A CYNIC’S GUIDE TO GETTING HITCHED – EPISODE 6

Withdrawal



One month, two weeks and three days since I refused to see or speak to anyone. My mother can’t figure out what is wrong and it drives her mad. She yells constantly about not eating and being silly but it all falls on deaf ears and a numb heart.

People talk of hearts shattering into a thousand pieces and I always thought that’s what heart break would actually feel like. It surprises me that I still put any trust in what people say; especially now that I discovered that “breaking” is not the right adjective. It is more like when you leave your hands on a block of ice for too long and your fingers start to get numb but somehow transport the feeling of painful freezing to your heart, and then soon your whole body starts to go cold. I have read that with hypothermia, after that feeling gets considerably worse, you lose you cognitive functions and soon you cease to feel anything because your heart stops beating.

And that’s what heartbreak is to me; hypothermia.

My mind takes every waking nano second (sleeping ones too) and dedicates it to him. I try to think if I said something or did something or didn’t say or do something that could have made him want to stay and I’ve come up with thousands of things.

I should have been kinder, been smarter, been more attentive, tried harder to understand his misery; a thousand things which, if I was within my senses, I’d have dismissed as being absurd.
I took to picking up every single trinket from his travels he had given me and looking so hard at it that I thought I had bent it with my mind in one instance. I don’t know what I expected from such behaviour. Perhaps I thought unconsciously that it was some link to him and since he had owned some of them for years that he was connected to them in a way that could allow me to communicate with him. Needless to say, I heard nothing from him. Useless, lifeless things!

Ayitey and Mansa came over to the house on several occasions, but I would only say to them without opening my door, that I wanted to be alone. One time Ayitey camped outside my door till morning to guilt me in to coming out. It didn’t work. I got many messages on facebook from Deladem asking why the prolonged silence saying he thought I was enjoying the relationship a tad too much if I was ignoring him. I just could not bring myself to tell him.

In the later days, I have tried to console myself with musings, thoughts that, even though are of a more general nature, cannot possibly be devoid of his influence. For instance I pondered: If great love is possible then great sorrow can only be a planet’s half rotation away. We live in a world of opposites; of contrasts; of duality in which one thing cannot exist without it’s opposite. Day and night, light and dark – If heartbreak was my constant state of being, would I know it as such an unpleasant feeling, or is it because I have felt the opposite that I am so irreparably injured? Isn’t it because some people have the most fun after hours that they crave the night when it is day?

When we speak and tell people things do they understand our words the way we do? When I said I love him did he understand the different emotions that coursed through me and thudded through my heart as I said it? Did he know that I meant that I think about him all the time and worry about him all the time, and feel him even when he’s not around? Did he get that I imagined my life without him several times and the sheer dread of it knocked the very wind out of me and left me gagging; shaking my head vehemently and telling myself that I should not think about it for fear of losing my mind. Did he understand that I meant out of all the men I have ever met and those I haven’t or am yet to, he is the one who I feel connects with my very essence? Did he get that he is the one who I am convinced is the missing part of my puzzle? And when he said it back or even when he said it voluntarily, what was the feeling behind this three word sentence?

I mean, how can such a complicated myriad of feelings be pushed into so few words and be expected to be understood. And when we think what we feel is love, is it really?

Two months after my hibernation, I meet Mansa and Ayitey at The Republic Bar for drinks. Mansa says the obligatory things which she assumes will help me feel better but it only infuriates me. Then I go off on her:

“You know nothing! This is not one of your cursory romances where by the 3rd month you’re already looking for the next Mr. Right. This is not me getting better and feeling better about the fact that he left me. What are you going to say next, it’s his loss, and he doesn’t know what he’s missing? Good riddance to bad rubbish, the next one will be better? It’s a blessing in disguise; the right man is still out there? What? What? You know when you said it’s supposed to take at least three months to get over love; show’s how much you know, because if it’s real love, you never get over it.” My heart beat, which I am hearing for the first time in months, is so loud in my ears it drowns out the live band playing outside. it suddenly dawns on me that I could be feeling this anguish for the rest of my life and just as quickly as I blew up, I deflate and sink back down into body racking sobs.

Ayitey puts his arms around me and Mansa, who I sense is very hurt by my outburst, puts her feelings aside and does the same. Thankfully, we are the only ones inside because everyone else is outside listening to the band.

* * *
Something must give. It just has to. I am only able to come back to baking after the third month. And I drown myself in it. There is a definite shift in the universe and somehow losing Nunya has brought me more business. But it happens just at this moment when I am at the stage where I crave distractions from my own thoughts. It’s uncanny but I embrace it tightly with both arms. In the moments when I allow myself to think I still think about him; worry about him, long for him.

It is at this time that I decide that life must go on. I call Mansa and apologise for my scene at the bar and even agree to go on a blind date with one of her friends just to make it up to her.
While I sit in this restaurant across this absolutely handsome and charming man who is well dressed and speaks impeccably about his life and work, a familiar quickening of my heart resulting in warmth spreading all over my body visits me.

“Say that again?” I say to my date, thinking it was what he just said.

“I said the difference between African writers and foreign writers these days is we tend to do more social commentary while they do more introspective pieces,” he answers.

Interesting observation but that wasn’t it. He keeps talking and the feeling stays and if I didn’t know better I’d say it was because of him, but something tells me it’s not. This is when I really look at him. He is gorgeous and he sounds smart and he reads! This is the type of man I am usually attracted to but tonight I feel nothing for him. Not even a thought that he might come to mean something to me in later times crosses my mind. I involuntarily think to myself, I will never meet him again after this night. He doesn’t kindle anything in me and I wonder if this is how it will feel for the rest of my life without Nunya; the inability to connect with anyone else.

When I get home, I finally send Deladem a message and say simply, “I’m alone again”. Deladem never disappoints me. He is the tonic I need; I realise this as he tells me that these things happen. He types that in times of despair, all I need to do is remember the really good times and know that in those moments when I felt we both connected strongly, is was real and it is mine to revisit over and over again if I want. Whatever else happened afterwards, in that moment we were perfect to each other.

Strange words; stranger still that they make absolute sense and settle me and the strangest of all, is that after our conversation, I pick up one of Nunya’s trinkets and stare hard at it again only this time I smile at it. And when I do, that familiar warm feeling washes over me again and I feel unusually happy. And then I remember; this is how I used to feel when our telepathic conversations started.

For fear of being disappointed I can’t let myself hope for what I think this possibly means.

A CYNIC’S GUIDE TO GETTING HITCHED – EPISODE 5

Ensnared!


Some say it is only when you dwell on a curse that it affects you. You’d have to believe in it to give it life. I never gave one thought to that curse Mansa put on me; not until I met Nunya; Nunya with his intense, silent stare and his few but significant words. And yet here I am a living witness to what Mansa gleefully calls my one great love and what I call the most bewildering experience of my life.

I find myself sitting and watching him, unable to tear away my eyes for a second and when he catches me in a stare I just smile because he smiles at me first. He knows I watch him. He watches me too and it’s the most beautiful feeling in the world to know someone you are deeply attached to is just as attached to you.

It is in these moments of bliss that I also feel the most intense fear. Because discovering how happy I can be also reveals to me how devastated I can get if this feeling should somehow be lost. If this is what love is then Mansa and all those who have told me of how wonderful it is have grossly misled me. No one ever mentions the tumultuous sea of emotions you are bombarded with every single day; the anxiety, the uncertainty, the self-doubt (this amazing person wants me? why? Never mind that you’ve been telling yourself your whole life how ‘wantable’ you are), the powerful joy that threatens to cause your heart to explode because you think you can’t contain it. And let’s not forget the constant need to speak to the other, see the other; be in each other’s personal spaces; be so close that you want to enter them, be a part of them.

I feel most at ease when I am by myself. I enjoy solitude, always have. It’s the time when I get to think, uninterrupted; a time when I feel whole. But lately, even when I am alone, I do not feel alone. It’s this persistent knowledge somewhere in the recess of my mind that someone, somewhere is there with me. I can only explain it as having a telepathic relationship. That even when we are apart and not talking, we’re having long winding conversations and when we meet and do talk we’re just continuing where we left off in our minds.

Our relationship moves at lightning speed like its making up for lost time. Like somehow we had been marking time until we met each other and now that what we were waiting for has arrived there was no need to tarry. That makes me happy until he says to me once “It feels like I’ve known you forever; it took me months to feel for my other girlfriends, half of what I feel for you after two weeks.”

I smile but inside I am torn because even though he means it as a positive thing, all I hear is “our relationship will age in dog years, and soon, we will reach the end.

Nunya is amazing! I am not saying this because I’ve been “blinded by love” as Mansa and Ayitey would like to believe. Anyone who meets him knows he is something special. He's a gifted artists. "Artist with no barriers" he calls himself. He paints, sculpts, plays the guitar, writes, weaves, prints; everything artistic. he is well-read and has travelled the world on art scholarships since he was in university. He has a propensity to learn things and once he learns them he is hit over and over again by how unfair and unbalanced and hopeless the world is. He is burdened by the feeling of powerlessness to overcome the things that ail the world and this unsettles him.

He has moments when it all becomes too much and it over powers him and he transforms into a shadow clinging to darkness and solitude, indiscernible; wanting only to disappear into nothingness.

The first time it happened on my watch, I thought it was something I did or said. After three weeks of unspeakable happiness together he disappears on me without a word.

I am plagued with three lonely, sleepless nights until on the morning of the fourth day when he calls me. In the time he was away I still felt him there, in my mind. Our physical relationship might have been put on hold but telepathically, we still connected and still had our conversations.

The day after he physically comes back to me, we meet up and head out of town to the mountains for a picnic at his suggestion. Sitting on the blanket in the grass with two glasses of sweet Bordeaux in between us, he assures me that I had nothing to do with his withdrawal. He explains to me his inner despair with all life. He questions the purpose of life; of his existence. He shakes his fist at the big bang (he is an atheist) and wishes it had never happened. He understands how humans can create for themselves something to worship, a life after this one; something to give our existence meaning. However, he sees the futility of our efforts especially since these imaginary gods can't seem to quell our incessant desire to be hateful towards each other.

I ask him, “But if we have created this mechanism of religion and spirituality to help us get through why can’t you?”
He replies, “Because I know it’s pointless, this lie has been told over and over again for so long, that humans actually believe it to be true.”

I am at a loss as to what to say to him; how to help him. What a burden for one man to carry. This is such a new problem to me. Of course these questions have crossed my mind but I always will them out of my consciousness as my mother suggested I do. At barely 10 years old, I had asked her how we know there is God if we have never seen him. “Shh, don’t think about these things. We just know, we had to have come from somewhere,” she had replied.

Now as I sit with Nunya discussing his problems, the thoughts and questions come back.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you this earlier. It’s just that I’ve never felt this way and I thought I wouldn’t need to withdraw, not with you,” he placates and looks down at the wine glasses.

“It’s ok. You’re back now. Just let me know when it’s happening again so I know what to expect. This being in love thing is new to me.”

He looks back up at me and smiles his disarming smile. “You love me?”

Oh dear! Mansa said to make sure I don’t say it first. “There are rules governing this relationship thing, you know. You don’t want to come across as desperate,” She had said.

“And if I do what will happen? “ I had asked her.

“One of two things; he’ll either say it back just to be nice or just to get what he wants from you or he won’t say it back, probably pretend he didn’t hear you.”

Things aren’t going as expected.

Ah well, what to do? the truth is already out. “Yes, I do,” I reply, looking him straight in the eyes. I don’t feel desperate and somehow I feel he doesn’t see it that way. There’s something beautifully abnormal about the way he thinks. It’s quite unlike the way the men Mansa is used to think and I’m happy with that.

He leans in and kisses me softly on the lips, then on the nose. “It’s funny you should say that because in the time I was away, you kept popping up in my thoughts and all I wanted to do was tell you that I don’t understand the concept of love, I never have. But I think if it could be anything at all, it is what I feel for you.

That’s why I think we should end this. Because I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want you to ever feel dissatisfied with our relationship; with me. This will happen again and again. It’s who I am. You deserve a normal man who will do for you what normal men do.”

I cut in then, unwilling to fully grasp that he is breaking up with me.

“Normal men want me to dress like a harlot; they want me to act like I have only basic desires and intellect. Normal men do nothing for me that I care for. You grip my imagination and set my body on fire and you take my intelligence out for long walks along beautiful, unchartered paths - you don’t try to lock it up in some societal prison for women.”

I hold his face in my hands. “You do for me what no normal man has ever done and you’re the one I’m in love with.”
Love; a notion I never thought was real, and here I am throwing the word about like I’ve been familiar with it my whole life. That’s how he makes me feel, I realise. He makes me feel like what we have is real, like everything I’ve thought about myself is not just in my head. You can believe in yourself all you want but it takes someone else voicing it out on their own volition to give your beliefs life. He gives me life.

How strange that someone who sees no point in life exudes it without even trying.

“I’m not leaving you,” I tell him. “If this is a ploy to put me off you then it backfired. You succeeded in intriguing me all the more.”

He smiles and kisses me again. “I was hoping you’d say something like that.” Then he laughs and repositions himself so he can put his head on my lap, looking up at me.

I smile down at him and say, “It’s just human nature, isn’t it? We see danger looming and instead of running away from the problem, we first want to find out what it is so we end up getting so close that it’s easy for us to get hurt.”

“I will never willingly hurt you; I need you to know that.”

And I do; somewhere deep inside I know that. So when he disappeared again a month later, I knew he didn’t willingly want to hurt me. Instinctively, I also knew he wouldn’t be back this time and I couldn’t reach him telepathically anymore. So on the night of the seventh day after he left the second time, after the feelings of dread had welled up inside, I broke down. I opened the dam and let the anguish of facing a life without him, which had magically turned into millilitres of salty water, spill over.