“Chidi, you just ghosted folks, eh?”
No, abeg. No ghosting. Just life, doing what it does best…dishing the hard lessons with extreme prejudice. The key though, is we still dey here.
Right?
One of the toughest things we deal with is when you realize you are being taken for granted. Let me explain. You know how some people and entities have this belief that no matter what—you will be there when they decide, at their leisure, that they need you?
Now what do you mean by “no matter what”, Oga Chidi?
When they go MIA on you, no explanation. When they pay (or try to pay) you less than you deserve. When they are there for you way less than you are there for them. When you are going thru your own wahala and they make their wahala the primary wahala when conversing about our wahala. When they get enamored by other people or other things.
I had a recent conversation with someone who is well aware that the Afulezi metaverse has some issues with the timeline. Lots of here and there. And I was like Iron Man, pre The Blip, just trying to keep things together. And yet, when we talked, after a cursory “How are you?”, all attention was on their wahala. And of course, I went with it, as always—The CHIDI, the one and only Oga Fixer #1 of Africa, the shoulder to cry on, the boulder to build on.
What a mumu.
And this is in addition to the day job o, the one that if you mess up, you MESSED UP:
Is it denial? Nah. More like compartmentalization. Doesn’t mean it’s better, though.
We still dey here.
There’s this concept of protecting your inner fortress so it may protect you. Build it up during the good times, and reinforce it during the bad. Unfortunately, as we allow other wahala to come at our inner fortress, without that constant reinforcement, it starts to wear down. Especially for me when I neglect to remind myself that I live in a world that is at best indifferent to my existence, many times exploiting of my existence, and at worst hostile to that existence.
I haven’t been protecting my inner fortress as I should have, and my understanding of the difference was getting off the rails.
Because resentment, eh? Eish.
Now. Instead of flying off the handle and popping off, I had to put things in motion to reshape, prepare, and fortify this inner fortress. For instance, I went off WhatsApp for a good while and weaned myself from scrolling thru WA statuses. Stati. Whatever. I just stopped. Enough of that.
Another thing that I do is write a letter via email to whoever is catching my resentment vibes at the moment. You should see the letter, let me tell you something…Chidi Afulezi can write o. Kai. Loaded with pure undiluted drama and emotion. Serious grammar. I lay into the situation and/or individual, and hand them their exposed derriere. They catch heat. It is a sight to read.
And then I <Select All>, <CTRL-Z>. And delete. Never sent. No need to send something that I don’t think needs to be heard. I said what I had to say, that the recipient didn’t receive it, no matter. This is a technique borrowed from Abraham Lincoln, who would unload on folks in a letter, and then put it away.
Never signed. Never sent.
I do <CTRL-C> and <CTRL-V> somewhere for my own records though. Ha.
Another weapon in my Iron Man kit is what I call my Anti-Resentment journal. I used to do daily affirmations and gratitude journals. But they started to feel…wishy and washy. You start making up stuff. “I am grateful for the ice cream I had yesterday because…ice cream”. Or “I am grateful for the air I got to breathe yesterday, which means I am alive”. Chidi…what?
This one was happening way too much—”Chidi, YOU are the MAN!”
The Man of where?
Wasn’t feeling better. So I started adding what I called anti-resentment (I made this up) to the mix. I would use my anti-resentment journaling to write down and hone in on feelings of resentment that I had towards individuals, situations, organizations, whatever, and actively work thru perspectives and mitigations against these resentments.
This is actionable stuff, giving me the arsenal to confront and resolve a lot of BS. And now I can be genuinely grateful for the real stuff. So morning time, I roll with anti-resentment journaling to confront any wahala in my system, then some gratitude work to reinforce my positive action mindset. N’abali, aka in the evening, I reload the anti-resentment weapons to process the wahala and kata-kata from the day, then gratitude to acknowledge the good stuff, and then add a smidgen of affirmations so I can go to sleep in peace abeg. Well, that’s usually the goal. We do what we can.
Anyways, na so e be. We keep pushing. Happy Sunday.