Wednesday 9 December 2009

Nigeria is My Country, I Have a Right to Discuss It

It is possible to live in decay and not know it
It started right before your eyes
You noticed the first crack but you procrastinated
I'll go back and fix it another day
Then that crack causes another crack
Yet again you noticed but failed to act
Afterall you have your hands full with other stuff that needs immediate attention
Until the whole thing bloody cracks
That you no longer notice it
Even though those cracks cut you here and there
It's nothing you're not used to it
So you don't see it as a big deal
People on the other side see how damaged things are
But you live in the damage so you don't know
When they mention it you tell them to keep shut and mind their own business
Yet in your mind you feel perplexed about your plight
Nothing a brave face in public wont cure, you assure yourself.
No matter how much you psyche yourself up
No matter how much you refuse to see the problem
It doesn't take the problem away
It is there and will always be there no matter how much your denial grow.
Nigeria has a problem, let us see it
If you're going to make an enemy of the person who points out a problem but profers no solution
and make a friend of the person who just fails to see the problem
then you're a bigger fool than I thought
I kid myself not
I am overwhelmed by the multiple problems we face as a nation
I dont even know if there's anything I can do to help
But please let no one tell me I cant discuss my country
Discussing a problem is not the same as tarnishing the image of the country
Please know the difference and keep your peace.

Monday 7 December 2009

This Love Palaver Sef

So it's another Monday and while making my commute to work I was listening to songs on my Samsung Tocco. As I settled on my choice train seat my best heartbreak song came on; Think Twice by Celine Dion. Thinking of it now I don’t know which is my best between that song and that of Whitney Houston, Heartbreak Hotel. Having suffered two heartbreaks within the last two years those songs never fail to remind me of the pain I actually went through and the various things I did to cope with them. My dating life is rather chequered and full of drama and while I loved the highs in my early twenties, I think as I've grown older I've become less resilient.

I thought specifically about my heartbreak before the most recent. That happened more like a dream really because I wasn't expecting it. I mean we were planning on moving in together and starting our own family after deciding that the marriage route was not for us and zap! he was gone! I failed to believe I was never going to see him again after that fateful morning that he kissed my sleepy head goodbye. If I had known that was the last time I would see him I would have got my lazy ass out of bed and at least seen him off to the airport, hugged him tightly and cried on his shoulder. At least let that scene haunt him for the rest of his life…if he has a heart that is. How did I cope with it? Well I splashed out on a party and just hit the club scenes until I danced him out of my system. The anger and betrayal I felt kind of helped too and the fact that I soon got myself involved in a lusty relationship soon afterwards that I knew wasn't going anywhere. Lust did help me a lot but when that ended it was just as bad as the heartbreak because once again I felt empty and betrayed. I have no one to blame but me.

My most recent heartbreak started really from the inception of the short-lived relationship. Not having met someone to remotely like in the past year I met this seemingly plain looking man but with bags of personality. It wasn't love at first sight but after sleeping and waking up the next day and dreamt of him, I started to pay him a lot more attention. The sail went on from there really and I didn't know what it was but I just couldn't get enough of this guy. I wanted to speak to him all the time and spend all my days with him. He on the other hand was trying to be cautious and he claimed he didn’t understand how I am so into him since I seem to have a healthy social life. He was right, even I didn’t know especially as he didn't have a good profile. Here, I was dealing with a divorced father of two who listened to dodgy music and had zero social credentials. But who understands how these feelings work eh? Apart from that he clearly had a lot going on in his head because he kept questioning my 'realness' and he was pretty mean to me on so many levels. I didn't mind though. I wanted to prove to him that I was the real deal and while doing this I over-compensated for my worldliness and did a few stupid things which marked the end of the relationship. He called off the relationship out of the blue and all my plea fell on deaf ears. I literally felt my world was coming to an end. As a fighter and not ready to let go yet I somehow brought things back on track but really things were never the same again except for the sex which could never be bad even if we tried.

After we got back together, his questioning of my realness didn't stop and coupled with finding out some unpalatable facts about him I decided it was time to dump his ass and I did. I revealed what I found to him and said hurtful things to him thinking that was it. Only my stupid feelings for him wouldn't let me. I went back grovelling and true to his meanness he told me where to go. He even spurned my friendship. That was a first. Looking back at how I coped, I figured I actually didn’t cope because the whole drama started two weeks into our relationship and it was a real rollercoaster. So this wasn't one massive heartbreak, it was a systematic one and one which when I had the bad days it was pretty bad and the good days were really good. It was hard for me to be angry at him. In the end he came out of the relationship smelling of roses and me as the scarlet woman. Somehow in the whole charade, what really went down was lost on both of us and I was left with heaps of blames even though deep down I know I wasn't to blame. We were just two mis-matched people who couldn't make things work.

I am on the other side now looking back, enjoying the little things of life. I guess in life we go through certain things so as to appreciate little blessings.

Have a good one guys.