26 July 2015.

I stopped living the day I discovered I was alone. He was still there, his clothes shared the locker with mine, his masculine scent still on the bed we shared.
But he didn't love me and I was alone.
He didn't notice me anymore, not when I started wearing make up or when I started wearing long weaves. He didn't drop a compliment even when i got alot of those from colleagues at work or even his friends.
He was absent. Silent. And that killed me. In the most unbearable way possible.
Her name was Sharon. He spent alot of time with her and when he was with me he spent it texting her.
He noticed everything about her.
Today he was texting her again. I was writing in journal. Something I began doing alot since the silence in the apartment seemed to be eating me up from the inside.
"What are you always writing in that your dumb book?" He asked uninterested,  taking me by surprise regardless.
I held out my open diary and he read out the words that have been fighting with my lips to be voiced out.
"I hope for a day that I would write and my words would bewitch you, hold you down like a spell, make you mine. I hope for a day you wouldn't want to leave, not for her big tits or her light skin. I hope for a day your soul would be fettered to mine, bound in deep devotion, blood vessels entwined together, destinies merged. I hope for a day that I wouldn't have to need you, because you would be mine. I hope for a day your silence wouldn't make my heart palpitate and leave me broken, struggling to breathe, struggling to live."
The look in his eyes told me I was late. That he had left a long time ago.
I took my book and started scribbling again.
"Where do heart breakers burn? They steal souls, making living impossible. Living will feel disorienting, like wearing a shirt inside out. It is like murder. And murderers burn."

12.03.2015

You always wanted to give up on love, you really wanted to. You gave yourself shrink worthy advice while facing the mirror, giving yourself reasons to move on, to leave him behind. You told yourself you would be better alone, or did you actually say you wanted to be alone. I mean I understand, after being with such an asshole you needed to say those words, those empty promises to yourself. You knew inside you were crumbling, bone crashing on top another, muscles melting into water. You strutted out that day both determined and afraid. Ready to be the new you, empowered and intelligent enough, enough not to go back to her former mistakes. But you were more afraid.

Maybe because your mistake was 6 feet, lean muscled, fine chiseled face structured, with extraordinary eyes that stripped you bare and made your strength buckle so easily. Your mistake was your first love and he did not even have to look at you for you to remember yourself, shy and ignorant while he ravaged you through pain to pleasure. Nights where he loved you senseless till each part of your body knew him well enough to respond, tingling when you sensed his presence in a room. Love making so passionate that you had accepted it was impossible getting over that.

You were always too intense, frightening in the way you wanted him, unashamed and sacrificial. Needing him even on nights he was busy needing another. You were too busy waiting for him to call to have a life, too busy making him happy to make yourself happy. Your friends tell you no man can live up to the one who lives in your head, but you found him, only that he did not find you, you were there but he wasn't. You wanted him around so you closed your mouth more, never complained when he treated you less than the woman that you are. You settled on being soft and understanding, or foolish, isn't that the word for it? You wanted to be prettier like the girls he paid more attention to, tried putting on some make up, saving up money for that soft full weave with bouncy curls. You fantasied his fingers running through those curls while he fucked you. But you only lost him and yourself. You could not make him love you, you built a home full of memories with him, Memories where he was someone else, loving you like he should, before everything changed. Memories that made the thought of leaving unbearable.

Ceremonies.

Is there a particular moment we begin spiraling down the bottom? I used to wonder if life snapped in clean halves bending at the exact moment when we departed from who we could justify into something strange and inexcusable.
The question of when everything started to fall apart hunts me, sleepless nights spent weighing each memory with significance like a weary detective obsessing over a timeline. Trying to discover the exact moment the house in Shomolu started to collapse, how long had it been? Were the foundations trembling the day papa talked about his new wife? The day we discovered Eka, the help next door was pregnant?
Mama said she felt when it happened, the Sunday the walls of the apartment caved in. The things we left behind, my dark doll with the green shoes, the dress with pink flowers, the chance of goodbyes we didn’t have. My parents never let me visit the ruin.
Maybe it was the day thick strands of hair fell on the marble floor of my room. I stood staring in the mirror, gripping the scissors a little too tight. It started with what was maybe an inch, a little trim, and then a couple of inches till there was barely anything left. Staring in the mirror, then at the comb, at hair on the floor, it’s been 7 years since her last haircut and 7 hours since a steam. The scissors had always been lying there rarely ever used.

Sometimes I hoped just as people faded away, memories of them would leave too, but they keep hovering, mists of confusion, making you hold on to nothing, leaving you struggling to move on. Time had a way of transforming Jade from that geeky timid child in nursery school whom she shared her cakes with to six feet with lean muscles who she day dreamt of sharing more than her cakes with. If love was laughing at his jokes and looking to him for agreement in a delicate and unspoken way. If love was holding hands in public places and kissing in school corridors. If love was moaning his name while grabbing a fist full of his thick black afro hair while he kissed her breasts. If love was wriggling in pleasure with her dress rolled up and shifted aside while he touched her warm skin. If love was a confused girl giving into a new strange graveness, a weak imitation of what she imagined love making to be and the moment being just as wonderful because of the strong weakening feeling she had for him. Then love was what destroyed her, like her mother, she felt it happen,  the growing distance,  his muffled one word responses, the deafening silence till she saw him holding her and whispering intimately in her ears. It had been two months since then,  he didn't even say goodbye, and she lived everyday in a new pain, holding onto her pillow and crying and begging herself to forget him. Somehow her life had evolved around him that her life before him seemed like a blur of events. She looked at herself or what seemed to be the version of her that existed, gripping the bottle of Tylenol she had kept hidden under her clothes for the past 5 days. She swallowed the first red five pills first, she had read online that a mere overdose could damage the liver and lead to death. She poured out a handful this time, not bothering to count how many and swallowed them. Waves of nausea hit her, somehow she felt a certain peace,  she didn't feel her pain as she lid into unconsciousness.
There are events that demand a certain ritual, a rite where you lose yourself to your pain, where you float like the lifeless leaves that have been dried up in the heat of the sun.

Adulthood and Absences.

My youth held nothing but the relentless struggle to be accepted by society, to be loved by someone and to be approved by my parents and myself, for I set the highest expectations for myself not them. My youth held a certain emptiness of a vast space where excitement and passion used to be. Each day started with a deep longing for something different and an overwhelming sense of tiredness from being bored of my routine life. Growing up closed me off from the world and my fears multiplied their numbers because understanding how cruel people could be would do that to you. Because I missed being care free and ignorant, I missed trusting and loving people blindly, I missed the uncomplicated innocent life of my childhood.

Because when I think of my life and the time I had been most alive, I think of when I was 3, running around our family house butt naked with my sister, laughing and screaming.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive, I think of when I was 5, playing hide and seek with my siblings and my cousins, hiding in the most obvious places and being genuinely surprised when we got found.

Because when I think of when I was most alive I think of when I was 7, and I wandered away from school, negligent of the danger of my actions, wandering curiously on unfamiliar streets and wandering away farther without worrying about the fact I didn't know how to retrace my steps back. Looking at my dad's teary eyes with my questioning ones when he found me later that evening, unaware of the nightmare I had caused my parents.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive I think of when I was 13 and I had my first crush. Of how it didn't matter that he didn't know who I was and how I felt. But all that mattered was the dizzying flutter in my chest and the butterflies in my tummy whenever I saw him.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive I think of my first kiss, from a guy I didn't even love, a guy that bullied me for my lunch cakes, a guy that teased me every chance he got. But he held me and took my lips with his and in those brief seconds,  the confusion,  the blood rush and the many other things I felt and didn't understand had me smiling to myself later that night while replaying the event in my head.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive I remember being laid on his bed, stripped of my dress and lace panties,  having my legs spread apart and cold jelly poured around the lower part of my tummy down the vee of my legs. I remember his warm tongue loving me, kissing and licking. And how I couldn't breathe from the intoxicating feeling and the blinding pleasure. How my body kept convulsing, responding to his tongue.
I remember those years and I feel empty, how becoming an adult took all of that away. How growing up created one absence after another and all I'm doing is struggling to deal.

27.01.2015

Too often words are not enough. To express what you feel and how you feel it.

How do you tell someone that you're burning for him? That he owns your heart?

What if those words are still not enough?

This is something more than words. He was something she couldn't recover from.

Even now he's miles away, she could feel his love holding her like the skies hold the sun and the stars and the moon, embracing her very being, making her warm.

She was unsure of the next minute or tomorrow or the future but she loved him so much it hurt. And in this moment he loved her too and that was all she needed. It was her truth. 

Miracle hungry Christians and Thieving Pastors

"Write an amount, the kind of amount you would like to receive from God."
I stared at the cheque book I had just brought  out from my suitcase. I would give half of what I own. That should be enough.
The pastor was speaking in tongues now. Then he said again, "Try God and see. Brethren, give Him 24 hours and He will surprise you."
The crowded roared "AMEN", busy stuffing money in envelopes and writing down in their cheque books like I was about to.
The title of the sermon was "24 hour miracle" and Pastor Nicholas was the guest speaker today. Our pastor, Pastor Clement was behind, eyes closed, vibrating in prayer.
Pastor Nicholas was still speaking, "Give him a 100 thousand and he would give you two hundred thousand, give him five hundred thousand and he will give you a million, give him a million and he would make you a billionare... (more speaking in tongues)"
Somehow I felt I should do better than giving God half, I was going to give him everything,  after all I would become a billionare in just 24 hours. So I gave.
We all congratulated each other and danced in thanksgiving and some even gave testimonies in advance. Then the service was over and I went home.
I went home and waited for my miracle. No call. No alert. No visit from the angel who would mysteriously give me my billions.  I looked at the time nervous. And checked my phone maybe it was the network acting up. I strolled out to the nearest atm to check my balance. I struggled to breathe easily.  Nothing. Maybe the 24 hours was to start after that day. I went back home with a strong sick feeling in the pit of my belly.
The next day went by, that week went by, and nothing still. I summoned courage to go to the church and request for how to locate Pastor Nicholas.
He had left the country and Pastor Clement had been unavailable since Sunday.
I was in a lot of trouble. I called my mom.
She was in my house that evening screaming and shaking her head, looking into nothing saying repeatedly, "I have raised a fool"
I was dumb unable to find words to comfort her or myself. I just stood there, feeling really sick in my stomach.

Not everytime front, sometimes love fiercely.

Lesson of the day: Say what you want, how you want to say it, love who you love, the way your heart wants to and the one that will stay will come.

Because you were the moon and I was the endless gloomy sky. 
Our love was different, beautiful, dark and extraordinary, brave regardless of time and it's inevitable doom. 
So I liked to believe.                  
I had the deep terrible lingering fear of uncertainty. Of myself. The way I loved you fiercely the same overwhelming way the universe swallows our world.
I wondered if we shared the same secret, if you feared losing me too.  If at anytime I wandered away, your heart would feel my absence.   
Or whether the laws of love applied to us. Laws that dictated who to love, how to show love and how much love to give.
  I laid myself bare before you, feelings engraved on my skin, oozing intoxicatingly from my being. I loved you the way my heart knew.     
Was that what sent you away?  Or did you just yearn for brighter skies?