they actually intend to change is their response to situations, not the situation itself.
Gba adura funmi!
You will write long letters home, letters that will never make it home, because if your mom ever reads them, she’ll tell you “come back home, omo mi, at least there is food in your mother’s house ”. And she will nag you until you do, even though you do want to. But you write those letters anyway, telling her everything; that there is the kind of craving and hunger burning in a 22 year old woman that isn’t food; describing tiredness, frustration and hunger in words and events that you never knew existed before.
But it is not just those letters that didn’t get to ma, because you will later discover other words that you once felt should never have left your passive vocabulary, words that did not fit into the kind of portfolio you have built on LinkedIn; words that had no place in content writing and copywriting and brand-storytelling and you will want to put those words to use, so you end up ditching LinkedIn for the meantime, because you will find Substack; a more suitable place to write on topics like gas lighting and emotional blackmail and being taken advantage of.
That is the kind of war moving away from home brings to you. Because first of all, you have that fight with yourself on whether deviating from your initial niche is worth your time and the effort. But this doesn’t even happen without you first uncovering a whole new part of the writer in you, parts you never knew existed before, and so this.
This comes first, please, then the battle with yourself and even this battle is a whole different flavour and tastes like you have only managed to grab just the hem in your fevered pursuit of happyness!
***Ifeoma is a recent graduate, currently building her styling brand. Catch her on X @Ife_omaokoye
