Kings and Queens

Hello beautiful people, 

                                                 Photo credit: hbansari.wordpress.com

A queen/king can fall, fail and lose but that doesn't mean she/he is not a queen/king. 

You can lock up a queen/king, beat her/him and maltreat her/him but that doesn't mean her/his throne still isn't there. 

A queen/king can get her/his hands dirty but it doesn't mean her/his hands no longer belong to the queen/ king.

You can even take away her/his crown and keep her/him in the darkest part of your house for months and years, she/he is still a queen/king. 

No matter what you do to a queen/king and no matter how far away from her/his throne you take her/him, she/he will survive because she/he knows that her/his throne is waiting. It will always be waiting. 

You may not have a kingdom or be born into royalty but are the queen/king of your life never, ever forget that. 

With all my love,

Dara 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