By: Caleb Kofi Ahenkorah
For over three years, Caleb Kofi Ahenkorah has been writing entries under the pseudonym "The I Am Me" for the My Name is Me series on Snapchat and Substack. Hidden in his tiny corner of the Internet, he has been exploring over two hundred unique human emotions and situations, teaching the lessons he learns as he goes. His humorous, straightforward and relatable pieces keep his readers coming for more.
Being born early in the year is sad.
I was born in late February, but to be fairly honest, when your birthday comes after Valentine’s Day, there’s not much hype left for your own event. So it practically comes and goes.
For Me, it’s the same thing every year: eat food, take calls, reply texts, sleep.
It used to be cooler when I was younger. Now, not so much.
The day of my birth is still just a one day. And I hate how passive that is. I still detest people who spend a full month lavishly celebrating their birthday, and then recall it for the rest of the fiscal year.
I hate how birthdays are merely days in a week, and schools are stress institutions, and the only bond tying you to your family is by genetics and donate-able organs.
I hate how love is bought like a Labubu, expensive and worthless, and hate is shared like a disease, far and for no reason.
I hate how existing, the simplest thing on earth to do, has become so difficult.
And yet we exist anyway.
Existence.
Remember how when we were younger we assumed everything would work once we were older?
That it’d be easy to pass school, get a job, and fall in love? That birthdays would get better? And SHS was like High School Musical? ( I did, bite Me.) We quickly found out that it's really not all that, no?
Existing is a chore; my reader, and if you say other wise, you’re either rich, hot, or lesbian.
We used to be filled with doodling and cartoons and childish fantasies. Now all we know is internships, and scholarships, and CGPA, and financial issues; formal attires and death and relationship issues, and whole lot. Give Me a break, you say. But we can’t take a break, can we?
That’s what it means to exist, after all. You just live till you don’t.
But despite all the good that life has to offer, it still generally hurts to exist. And it doesn’t make us any less grateful for life to admit that sometimes, living hurts.
Yeah, I said it. You can quote Me.
It hurts to exist. For Me, anyway, it does. The best way I can describe My existence is the feeling of agony one would get if they accidentally slipped off a building, hit a shit ton of things on the way, got scraped up, and somehow still survived the fall. They don’t get the bliss of death, or the beauty of a coma. Just the agony of remaining, the punctured lungs, the broken bones, the leaking blood and the screaming nerves. That’s what it’s like to inhale and exhale for Me. It hurts.
It hurts to move, it hurts to wake, it hurts to sleep; it hurts to text knowing you feel nothing, it hurts to ignore you knowing you once felt something. It hurts seeing you with anyone but Me. It hurts. And yet I exist anyway.
These days, I ask myself why.
And I bet you have too, reader. You’ve wondered why existing is so hard. Why things can’t be like the way they were when you were a kid, and you had a cartoon themed birthday cake. You wish you could go back to when you saw your crush in primary in the morning, and you proudly told them that you liked them during break time, and you broke up over something silly like lunch boxes by closing. Truth be told, I don’t know why life is so pale and passive now either. You tell Me.
Maybe time passes, and people and circumstances change no matter what we do. Maybe we grow as we exist, whether we like it or not.
And maybe existing is only as hard as we allow it to be.
Existing is tough. But maybe we allowed that. Hear Me out. Maybe we didn’t think life could get any better. We think, therefore it is. And now, that’s status quo. So what happens when we stop thinking that way? That’s what it means to exist, after all. You just live till you don’t. But HOW we exist is completely up to us. Hot take, but being proud of suffering more that someone else isn’t a flex. Because we don’t have to. We could just sit back and allow life to be as harsh as possible.
We could choose to never smile or laugh or love again. Or we could do something about it.
So let’s do something about it together this year.
We don’t deserve to live miserable, to exist without hope, and to pass the days as they are. We deserve big bright birthday parties, and gifts, and happy days, and all the love in the world. We better start thinking like that, so we can start living like it too.
I really hope you do.
I think, therefore I Am Me.
