TRUTH CIRCLE
Location: around a fire in Akin’s garden
MARO: The thing I’m furious about is also the thing I’m thankful for, and sometimes that makes me feel like a fucked-up person. I miss someone who is dead. I wish he had died happier, and by another means, blablabla, you already know that part. I also know that life didn’t mean to him what it means to me, so the thing that brings me pain is the thing that caused him relief. I know he stayed here for others, mostly, his whole life, and I know that I’ve never known if that was fair. I know that part of why he left is so that I could be free. I miss him. And I like myself and my life so much better now that . . . you know. Because he’s not in the world anymore, I feel no weight to be good in the way that old way that was killing me, I see no reason to wear a disguise that wants to take my form without giving anything back in return. I like me and all my flawed parts; wonky as they get. I still feel guilt, even though I did nothing wrong. Not in that sense, at least. But I also feel thanks, because who wouldn’t have reasons to, with people like you as fam? You guys are that for me. I think he knew this and left me here in your care. Remember the note I told you about that I found at the house? Yeah. I don’t think he wrote it to me, but it consoles me regardless. And no, when I say he left me in your care, I don’t mean I’m going to quit life and become a burden to you guys before this fool here jumps in. [Laughs.] I know you know. Just saying that, yeah, it’s like that. Sometimes I’m not sure what or who to be angry at. I’m not even sure if I’m pissed or relieved. Does that sound somehow? I worry that it does.
Anyway. That’s me.
KARABO: Some years ago, I used to say none of this is real, but nothing teaches you better than death that life is real. When I’d say that, it was because I thought something being temporary or fleeting or passing made it unreal, less worthy of serious contemplation. Like if life is a passing moment, and I don’t believe in heaven and hell, then what’s the point of taking anything seriously, right? If this experience is passing, then it isn’t the Real thing—because what’s real endures, right?—and so what happens before life and after death is what’s real. This helped me cope with life by disengaging, by sequestering certain selves, by becoming removed, just waiting it out. I was steady distracting myself from the fact that I was here, because I’d soon be elsewhere. So a whole life, just waiting on death, ruminating on it, anticipating it. But my thinking has shifted over time. Now I think I’m learning that it matters to respect life, to notice it, to notice the body itself, no matter its shape, form, or abilities—as an experience, as necessary. Basically, yeah, I want to take the fact that I’m here seriously, because it’s serious. Ziz really inspires me in that way, because wow, that lesson is much harder than it looks.
—FIRE WHISTLES—
—crickets climb the night like a conquest—
AWELE: I understand the need to escape. I actually get it. I always have. In church, that looked like deep worship, body f lat down on the ground, arms outstretched. When I still felt safe with my family, that looked like reserving the entirety of my love for them. With my writing, I throw myself into it completely. The reason I’m not hooked on anything is not because I’m righteous; it’s because I’m scared. I’m simply too scared to find out what is inside certain portals, because what if I start to hate it here? That’s what grates me sometimes about how the world talks about drugs and addicts and using and people trying to self-sabotage and destroy their lives. What pisses me off about all of it is that they would never survive their own hand if it turned against them. All of it is bullshit. And I’ve been them too. I used to judge my mother for what she used. I still do. I used to judge myself for what I used. I still do. I used to feel disgust at myself all the time, all the time, all the time. And for what? Wasn’t I already in pain? I was already in the thick of it and the last thing I needed was my own judgment on top of everything else. I feel alone sometimes, because I am so hurt at how much of my mother substances took away from her and from me, then I understand, then I get mad, then I understand. Shit plays on fucking loop. Sometimes I get scared to see how connected my gratitude is to relief that I have a better life than others. But I just want ease.
MAY: Anger is also one of the problems for me right now. I’m angry at the world, angry at how angry I am as a person, angry at what I can’t unsee. I can’t seem to control it. I’ve been burning things down lately. I end relationships disastrously because I’m putting the rage of everything on my partners. The other day, I was yelling at one of my babes and she just shook her head and said: Is this what you want for yourself? I broke up with her the next day. The shame was too, too much. Last year, my ex looked at me in one of those moments when I was moving like a fucking tornado and just laughed. How did I become this person? I actually don’t know. I used to judge people like that, you know? I did. There’s so much pain in this world and motherfuckers just keep going and going and going and going, but I’m aching all over. Like, how does one make it stop? I’m just trying to make it stop! Like, bruh, I keep losing myself; I keep slipping out daily from random pores. What to do with that? What is fair about that? Sometimes I need to go home because I need a parent, and I can’t fucking go there, you know? I can’t. Because that has made me go mad before.
Also, coming to terms with the fact that you can’t fuck with your parents in real life if you truly value your mental health? Yeah, extreme fucking sport. And I can’t afford to risk me right now, because my life is good, finally. My life is actually good.
IDRIS: *clears throat* *shifts in seat*
Omo, I felt that in my fucking chest. Yeah, man, fuck.
Life is actually good right now. Why can’t that just be all? You know—you can make a life you genuinely love and all, yeah? But life outside the life you choose is still real as fuck; you still came from somewhere, and sometimes the people you love a lot are still themselves, which in itself is a wound, and sometimes they’re still in the exact same place you left, which is its own injury, and all this is happening when you are happy, and this is the happiest you’ve ever been, no? As far as you remember, it is, isn’t it? Exactly. But on the days when you hit the ground in sheer fucking exhaustion, it’s hard not to get up and feel like asking yourself in the mirror in the fiercest voice: Come on guy, are you saying you can’t maintain joy? Are you saying you can’t let yourself be happy, be a little selfish, even after all you’ve seen? You wan tell me say you no understand how to sustain peace, even after all you’ve been through? Then you realize how complicated the honest answer is. It’s crazy, because hard guy hard guy from here till tomorrow, but things are just not that simple at the end of the day . . . are they? They’re really not.
ALI: Chaaaaale. That one enter. Idris. I relate to that. Seconding May, you know something I really hate? I hate it when people who have something to salvage in their relationship with their parents act like it gives them virtue. At the end of the day, it’s still your mum. Your father is your father. Sometimes I want to tell people, like, look, I’m so glad you cannot imagine a world where there is simply no relationship to pick up or fix, because things were that bad, things got that bad. But be‑ lieve it or not, that world exists, and I live there. There just isn’t enough out there that talks about what to do when you’re the only person in your friend circle who doesn’t have parents—not because they’re dead but because you literally can’t go home, because shit literally gets too dark at home.
—AN ASSEMBLY OF BIRDS SCATTERS INTO A WORSHIP—
—what’s that called?—
BLACK: As for me oh; wetin dey pain me na money. I need money. The life I’ve imagined for myself no be by mouth. It needs money. Making my work and hustling and trying to network and all that, but where’s the money to match? If after all this I have to go back to Zenith Bank, I swear to fucking God . . .
LEKE: Me, I have been thinking seriously about the pros and cons of japa. For personal reasons. We go yan that one in full after the circle, because I no wan just dey talk like say na casual P, and I also want to hear you guys. But the answer to the question I know some of you will ask later is: The whole country. The whole country is my problem. The whole thing. I look like I’m fine, but me, I still haven’t recovered from what the soldiers did at toll gate that October 2020. I know that many other things have happened since then, but that whole time fucked me up in a way I can’t reverse. Sometimes that makes me feel weak, you know? But, like, I need to live a different life. I’ve felt that it’s possible before. I’ve done it before—when I chilled in Accra postLegon and stopped drowning for like a year straight. I want that again. Just to be able to sleep at night without fear or f lashbacks. And yes, I know every city has its own problem, but I know you know what I’m getting at. Maybe I’m weak, but Lagos might be getting a bit too brutal for me. Anyhow, sha, like I said, I want to tell you guys that part properly after the circle so that I can also hear you.
—SILENCE—
JEKWU: What Leke said, damn. What Leke said. Obviously everyone who was around and alive and Nigerian knows what the protests did to us in 2020, so no need to rehash. But e still dey pursue me enter dream sometimes. What we saw our government could be is actually impossible to just fashi like say na small thing. No be small thing. People died. And people got lost. I wasn’t close to him or anything, but I have a cousin no one has seen because they peeled him off the road during a protest in PH. Till now, nothing. One guy I went to uni with; same thing. I found out because his sister posted it on Instagram and it went viral. Still, nothing. There’s a way it’s changing me still, just quietly and gently—behind my ears, inside my knees, between my toes—because what do you do with something like that, right? What do we do about the ones we lost without closure; physically, emotionally, literally? Sometimes I catch myself laughing and having a normal day and feel like crawling out of my skin just to turn around and push myself specially to the nearest wall so that maybe I’ll wake up. It was not me that pulled the trigger, but somehow, I feel rotten. I get scared, because I remember feeling like everything was going to change, and now all of us are just back to casually posting bants and memes. But how we for do? Everybody has to move on with life, obviously. Sha, too, too, too often, I find that my resilience actually just . . . like . . . fucking . . . nauseates me?
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From Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde. Used with permission of the publisher, Riverhead Books. Copyright © 2025.
