“This life will happen fast, you won’t see it go…” goes the song, a beautiful reminder that life has a way of shaping us. We think we’re the sculptors, but really, we’re the clay. Life cuts with invisible knives, and we’re left standing there, wondering, how did this all happen?
We want to be Happy. We chase happiness like it’s the last bottle of beer at a party. We take jobs that drain our souls to buy things that gather dust. We love people who shrink us just enough to fit in their pockets. It’s a cruel joke like drinking saltwater to quench thirst.
We lose people. Some to the grave, others to the slow erosion of time. Grief moves in like a bad roommate, rearranging our insides until we don’t recognize ourselves. We learn to laugh with the emptiness, smiling at ghosts so that no one should notice our hurt.
We drown in lonely tears, crying Dear Heaven to those we’ve lost. Their names sit on our tongues like unspoken prayers… or curses. Sadly, the world doesn’t pause for our pain. The sun rises, birds chirp, and life carries on like nothing happened.
Depression crawls in, a silent thief stealing pieces of us behind closed doors. We mourn the ones who left not because they wanted to, but because their own demons dragged them away and couldn’t carry their own pain long enough to stay. Funny how we laugh at them as weak for not manning up.
We become prey to manipulators. Sweet words laced with poison pierce our souls. We let them sink their fangs in, only to realize too late that it was an act. We die of the hollow ache they leave when they’re done with us, selfishly moving on to their next prey. We all wish life could have warned us, but it only said mudzamvetsa Mukakula.
Love starts like a warm sunrise over a pond of ice cream, sweet and soft but ends violently, like a typhoon. We ride life along with spouses and partners who promised forever but quietly drained the life out of us like hungry leeches leaving nothing but shadows of who we once were.
We hold on to love that has already left us, loving in memory what we can’t have in reality. Letting go feels harder, and the pain sometimes pushes us to the edge until we lose ourselves and become the ones remembered in loving memory.
We see their smile in strangers, wondering if they ever think of us. It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t heal. It lives quietly in the background like a song on repeat that we can’t turn off. Meanwhile, they’ve moved on, happy and whole, while we’re still picking up the pieces. We whisper I’m happy For You like it’s a spell to numb the hurt. It doesn’t work.
Sometimes, a voice inside says Zitaye … let go. But you see, letting go is like trying to swallow a razor, possible, but painful. If pain were a suitcase, we’d have left it at a bus stop long ago. But pain is more like skin. It’s part of us, and peeling it off hurts as much as keeping it. We tell ourselves we’ve moved on, then a song plays, and suddenly we’re back in the wreckage.
We carry regrets like unpaid bills. The words we didn’t say, the chances we didn’t take. But life sometimes tosses us a bone. The kindness of a hand reaching down when we were falling. A word that heals more than time. The power of someone speaking good about us in a room we weren’t in. The grace of second chances. The rare gift of a life that, despite its storms, still has moments of calm.
We’re walking contradictions. Bruised but blessed, reckless but regretful. We’re the ones who said no when fear shouted louder than hope. We carry the ghosts of risks untaken and the scars of the ones that backfired.
If We Don’t End Up Broke, maybe there’s hope. Maybe peace isn’t just a myth after all. But hope is fragile and needs feeding.
What we become is never what we planned. We’re shaped by the losses, the mistakes, the love that broke us and the hands that pulled us back up. We’re the fights we won, the battles we lost, and the wars still raging inside. We are the sum of it all.
In 2024, Praise Umali dropped What We Become, an album that felt like reading our own diaries. We didn’t ask to write this story, but here we are… living it. And somehow, against all odds, surviving it.
