Robbed Jul 2020

Robbed 8 Jul 2020 by Victoriadeyemi

Many a time, I was told to let the murderer pass by.
Something about a right of passage. They said “This is what life is like”.

This time, I investigated before planting.
I stayed up all night guarding.
Watering, building, giving.
Though we exist in strange times, everything started to yield.
Again came the thief. Insincerely wearing the face of a thousand men, lowly creeping out in the field.

A known destroyer; with it’s mouth full of acid, drooling and devising a scheme to blend in.

I was mocked by the ‘wisest of the wise’ and was told to let you by.
No sooner than they spoke, did I realise that you champion that advice.

The funny thing is you always come here.
Yet your curse is not mine to bear.
You are drawn to me.
You see me; the sole surviving fruit on this deep-rooted tree.

I see you.

To stop you, I would have to set off the bomb attached to my head.
But see, even if it were my destiny to bring about your end…
I refuse to die with you or in your stead.

So, conflicted I ask, what do I do now?

Home (Aug 2017)

Home by Victoriadeyemi

Home

They say ‘home is where the heart is’.

Home is supposed to be where one feels most secured.

How is it that I lost my home? Or did my home lose me?

Not in the literal sense, but…

I crashed and burned at home

Came in on high cloud secretly inflated with gasoline

Soaring with my expectations on a collision course with reality.

I burst into flames.

How could I have seen this coming?

Lassoed down from my former state.

Reduced to nothing but ashes.

How could I not have seen this coming?

As uneasy as it is to understand, my worst fears are associated with my home. My definition of home isn’t the typical one of ‘a place where I live, with my family’. To me, anything that I can associate with hope becomes my home. For example, the special people in my life, my aspirations and most importantly God. I often refer to Jesus as my home. When I wrote this piece my home felt like it was hanging in the balance; I tried to hold on to everything with my hands and heart but it was slipping so fast.

The colouring pencil sketch, as usual, is a reflection of my state of mind. I haven’t made her look utterly destitute, I guess that even in my state of confusion and strife, I still remain hopeful that things will work out. Sometimes we are forced into paths that we couldn’t predict but wished we could have. Yet, I think, even if we could predict some of these things, it does not necessarily mean that we would have been able to stop them. Not even when we have the entire force of a supernatural deity on our side. I think the important thing is learning; most things happen so that we can learn from them and come out newly formed. God wants us to grow, and how he chooses to make that happen is entirely up to him, but I think that we have a say concerning how long any unpleasant situation persists.

When It Rains. (Dec 2016)

When It Rains Victoriadeyemi

When it rains.

Where does real strength come from?

The painting was inspired by my peaceful state of mind, I used mostly pastel colours, which is a first for me. I was mainly thinking about what it really meant to be strong. Drawing from my experiences, I think that true strength is accepting the people that genuinely want to help us. True strength is having the humility to believe and the willingness to grow. True strength is holding a mirror to our image every now and then.

I think it is wrong when people say ‘true strength comes from within’. It is implausible to suggest that the origin of strength is ‘within’ when strength is not an intrinsic value. Strength does not come from ‘within’ it is just formed there. We are all born weak, defenseless, vulnerable and dependent. We each have our individual characteristics that make us different and react in different ways to certain situations. However, it is predominantly our experiences that form and develop us; our experiences trigger the fight or flight notion in our minds. Our experiences may be caused by the natural order of things, they may be self-inflicted or caused by others. But we can only develop strength when we make the most out of our experiences by appreciating them for what they have to teach us and appreciating the available help. We can only develop strength when we stop indulging in isolated thinking and self-pity.

Yellow And Green: To X and others (Sept 2016)

 

Yellow and Green By Victoriadeyemi. Dedicated to X 

Chalk and Acrylic.

Dedicated to X

Yellow and Green

Yellow and green like the natural valley underneath your sternum.
Yellow and green because I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Yellow and green like growth and mutual reliance.
Yellow and green because I have trusted you with so much and yet so little.
Yellow and green like when the hills kiss the sun.
Yellow and green because this ultimately came, without much thought or inquiry.

Dedicated to those who happened into my life and managed to stay in.

Interpersonal relationships: Being in charge but also leaving enough room for the unknown.

Relationships may sometimes seem overly centred around trying to make things work. The level of difficulty of this is often dependent on one’s ability to tolerate and willingness to understand. It is almost common knowledge that you cannot choose your biological family but you can choose your friends. However, some friends happen to you like an unforeseen event. Sometimes they are disastrous, even catastrophic and other times a wonderful surprise. You end up going through or coming out of such experiences with thoughts like ‘what just happened?’

For the most part of life, we do not have a choice with regards to a majority of stuff that happens to us. For instance, the people we were born to, the struggles we were born to deal with or other circumstances we found ourselves in.

We may not really have a say when it comes to the people that happen into our lives, the ones we fall in love with, the ones that hurt us, the ones that we have to work with or those who become family members along the line. However, we do have a great amount of discretion when it comes to deciding who stays in. We just need to be wise with how we use this choice.

 

Why Everyone Needs To Shut Up and Think. Break free (Aug 2016)

Break Free by Victoriadeyemi

Why everyone needs to SHUT UP and THINK.

I created this blog not wanting to be too acidic.

I needed it to be a distraction from the real world.
Talk less politics.
Talk less God.

Not wanting to be that loud cry in an empty hall.
But I didn’t last long doing that.

I have a great dislike for bullies but a special dislike for self-righteous people who feel above correction; they will never change.

Can you hear me?
Stop persecuting us!
Stop limiting us!

Stop hating yourselves!
Forcibly driving yourselves into sunken airless pockets.

Are you ignorant?
Light-hearted fun is good. And alcohol makes people happy. But only for a little while. Ignorance is only bliss when it is real ignorance. Not the type that was fashioned into existence  to sway minds and suppress overly thoughts
You are not Ignorant.

I Stopped fighting for the cause, but did I ever really begin?
Did I never tackle Inequality because I became apathetic? Or because I became too scared of the backlash from people who pick equal fights against the cause?

Do people really want to read long reports about inequality?
Don’t they either feel guilty for being a part of the problem? Or guilty for not fighting against the problem? Guilt always finds new ways to be transformed into backlash.

Are you selfish?
True selfishness is to seek your gain to the detriment of others.
For humanity to grow true selfishness needs to die.

Everyone needs to SHUT UP and THINK.
Activists included. Non-activists included. Everyone. Including those with tremendously wise things to say, and those who only say stupid things.
Myself included.

Talk is cheap.

We are all becoming too stupid from talking more than we are ever willing to listen.

Accidental (Jul 2016)

Accidental By victoriadeyemi

Initially being 21 did not feel that much different from being 20. My thinking was; It is not really change if the same things keep happening but in a different way.

Accidental.

Tired birds singing tired songs.
Singing the same song, centuries past.
Future to come.

Are you not exhausted by repetitive things?
LIAR! in swift denial, gently coaxed by…

wandering voices; near and far.

Liar and thief: victims and oppressors.

Trapped in an endless dance, a vicious cycle.
Quick to condemn.
Slow to change.
In swift denial, gently coaxed by wandering voices.

All My Friends Are Turning Green (May 2016)

All My Friends Are Turning Green by Victoriadeyemi. 

All My Friends Are Turning Green 

Hear the words of an artificial introvert.
One who felt too guilty to be rightfully happy, who instinctively took on the burdens and sorrows of others’ misery.

Hear the words of one natural critic.
At the birth of an opprobrium.
One who dealt too harshly with herself.

Hear the words of the one, who constantly battled with the idea of freedom and the premise behind escape.

One who fought himself every midnight, frantically chasing himself in the desert. This is actually hilarious, because it is impossible to escape from one’s self.

It is sometimes easier to shut yourself out, to become closed off, detached, uncaring. But you shouldn’t; the world is just too interesting and intriguing to do that.

‘Follow Your Heart'(Sunken) Feb 2016

Sunken by victoriadeyemi feb 2016

Sunken was supposed to have been done in colouring pencil. I feel like colours would have given it more life, but I left all my colouring pencils in London, and didn’t feel like buying yet another set. I already have 3.

Dedicated to strong women everywhere and to the special ones in my life who inspired this.

Follow your heart. To where? and at what cost?

Whilst he thought of ways to follow his dreams, she thought ‘how do we pay the bills and eat?’
Not that she didn’t have any dreams of her own, but she was evidently more willing, albeit reluctant, to make sacrifices. “You make certain concessions to protect your own”

Ending up deeply wrought by a situation she concluded to be the fault of his lack of consideration and egoism.

She was hurt by the thought that she would have happily supported anything, if only he was at least following the voice of God. Not that of his selfish and fickle heart.

After finally accepting that chivalry is not actually dead because it never really existed, she could really only blame herself for ever having faith.

‘Its just, as you go through life, you’re bound to sometimes forget that people are just human beings. Regardless of who they are, what they mean to you or the promises that bind them to you.’

Atashino Tsubasa. Betrayal (Jan 2016)

Atashino Tsubasa (My Wings)  By Victoriadeyemi

HB pencil and Red chalk.

My Wings

It was the sound of my heart breaking.
When I forged for you clippers to break the hedge. “Set me free?”
Instead you used them to rip out my wings.
Cracked the bones even when they were still attached.
Robbed the desert soil of it’s gold.

These are my just rewards;
For there is nothing new underneath the sun.
“Whosoever breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him”

For those with stories, both heard and unheard

For those….victoriadeyemi

For those with stories, both heard and unheard.

 

For those who could cry no more tears.

For those who would never see their loved ones again.

For those who experienced demoralising, dehumanising events.

For those who lived through hearing screams.

For those whose lives have been turned upside down.

For those who could literally feel their hearts jump out through their mouths.

For those who were too traumatised to hold on to reality.

For those who are still trying to get used to it.

For those who could not do anything else but cry.

I once survived mass killings in a civil war outbreak. Though it was nothing as titanic as recent events, in those timeless yet brief hours,  I learnt what it felt like to be frozen in a state of shock; petrified. To not know whether to hide or run, to be surrounded by blood curdling screams.

I know the sound of death.

The sound it makes when it comes hungered, in a rage, unexpected.

But what haunts me more than the experience is the thought that this is not a one off thing for some people. That some people live the trauma, as the rest of the world watches in silence whilst they die.

The world has been shattered into delicate pieces long before last week, last month, earlier this year. The world has been so broken that the stories are becoming as ancient as time itself.

Please, Pray for a better world.