25-01-2016

"What happened?"
 ...silence.....
 Stare into nothing. You are deep in thought. Pretending to try to remember what you never really forgot.

"Did you forget how to feel?"
"Feelings are visitors, let them come and let them go"
 Have teary eyes now. It is important you look like someone capable of exhibiting emotions.

"You used to be vulnerable and fearless"
"We all have paranoia inside us"
This wasn't a lie.

"I meant you were an optimist. What changed?"
"Reality"
This wasn't a lie either.

"Did someone hurt you? Is that what changed you?"
"I still carry memories of how each one of them left"
You were too intense. Most of them had said this.

You don't talk about the details.
That it is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything, so very deeply.
To feel real love and true happiness with someone in a way that made you complete
And then have it all taken away
leaving you the worst kind of hurt.

You don't talk of the huge man and his huge self inside you.
He was going to help you get a job so you agreed to visit his hotel room even though you were aware he had always looked at you with hungry eyes. Despite your tears and pleas, he pins you down and pushes himself forcefully into your tight space. His hand is over your mouth and no one hears your muffled screams. He rolls away from you, speaking as though to himself how disappointing you turned out to be. You are in so much pain for the next few days.

You don't say who you are. A drunk
You don't say you got it from your father.
Who after working 12 joyless hours with the other laborers at the site and answering "yes sir" to a boy half his age, could only find his testicles was in the big Ragolis bottles filled with vile tasting white water he bought mostly on credit from his palmwine tapper friend. Your mom had scars almost every time this happened, other scars cut deeper than the dark pink colored bruises on her skin.

You don't talk about the looks and whispers that came with being unmarried at 40.
For people to see you as undesirable. The looks of scorn, the unbearable ones of pity. Your younger sister had been married off while you were the stock fish drying up in your father's compound. Your mom would kneel and pray at night, binding the witches that were chasing men away from you.

You don't talk about the accident at your sister's house.
How you carried your married sister's baby in your hand and a cup of American honey in the other.
You slipped, missed a step and let the baby go. Her head met the edge of the step. There was so much blood. You didn't drop your drink however, It didn't even spill, not one drop. Your sister doesn't know the truth, but she doesn't forgive you either.

You don't say anything. You just stare into nothing.

Untitled

How do you know the one?
What sign is the universe supposed to give so you know
Your soul mate,
Destinies intertwined. Fates to become one
That this person will always love you.
Always understand
Never leave you.

That this person will not fall out of love with you
Bola didn't know what that meant till her husband for 22 years told her he didnt love her anymore and he had fallen in love with another woman.

That this person will not become your abusive husband.
Sara finally got the courage to leave her husband,  showing up at her parents' sometime after midnight, swollen faced in torn clothes sobbing out two years of domestic violence.

That this person will not make you feel like nothing, undesirable nothing.
Irene knew her husband chased younger girls. She now weighed 3 times more and wore big unattractive clothes to hide her tummy folds. It had been years since her husband touched her or even wanted her in that way. But she wasn't the same person in their wedding photo that hung on the wall of the living room.

That this person will not make you see love differently, smaller than what it is.
"You shouldn't show you care so much, it's the number one rule of the love game" Anita advised her heartbroken friend.

That this person won't make you pretend that you are happy and what it is love just because the truth is too painful and the loneliness unbearable.

09-12-2015

I hope your boyfriend isn't a philanthropist. Boyfriend to the boyfriendless. A listening ear to their many problems. a shoulder for them to cry all their lonely tears on.

I hope you will not end up loving someone who will leave you. Someone who will dizzy you such that anyone after him will seem like a shadow and love will become that bitter regret.

I hope you don't grow up witnessing your mother live in a loveless marriage. I hope your heart doesn't break looking at her ever sad eyes and her feeble attempts at smiling. I hope you are unaware you are the reason she is sacrificing her happiness.

I hope you do not look at your life, years from now and feel like shit. I hope you will be able to forgive yourself for all the wrong decisions you made in the name of love, the careless ones you made because you were tired of being lonely.

I hope you grow up scared of men, their sex and their semen.

The man is the boy with intense eyes that told you he loved you, the one whose stares were so hot you got nervous and fidgeted with your sweaty palms. The man is the boy who made your heart flutter and your eyes dreamy. The man is the boy who made you smile a lot, who made you hope. The man is the boy who left you after you bared your soul to him, the one who made living unbearable.

Their sex is his penis, standing like a sharp weapon, ready to tear your woman space. Their sex is his sweaty voice in your ear, telling you - "just the tip", "i'll be gentle", "i want you so much right now". Their sex is the deafening pain you feel when he puts more than the tip inside. Their sex is his violent thrusts despite your tears, pleading and feeble attempts to push him away.

Their semen is morning sickness, weight gain and a stomach the size of a pumpkin. Their semen is a big round secret under your dress that can not be hidden. Their semen is disappointed parents, your yelling father and your crying mother. Their semen is stopping school because the principal thinks you are a bad example. Their semen is leaving church because you can not deal with the judgemental stares. Their semen is housing another human inside you, their semen is labour pain, your baby splitting your body open to come out. Their semen is a crying baby, money for baby things, raising a child by yourself.

17/11/2015

It had been a bit more than a year since you had told someone those words
"I love you"
Admitting that you were helplessly drawn to another person. Making yourself the worst kind of vulnerable. Giving your heart to someone else. You remember how that wrecked you. How you had struggled to live after he left.
How everyone thought you were stupid for making yourself miserable for him but they didn't understand you did not know how to go back to being strangers with someone that has seen your soul.
How it had been 10 months since you spoke to your best friend.
And somehow things were never the same.
You do not know how to tell people he took a part of you with him, how the bits of you left cannot contain anyone else but yourself.
Now no one gets close enough to know you. You managed to leave every beautiful thing that could have been love.
The guy last year, on your birthday dinner, with hopeful eyes and a diamond ring in the pocket of his jacket. You told him not to embarrass you in public.
He never got the chance to bring it up again, that was the last day he saw you.
You just knew they were all going to hurt you.
The one who wanted to know your name the morning after drunken lust and meaningless sex. The one that looked so appealing after your sixth shot of tequila the night before at the bar.
You told him there's no need.
Your friend asks you why you are being difficult and why you have refused to try again, you tell her they are all going to leave, she asks you how you know, you tell her you can smell rejection from miles away.

8-11-2015

Being alive is about feeling things.
To love. Hate. Hurt. Grieve. Break. And be destroyed.
And build ourselves up to be destroyed again.
We are built to survive through pain not manage it or dull the sensation
Because then it never really goes away.
I hope one day your pain will be useful to you.
That it will give you. Strength. Courage. Comforting words to give another
Going through a similar experience.
Or it will give you a a gift.
And one day you will write words that people will find inspiring
Words written with your bleeding heart and tears
Because in your pain lies all the light you currently cannot see
And all the future life has for you.

06- 11-2015

Because this is exactly what's on my mind this morning. 

I don't feel a woman is demanding or selfish when she wants effortless amazing love where the other person treats her exactly how she wants to be treated without having to spell it out to him. 

Virginia Wolf gets me on this.

“I’ve been quite miserable. You’d call me selfish — but I feel it more and more; I feel the need to be alone with people who understand without having to try. I need that sense of effortlessness right there — I just refuse to hold back these days. I refuse to settle for some lucidity of mind in my own privacy and then no more energy left, no more vitality left to keep me going. It’s all anxiety and restlessness. And — I find it more and more hard to waste my time on people I don’t truly care about for I feel they don’t care enough either. Or they do care, in their own way, but it’s just not meaningful to me whatsoever. Does it all lie in my complete inability to receive? At any rate, I think they surely like the idea — that’s why they obviously keep coming around for tea! But at this point, I can’t have that — and there’s no point, really, for they don’t understand, ever, and in all my misery I am still pretty arrogant and demanding enough to believe that it is my right to wish to be felt rather than be understood but that doesn’t seem to happen either. So, here it is: is it possible? I ask. Is “emotion” possible without “understanding” of some sort?”

- Virginia Woolf

The Road to Recovery

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step – Lao Tzu

If we want change in Nigeria - we need to start small.

Start with your boss’s friend who at the last presentation, told you you had a nice smile with his eyes fixed on your round ass in your tight skirt.

Start with your fiancé’s mother who is against your marrying her son because she thinks edo people are diabolical.

Start with your father who beat your mother last night till she was red and bruised for serving him soup that was not freshly made.

Start with your pastor who told his congregation that the church will be collecting 5 sets of offerings as his Range Rover and Mercedes Benz are not befitting for the man of God that he is. He has his eyes set on higher grounds - a new private jet because he is the mouth piece of God.

Start with the boy you met on twitter, the one that made you feel special just so he could get you drunk and feel you up.

Start with your married uncle who gives you orgasms against the same wall his wedding picture frame hangs on.

Start with the fear of going to your village, the many deaths and the wickedness that lurks in the hearts of your kinsmen. You have heard the charm to cause a stroke costs just ₦50. How can evil be so affordable?

Start with the lies you told your parents, you were never really in school, always in the cars of strange men.

Start with your swollen heart and all the baggage of hurt it carries – the names of the people you have refused to forgive.

Start with the sins you commit without flinching and the abominations that happen that do not rob you of sleep.