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Diriye Osman

Diriye Osman Biography

Short story writer

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“To be queer and Somali and neurodivergent is concentrated alchemy, and yet we constantly raid the cupboards of our souls like we are a people of lack. When you operate from a position of lack, you don’t realise you’re robbing yourself of everything worth preserving, and forgetting to toss away all the empty pursuits that lost their synthetic spell several generations ago. And suddenly, you’re wide awake in a new country, in a new decade, and you’re startled because you can’t remember how you got here or why you’re still feeling hunted by your own reflection. You can’t remember how or when or where or why you misplaced all your breezy dynamism—all that wildness of perception you used to project with such ferocity. Where did it all go? We have conveniently forgotten that we have always been fundamentally idiosyncratic and fantastic and fucking alive. Instead we feed ourselves and our children and our children’s children prosaic fuckery for what? Respectability politics? So that if we twist and try our damnedest to conform to standards that have never been coded into our collective DNA, that we’ll what? Somehow be less strange? Less weird and wonderful? That we’ll transcend the soul-snuffing snare that is the myth of the good immigrant? That if we mute all of our magic—everything that makes us some of the most innately interesting, individualistic and fun, funny beings in this boring, beige-as-fuck world—that we’ll win over whom? Folks who don’t season their food right or whose understanding of freedom is a shitty Friday night sloshfest at a shitty pub playing shitty music, chatting nonsense that no-one with a single iota of sense gives a fuck about? Is that who you are so deeply invested in trying to impress? If so, then go for it, but don’t fool yourself for a fucking second into thinking that trying desperately to shave off your elemental peculiarities through self-diminishment is salvation, because it simply isn’t, honey, and it never will be.”

Self EsteemImmigrationQueerNeurodivergenceSomali WritersQueer AfricanQueer SomaliRespectability PoliticsQueer Africa
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“I have always been a loner. Even as a child, when my family and friends were off attending parties I would be sequestered in my room, sketchpad in hand, stereo by my side, listening to seductive R&B. Solitude was something I took for granted. Coming from a large family I needed solitude in order to think straight and paint my way out of confusion. My parents were accepting of the fact that I kept to myself and they respected my decision even though it went against my Somali upbringing, a culture rooted in boisterousness and joie de vivre.”

SolitudeAlonenessSomali
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“There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you’re a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it’s about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing charity work, painting or, in my case, writing can be a galvanizing part of the recovery process. Keeping the brain and the body active can give life a semblance of pleasure and hope. This is what writing has done for me. I took every traumatic element of my condition and channelled it into something useful.”

InspirationalMental HealthMental IllnessAgencyBipolar DisorderFree Will QuotesBipolar Quotes
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“You may feel like your future is slipping from your grasp, that if you don’t rush now to greet your dreams you might lose out on them, but please wait. If you are coming from an unsupportive environment with regards to your sexual orientation, the best thing to do is to establish your independence. Make sure you have a support network of loving and loyal friends. Make sure you have somewhere to live. Make sure you have an income to sustain you. Place a premium on your life. Always, always place a premium on your life. When all these elements have been configured and your psychic compass is at the ready, go forth in the knowledge that you’ve created a self-preserving future for yourself. Go forth in the knowledge that you have a safe space to call home. Go forth in the knowledge that not only are you kicking ass but you are kicking ass on a major scale. Go forth in the knowledge that not only are you winning at life but you have already won.”

InspirationalComing Out Of The ClosetComing Out Stories
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“I wear makeup and I don dramatic attire because I like control. I’m not interested in controlling others but I’m invested in strict self-governance. This is why I don’t do many face-to-face interviews. I don’t like being caught off-guard. It all goes back to that attempt to create order amidst disorder. One of the most frightening things about losing your mind is that you feel like your body, your brain, every part of your essence is being invaded. There is such a palpable helplessness to that narrative and I hate the sense of victimhood that it implies. Certainly, this is how I felt during my moments of psychological disquiet. I felt like my personhood was under attack. Performativity is important to me because I’m the teller of my own stories. I have been performing these multiple roles for so long that they have bled into my identity. I have become the man that I always wanted to be.”

Self EsteemIdentitySexualitySelf ControlVictimhoodIdentity Politics
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“Happiness is two-hour long baths during an energy crisis because it's fantastically irresponsible and fabulous for your soul. Happiness is fresh Spanish perfume on your collarbone and sipping ice-cool Caipirinhas with fun people whilst Mariah Carey's 'Babydoll' plays in the background on a booming system. Happiness is never giving a fuck about becoming fat because you will always fuck, and instead enjoying delicious, deeply satisfying suya and switching your phone off for a whole weekend. Happiness is bad bitches who no longer front like insanity is not festering on every floor of the Western Promise and finally stop giving a fuck. That's happiness.”

Inspirational QuotesHappiness QuotesHappiness QuoteBody PositivitySex Positive FeminismQueer LitSomali WritersQueer AfricanRadical Joy
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“Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.”

Happiness QuotesDecolonizationAntiracismSomali WritersQueer AfricanRadical JoyBlack QueerQueer Somali
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“Happiness is not spending a single second reading endless—and I mean, endless—shitposts in 'The Guardian' masquerading as reportage about the kind of very, very boring morons you actively go out of your way to never meet. Happiness is The Wellcome Collection, but never the Hayward. Happiness is Kylie Minogue and Graham Norton because they're both dope, but not Dua Lipa or Calvin Harris because even though they both seem to be everywhere, all the time, I swear I cannot for the life of me name a single song of theirs.”

Happiness QuotesHappiness AdviceQueer LitSomali WritersQueer AfricanRadical JoyBlack QueerDua Lipa
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“Happiness is day drinking in the middle of Oxford Street whilst dancing to Megan Thee Stallion on a busy weekend after having mixed up all your meds because surprises are fun, and sometimes it's important to be reminded of why you first moved to this weirdly wonderful, obscenely overpriced city. That is happiness and you don't need a therapist or a witchy, wasted transwoman to tell you that shit. Invest in a bombass vibrator, be nice to sweet old ladies on the tube because if you're really lucky, you too will one day grow old and you'll want someone to treat you with a modicum of kindness and care. And stop making yourself go grey with needless stress! Now get the fuck out of my house. You're starting to harsh my buzz.”

Inspirational QuotesHappiness QuotesSomali WritersQueer AfricanBlack JoyBlack QueerMegan Thee Stallion
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“Home is in my hair, my lips, my arms, my thighs, my feet and my hands. I am my own home. And when I wake up crying in the morning, thinking of how lonely I am, I pinch my skin, tug at my hair, remind myself that I am alive. Remind myself to step outside and greet the morning. Remind myself that it’s all about forward motion. It’s all about change. It’s all about that elusive state. Freedom.”

ThinkingStatesHomeHandsMy OwnStepsMorningAliveFeetCryHairArmsLonelySkinsWake UpLipsElusiveThighsI Am AliveForward Motion
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“Daughter, I want you to form the most intense, loving relationship with yourself. Only then will you realize your capacity for kindness and emotional expansiveness. Daughter, after you have formed this relationship with yourself, I want you to love others with the openness and humility that you always embodied as a child. Daughter, I want you to forgive easily, laugh loudly and never allow yourself to become the invisible, silent woman that your mother was. Daughter, this is how we soften our hearts and become better human beings.”

WantHumansHeartChildrenFormMotherRealizingHuman BeingsKindnessLaughingHumilityEmotionalDaughterCapacityForgivingSilentInvisibleIntenseOpennessI Want YouLoving RelationshipsExpansiveness
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“In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives.”

BodyNightTurnsImaginationSecretOur LivesMagicSweetLimitsSummerGardenWindowSouthDefeatLondonTinyHeatApartmentUnwillingStickyBorderlineSummer NightsSecret GardenMagnoliasMarigoldsMogadishu
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“If dislocation is a permanent state, I want to try and explore the possibility of temporary impermanence. If dislocation is a tatty dress from the thrift store, perhaps the solution is not to cast it aside. If dislocation is a tatty dress, perhaps the only solution is to mend it, scent it and wear it until everything about it signifies newness, something close to the perpetual promise of a fresh start.”

IfsWantTryingStatesPossibilityPromiseSolutionsDressesCastsStoresPermanentTemporaryPerpetualScentImpermanenceThriftFresh StartNewnessDislocation
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