I was happy. There was no longing of any kind just – living my life – one day at a time. Yet
here I was sitting by his courtyard window blushing as he stood before me relaying how he’d
imagined the day he had me alone. Till that moment, my energy had never been romantically
inclined, so, I should have known he was attracted to something else. Our dates were mere
social extensions of working days fulfilling HIS dreams while intimacy lulled me into
self-actualization martyrdom. They were only meant to last while I dreamed with him
because the day I woke up dreaming for me – I went to bed alone. By no big announcement, I
remember how he sat quietly on the lip of his bathtub as I now stood before him, screaming. His doctor’s wife. Yes. I had seen them once, talking to each other with thier faces apart, yet,
an inch too far from respectability. That alone was enough to suck me into a tempestuous
murk. No. It was not that alone. It was when she told a joke and he threw his head so far
back I was sure he’d swallow the sky. Maybe even before that when creases on fresh bed
linen told me to go watch re-runs on TV till morning instead. Could it have been when he
introduced us and she flooded me with empty compliments? Then again, the day we saw her
for the first time he criticized her so passionately. Or, maybe it was when she was nowhere in
our lives and I sat wedged between the wall and toilet bowl, weeping for our unborn child
whose life I had snuffed out because he did not want that kind of attachment to me.
Yes, it
must have been then because, those aforementioned times struck resentment but THIS
initial time – I smiled. Looking in the mirror, telling myself many lies which weighed on that
guilt till it was dead – like pressed flowers between the pages of a holy book; death
concealed between the words of life. Though we walked on together laughing, trying to create better memories we were just a
rat-king; bound by a filthy secret. It could only be for so long because I was emaciated. It was
I who’d moved from her world; her home, her vision, her family, her friends so he could carry
on. I had crucified myself upon his success and purged my soul for his happiness yet for all
that, here I was like damp salt in a shaker being bashed out; I had never been so homeless. True then to the nature of damp salt, I fell out all at once and poisoned everything. You
couldn’t water me down, you couldn’t scoop me out you couldn’t salvage the broth. I charged
at red flags as the bulls mythically do and like matadors, the audacious were mine to gore. I
left a body count of friends who’d used up half their strike and shrunk strangers down to ill
motive so I could crush them. I could read my name off lips miles away and hear disgruntled
whispers out of toothy smiles because to tell me I was wrong face to face – you’d have to
have drunk viper venom and survived. Even the scent on cut flowers was like cocaine I
refused to sniff up lest I be trapped by dependency on the one who had gifted them to me. The world, was not innocent.
A year went by, then another. Just when I thought I had permanently cautioned the wind, it
directed an aroma of wildflowers and I found myself in yet another distant man’s arms. For
all the times I had asserted myself above gamblers of emotion, here I was, still a desparate
dreamer. Charity is all I could be to a man. Once more settled into my role as a self
contracting employment agent; a frachise of….non-profit orgasms. How else could one love
and be loved – if it was love at all? Free spinning in that cycle is all I knew with resolve – there’d be nothing better for me. Notwithstanding, that circle also bent offensively out of
shape. He said thank you, I’m alright now, be gone by September. Mechanically, I picked up
my weapons, hoisting a gurney of painful memories, set out to raze the last remnant of
gossips, gaslighters and mockers. Oddly, however, while trekking this emotional terrain there
was no screaming. No screaming. I didn’t smile; the darkness couldn’t hold me. Levitating
through the betrayal I drifted to a quiet place where lonliness was alien. I watched a woman
strip naked and look lovingly at her body that I needed to touch her. I felt pain as she pulled
the knife out from between her shoulder blades and cried as she sang away the wound.
She
lay down alone and I slept restfully. She awoke alone and I dreamed with clarity. She opened
the door but no one walked out she closed it again and I sensed the comfort of solitude. Where was the woman who had mapped a ruthless road to retaliation? She was still there – having an encounter with someone new. Compassionate fingers traced my scars and tickled
such that I laughed all night, unloading the gurney – not of painful memories at all but of
enlightenment.
So proud was I to think I could change a man will and matter, oblivious to
how it was changing me. So proud to feel indebted by my failures ignorant of the lessons
they taught. Proud to think they needed me yet the one who needed me – was me. In seven
days I broke camp, took a new turn and never looked back. They tell me now I’ve changed. They say I’m difficult and mock my intuition. They say the old me was more loving but I made
the long journey to loving myself. If they don’t recognise me, it’s because the shell they left
empty is now home to a stranger I met on the way.