You Had Me At Hello...Why Though?

A long time ago when I was but a babe in the woods, the man who would eventually sire my child gave me this book about relationships.
Ever since Jerry Maguire yelled, 'Show Me the Money!' people, especially women, have been looking for the partner who's gonna say, "You Complete Me."

That book though, opened my eyes to the fact that nobody can complete you except yourself and getting into a committed relationship without being complete is dooming it to failure.
The way the book put it is, we are all circles, but most of us are broken and so our circles are incomplete. As long as we have not 'completed our circle' we have no business trying to join our lives with anyone else's.
Once the circle is complete, and we find someone whose circle is also complete, we can form fully functional relationships.
The very essence of #relationshipgoals

In real life though, that's not what happens is it? People are too busy not wanting to be alone; satisfying their parents' need to see them married; wanting a constant sex partner; looking for the social prestige of having a spouse; looking for a family to 'love them'; gold-digging...whatever it is, people get married for the wrong reasons every day.
I don't think the problem is so much that they marry for the wrong reasons as they lie to themselves about their reasons. The foundation of the relationship is therefore made of quicksand.
In Nadia and Kareem's defense, at least they went into this marriage with absolutely no illusions as to why it was happening.
I wonder if it helped.
You tell me.

Writing Depression As A Hidden Plot Device

What do you know about Depression? You, like me, might have thought it was about being a sad sac and dragging oneself everywhere with your lips permanently turned down like this :(.
But that's not depression; that's sadness.
Who knew? They're not the same.

I was like smack dab in the middle of writing Nadia before I realized that my poor heroine is super-depressed. Her depression of course stemmed from unresolved childhood traumas and feeling out of control in her life.
But if you read Nadia, it might not jump out at you like, whoa, this book is a black hole. Oh no, she's sassy, sarcastic, strong, resilient; which makes it all the more difficult to recognize that she is drowning.
I think that a lot of people are going about their lives, living with trauma, living with depression and just getting on with it, assuming that "life is a bitch and then you die" right?
The road less traveled, a novel by some psychologist whose name I forgot, literally begins with the sentence, Life is Hard. I learned it as a part of my higher diploma in counseling studies.
So when I watched The Secret and it said the exact opposite thing. That life should be easy, not hard. That things come to us because we summon them; it was a paradigm shift hard to fathom.
Both of these things are true though. Life is hard but how easily you navigate it does depend on your state of mind.

So how can you control your state of mind when you don't even know you're depressed?
It's a conundrum.
I might be making Cinderella By Any Other Name sound uncommonly deep when you could just disregard all this and read a story.
But I cannot escape from my own introspection.
The good news is, I am also open to hearing yours.
So, February 14th, let the theories abound.

The Sibling SubPlot

Do you have siblings?
What would you do for them?
I mean, I'm not talking Dean Winchester die for your brother here, obviously because well...calm down; I just mean, how far would you go for your sister or your brother?

I think that you have to have siblings to know how it feels to be able to hate somebody's guts and love them at the same time. Siblings have the unique privilege of knowing how to push every single button you ever imagined having without fear of consequence.
Consequence being they are canceled forever.
Perhaps it's because in addition to sharing blood ties, you also share the trauma of growing up together. The common experience of surviving your parents, relatives, school, whatever it is, just builds a bond that is difficult to break underneath all the bullshit of stolen clothes, gifts or significant others.
Siblings are forever.

Nadia and Amina have a shared traumatic experience which  defined their relationship going forward. The layers of emotional trauma that it brought about certainly did not help the pursuit of happiness for either of them.
I mean, can you relate or can you relate?
I guess we'll see, right?
Cinderella By Any Other Name is Available for Pre-Order now.
Here's an excerpt.

Its a F U W And We Are Just Trying to Live In It

Yesterday, somebody attacked Jussie Smollett also known as Jamal from Empire because he's gay and black. Thanks to Donald Trump, prejudiced people think they can act without consequences. They put a noose around his neck and called him racial and homophobic slurs.
When people do such a thing as put a noose around your neck, they aren't just being hateful. They want to break your spirit; to remove from you the very concept of ever being safe again.
I follow Jussie on Instagram, and he is just the bubbliest, happiest, gay light I have ever seen. Someone saw that light and thought, "I need to provide a bushel and make him shove his light right under it so it never illuminates anyone ever again."

I worry that after this, Jussie will lose that lightness of spirit that defines him. That, to me, is the saddest thing about this attack.
His physical injuries might heal, but how do you get over being reduced to a thing someone wants to hang up from a tree? These are the same people crying a river for dogs in China. But humans in America are fair game.
But hatred and prejudice is not just an American thing.
A few weeks ago, Kenya experienced another terrorist attack, and Al Shabaab took the blame. Of course the very next day a member of parliament was saying that "Somalis should go back home." Thankfully, that voice didn't become a chorus. Thankfully, Kenyans are a cynical lot who are not so simple-minded that they believe getting rid of an entire sub sector of people will solve terrorism. Somali refugees are not to blame for terrorism. Porous borders, corruption and poverty are.
When I wrote Cinderella by Any Other Name, I wasn't specifically looking to humanize Somali refugees or Muslims.

I love Muslims though.
I lived with them in Mombasa and they are just some of the most peaceful, generous and safe people I have ever lived among. Furthermore, I have never been sexually harassed by a Muslim man. I am a creature of habit and I tend to go to the same shops, fast food places, Mpesa agents, use the same boda boda guys and shop in the same kiosk. All the places I frequent where a man regularly works, I have been hit on at least once, as if me coming there more than once is some kind of signal that I'm interested.
Except for the Muslims.
My Muslim Somali Mpesa agent greets me politely every time, we transact and then he says thank you, I say thank you, he says you're welcome, and I smile and leave.
Every time.
He hasn't yet made some smarmy comment implying that I might be interested in him.
I feel safe with him. When I smile at him, I don't hold back out of fear that it might be misconstrued.
So yeah, making Nadia and her family Muslims felt right but also I haven't heard of any Christian Somali refugees.

This is not a political book.
This is not a social commentary.
But both of those things are part and parcel of the fabric of life and if anyone reading this book can look up and see a human being instead of a 'Muslim' or a 'Somali' when they look around them, that is a beautiful side effect of expanding your mind with stories that are out of your sphere of comfort.
So here, take my hand, journey with me.
If you're a Somali, a Muslim, a refugee or a woman reading Cinderella By Any Other Name, I would love to know if I got it right or I got it phenomenally, horribly, wrong.

The Motivation Behind Cinderella By Any Other Name

2019 is the year of realizing stuff.
I just wanted to write that because it's such a faux airhead thing to say.
I've been realizing stuff for quite a while. Since at least 2016. But lately, it's been all about me and the things I've been taking for granted which are actually kind of interesting.
For example, my body. In my mind, I have always thought that I take relatively good care of my body because I at least think about exercising, don't eat that much junk food and just generally try to eat my vegetables.

The truth is, I eat for something to do, sometimes, even when I am not the least bit hungry. I eat if I feel tired or sick because I imagine that its just my energy flagging and I need to fuel the engine. I drink way too much tea.
So this year, I'm thinking first.
I look at the food on my plate and ask myself, "Is this too much? If I halve this food, will I still be satisfied?"
Nine times out of ten, the answer is yes.
It's about control you see. For a large part of my life, I felt like I had no control over any aspect of it. I was in reactive mode.
Things happened to me, and I reacted to them. Nine times out of ten, it ended badly - for me.
In my forty plus years of living, I have never been the one to choose a boyfriend. They always chose me. I took whatever job was offered, whether it was in pharmacy or freelance. There was no feeling of "I choose this."
The only things I feel I ever chose were:
1. To keep my baby.

2. To write stories.
I didn't realize how much I was letting life happen to me until probably last year.
I think that this happens to a lot of people. We are spectators in our own lives...
Nadia is an extreme example of that.
Things happen to her, and she feels like she's a prisoner in her own life. If it ain't one thing, it's another. How does she navigate her way through and does she find herself in the end?
I love Nadia, I relate to her story, I really hope you will too.
You'll let me know on Valentine's Day, won't you?
Cinderella By Any Other Name is Available for Preorder Now. Go on, click on the link.

A Pictorial Book Launch for Cinderella By Any Other Name

Keep That Same Energy, 2019...Or Not

It's theoretically unforgivable of me to let half of the first month of 2019 pass me by without a single post. I'm going to show myself out now, nail myself to a stake and set myself on fire.
Or maybe not.
There is only one of me after all and the demands on my time are myriad. I used to bend over backwards to try to satisfy everyone's wants and needs; but 2019 is all about me baby. I'm putting myself first this year. And that means, doing what's best for me.
I think that if we all did what was best for ourselves, we would all be happier and therefore not demand so many things from other people. It also means that when we decide to do something, we don't half ass it; you get me?
What do you think?

Just because I was doing me, doesn't mean 2019 wasn't keeping 2018's energy and in fact, taking it to supernova. Let's see, in just these two weeks we have:
 - watched Surviving R. Kelly and been confronted with our own complicity in enabling this man and men like him to continue preying on vulnerable women. We have watched with disappointment as the people who should be most vocal in defending the right of those girls and women to be treated with dignity and respect, instead heap vitriol and hatred upon them. Black American women y'all. At the forefront of defending the R. I have watched with disgust from the mountains my guys. Y'all need help.

- Kenya underwent yet another terrorist attack where nothing definitive is ever said about who is really responsible, how many were killed, or injured and how it even happened in the first place. My neighbor lost a brother-in-law and various people on my Facebook timeline lost friends. It seemed that either Nairobi is a very small place or the death toll might be larger than advertised? I don't know. We'll probably never know. Of course everyone immediately wanted to start blaming Somalis, ostracizing them, oppressing them...human beings sometimes make me so tired.

- The President of the United States was caught breaking the law. Again. However, watch whiteness work. He's still president. They're still reluctant to impeach. I don't know if they see it but I predict that in ten years they'll be just another failed state at this rate. And they'll bring it all about because white must remain right at all costs. It's sad.

- Well that was fast. Mr. I-am-so-different-from-Mugabe-whatever-his-name-is has cut off the Internet in Zimbabwe so as to properly oppress his people without the world knowing the details. The world still knows the details because there is only so much information suppression you can do. These despots never learn. What is the African Union for exactly?

On a more personal front, the world's most disorganized book launch continues. I've had some feedback from advance readers, they seem to think that more story would be good. Which brings us to the question of the day;
How much story is too much?
Because obviously this story is the kind that contains a myriad of tales in between its pages. We could go off on tangents for like, ever. But do we want that? Or do we want it stripped raw and naked, laid bare for us to behold?
I am prevaricating as time continues to run out.

Anyway, my next post will be entirely Cinderella related. We shall begin the launch, officially, with style, pomp and ceremony. However, she's already available for preorder so click on the link and get that done. Start the year right.
Meanwhile, I shall continue with my various jobs, hopefully meet the first friend my son has brought home who didn't live next door and watch Fantastic Beasts. Are you going to have a good rest of the day?
Make sure you do.