Insight of a Kenyan Girl

I am drowning. Not the beautiful, cinematic kind. This is ugly, salt water burning my throat, my lungs begging for air, the cold gnawing at my bones. And there they stand society, dry, warm, smug, their feet planted firmly on the shore. Watching me flail. Watching me choke. No lifeboat. No helping hand. Just a silent, merciless command: Swim, or sink quietly where no one has to see you die.

Every day, I try to stay afloat, steering between “right” and “wrong,” between what is applauded and what is condemned. But my compass spins in circles, and my arms are tired. My smile is a mask; behind it, my bones are splintering under the weight. The burdens stack higher and higher, swaying dangerously, but I keep holding them up, pretending I’m not shaking.

I’ve seen the filth at the core of this world the rot dressed in silk. I yearn for the other side: waters that don’t want to swallow me, skies that don’t lie, freedom that isn’t traded for obedience. But I am trapped here, in the pull of the waves, trying to prove my worth to people who will only love me while I’m fighting to breathe.

I listen to laughter in cafés, in offices, in passing conversations. And I wonder why does joy sound foreign to me? When did I stop belonging to it? Then the thought comes, cold and cruel: maybe I did this to myself. Maybe I built the walls of my own drowning pool. Because everyone else seems to get the flowers, the praise, the arms that hold them through the storm. I get the excuses. The mockery. The betrayal. Friends who smile in my face while twisting the knife. Men who pretend to be kind until their eyes catch on something shinier. Relationships that are more performance than love. Connections as thin as tissue, sold to me as gold.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m just a prop in someone else’s story kept for convenience, for the illusion of care. And I know, deep in my gut, that if someone ever truly saved me, pulled me from this ocean, I would vanish from their world the second I stopped needing rescue. My place in their life depends on my suffering.

The world doesn’t offer acceptance; it offers rules disguised as guidance:
Be confident, but never intimidating.
Be pretty, but not enough to make others insecure.
Be smart, but never outshine the ones in power.
Be kind, but never complain when you’re hurt.
And above all be pleasant to look at. Perfect smile. Perfect skin. Perfect weight. Anything less and you’re not just invisible you’re disposable.

Perfection is the god they worship, and the altar is slick with the blood and exhaustion of those who try to reach it. I’ve clawed my way toward it until my fingers bled, and for what? To be told I’m almost there? That if I just erase a little more of myself, maybe I’ll be enough? I’m tired. God, I’m so tired.

The water gets deeper every day. My legs ache from treading it, my lungs scream for air, but I keep asking when will it be my turn? My turn to stop performing. My turn to stop mutilating myself to fit the mold. My turn to exist without being scored, judged, and diminished.

Maybe that turn will never come. But I know this: if I ever feel the ground under my feet again, if I ever breathe air that doesn’t taste like salt and despair, I will never step back into this ocean. Not for anyone. Not for anything.

Because this ocean doesn’t just want me tired.
It wants me dead.