Verified Dilemmas

Chapter One: Reality Check

An hour later

Somehow, I felt comforted, hopeful even when I thought, flattering myself in the process that all things considered, I am pretty too!

Although, if you happened to catch me wandering about, you would hardly believe that in my entire life's existence, I had never had an actual boyfriend or had a crush on anyone.

Fair enough, I understand you  might have already formed some preconceived judgment about me now, but let me be the first to admit that judging people is easy. Understanding them, on the other hand, is a whole other ball game. Trust me, I would know.

For the skeptics who think I'm being fictitious when I say, "I'm pretty too!" consider this; I've encountered two many conversations that basically go like this:

"Do you know Jordin Sparks,the American RnB singer?"and since I often know where this leads,I play dumb.

"Um no,why?"at this point I'm just fishing compliments to feed into my forever starving ego.
"You look just like her!" they say sounding amazed, "Especially when you smile." They add.

And look, not everyone gets compared to a famous and beautiful celebrity such as miss Jordin freakin Sparks! But I did. so I'm honored to hold and wave that flag every once in a while.

You see, the being pretty notion checks out pretty and sparkling well.

***

After I had enough of blowing my own trumpet, I detoured to address the nightmare that my clearly off script life had been  over the years.

This isn't how my life is supposed to turn out.

I remember thinking to myself while still jotting on the tablet I had then placed on my laps.

At the time, my life had been what I could only describe as a bombshell: I'd had things thrown at me, harsh words hurled at me, voices raised at me...All these to say: I had had a crazy year but one thing kept me going, and that was writing weekly blogs on Medium. Which I published under the pen name: SheeWrites.

I figured since my name was Sheliza, SheeWrites would sound reasonable and mysterious as a writer's name. I must admit I  like the mysterious bit more_'Shee'

The intense process of collecting blog ideas to developing captivating titles then finally self publishing them did a lot of good by clearing my often if not usual chaotic mind.

Essentially, writing had saved me from possible mental breakdown, looking like so or worse, doing crazy stuff like drugs. Which I must admit I'd wanted to try for the longest time. Purely out of curiosity. Which is both a good and bad quality I had.

But just as I contemplated on what to do with the joint (previously offered to me by a friend while we were at her boyfriend's birthday party) ,a disapproving thought crossed my mind:

"Once you take the first puff,there is no going back, and it will only get worse from there on."

I unsurprisingly deemed the thought reasonable.

"With each puff giving way to the next and the endless nexts after that. And that's generally how drugs work. They create their victims a smooth sailing high way into the depths of hell. Never to come back in one piece."

The scary but insightful thought concluded.

I shouldn't have to explicitly spill out what I din't do after that, because that clearly sounded like a death threat even to a dumb person listening.

Given the series of disturbing realities at the time_as a twenty-two-year-old, it wasn't far fetched when I was circumstancialy pushed to start the SheeWrites blog on the 11th of September 2022.

Unfortunately, an year in the online writing habit, I unfortunately learnt that Medium, the writing platform I had been using, doesn't pay African Writers. Since their Partner Membership program is only available to a couple of Non-African countries.

I had worked so hard to gunner a hundred followers on the platform which was a prerequisite to joining the program. With that, I had hoped to earn a living, no matter how little. But no, it wasn't meant to be.

I got so discouraged after this and I remember feeling like I would truly be wasting my time and effort if I continued writing.

Non of which were of my own true feeling and thinking. All these were comments I'd got from people who asked if I was getting paid as a writer and my response had been no.

So there I was, faced with a dilemma, to either continue writing or trash the whole thing all together with my then few readers. I had to make a choice. My own. One that was free from all the outside noise of people's opinions or perception of me.

Given I hadn't started blogging to solely earn money from it, but to continue journaling online, to sustain my source of outlet, I decided to soldier on regardless of no monetary rewards. The inner fulfilment I got was more than enough.

Even so, what was pathetic but mostly humiliating was when admitting out loud to anyone that the reason behind the existence of the blog was primarily triggered by how broke I was to afford buying myself a simple notebook to journal on.

The logic was that if I journaled online I'd never run out of writing space. Where was the lie? Unlike note books which kept filling up.

Luckily, that desperate (but genius) decision became one of the few spontaneous and unpremeditated smart decisions I'd made in my life. Not that I knew it at the time: I was only connecting the dots looking backwards_now that I was there_drafting what became my very own book.

A dream come true that I'd never thought possible. It was such a surreal time for me_Sheewrites the blogger. Turning author.