the three horsemen.

Over time, those reminders became invisible fingerprints around my neck.

Dear Reader

Every time I think I’ve finally made peace with certain emotions, something happens and I find myself taking a few steps backwards.

The difference now is that, for the first time, I know what is happening. I no longer mistake it for failure. I recognize it as my body asking me to feel what I spent years trying to suppress.

Growing up, I became an expert at bottling emotions. I was terrified of expressing anything other than happiness, which is probably why I developed such a giggly personality. Even when life felt like it was falling apart, I smiled through it. It became second nature.

Lately, therapy has led me to three emotions that have quietly followed me from childhood into adulthood: fear, shame, and bitterness.

The three horsemen.

For years, they have dictated the rhythm of my life.

I don’t speak of them with hatred anymore. Oddly enough, I’ve grown to respect them. Their persistence tells me they were never trying to ruin me, they were trying to be acknowledged.

Shame was the first to introduce itself.

I grew up around a man who seemed to shame almost everything about me: the way I spoke, the way I dressed, the things I liked, the way I thought, even the things I disliked. Eventually, shame stopped being an emotion and became part of my identity.

The idea of existing without shame felt foreign. Sometimes I grieve for the younger version of myself because I never asked to carry that burden. Yet even admitting I was hurt has always felt... shameful.

Then came bitterness.

I became deeply bitter toward this man, this shadow, and because I never allowed myself to express it, I learned to swallow bitterness everywhere else too. One plus one equals two. That’s how easily survival strategies become personalities.

I’m only learning to speak up now as an adult, and if I had to describe the feeling, I’d compare it to wearing socks to bed. Nothing about it feels natural. For most of my life, it was always better to die than to speak. Remaining silent felt safer than being honest.

But fear... fear is the most complicated relationship I’ve ever had. It has robbed me more than any Nairobi thief ever could. It has wounded me in places no one else can reach.

It wasn’t fear I created; it was fear I inherited. Passed down with such emphasis that it became the genesis of my longstanding paralysis. It’s like watching an accident happen in slow motion. The injuries I have sustained cannot even be nursed at an ICU. Again, nothing invented by me, only borrowed and inherited. I learnt to fear with so much passion it shocks me at times. I feared failure. I feared love. I feared mistakes. I feared trying. I feared pleasure. I feared my potential. I feared care. It’s a baggage I wouldn’t wish on anybody. You see, being a fearful person is a grief that kills you a very slow, painful death.

The tragedy of being ruled by fear is that it convinces you you’re protecting yourself while quietly stealing your life. The hardest realization this year has been noticing that these three emotions never travel alone.

Whenever shame arrives, fear is usually holding its hand. Bitterness isn’t usually too far behind either. They move together like a band, feeding one another.

Living at home has made this impossible to ignore.

Recently, I overheard my father yelling at my sister, Tumaini. The conversation itself wasn’t even about me, but my body reacted as though I were fourteen years old again.

His voice has always had that effect on me.

It wasn’t just the shouting.

It was what followed inside my own mind.

“I am a burden.”

That belief surfaced immediately.

Growing up, providing often came with reminders of the sacrifices being made for us. Over time, those reminders became invisible fingerprints around my neck. They taught me to fear asking for help, to feel guilty for existing, and to believe that needing anything made me difficult to love.

As he spoke to my sister, fear flooded my body.

I worried that everyone else in the house would eventually feel the consequences of his anger and that somehow he’d find a way to involve me in the yelling. I worried that I wouldn’t achieve my goals quickly enough to become independent from him. I worried that I would remain trapped in this environment. I worried that he would break my sister’s spirit in the same way he managed to break mine more times than once.

Then something unexpected happened.

Tumaini wasn’t affected in the same way I was. She listened to what mattered and left the rest.

That realization stopped me in my tracks.

It showed me just how deeply my father’s voice still lives inside my own head. How saddening that a conversation that had nothing to do with me sucked the living lights out of me. That was enough of a wake up call.

For years, I believed leaving home would automatically set me free. That if I got far away enough, the pain would stop. That my feelings of fear, shame and bitterness would finally go away.

Now I know better.

I could move to Atlanta tomorrow and still carry the three horsemen with me.

Healing isn’t geographical. It is internal. That realization has been both heartbreaking and liberating. Because if these emotions live within me, then perhaps freedom can begin within me too.

One phrase I’ve heard throughout my life is, “You’re too hard on yourself.”

I never understood it until this year.

I’ve spent most of my life believing something fundamental was wrong with me. Children rarely invent those beliefs on their own. They absorb them from the environments that raise them. And we never forget the people who tried to break our spirits.

I genuinely believed I had to become someone else before I deserved love, belonging, or acceptance.

It felt like being homesick on earth.

Lately, I’ve been trying something unfamiliar.

I’ve been soft with Joy. Every time I extend myself kindness instead of criticism, I become emotional because I realize how long I’ve waited to hear those words from myself.

My father may never fully understand the role he played in shaping these wounds.

The truth is, he probably carries wounds of his own. That doesn’t excuse the pain.

But it reminds me that pain often travels through generations until someone decides it won’t continue.

Perhaps that someone is me.

Forgiveness will take time.

Healing will take time.

Neither can be rushed.

But I no longer want fear to narrate my life.

I no longer want shame to determine my worth.

I no longer want bitterness to be the loudest voice in the room.

This week, I’m choosing something different.

I’m choosing to focus on possibility instead of catastrophe.

To believe that independence is something I’m building, not something forever beyond my reach.

To remind myself that mistakes are part of being human, not evidence that I am fundamentally flawed.

I’m learning to develop a healthier relationship with failure. I want us to be besties.

After all, failing at something I had the courage to attempt is far more honourable than never trying at all.

I don’t have everything figured out.

Some nights I still cry. A lot. Like a lot!

Some days the three horsemen still come knocking.

But now I recognize them, and recognition is the beginning of freedom.

I have a stubborn feeling that I was created for something greater than the fear I’ve inherited.

This raw, messy, wholesome journey isn’t about becoming someone new.

Maybe it’s about returning to the version of myself that existed before fear convinced me I was too much, too little, or never enough. And even if I may not remember exactly who that was, I can always follow where the light leadeth me.

For the sun rises and sets every day. And that means I can always try again.

And again.

And again.

From Letters by Joy.

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