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.
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