Who the F*ck is Olu?

It was my second session with my coach. Thankfully, it didn’t leave me emotionally distraught, my brain scattered, my thoughts all over the place, or feeling like someone had just bored straight into my soul with fiber lasers the way our first session did. We were just about to close the call when she handed me an assignment of three questions to complete; the first was about my strengths, which was easy enough because I could just ask other people what they thought instead of having to figure it all out myself.

The second question she asked was also quite straightforward since I already knew the answer, but the final question, as if the question wasn’t hard enough, came with the frustrating caveat that I had to answer it in just one single sentence: “Who is Olu?” I remember staring at this question in particular and getting flustered because, really, who the fuck am I?

I told her it was a difficult question to answer because even I didn’t know… but that wasn’t entirely true. The question is hard, yes, but not because I don’t know who I am; rather, because I simply don’t know how to concisely describe her.

…and as some of you know already, I am notorious for writing sweeping prose when I ought to be writing a short draft, so how on earth could I condense the sheer essence of this gorgeous, amazingly complex human (yep, I’m hyping myself) into just one sentence without it becoming the longest, most convoluted sentence history has ever recorded?

I have been battling with how best to describe myself for a long time, as evidenced by the constantly shifting bio on my About page:

Who am I? The billion-dollar question... I’ve often wondered how to describe myself. By my hobbies? Flaws? Strengths? Values? Beliefs? Career? Which of these, if you hear them, would make you say, “Yes, I know who Olu is”?

This excerpt, by the way, is a brand-new arc that wasn’t there before, because the agonizing process of regurgitating this question means I have to continuously rewrite the description of who I think I am.

As usual, I always have a song playing in the background of my mind while writing, and for this particular existential crisis, it’s If You Ask Me (Na Who I Go Ask) by Omawumi, so please do me the honor of putting it on while you read this.

After much thought, the only conclusion I have reached so far is that a person is perhaps the intricate sum of many disparate things, much like I listed in my about section. Perhaps our identity is less about finding a coherent answer and more about gathering enough pieces of the confusing puzzle that is you until a recognizable picture finally starts to emerge.

However, since this exercise demands a single sentence, I guess one of the most important puzzle pieces of who I am, and perhaps the sum of my entire being, is simply that I contain multitudes. I also quite think it is the best possible answer to the question, but now, I just need to figure out how to phrase it in a way that makes sense to my coach.

But for you, dear reader, I will happily expatiate a little bit more…

While most people seem to have two or three versions of themselves, I possess about seven; some are versions people will see often, while others they never will because they live strictly in my head, meaning only I will ever get to meet them. I am basically like Jessica and Niki in Heroes, except I am split into far more than two.

For instance, there is the Olu people usually meet first: the energetic, bubbly, outgoing, life of the party, and seemingly extroverted woman. And then, standing right behind her, is the shy and quieter Olu who willingly disappears into her own thoughts, prefers listening over talking, and can easily spend hours entirely alone without feeling a shred of loneliness. I also possess the social battery of a house cat, which explains my pendulum swings between extroversion and introversion at social gatherings.

People rarely believe this quiet version of me exists because they usually encounter the extroverted one long before they earn access to the quiet one, and when she finally does appear, they almost always assume something is terribly wrong. But the truth is, if you have never met the quiet me, then I don’t think you have ever fully met me at all.

Because I spend so much time observing, I remember an alarming amount of what people tell me. Even when I am pretending to be preoccupied with something else entirely, my ears are often wide open, taking notes.

Surprise, surprise, but I also do not enjoy being the center of attention, though I oftentimes find myself thrust into it anyway due to my vibrant hairstyles and the rich color of my skin. Living in a white-dominated country usually guarantees that I stand out, and while I am incredibly proud to show off my African hairstyles, I frequently find myself at a loss for what to do with the unprompted attention.

I am also a walking paradox, both spontaneous and meticulously careful. Although the vast majority of people would probably say I lean more toward the careful side, if you have been paying attention to me in recent months, you would know my spontaneous self has been running wild.

Alongside that unpredictability is my confidence; you don’t know this, but when I shit, I shit high self-esteem. Despite my bravado, I have moments when I battle self-doubt. What I doubt far more often than myself, however, are other people. I do not naturally trust people’s underlying intentions, but to be fair, I also do not completely trust mine either.

That underlying skepticism is exactly why I spend so much time reflecting on my actions, constantly needing to know whether I am being genuinely honest with myself and whether my deep-seated motivations are exactly what I claim them to be.

Driven by that same reflection, I am endlessly curious. I want to know why things are the way they are, why certain design decisions were made, why people behave the way they do, and most importantly, why I behave the way I do.

I question everything, which serves as both my greatest strength and my most exhausting source of frustration. I desperately want things to make perfect sense, and while they occasionally do, more often than not, they don’t. As much as I fundamentally believe we are meant to question the world around us, I have come to accept that we are probably not meant to actually understand everything.

I also have entirely too many fleeting interests and move so rapidly between them that I will spare you a comprehensive list of my hobbies, simply because even I cannot manage to keep up with the endless rotation of things that captivate me.

Finally, there is the complicated matter of my overthinking every piece of shit in my life, which is exactly why I end up writing so much. The irony is not lost on me that I am meant to write a one-liner about who I am, yet here I am doing the exact opposite.

But writing is my lifeline; it helps me understand my own mind, empathize with other people, and process the emotions that would otherwise mess me up. I sometimes have difficulty expressing myself in conversation, but if you give me a blank page and enough time, I will find my way to exactly what I mean.

Oh, and before I forget, Olu is also incredibly funny. I might not have cracked you up yet, but I amuse myself every day for free.

So, after all of these words have been written, who exactly is Olu in a single, well-crafted line? Because even after writing all of these paragraphs, there is still so much of who I am now and the versions of myself that have not even emerged yet that I have left out.

So, is the best, most honest answer simply that Olu is still in the active process of becoming? …Except, I know that is a sus answer to give, which will buttress the claim of the people who have at one point or another said I am not straightforward.

Or perhaps she is a tenacious woman, as so many people have pointed out when detailing my strengths, who contains contradictions: quiet and loud, certain and questioning, serious and funny. Someone who is endlessly curious about the depths of herself and the world around her.

Which of these is the actual truth about Olu? All of them, none of them, or maybe just some?