Before you hunt me down on social media to cancel my ass, I bet you’re just as guilty of breaking your mum’s heart.

Think back to your many sins. Sure, maybe you’ve never been arrested or you’ve somehow managed to consistently call your mum once every week, but what about those times you broke curfew in her house? Hm? And let’s not forget the lies after: “Mummy, leave me alone. It’s not like I was drinking.”

We’re not perfect. We’ve likely disappointed our mums at least once. And okay, dads can come in. It’s Father’s Day tomorrow, so it would be rude to forget that their hearts are just as breakable. Which is what I’m here to say: You will break your parents’ hearts, and that’s not so bad. Trust me, I’m not shouting it. I’m more like stuttering because this is one of those times the truth hurts like a bitch.

Right now, I’m talking to all my young adults who can’t ignore the desire to go out into the world and do their own thing. This is for us twenty-somethings who’d like to party literally all night, take that unpopular job and figure God out for ourselves. 

So how do you grow up, even when your parents don’t want you to?

Build a fence taller than Otedola’s money. Breaking a heart always begins with setting boundaries. That’s why it feels like a gut punch when an ex blocks you on social media. It just so happens that this time, the people on the outside are also the same two people who bathed you for years, bought birthday cakes and prayed for you to “join a multinational company” after university. Of course, it’ll break their hearts.

I could tell that their relentless asking about my life, salary and every move was their attempt at guiding me, but I knew better. There are many ways to say it, but always, it’s the same thing: Your parents will only begin to recognise you as a separate and capable individual after you’ve cut them off kindly.

Say “no,” and make sure they hear you. Till today, my parents can’t understand why I’m growing my hair out. Every time they ask, I fling some version of “I’m trying something new” at them. Casually like that. I know the image of me they hold in their hearts and the son they see on the WhatsApp video call are worlds apart. Once, they sat me down and begged me to get a haircut. “Look responsible.” I said no.

When you stand your ground, your parents will get mad or sad or really quiet and confused; it’s all okay. Part of growing up is making your own decisions, consequences and all. This is what our parents want for us, whether or not they realise it.

Finally, make space for them. Because bless their hearts, they’re trying their best. It truly is not easy to watch a child grow and go. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to see your child brave the world by themselves. You know how babies are born and it seems everything on earth is somehow designed to end them? What if that feeling never goes away for our parents? I can’t imagine it, but I try. 

So once every week, I call from wherever I am to let them know I’m good and safe. I drive them to church on Sundays when I’m home, and we all take pictures together. I ask my dad what stocks to buy even though I already know the answer. Because I know my mum prays for me, and it comforts her to do so, I pray too. I even tell her when I’m travelling so she can pray extra, extra hard.

Growing pains, I think they call it. Emphasis on the pains because damn, it breaks all of us. I have this friend who — mid-laugh — says, “you will heal” to me whenever something slightly unpleasant happens. And just like that, we’re laughing at that same unpleasantness.

ALSO READ: The Very Nigerian Ways Nigerian Fathers Say “I Love You”

I love my closest friends, but my burner account will only stress you out.

@IfoghaleWilson. @The_Black_Prime. @iTITAN_X_. And most embarrassingly, @CyberLord_R9 — my very first Twitter username. Still, none of those times I changed my Twitter username brought me the same satisfaction as when I opened my burner account.

We’ve all got one. Whether it’s for posting racy photos or confessing long-suffering feelings for your ex from two years ago, we can all agree our burner accounts are our little kingdoms. Our private beaches where we can strip without shame. That’s why we keep it locked and anon. And yeah, sometimes, that means locking our partners and besties out too.

It’s only now, in my 20s, that I can look back at all the times I’ve changed my Twitter username over the years and be like, “yeah, I wasn’t insane.”

I was reinventing myself, again and again. At 13, my brain said I was into Megas XLR, and I signed up on Twitter as @CyberLord_R9. At 14 years old, my brain said I needed to become cool for my crush, so I became @iTITAN_X_. @The_Black_Prime was me entering my mid-way into my teens. I wanted to be unknowable — “this guy’s so mysterious and cool.”

But I was 16 and dumb, not mysterious. And on and on, I wasn’t satisfied. Changing my Twitter username was fun, but there were still the limitations of my main account: I can be opinionated but not unhinged. I can share stuff about my life, but I can’t overshare. Oh, that guy’s tweet was dumb AF; I need to tell him he’s not wise. But what if I become the first person to die of insult? 

Yeah, there was no way I’d ever become the main character on Twitter. I gathered all my hot takes, horny tweets, embarrassing confessions and emotional baggage, opened a burner account, and dumped them all in. Do you smell that? — freedom.

Everyone with a burner account is looking to be free. This means everyone with a burner account is hiding something from someone they love. Hear me out. 

There are things we struggle to tell even our closest friends. This might be true in a relationship. Sure, you’re in love, but you’re still an individual with your dark and heavy thoughts. It’s a kind of mercy to want to spare your lover the stress of communicating every small, dirty, depressing thing your brain can conjure, even if your brain won’t spare you as it begs for you to let them out.

In comes your burner with its eight, maybe nine followers. People you know just enough to not really care what they think. Friends of yours mostly, but nobody you’re scared of hurting with your words. The followers on your burner won’t be worried sick about you, so you spazz.

I keep some of my closest friends out of my burner account. I love you, but nah. You’ll be stressed by it. You’re going to go to bed wondering if I’m okay or where I learned to insult somebody’s child like that, and I won’t have an answer. I don’t want that for either of us. I want you to have peace of mind. 

Maybe I shouldn’t be afraid to approach my friends and lovers with my hideous and beautiful parts. Maybe I should trust them to handle these parts with grace, but it isn’t always about the fear of being judged (though this is half of it). It’s also that becoming aware of my less-appealing parts actually suck. Of course, it’ll take some time before I share everything.

Okay, I don’t know about “sharing everything.”  I’ve got friends on my burner account who post pictures on their burner accounts — pictures they don’t want some of our mutual friends to see. They love our mutual friends, but I’ll bet they love the privacy too. Bless the burner.

A friend of mine opened a burner to escape her bosses at work who follow her main account. She simply wanted to complain about work and be horny in peace. Bless the burner. It’s about privacy at the end of the day.

I’ll admit that I owe the closest people in my life all my many sides and faces, and maybe I’ll eventually get to show them. 

When I do, it’ll be free from the view of the over 200 million other Twitter users. When I open up, it will be from safe within my burner account, where I’ve got the keys. If you know, you know. Bless the burner.

ALSO READ: 5 Nigerians Tell Us Why They Have Burner Twitter Accounts

If you ever manage to glimpse my YouTube watch history, I promise I’m not obsessed with Gordon Ramsey. Instead, zoom into those video thumbnails and see the image of my one, true love — spaghetti. 

We’ve been skin-tight since 2021, Spaghetti and I. I’ll have to thank my depression for introducing us. The bigger picture here is that you can eat your way to happiness. Hear me out.

Grab the closest skillet you can find. Fill it up with water and bring to a boil. Now, I wasn’t born depressed. At least, I remember being five and wanting to dance all the time. I loved Michael Jackson and practised his moonwalk non-stop. My parents fed me every day. I went to school, came home and did homework. As a teenager, I annoyed my siblings and hung out with my friends, you know, normal kid stuff. So it’s hard to say when I began to fall apart.

What I know for sure is that I lost someone I loved very dearly in July of 2021, and it stung like a bitch. Though, yes, most of 2021 was a shitshow, the grief from that one singular loss pressed down upon me like the heaviest blanket. 

Is the water boiling? Toss in a generous amount of salt. Go wild with the salt, you want that water salty. Open your pack of spaghetti, throw in your version of one person’s serving into the skillet and cover. 

My depression diagnosis came because I’d unintentionally hurt my friend when I disappeared from her life. I felt bad that I was making her feel bad, and so with her seated on my bed, I booked an appointment with a doctor. One online evaluation later, I was staring at two options: psychotherapy (too expensive) or medication (pills, ugh!)

Now’s the time to cook the Guanciale (cured pork cheek). Don’t worry if you can’t find that; bacon works fine. What you want to do is cut the meat into one-inch cubes and toss it into a pan or skillet under medium heat. Don’t forget to throw in a bit of butter.

Coconut head that I am, I told myself, “I’m only a little sad, I’ll make some spaghetti and be happy again.” Your comfort food tends to be personal. Maybe it reminds you of something from your childhood or just the act of eating itself grounds you. People stress eat, but that’s not what this is about. I’m talking about the bowl of [insert favourite food] that seizes your attention (and taste buds) for a few minutes. 

Spaghetti was my food of choice because it allowed me to be lazy. Inside the pockets of depression where I lived, I was always tired. Always sad and always numb. Check on your spaghetti right about now. You want to cook it until it’s al denté — not cooked all the way through.

Once your spaghetti is almost cooked through, turn off the heat and dump it into the pan with your cooking meat. Remember that everything is happening quickly. Grab about half a cup of your pasta water and pour it into the spaghetti + meat mixture. Turn your heat all the way up and toss vigorously. Put your elbow into it, your ancestors are watching!

Discovering Spaghetti Carbonara was an accident. My depression led me through a period when I lived on spaghetti and ketchup for weeks. That ugly splash of ketchup across the spaghetti strands looked like depression in a bowl. After I ran out of ketchup, I made a list of the items left in my fridge and threw them at Google for something, anything, to eat. 

Enter Gordon Ramsey and his Spaghetti Carbonara recipe. Filmed on a mobile phone by his daughter, the video was fast-paced and had a lot of jokes. The best part? How every second of the video left no space for thinking — just cutting, tossing and good vibes. It was perfect, delicious and easy enough that I nailed the recipe on my first try.

In my saddest moments, I start with a skillet of boiling water and run along the steps it takes until there’s a creamy dish in my bowl. I love the way my brain stops circling the dead thing it carries and shifts its attention towards making the best damn bowl of spaghetti. Comfort food won’t kill our sadness and it won’t reverse our grief, but it will give us the space to consider anything else but the grief.

With your tossed spaghetti in the pan, meat soaked and pasta water combined, turn off the heat completely. Very quickly crack two eggs and separate the yolks into a bowl. It’s traditional (I mean Italian, which is where the dish is from) to grate some Parmesan Reggiano into the egg yolks, but you have my permission to skip this.

Lightly salt the eggs and beat until homogenous. Pour the egg yolks into your spaghetti and toss very quickly, allowing just the heat from the spaghetti to slightly cook the eggs. You don’t want the eggs to scramble, and this is why we turned off the heat.

Serve in a bowl, dust it off with some black pepper, and there you go — happiness. 

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? 

I’ll usually open a bottle of beer with mine, but please, you do you!

For however long we spend cooking and eating (just eating is also fine), we can learn to live beside our grief, instead of being crushed by it. My friend is even more stubborn than I am and does not believe in my spaghetti therapy. If I do end up on antidepressants, someone please tell me I won’t be too numb to still make spaghetti?

ALSO READ: 7 Meals You Can Eat on Sunday Instead of Rice

Hear Me Out is a brand new limited series from żěèĘÓƵ, and you can check back every Saturday by 9 a.m. for new episodes from Ifoghale and Ibukun.

Everybody get wetin dey do dem, and what is doing me is that I’ve been skinny for my entire life.

I’ve gone through periods of weight gain all my life, only to quickly lose it again. It’s exhausting having to ride these waves, and should we?

COVID came to me like a gift or a jug of iced tea after almost five years in the desert of — let’s name it — skinny land. I hated skinny land.

Skinny land is where I first noticed how my t-shirts slacked on my body. Oh, I didn’t like that. Even worse were the passing comments on how I looked sickly. Yes, hahaha, you could, in fact, probably lift me over your head; I am not amused. But the thing I hated most about skinny land was realising in university that I was not a fan of my own reflection in the mirror.

For all my time as an engineering student, sitting through long classes and squeezing sleep in during the short nights, I wholly abandoned the one rule my dad set as he dropped me off every semester: make sure you eat.

The lie was that, not-so-deep-down, I knew I’d choose school activities and my responsibilities over food every single time.

I would come home looking like a third of myself, and my mum would panic. “Foghale! Are they stealing your money? Why are you starving yourself?” Then she’d cast a mountain of rice on a plate for me, complete with three chicken laps.

I was willing to put on some weight, so I welcomed it. It was easy to lie to myself. I told myself I would be consistent with my meals: three times a day with snacks in between. As my dad dropped me off at school in my third year, leaving behind his one rule, I thought, “This is the semester I will gain weight.” The lie was that, not-so-deep-down, I knew I’d choose school activities and my responsibilities over food every single time.

That’s why I adored 2020. When COVID came to Nigeria, we were all stuck at home for almost the entire year. Life slowed down, and I began cooking — a lot. I learned the secrets of curry sauce and egg-fried rice. I made alfredo fettuccine, spaghetti bolognese and carbonara drizzled with parmesan reggiano. I noted the foods to avoid: skimmed milk, low-calorie fruits, low-fat everything. All of this because I wanted to gain what I called “healthy weight”.

The changes felt slow, then all at once. After about seven months, I smiled at how my neck filled up its opening in my t-shirts. Two months after that, my jeans began to sit perfectly around my waist without assistance for the first time. I, a formerly skinny person, had finally gained some healthy weight.

The problem with this — hear me out — was that I saw this as something I needed to cling to. What I should have done was allow myself to recognise the free time, the unhinged access to all kinds of food, and my lack of travelling that helped me gain weight, while holding space for a phase of my life where any of those things would be absent. And that phase did come.

Picture this: it was hot in June of 2021, and NYSC decided to ship me off to Benue state for what I could only imagine would be 12 cruel months. After much wahala, I finally accepted my posting. I packed my bag, took one last look in the mirror — muscles, lean; neck, thick; watch, not helplessly dangling at the very edge of my wrist — and left for the bus stop.

From inside my cheap hotel in Benue, I wrestled three villains. First, it was homelessness. I couldn’t cook a single thing, so for over a month, I was eating once a day. Usually small portions of street rice and too many bottles of coke. It also didn’t help that my PPA had me making several long-distance trips on foot. (Exercise? Fuck my life.)

Then there was the food poisoning in July that lasted for almost two weeks. However little I had been eating up until that point, I now ate far less. Don’t get me wrong, I was hungry a lot of the time, but mostly I was weak and tired. I chose sleep over food. Between the homelessness, falling sick and whole days on an empty stomach, I lost more weight than my pandemic gains, and my confidence went down the toilet. 

I hadn’t been in Benue for up to two months.

It’s not a crime for my body to respond to circumstances. Still, it was definitely not okay that my self-esteem suffered for it. I thought I was angry at having lost weight, but it turned out I was disappointed with the seemingly endless cycle of gaining weight only to very quickly lose it.

We shouldn’t live our whole lives latched to the idea that we’re somehow more attractive because we occupy a specific point on the body image spectrum. And nobody should ever have to wake up every day to a spreadsheet telling you, in precise numbers, how many calories to consume in order to gain X kg every damn week. 

The cycle is brutal, and I want out, which is what I’m doing. Or am trying to do. People like us, who have been skinny since birth, will likely lose weight based on pure circumstance. Desperately trying to gain weight is simply not worth risking low self-esteem if those gains should evaporate — as they just love to do.

The trick then is to do the best with what we have and accept — no, observe, then try to love — all the changes our bodies go through. Granted, we should put in reasonable efforts to eat regular, healthy meals, but you see that thing where we devote hours of our lives to self-loathing, as we hold up an image of what we think we should look like? Yeah, let’s not do that anymore.

Funny, I’m leaving Benue state the very day this article is being published. I’d say I’m on the horizon of a new phase in my life. I’m headed back to my father’s house. Will I have access to more food? Will I stay in one place long enough for me to eat consistently? Yes and yes, most likely. After all, that is the origin of my pandemic gains. Today though, I’m still very much skinny, and I can already picture my mum freaking out.

NEXT READ: Ten Cooking Hacks Only Your Nigerian Mum Could Have Taught You

Hear Me Out is a brand new limited series from żěèĘÓƵ, and you can check back every Saturday by 9 a.m. for new episodes from Ifoghale and Ibukun.

I like the idea of phone sex because I often find myself pitying long-distance couples. If you spend hours talking on the phone with your partner, have virtual dates and parties on Zoom, should phone sex seem that weird?

On a Sunday morning about six months ago, I got three separate voice notes from a friend on Snapchat — a three act narration of her phone sex experience. I don’t usually consider myself an amebo, but I was eating this gist up like ewa agoyin and then asking for more.

What had started out for my friend as a lonely evening in a hotel bed in Abuja with an admittedly big bottle of wine in the space beside her, had turned into a restless need to be touched. When it became clear her usual people were too far away to come over, she decided to browse through her FaceTime contacts for some company. That’s where she found him.

Honestly, she didn’t even consider this guy to be a friend. He was someone she knew a long time ago who had indicated interest in her. Nothing else was special about him. At that moment when she needed to feel something, to have someone watch her and desire her in the watching, his face on her phone screen was good enough. By the time she sent me those voice notes, my friend’s wants were  satisfied.

Phone sex, before anything else, satisfies a special kind of horny. It’s for that urgent horny. The horny that believes it’s strong enough to defeat the wahala of Nigerian networks.

I get it — I do. I’ve found myself far away from my love interests for most of my life. At first, it was university whisking me away from my secondary school love, and later, work. Most recently, it was NYSC. Because of these, phone sex was simply where my life naturally arrived — but why exactly did I turn to it?

Phone sex, before anything else, satisfies a specific kind of horny. It’s for that urgent horny. The horny that believes it’s strong enough to defeat the wahala of Nigerian networks and doesn’t care for all the awkwardness of purely talking someone else to the point where they satisfy their needs. And it can get awkward, I’ll admit.

In my first experience, there were moments where we both fell silent because I didn’t know what to say. When I did speak, I was a little worried I was saying the wrong things.

The thoughts in my head  went from “Is this what she wants to hear?” to “Should I fake a moan? Would that be obvious?” and finally, some minutes into the thick of it, “So I can join Twitter moaning competitions like this?”

Later, when I wasn’t lowkey cringing at how thirsty two people can sound when they’re horny, I thought about how I was forced to open up. I had shared entirely new things with my partner, and this brought us closer.

Our conversations became vast and more fluid. We’d moved past the phase of trying to figure out what we couldn’t say in the relationship, and suddenly we could talk about sex without holding back. I felt like our relationship had reached the next level.

My desire to keep my partner interested forces me to become vulnerable. When I fear I’m about to kill the vibe, the only thing left to do is to become explicit about what I want to see, feel or hear. My least favourite thing about phone sex — the part where I worry about saying something so boring, my partner starts to roll their eyes  — is also the part I need the most.

Another great thing about phone sex is the way it can turn just about anybody into a listener. If you’re worried your partner isn’t paying attention to you, let me tell you about the give and take energy in phone sex.

Like with all sex, there’s very little fulfilment if your partner is not interested. Though, the stakes are much higher with phone sex. It’s tough to fake interest behind a screen from many miles away; you’ll really need to listen to what your partner enjoys.

I was curious about whether I was the only person who sometimes found it awkward, and so I went around asking.

Someone told me on WhatsApp: “If I’m not comfortable with the person or not in the mood, then shit, it’s probably going to suck. There’s no point.”

And another friend on iMessage: “I was sometimes confused about what he was saying, but it wasn’t all bad once I got into it. The problem was that I wasn’t always into it. But video calls and voice notes work like magic!”

The cool thing about phone sex is there are so many ways it can happen: over texts, voice call, video call, whatever you and your partner find most comfortable. Just because they’re not in the same room as you doesn’t mean you have to pocket your desires and go to bed.

Thinking back to those three voicenotes, I remember my friend swearing that the best part of phone sex is the hunger.

“I love that my partner thinks my body is such a turn on, even if they can’t touch me at that moment. Sometimes, it helps to build momentum for when you actually get to see the person.” I agree with this, especially when I remember the times my in-person sexual experiences started off over phone calls.

I’m single now and about 16 hours away from my current love interest. Whether or not they’ll eventually love me back (don’t ask me about this) is uncertain, but I plan to bring up phone sex if we ever take things forward. Because I know for sure that I might be on the move again soon, and my horny will likely come along with me. If you’re like me, young and unsettled — hear me out — you might want to read this again.

Hear Me Out is a brand new limited series from żěèĘÓƵ, and you can check back every Saturday by 9 a.m. for new episodes from Ifoghale and Ibukun.

Exclusive inside gist.

New content.

The ability to send in submissions.

Guaranteed to make hours in traffic feel like hours in traffic, but this time, you’ll be smiling like someone who’s just found love.

This is the new żěèĘÓƵ Daily.

Still here? Then let’s get into it!

A while ago, we realised we could improve our current newsletter structure, aesthetics, and content plan. So we went ahead and did just that.

Go on…

Here at żěèĘÓƵ HQ, our slack channels can get pretty wild. As one writer is dropping new ideas, someone else is asking for quick feedback. While one writer is battling principalities and powers (usually in the form of slow internet) to get a piece published. our editorial ogas are asking the important questions like, “Have we reminded our readers that they’re violently single?”, “Have we asked them what kind of jollof they are?” Here’s one of such situations:

This is how our flagship series Naira Life, Love Life, So You Don’t Have To, Abroad Life, What She Said, Interview WIth, Man Like, and others were born. From the outside, it might seem like we’re simply chaotic AF, and honestly, we are.

But there’s a lot of thought, planning, experimenting, iterating, and scheduling that goes into the articles we publish. And all this is so you can read them and say, “OMG, żěèĘÓƵ is so great.”

Oya get to the point

We’re excited to be launching the new żěèĘÓƵ Daily. Whew. We’ve been wanting to say that for a hot minute now.

So what’s new with żěèĘÓƵ Daily?

1. A new visual design

We figured that if we were going to deliver premium content to you, the newsletter needs to look and feel great, like Fan Yogo on a hot Sunday in March. To make it easier for you to find the żěèĘÓƵ content you love, we’ve grouped the content into neat cards. Check it out!

2. Exclusive content

Starting *checks time*, now, żěèĘÓƵ Daily will feature content that will only live in your inbox. Kinda like a behind the scenes peek at how your favourite stories come together. Who is shaving their heads at the office, what weird concoction Kunle is assembling in the name of dinner, etc.

We’ll also be launching a column where you’ll be able to send in submissions that’ll feature in the newsletter. Hint: this one’s about love. So get your stories ready.

Let’s take a break to hear from our two sponsors and resident struggling artists, Ignis Brothers: Dwin (Editor-in-Chief at żěèĘÓƵ) and Ruka (Managing Editor at żěèĘÓƵ).

“Let’s get straight to the point. żěèĘÓƵ writers are always causing trouble with their stories, but how are they doing it? To be honest, we have no secrets. We are an open book. But if, perhaps, we did have secrets, that’s the kind of information we’d only reveal to our Z! Daily family. Question now is, are you part of the family yet?”- Dwin

“Love and subscribe to the newsletter or ELSE” – Ruka

Cute. Back to regular programming.

3. Throwbacks

Unlike your ex who keeps leaving you on read, we’re willing to take you back. We’ll be hitting you with throwbacks of some of our old stuff. It’s not today we started making banging stuff.

So that’s it — for now. It’s not the latest iPhone announcement, but you will be able to win some very cool things when we launch our newsletter referral system in the coming months. It only gets better from here.

What next?

Well, it’s a date. See you in your inbox. *blows powder*.