Zikora

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“It’s funny how pregnancy is like body hair. We scrub and scrape our armpits and upper lip and legs because we hate to have hair there. Then we pamper and treat the hair on our heads because we love hair there. But it’s all hair. It’s the wanting that makes the difference.”

I read somewhere that love was about this, the nuggets of knowledge about our beloved that we so fluently hold.

I cried and cried, and even though people said crying made them feel better, it made me feel frightened and small.

How you imagine something will be is always worse than how it actually ends up being,”

Nature must not want humans to reproduce, otherwise birthing would be easy, even enjoyable: babies would easily slip out, and mothers would remain unmarked and whole, merely blessed by having bestowed life.

I never told the boy who didn’t love me, the boy I was trying to make love me when I didn’t yet know that you cannot nice your way into being loved.

How swift the moment is when your life becomes a different life.