Shadow Black: A Return to Myself - by Inioluwa Adeyeye

A few days ago, my friend asked me a question that should have been simple but wasn’t. She wanted to know why anyone would choose to come back to this hell of a country and more importantly, why I seemed so calm about it. I laughed. She stared at me like she was waiting for the truth to break open in my face. When she asked why I laughed, I told her, “The Lord helped me.”We laughed it off. She moved on. But I didn’t. That night, her question followed me into my room like a memory I hadn’t invited. I found myself scrolling through old notes until I stumbled on a poem I wrote when I first resumed university in Nigeria back when everything felt like a battle, including breathing. The anger in those words shocked me. I could almost feel the heat of my younger self burning through the screen: “Fuck uuuuu Really fuck youu I had a good life u just had to step in I was at my happiest just with a little suffering that I could bear Who am I lying to I was actually choking … I Will grow and all will choke”Reading it again, I realized something I didn’t see back then: I wasn’t just angry I was drowning. I had been fighting everything at once. My faith. My choices. My reality. Maybe even myself. I remembered crying quietly in my bed night after night, the way the walls felt too close, the way my thoughts felt too loud. I remembered feeling like I was going through hell. I wasn’t diagnosed, but I was close to depression — close enough to smell its breath. And because I couldn’t talk, I wrote. That was when Shadow Black was born: *“It’s real dark here. There’s no life in this place, no hope in this air.”Back then, I couldn’t understand why everything inside me felt so dim. I kept asking myself questions I didn’t have answers to: “Did I ever have the chance to hope? Will this darkness keep pulling me back? Will it end me?”* I remembered the day my mum asked me, “When did you start wearing so much black? I thought your colour was pink.”I told her, “I don’t know, it just happened.”But maybe it didn’t just happen. Maybe life happened. Maybe the smile didn’t disappear maybe it faded so slowly I didn’t notice it slipping away. I read the poem again and again that night, and suddenly, I didn’t see just a poem. I saw a younger version of myself standing in the dark, terrified, asking whether she’d ever shine again: “Shadow black, will I ever get my smile back?”There was a time I couldn’t answer that question. There was a time I believed the darkness would win. There was a time the emptiness felt permanent. But here I am now laughing at a question that once would have broken me. Not because life has magically become easy. Not because this country is any less chaotic. But because I survived the version of myself who thought she wouldn’t make it. The storm didn’t destroy me; it reshaped me. It carved out a new calm in me. A new strength. A new peace. So when my friend asked why I’m calm… this is the real answer: Because I’ve seen darkness deep enough to swallow me whole, and yet here I am. Because I’ve worn shadow black so long that any sliver of light feels like grace. Because the version of me who cried every night would look at me now and say, “You made it.”I’m not who I used to be. Something died, yes but something else was born. And that is why I can laugh now. Not out of denial. But out of gratitude and peace. YoursInioluwa

Other insights from Inioluwa Adeyeye

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons