simplymwanza

For a long time, I thought love was something you owned by proximity. If I stayed long enough, if I showed up correctly, if I was unforgettable in the right soft ways, then love would settle on me like a permanent address. Last year, I watched my friends grow closer to other people and felt something quietly bruise inside me. Not jealousy of the people themselves, but grief for the space I…

I have a confession that probably sounds a little unhinged. I think one of the most attractive things a person can possess is the ability to suffer well. Not intelligence. Not beauty. Not ambition. Not even kindness, although that one comes close. Suffering. Or rather, the way someone carries it. I know that sounds strange because nobody actually wants to suffer. We spend our entire lives trying…

Somewhere between heartbreak and boredom, I accidentally fell in love with football again. Not the noise, the commentary, the patterns, the discipline, the quiet, stubborn courage of trying again after being blocked in public. And somehow, without intending to, I replaced men with about forty or so beautiful, committed boys and girls from Arsenal F.C. and Arsenal W.F.C., and the game began…

I know. I am old enough to know better and young enough to keep hoping. I have seen people do it before. Ordinary people. Extraordinary people. Turns out the gap between the two is often just endurance. So yes, I still think I have time. Not to play professional football. To become an athlete. I have been watching football differently lately. Most people watch the goals. Others watch the…

Everyone talks about nostalgia as though it is one of life’s sweetest gifts. A smell. A song. A street corner. Rain hitting dry soil. A particular shade of afternoon sunlight. Suddenly, without asking permission, you are seven years old again. You remember the exact texture of the moment. The laughter. The annoyance. The innocence. The version of yourself that still believed tomorrow was…

I think desire is one of those things that gives us the most pleasure but has the worst public relations. It has been marketed as vanity. As shallowness. As proof of weak character. Like money once was, desire has been handed a bad reputation, as though wanting deeply is somehow evidence of moral failure. We are taught to be suspicious of it. To distrust the very thing that moves us. Yet…

Perfection isn’t the enemy. It was never trying to hurt you. For many people, perfection doesn’t present as obsession, but as relief. As something solid to hold onto when the world felt unreliable. As a language that made sense when emotions didn’t. So if you recognize yourself in perfectionism, this isn’t a dismantling; it’s an understanding. Perfection often begins as care. As attentiveness.…

I used to think that going through hell meant flames. Screaming. Chaos so loud you couldn’t mistake it for anything else. I thought hell would announce itself clearly, violently, so I’d know exactly when I entered and exactly when I left. I was wrong. Hell is quieter than that. Hell is waking up and doing everything you’re supposed to do while something inside you is collapsing. Hell is…

There is a thought that has followed me through football seasons, broken relationships, grief, and even justice itself: You cannot make yourself happy by making others miserable. Life, of course, is not that simple. We hurt people unintentionally all the time. Relationships end. Dreams collide. Sometimes our healing is another person’s heartbreak. Pain, unfortunately, is part of being human.…

I am at a place in my life where I want to be seen, but I don’t want to be perceived. I want to express myself, but I don’t want to be figured out I want to be understood but stay a mystery I am at a place where I feel so lost, and I have surrendered to the darkness. I have accepted that when they say life is imperfect, they mean me too. I am at a place where I believe in love, but question…

Do you believe in soulmates? Why or why not? Yes I do believe in soulmates. A couple, not one. For example I feel like my family are my soulmates. Each of them fills a different part of my puzzle. They answer questions of my existence, how I am, who I’m meant to be. My friends, because they fill a void. I believe my friends are people I share a universal language with. They get me, I get them,…

He was an apology for the patriarchy. A balm for a bleeding heart. Glue for the falling apart. A string to sanity. A reason to break rules. Reason to be good. And bad, very bad. Spirit high, legs higher, shoulders occupied, souls full. Ooh, how I am going to miss him. Because for the first time in a long time, I did not feel like a woman surviving herself. I felt held. Softened. Seen beyond my…

People love to imagine that control freaks are made in one dramatic moment,a childhood trauma, a betrayal that turned the world upside down, a single event that rewired the brain.It’s never that clean. I wish I could tell you it happened in one moment.Honestly, it didn’t.It was gradual.A slow drip.A quiet accumulation of life doing what life does best: refusing to obey. I’m barely a control…

I hate relationships that end amicably.What do I do with the pain then?How do I grieve losing youwhen there is no villain to blame,no slammed doors,no smashed plates,no bitterness to coat the heartbreak? How do I leave youwhen I still love you?When every version of us is still gentle,still soft,still tender in my memory? If there had been spite,I would have packed faster.If there had been…

I hope the title rage-baited you enough to bring you here, believing this was some deranged opinion from someone who hates humanity.Hi guys.I’m a recovering selfish person.Recovering is relative, so let’s just say I’m a lastborn. A typical one. The kind that grows up knowing the world rearranges itself for them before they even ask. So when I say selfish people are to be trusted, I don’t mean…

I am intenseSometimes I wonder whether I am too intensetoo deep you’d drown,too high you’d lose your mind.Too soft, I’d break;too fiery, I’d never extinguish my own fire. One of my biggest fears is the ordinariness of lifeits bleakness, its emptiness, its quiet cruelty.I am so scared of feeling nothingI romanticize everything:I find grandness in absence,find solace in solitude,spice logic with…

I am always on a quest.Not the heroic kind with a clear map and a finish line. Mine is more… episodic. Seasonal. Hormonal. First it was her.Then him.Then the job that pays, because love is cute but rent is louder.Then my brand, which currently feels like a child that eats more than it contributes.Then upskilling, because apparently rest is illegal and we must always be becoming. Then there’s…