TAKE UP SPACE, SIS

There is something beautiful when you do it, when you finally let go of shame and start growing into your confidence, into your freedom.

It’s 6:52PM and Nairobi is so cold. So cold that I can feel my skin crawl into itself. In some ways, the feeling reminds me of when I used to (and sometimes still do) shrink myself in spaces I felt I didn’t deserve to be in. Rooms that were filled with so much talent and beauty and brains that I cowered in the shadows of my own inadequacies. In those moments, I prided myself in my silence. I shut down, refusing to respond to a question I knew the answer to. Because, who am I to speak in front of all these other magnificent people around me? Who am I to dare let myself be seen?

In time, it started to eat at me, and the shame of being seen slowly turned to a growing resentment towards others who had no problem being in the spotlight. How dare they do the one thing I was deathly afraid to do? So it brewed. The self-hate concoction mixed with resentment and self-pity. The mixture of it, in the right conditions, can actually make for good art. Good art is not only born out of goodness. Most times, it’s born out of pits of self-hatred and low confidence and negative emotions spewing inside you. And when this art makes it into the world, and it becomes celebrated, you, as the artist, do not quite feel like you deserve it. You remain unproud of yourself, waiting and baiting for the next moment you will cower back into your own shadows. At least there, the darkness is familiar. The lights, out of reach.

I was listening to a podcast today, as I do when I am going through these 30 day challenges, and the host ripped me open, diagnosed me, and handed me my medication. She had pink hair. The host. I clicked on her video because of that pink hair because anyone who is daring enough to have pink hair is a person you have to listen to.

She said: Great and bold women piss people off, not because they are being provocative but because other people cannot believe the audacity she has to dare achieve something they thought was out or reach.

I felt cornered. Like a bull, in the field, and she was my Spanish conquistadore. Or my Bukusu one. Since, hey, it’s important to remind myself that bullfighting is not only something I see in movies. It happens in my own hometown, near my village. Why should I use a simile for Spain where I have never been? Anyway, I digress. This demands another essay entirely on culture and how sometimes we are ashamed of the places we come from. Or maybe, I don’t digress. Maybe that is the reason why it becomes so difficult to take space. We are often ashamed of where we come from.

Me? I come from a family that does not appreciate art enough. I come from a family of academia. My family is wonderful. We are beautiful in how we joke and laugh and carry some levity in our conversations. But, it becomes difficult to exist when you know what you want is not what they envision for you, and more than it becoming difficult, it becomes like this shameful secret you are carrying around them. Your art becomes shameful. Your poetry is not something you share freely on the dinner table. Your writing hides itself in the kitchen conversations. Your need for performance is tucked away into the corners of your mind, afraid to come out lest you shame it back into oblivion. So, when you interact with other artists, you fail to take up space, because deep down you are still carrying that shame inside your bones.

But it reaches a point where you have to say no. Where you have to start realizing the dream you have for yourself is only yours, and you are the only who can go after them. For me, this lesson has shone so much brighter during the confidence journey I am on. Today is day 19 and I decided to try something different and new this time. I vowed to myself to take and post selfies and pictures everyday for thirty days. The photos are not for anyone else but for me to see how much I can allow myself to take up space. Suffice to say, it’s been a small working miracle. In this experimentation, I have found some liberation.

I still remember the first day, day 1/30, and how fucking terrified I was to start. I kept thinking: what would people think if I just started to post myself everyday? Would they think I was trying too hard? Seeking too much? Then I posted it , and it felt good to let myself be seen like that. And day 2 came, then day 3, then day 4 and everyday, I discovered something new. New camera angles. New ways to put on makeup. New ways to pose. New ways to take up more space for myself.

It’s been liberating, just to iterate. I want more of this for myself. Allowing myself to take up space. In the podcast, the pink-hair lady also asks an important question: if not you, then who? If not you to write that book you have been thinking about for years, then who? If not you getting that promotion at work, then who? If not you asking that girl or guy out on a date, then who? If not you performing on stage, then who? If not you taking up space, then who? Do not allow yourself to be shamed into a state of oblivion. You deserve all these things you dream of. You deserve the wild, romantic life. The good life with fancy cars and great love that you think is only possible in movies. It’s not. It’s entirely possible for you, and if not you reaching out to taste the glamour, then who?

There is something beautiful when you do it, when you finally let go of shame and start growing into your confidence, into your freedom. That is what confidence is. It is you stepping out of the shadows. And if you do not have the strength to step out yet, crawl then. Make one move. Then the next. Then the next. Until that moment you start to see the light as something within reach.

I have crawled. God knows I have crawled. I am a slow learner. I take my time with things, and my growth, this growth, has taken years and will still take years to achieve what I truly dream of. But what do they say about slow and steady? It wins the race, right? So don’t be afraid, even though at the moment you might feel like you are miles behind everyone you know. Start today. Start crawling today. Start taking up the space you deserve, today sis. You will thank yourself for it, I promise.