Kafanchan Grace Choir, Royalties, and New Life Choir: for the colossal contribution you made in shaping my sense of identity and independence. Looking toward the future, some spoke just to be heard, and others with the intent to act. ‘Well done’ is better than ‘well said’. I hope you are living your best life, no matter its form. For my part, if I had known beforehand the overtaxing sacrifices and crushing isolation required to grind those aspirations into reality, as well as the high toll it would take on relationships and lifestyle for a tedious, protracted amount of time, perhaps I might have prophesied less; Kaza: my boyhood favorite neighbor. Still wonder fondly the whereabouts of you, Tomo, Swam, and Momi; Rev. & Mrs. Nduba: always remembered with veneration; Ike at CPM Kafanchan and Stephen Chinwuba: it was so fun learning the piano and guitar, and composing songs together during my early teen years; Chidi Achims: for taking my early work seriously and giving it a platform. Death cheats and memories redress; Kingsley Igwe: a dear and constant friend in the past, present, and future; Abiola and Femi Otenigbagbe: for nurturing a youth’s reckless leadership, believing he could rise to more; Tola Akunji: in some alternate universe, our bond and friendship wouldn’t have been so undervalued (Curse Daniel); Tunde Microbrosky: for your infectious enthusiasm for internet technology that drew me firmly into the computer sphere; Faith Enabosi, Victor, and Kelechi: What was it we’d call ourselves? Sweethearts or Sweet-tarts? lol. I still miss those carefree days; Chuka Ojimba, Brother Ben, Monday Igwe, James at Technical, Afolabi, others: names to always remember and hold dear; Francis Ikegwuonu and Ismaili: for our adventuresome friendship and the many extraordinary night vigils spent together learning and practicing technologies; Nelly Ekaidem: I will always adore you – the young are often stupid; Iyke Onka: ♪ Down in my bones I can feel this holy dope ♫. More than a musician: the Science ideas you shared with me about Light and Time were brilliant, and I wish you’d put them to paper and publish. Thanks for being such an inspiring figure during my more musically inclined years; Chidi Nnadozie: my first work boss. Thanks for taking a chance on me and encouraging my adventurism even when it threatened your job. You are the most secure boss I never had again; John & Marilyn Kelly: my second home in Edinboro Pennsylvania, which will always be one of my favorite places in the world; Adaeze Akeru: for your act of kindness; Tracey Newton: for your solidarity in a time of endless adjustment and distress when everyone else avoided me; Allen and Susan Scott: for your warmth, kindness, and the memorable winter hat and scarf you knitted for me. I will always value the moments shared with your outstanding extended family. Alas, contentment is seldom possible under great pain. Georgia was the unhappiest and costliest waste of time in my lifetime given how I got there, and I still curse under my breath the exploitative influences that dragged me there at the expense of my early aspirations and adulthood. The ripples of that catastrophic misstep and the difficult 7-year period it took to recover persist to this day; Linda Hawkins, Laura Mae Smith Wood, and Laurie Amber Chandler: for our loving friendship which continues to pulse in my heart reminding me that Georgia gave me something worth keeping; Anita Okeke, Anna Ruth Flagg, and Nancy Von Stein Tuttle: for your gestures of encouragement that never let up. It really was all I had to go by sometimes; Jialuo Chen: favorite roomie. Our time shopping, watching 90s movies, and learning to cook Chinese dishes from you is one of my lifetime’s favorite memories; Andrei Santos: the last pages of our times are still ahead; Barbara Spohn, John Butler, Betsy Dodd: thank you; Jerry and Susan Pickens: all-time favorite neighbors. Still treasure every moment we shared.

There are people who prefer the airbrushed versions of our lives, the better days and the fair weather. Some others try to keep you boxed into stereotypes to serve their delusions of charity and virtue. Many of the names above knew me through the most self-damaging periods of my journey and character – an inconvenient friendship for you. Years of prolonged fighting to assert one’s ambitions and agency do eventually turn a person insolent, harsh, and callous – even toward those offering help. Thank you for seeing more than who I was and believing in me when there was no sign it would matter. Life stages, relocations, and long working hours [especially during the founding years] have sent us down diverging roads, leaving so little time to maintain even the most vintage of connections. Still, your names remain personal and cherished to me, whether or not we remain in contact. In some ways, the people we all knew and loved no longer exist^[»], transformed by the realities we all share, each in our own form^[»]. But I hold the remnant of who I once was and know how highly he esteemed you.

Special Thanks also to the notion of Failure and Imperfections: whatever I am today, I am because of failing at friendships, love, family, business, and life. Without all that failing, I wouldn’t be better at a single one of them.

Adun Akinyemiju, S. O. Adigun, F. T. Himmikaye, S. O. Otoide, A. O. Edun, Lola James, N. J. Osai: a heartfelt appreciation for seeing something in me at a time I could not possibly have believed it on my own. Thank you. Dr. Ron Koger: for your influence that kept me in college longer than I could afford. Dr. Kim Haimes-Korn and Erin Sledd: for teaching me writing as an exploratory means of inquiry, discourse, and fine art. Dr. James Ponnley: the only math teacher that mattered… of blessed memory. Thank you, Dr. Ponnley.

To every sponsor, thank you. The best gift one can give another is not handouts and aid, but the opportunity to thrive on their own. You put your reputation and personal interests on the line, betting on another person’s promise even when that person may not have seen it in themselves. You facilitated opportunities, jobs, life-saving ad hoc projects, needle-moving guidance, and, last and least, cash. Occasionally, you pulled me out of the deep when I was in over my head, or threw a line to keep me afloat. You empowered me to catch my own fish. You stood against the familiar pattern: patronage of “minorities” by people who declare themselves mentors or foster parents and go on to treat a grown adult as a project, a stray to be sheltered, or a vassal of their ostensible virtue – abundant coffee meetings and counsel while keeping doors and opportunities shut, steering their ward toward settling beneath stereotypical ceilings instead. The unspoken message: “You need guidance, correction, and shaping, not agency, trust, or a real bet on who you might become.” You were none of this. You created updraft rather than aiming to control my trajectory. You trusted my judgment. Our personalities may have drawn us together before we had any stake in common, yet few things have left me as conflicted as trying to remain a friend, and never a supplicant, to someone who *seemingly* had a water barrel while I was parched. Thank you for seeing past my impecuniousness and the long odds against me. Thank you for every yes when it was a fit, and for every no when it wasn’t. Special thanks to those of you who never treated my time or position as inferior to yours… You were the better leaders.

To second-class citizenship. “Just go back to your own country…” It is a piece of wisdom that the early settlers and the forebears of every Founding Father should have adhered to; I’m sure Native Americans would agree. It is a piece of insight that would have left most parts of the world free from colonies, forced displacement, and ongoing occupation. It is a piece of advice that many humbugs spew, conveniently ignoring how it applies to them and to their ancestors’ unlawful, violent immigration and resettlement of continents and countries – perpetrated to this day. “…Right back at you. Go back to your own country.” Thankfully, most people will never know the misery of being an alien in a foreign country, requiring the same survival and dignity as anyone else but locked out by law from even the most menial work without a permit. Condemned to rely on bottom-feeders and shady employers who exploit your insecurity for their gain, while being derided as both an outcast and a burden by locals and popular narratives. The context of your decisions and the constraints on your outcomes are seldom understood… “Perhaps you aren’t trying hard enough, or maybe there’s something wrong with you that you’re hiding; surely that’s why you aren’t productive enough to stand on your own feet.” You learn to function under excruciating civic handicap and daily demoralization. You occasionally contemplate an out from life altogether – seeing no end to it, each day as dark as the one before. Then, you tell yourself to live only in the present moment and hold enough hope for just the next mile. Let tomorrow wait its turn. In this ordeal, as in any frontier tale, maintaining toughness and self-respect (which people often mistake for arrogance) matters as much to your well-being as anything else you do to reassert a reason for living and self-determination. Dreary years out of residency status left me needy and asking for help for an uncomfortably long time, especially for an independent person. Writing helped ground me, creating breadcrumbs back to who I really am so that the travail doesn’t become the only definition of self, erasing the person who experienced it. While I resent every remembrance of that phase in my life, I wouldn’t trade the lifelong lessons of feeling alone, being quickly abandoned once found to be vulnerable, and staying defiant in the face of fate and adversity.

To each of my rideshare riders during the 9 years driving 4 days per week, a fifth or sixth day when it ran slow, across the sprawling Bay Area over 12-15 hours of app-time and then more offline behind the wheel to keep the lights on while simultaneously bootstrapping Afterlife Licorice – you carried me through happy times, grief, and many reflections, bringing all the excitement and sheer range of meaningful human-to-human connection, with laughter, sadness, solidarity, and occasional irritation. For an exhausting and frequently deflating 7-day work week, driving or coding, that included every single holiday [Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Thanksgiving Day] in a grueling, non-stop work life with neither respite nor a break, often without a single hug from another human being for a whole year, you riders became both the work and the only vacation I could afford as I participated in your jaunts vicariously. In the pandemic years the weeks stretched to more days, with longer hours and more dead miles, putting nearly 200,000 miles on the car in a single year. Still, sharing thousands of moments with people from all walks, stations, and places of life, and from all parts of the world, that I could not have otherwise met has affected me considerably, leaving me with no doubt that humanity has far more in common across peoples, cultures, and societies than our rearing and environment might have us think. Only through a genuine human connection with the person next to you can the world become more colorful and vivid. Every 37,000+ of you, across multiple app platforms, from 150+ countries, with four in five of whom I shared more than a 5-minute conversation, left a part of yourselves, your world, and your experiences – highs and lows – with me. Thank you.

During my food courier years, it was also nice to enter your buildings, see how you live, what you eat (you guys eat the most remarkable things. Fried Oreos? Didn’t even know that was a thing. Definitely never judged… aloud). Standing at your doorsteps at odd hours was a different kind of glimpse: seeing you in your most unguarded forms, caught in the middle of whatever you were doing before the knock, wearing just a genial smile (sometimes literally), and radiating gratitude. Thank you for those brief, disarming moments.

(Perhaps a thank you to our beautiful universe, too. What I miss the most about my long shifts, which usually started at dusk, is seeing the phases of the moon and occasionally stepping out of the car during a clear night to look at the stars.)

Robert Greene: especially Mastery. It reinforced my drive and focus through the darkest moments of inner conflict in the early days, when I faced an excess of work over punishing hours and no other friend or companion would travel with me, often restoring clarity and the poise to stay on mission. Leil Lowndes: for your definitive guidance, which enriched my conversations and my connection with other people, letting me see more treasure in each of them, and widening my view of them far beyond what my background alone could have enabled. Deunan Knute: a fictional character, and my action-hero inspiration for surreal competence. Monica Lewinsky: for standing back up and outmatching the entire world, demonstrating ownership of our own story. Your resilience continues to inspire my approach to life. MacKenzie Scott: the moment you had the means to improve millions of ignored lives, you did.

No matter how strong or in control we might think ourselves to be, our behaviors and outcomes are not silos. The close relationships we maintain and the environments we put ourselves in have a surprisingly outsized influence on our mindset and well-being. Some orient and bring out the best in us, furthering our maturity; others disorient and bring out the worst of our humanity, pulling us backward against our hard-won values. Some prefer us continually down and broken, because they can only love us, and can only feel useful to us, while we remain defeated and in need of them. You can spend a lifetime bickering about how your background and unhealthy relationships hem you in… or you can leave, absorb the costs, dispel all the norms you once held, start anew, and take the reins yourself. You become your own person only after you embrace the latter. The most transformative life skill responsible for my attainment today, however belatedly learned, is intolerance for places, communities, and situations that detract from or level down meaningful growth and impose conformity to how such places and people would rather you be, and readiness to jettison them. Yet there have been, and continue to be, those who add positively to the story of our lives. Many have names we tragically may never remember again. Others, like my literature teacher during Primary School (Elementary School) in Benin City, a tall, slender man who often wore black trousers with a black short-sleeve shirt with white polka dots, whom I knew only as Mr. David, are remembered as though from another lifetime. Mr. David’s palpable disappointment at my involvement in a foolhardy class raid and fist brawl in Primary 2 (second grade) would go on to shape how I handle aggression. I never wish to see that look on his face again. I have been loved, aided, and abetted by Latinos, Semites, Indians, Africans, Europeans, Asians, and Natives of the lands and places I have been. The world and its people have been kind to me, and most of my teachers throughout life and school expected so much of me and fostered their hopes. All those past ‘lifetimes’ were the building blocks of the present. Wherever you are, thank you. You made a difference.

To surviving siblings. In early adulthood, we try very hard to paint the merriest pictures of our childhood, yet the raw truth eventually stares us down. Invisible and denigrated at home, bolstered and valued by outsiders, then criticized and accused of preferring outsiders. To paraphrase a quote, rivalry within families is the most dastardly and toxic form of rivalry because the prizes are so small. I wish meticulous gaslighting were enough to amend tumults and extortions carried on from childhood. No family is perfect, and my experience is neither special nor rare; plenty of homes are worse. Even so, there comes a time to choose between resigning oneself to the frame of one’s upbringing and honoring one’s values, a time to know oneself and one’s limits, and to recognize when the pain of being without a family is markedly less than the pain of remaining anchored in a perpetually detrimental situation merely for appearances. Permanently extricating myself and cutting ties may have been the hardest decision of my lifetime; it was also the healthiest. There is no going back. I regret the lost time, disoriented years, irreparable life damage, and self-sabotage it took to finally summon a firm decision, but take solace in knowing my ultimate recourse was that much of an absolute last resort. No doubt I am ignorant of some grand cosmic rationale that flawlessly explains the ever-changing twists and mind-bending subplots so extenuatingly that only a simpleton like me fails to appreciate the scripture that covers it all. No doubt I am the odd one out, the black sheep condemned by sanctimonious logic. And in a world where estrangement, even from a family mired in dysfunction, still carries a stigma, no doubt I am a monster for my resolution. So be it. Our better decisions in life aren’t usually the most popular. More than a decision, this commitment is an ongoing choice to exit a structure that keeps inflicting trauma and handing the damage down to generations unborn. May this branching out create a different future, one with more functional relationships for everyone. I do not think the circumstances are about villains or pure evil, just a handful of imperfect humanity that unceasingly brings out only the worst of each other – egged on by maternal puppeteering and insatiability. A pathological gamesmanship within one’s own family where even death itself is fair game. There has to be more to life than a revolving door of convoluted family quarrels, petty feuds, crab mentality, vain factionalism, and calculated cruelties, each round ending in a wily overture for a reset that only starts the next onslaught, on and on as everyone pretends no real harm is being done. Meanwhile, the rest of living is held hostage and repeatedly compromised: pursuits, mental health, and relationships forced into second place. It has taken me years to recognize how these patterns, bred in early and carried unseen into adulthood, ripple through my other relationships, and more years of deliberate work to begin transcending what has become my own nature. That work remains a formidable daily effort, even without the pull of an environment that insists on regression. May we all find the courage our own paths require. Let time show the wisdom of our judgment, and may each of us harvest the contentment that eluded us together. I wish us all peace and healing through the remainder of our separate lives.

To Francis Ezeadina Ikwuadinso, we shared a lifetime mixed with affection and alienation. Your unexpected passing left me permanently cratered with shock, and I still mourn you. Your industry provided both the floor for my aspirations and the agency to pursue them, despite your shortcomings as a father. A man of your time and society, I do not hold you blameworthy for who you were any more than the inevitable outcome of our relationship in my adult years. Still, I had tacitly hoped for closer and prouder days ahead of us, reignited by success and a newfound grown-up understanding of ourselves – an opportunity to know better the person behind the Dad. I have always held gratitude for your hard work and what must have been painful sacrifices for you, especially now that I have met the same pressure in my own efforts, and heard it in the stories of other people who worked like you. I am saddened by how much your sweat enriched my life and how little of this impact you ever got to know before your death. We had no closure. Without a conclusion, my mind recursively searches for you restlessly in dreams during sleep. When you come to me, you are elusive and ephemeral. A brass light is cast on you, and none of it makes any sense. A meaningless and utterly avoidable death, yet certain in the absence of the will to live. While I harbor no regrets but resolve from your fate, the chill of the crueler realities of this world that wielded the solemnity of your final days as nothing more than a cheap weapon for exclusion and emotional blackmail to extort the pain for a lifetime was the befitting culmination for a beleaguered childhood, and has dealt even more losses. It remains the lowest point of my labor and the darkest day in my life. Friends and outsiders bore me through the dissociation in childhood. Strangers now bear me through grief. I grieve only one. Have heard it oft said that the dead see all things. If they do, then you know my most intimate feelings towards you. You also now know the crushing circumstances that held my mind and attention captive daily as I worked for what I thought at the time was the greater good of the family. There is no guilt where there was no malice. You once told me that in this world, we are all alone with no one else. Although I continue to regard your remark as a fallacy, I feel its weight ever more gravely since your passing, and I worry that I always will. RIP – invictus manes (You remain unvanquished).

Remembering my grandmother, Mary Rose Mbaezue, whose soft reassurance I could never forget. To the GOAT cousins in my teen years, Chijioke and Eloka Anyaso, miss you guys and hope you forgive me… Adult life is complicated. To Aunt Chinwe Ozigboh: there are things from our brief encounters in my late teens that I still deeply appreciate, and I’m sure you don’t even remember them. Fond thoughts also of Sylvia Omini, Blessing, and Chineye Okeke. To dear Aunt Onumasi Okafor: deep within my heart, you will always live. Aki oyibo, zo. Shiga, shiga, shiga, shiga. Death cheats and memories redress. Ifeanyi Ikwuadinso: the nearest ideal I had to a big brother.