The cloud that never leaves

     Photo credit: bengaliclicker.com

Can I tell you about the cloud that never leaves?

The cloud doesn’t care about who you are. The cloud doesn’t care about how much money you have or what your family has. The cloud doesn’t care about how amazing you are or how much everyone around you loves you. It doesn’t care that you have a beautiful life. 

The cloud only cares about consuming you. About filling you with hopelessness too great for words.

It hangs and lurks. Hangs above you, never letting you out of its sight. Lurks, in the shadows waiting for the perfect moment to pounce and attack. Always waiting and always ready.

The cloud may leave you in peace today but it can’t promise you won’t have a category 5 hurricane tomorrow morning. 

When you are sad and you don’t know why because you have no reason to be sad, it’s the cloud. When you cry and you don’t know why because you have no reason to cry, it’s the cloud.

It’s not you, it’s the cloud. The cloud is a demon. The doctors call it depression but you know it’s a demon. A demon pretending to be a cloud. 

When the cloud releases what it is carrying, when it releases the thunderstorms, category 5 hurricanes, snow, rain and hailstones all at once, don’t fight back. How can you? 

Stand. Stand or sit or cry but don’t break. Don’t let the weight of it all crush you. 

You must not let it crush you. You must not break. You must rise up. 

Rise up and burn. Burn the whole building down, burn and keep burning till the flames go up into the cloud and the cloud leaves. Even if it is for a moment. 

What triggers this attack? What triggers such a horrible attack? A cruel word said innocently, an overwhelming situation, confusion, happiness, good things, nothing. 

But when the demon attacks, it attacks in full force. It pounces on your mind and devours it completely till you feel like you cannot breathe. 

People see sadness on your face but have no idea that the sadness in your heart is greater than what your face can ever express. 

People see you sad and think you just want attention when the only thing you want, is to disappear. 

“You have no reason to be sad” they say. 

“Well, tell that to the demon behind me or the cloud above me,” I think, but don’t say. 

To the people that know this cloud, this demon they call depression, know that everything will be okay. Maybe not today but someday it will be. 

And to the people that don’t know this cloud, the cloud that never leaves, thank God every single day.

With all my love,
Dara Rhodes

Abimbola Elizabeth Rhodes (nee- Da Silva)

To Lagos,  Abimbola Elizabeth Rhodes (nee- Da Silva) was the Iyalode,  queen of all its women. 

To Ile- Ife, she is Yeye Apesin, a goddess. 

To her husband, the sun rose and fell at her feet.

At every party she ever attended or hosted, her presence drew attention like the earth draws light from the moon at night. 

To her sisters, she was the imperious voice of command.

To my mother's father, she was very mischievous and literally one of a kind.

All her staff remember her as, the madam that took absolutely no nonsense. 

To her sons and daughter, she was the entire world.

but, to me, a shy little girl, she was only my grandmother. My grandmother who behaved like Queen Elizabeth and whom I loved and adored with all my heart.  

As I grew and silently watched her though, I saw that she wasn't just my little grandma, I saw that she was a powerful lioness that no one in the country dared to cross.. The writing of this post began at the start of this year and I still have no words to fully describe her because of the sheer complexity of her nature and because the more I thought about her, the more I wished I had spent more time with her. 

How could God have given me one of the fiercest women Lagos has ever seen and I didn't spend time with her? How could God have given me such a precious gift and I never opened it? Yet, as if telling me that we are not our mistakes, I feel her so strongly around me. All the time. Reminding me that she gave me all her names for a reason. Reminding me that she was me and I am her. 

I feel her telling me that as long as there is life, there is hope. I feel her telling me that real family is everything. I feel her telling me not to make the same mistakes she did and find God early. I feel her telling me that I am a queen and queens never crawl. I feel her telling me to never lose my dignity and pride. I feel her telling me to never despair and never give up. I feel her telling me to live and learn, to love deeply and fight fiercely for what I believe. I feel her telling me that I must never forget who I am. These words carry me when I get weak and as I remember her on this day, I hope they carry you too when you get tired.

My phenomenal grandmother left us on the 9th of February 2013 and today, three years after her departure, my heart whispers that, Lagos might have lost its first Abimbola Elizabeth Rhodes but Abimbola Elizabeth Rhodes 2.0, an improved, faster, sharper and tad bit less ferocious version is currently in the works. 

I love you forever and ever grandma and Lagos will never forget you.

With all my love, 

Dara Abimbola Elizabeth Rhodes

Much of life is complicated.

"All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place."- Douglas Adams.

Hello beautiful people,

Can you believe we are in October already?! I most certainly can't. I hope you all have had a good year so far, and if you haven't, I hope the rest of the year turns out amazing! 

Since the last time I wrote on here, two major things have happened.

 1) My best guy friend (see last post) and I have kinda made up. 

2) My beloved country, Nigeria celebrated her 55th year of independence. 

I'll start with Nigeria. On the 1st of October, I wrote a post but didn't post it because it read too much like the Independence Day post I wrote last year. (Not much had changed to me). However, today, I went to church and at the end of the service, we sang the national anthem and I cried. I hadn't sung or really listened to our anthem in such a long time, I'd forgotten how beautiful it is. Yes, everything I wrote in the post on Thursday is true- I'm still angry with Nigeria and I don't think we are really independent yet- but (and a very big but) I really, really love Nigeria. It's a very complicated thing in my head.

Unto number two. My best guy friend. I expressed my total dislike for him in my last post and even though only very little has changed, something has changed and for the simple fact that he is truly my best friend, that little change had me willing to forgive him. Again. This situation is also very complicated in my head. I love him but hate him so much too. I told my close cousin the situation yesterday and his reply was one of the best things I've heard all year. "Dara, best friendships are complicated. Infact, much of life is complicated."

In response, I nodded my head in agreement but I couldn't help thinking about his words today. He is very right. My love for Nigeria and my best friend are two very very different things but somehow the same; complicated. And guess what? It is okay. I am/was such a perfectionist, everything in my life had to be either white or black. All the grey areas were not allowed to be grey, they had to pick a side. That is good sometimes, but sometimes, one (me and maybe you) has to realise that life isn't just black and white. It does have grey, blue, yellow and every other colour that has ever been discovered. You can love somebody or a country and get mad or angry at the person or country. We can fight and make up and fight again and make up again. We can hate our countries and run to other countries and run back to ours again and run to other countries when we begin to hate our country again. Please by all means be a stable human but when life becomes complicated as it often tends to, don't despair. Why? Well, because much of life is extremely complicated.

     Photo: keshavasari.wordpress.com

With all my love,

Dara Rhodes

It's Really Not That Amazing

Hello beautiful people,

         Photo: quotesvalley.com

I know it has been a while but I've been busy living and enjoying 21. Omg! 21! Sometimes I still need somebody to pinch me, I can't believe I'm 21! The oldies will think I'm utterly ridiculous but I feel like I'm getting old, people. :'( Anyway, away with all the talk about ageing, I'm here to write about something completely different today.

The summer I turned sixteen, I wanted something. As I was in an all girls boarding school in England at that time, I knew I was going to have to work for it, but I wanted it nonetheless. I didn't know what it would do to me or how it would affect the next 5 years of my life if I got it, but I wanted it. And what Dara Rhodes wants, she gets. Thus, in my usual manner, I scoured the internet for information on the subject and read every word about it on every website I could find, determined to get it and do it very differently. 

So what exactly did I want? Simple. I wanted a boy best friend. Lol, yes. A Nigerian boy best friend, might I add. I have an amazing girl best friend but I wanted the boy best friend I had read about one too many times. I wanted the wonderful one that was always there, the one that listened and did everything the blogs described. I was convinced my life needed a male best friend to balance my friendship triangle and so I went out and got one. Lol, it wasn't that easy but it almost was. A month before my birthday, one innocent (well, not so innocent now) boy asked me out and there I saw my perfect opportunity. I said, I'd much rather be your best friend and he begrudgingly accepted after telling me boys and girls can't be friends. Armed with my determination and unshakeable will power, we began our best friendship. 

We fought every time we met up (not entirely sure why) but met up every single day of that summer regardless. It was amazing and heart wrenching at the exact same time but we trugded on. I went back to England and he went to uni in America. We didn't speak when we were apart but once Summer/Christmas arrived and we were both in Lagos, it was like we had never been apart. We fought and hung out all the time, everyday. 

To cut a very long story short, after 5 painful and awesome years as best friends, he is no longer my best friend or even friend at all now (or at least till we are both in Lagos next year). Though he came with an extra special dose of unique issues, I think I agree with whoever said boys and girls can't be best friends. We will always love ourselves (or at least I will always love him) but we just simply hurt each other too much.

The day after my 21st, I called him and informed him of my decision to break up our best friendship and I think he was shocked or maybe he wasn't (you never know with him). It was a break up like none other so I didn't quite know what to expect (I've never 'broken up' with my best friend before) but it was difficult. It felt like a real break up and even though he is still the second person (my girl best friend is the first) I always want to share my good/bad news with but can't, it is getting slightly easier everyday. 

The point of this beautiful sob story? Getting what you want isn't all it's cracked up to be. Every single time I've gotten what I wanted, which is 99% of the time ( I've perfected the art!), I've been minorly if not grossly disappointed. So the next time you don't get what you want, don't get your knickers in a twist, simply thank your stars and move on, after all, they could be saving you from five years of avoidable pain. Lol!

But then again, I have just acquired a new boy best friend and he is really that amazing! Lol! 

Have a wonderful day/ evening!

With all my love, 

Dara Rhodes

Death and marriage and life

Death is hard and painful and bitter. Death is a thief, and a teacher and a mystery. It steals the ones we love away from us, teaches us to value and appreciate the ones we have left and leaves us asking, the puzzling question 'why?'

Ironically, death reminds me of marriage. The wedding, preparations and all the crazy emotions do nothing to prepare you for the reality that is marriage.  Nothing prepares you for the arguments you'll have, the traumas you'll face and the difficulties you'll have to bear together. Nothing prepares you for the sleepless nights and the problematic children. Nothing prepares you for the overwhelming love and hate you will feel for each other at various times. Nothing before your first night as husband and wife prepares you for life with that person.

With death, nothing prepares you for life without your loved one. The funeral, people's condolences and the outpouring of well wishes and prayers do nothing to prepare you for the reality that is death. Nothing prepares you for the emptiness you'll feel. Nothing prepares you for the nightmares, the tossing and turning at night. Nothing prepares you for the days and weeks after all the immediate emotions die. Nothing prepares you for the silence you'll get in return when you call out their name without thinking. Nothing prepares you for the dull permanent ache in your heart that you can't describe to anybody. 

I lost my cousin last week. Before that terrible day, death had been far from me. I hadn't lost anybody close to me and so I never quite understood grief. I always cried when I found out that my friends lost someone close to them but nothing prepared me for the way I felt when I heard I had lost my beloved cousin. At first I felt bone chillingly cold. Then, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. I sat on my bed and after staring at the wall for what seemed like eternity, a muffled 'why' escaped from my lips. Why did my nineteen year old cousin have to die? Why did one of the few cousins on my maternal side that I truly love have to die? Why did God allow her to be born if he knew he was going to take her away just after nineteen short years? Why did God allow people to love her deeply and then allow death to rip her away from them?

After asking myself all those questions and more that I'm sure no human being alive can answer, I came to a startling conclusion. Death is hard and painful and bitter. Death is a thief, and a teacher and a mystery. But eerily like marriage, once the charade is over, we have to find a way to accept it and move on. Unlike marriage though, death is the end. The end of life as you knew it but the beginning of a new life. Both for you and the person you've lost. Losing someone you deeply love changes something at your core forever. I still haven't been able to cry for Temi yet but I know that very soon, like a couple settling into their marriage, the reality that I've lost someone I truly loved will hit me. And all I can pray for myself, is the strength to accept it then and keep her in my heart but move on. Death is the end but life, no matter how hard, painful or bitter it may be right now, isn't. 

This is for you, Oluwagbotemi Braithwaite. I will always love you and I thank you for the precious but too few moments we shared together that were full of laughter and the warmth you radiated so beautifully. I don't know why you had to go but I thank you for the love you gave so effortlessly while you were with us. Right now, all I pray for is divine strength for your immediate family.

From your cousin and with all my love, 

Dara Rhodes 

Broken people. Everywhere

Hello beautiful people, 

I've been thinking. Writing Ebun's story (my last post) really did something to me that I can't even articulate yet. Thus I went to Hyde Park yesterday to get "fresh air" but somehow ended up watching people. Yes, I sat down and watched people, it's called 'people watching' apparently. Anyway, I was there for a very long time and just when I thought my mind was empty and got up to leave, surprise surprise, Ebun's story filled my head once more. And I started thinking again.

       Photo: www.amazon.com

Then I got something. Ebun's story is her story but everybody has a story like that. A dark story hidden somewhere in their lives. I tried to imagine the stories behind some of the people I saw, and as you probably guessed, I couldn't. We have perfected the art of covering our stories. Nobody on this earth hasn't been broken. Well, maybe except the children under age one and it's just a matter of time before something breaks them. When I sat and watched everyone regardless of what they were doing, I realized something. When we are all born, we are clay pots and unfortunately, none of us come in a box clearly labelled "Fragile" so life doesn't get the memo. And life is clumsy and rough. 

      Photo: www.bobvilla.com

Sooner or later, it drops the clay pot and either breaks it completely the first time or creates a crack in it. A crack that'll probably be joined by a lot more cracks as the clay pot ages. Just before I left the park to get myself a drink, I searched my mind for a solution. If we are all manhandled due to no or very little participation from us, surely there must be a remedy. There must be some sort of glue to keep the cracks from shattering the pot completely and there must be some sort of glue to put back a completely shattered pot. What is that glue and where can we find it?

I watched a mother or maybe it was a nanny or an auntie bend to kiss a little girl on her forehead in a stroller and the answer slapped me hard across my face. Then I slapped my forehead and wondered why I didn't see it since it was so obvious. One word. Love. And it is all around us. Life is the problem and love is the solution. Believe it or not, as long as you are born of man and woman, life is the problem. It just happens to you no matter how much you think you control it. Fair enough, some people ignore the cracks and put on a brave face for the world and tell us that life doesn't happen to them while other people ogle and wish they were them. Some others, are broken completely from such a young age that they spend thier whole lives trying to put back the pieces. But the honest truth is that, we all have cracks and sometimes we break.

If you ever listen to the true story of people who've been broken but are fixed or put together or mended, you'll find a common factor. And that common factor is love. The healing always begins with love.The amazing part of love being the solution is that, it is a seed. When you sow love into a person's life, and help glue the pieces together, that clay pot may not be perfect but it is whole and now has the ability to sow love into another clay pot and help fix that pot too. 

       Photo: www.heuning.co.za

There's a twist though. Because we don't realise we are all either broken or cracked, we mastered the art of hiding our brokenness. The problem with that is, because so many of us never show the cracks or broken pieces, the true healing love eludes us. As you have probably realized, human beings are busy. So, if you are not willing to expose the cracks and pieces, they walk right past you. Why is it so difficult for us to expose our cracks and broken pieces? Simple. It's painful and so many other people live like their clay pot hasn't even been scratched, so we feel alone. Well, news flash, it has. Infact it probably looks like yours and just because they cover it, doesn't mean it's whole. Incredibly, humans are willing to pour love onto broken pieces once they see it's broken. Our creator, gives us the problem, the solution and goes a step further by making the solution a reaction to exposure of the damage the problem causes (you should probably re-read this sentence). If that isn't amazing, I don't know what is.

      Photo: yvonnechase.com

I have different messages for everyone. For the ones hiding their pieces and making their clay pots look flawless, please tone it down a notch. You are human and life has manhandled you too just like the person beside you, accept it. You need to, to receive the healing love you need and to also give others the courage to reveal their flaws. For the ones still shattered and broken, drop all the ways you are trying to cover the clay pot up, it's obviously not working and expose yourself to the love around you. Before anyone says there is no love around them, there is. It's in your child's eyes or your friend's eyes, or your sister's eyes, or brother's eyes, or mother's eyes or father's eyes or even that stranger's eyes, just waiting to be sparked. The most beautiful part of this story? That love is sparked the moment you lift off everything you're covering your clay pot with. So please, I dare you to do two things today. One, expose and embrace your brokenness so you can be healed and put back together. Two, love someone like you see their shattered pieces or cracks.

Have a wonderful day! 

With all my love,

Dara Rhodes

Understanding

When I turned 20 years old, my aim for this year was to nurture and cherish all the relationships in my life. As such, I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately. 

One word keeps coming to my mind. Understanding. What you understand, you can accept, what you accept, you can love. I love my two best friends from the bottom of my heart and I have just realized that I love the both of them because I understand them. I understand where they are coming from, so it's easier to be patient, kind and not envious. It's easier to be humble, polite and it's easier to refrain from anger. More so, it's easier to keep believing, keep hoping and it's easier to endure things. 

 My girl best friend was easier to understand but my boy best friend? Lord have mercy. The saying that men are from Mars and girls are from Venus couldn't have been more appropriate when I met him. 5 years on, after a gazillion fights, we can say we finally understand ourselves. Praise The Lord. 

I still think love is the most important thing in a relationship. But I believe that the foundation for love is understanding. Once the foundation has been laid, then and only then can love flourish. As usual, the world has it twisted again. Many of us seek to love first, and then try to understand. Little wonder relationships are so messed up these days. Love without understanding is too ambiguous. It means too many different things to different people. For example, people think love is when he hits you, some others think love is when he can't keep his hands off you and some think love is when you and your best friend talk for hours passing advice back and forth. 

Then again, I think love is a choice. So here's what I've concluded. If you choose to love someone, make sure you seek to understand that person first. 

With all my love,

Dara Rhodes. 

Seek to understand first. Photo: kyliemcgrr.com