I take solace in the fact that the course of history was never changed by the many but by the few who risked exposing facts by written word reminds me always that the Pen Is Mightier than the Sword. When the self righteous is poked into undying rage the real personality explodes like dynamite and the self proclaimed veneer vanishes into thin air like the mist from dawn. Let the chips fall where they may.
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Crystal Evans Books
“The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl.”
I doubled up in the corner of my room, sometimes i paced the floor. My broken heart would not give way in my chest. I have been down this road before. It's a strange yet familiar terrain, didn't make it less gruelling.
I had nightmares.
I tossed and turn in my sleep. I've contemplated suicide. The jokes are all on me.
People said that I deserved the disgrace that Dre brought upon my head. I shouldn't have left Jerr for Dre. Dre is a slithering serpent.
While I locked myself inside, dying of heartache and humiliation, I was told that Dre was up and about, happy and sociable. He moved on with his life as if nothing had happened. I was left to pick up the broken pieces. I am a mess.
My mother rebuked me with scorn. She chastised me for being a weak woman, a foolish woman.
She was the mother whom I witnessed at age of three year old, when the father of my younger siblings chopped her in the palm of her hand. There was blood everywhere. I was a baby and the room was redolent with the scent of fresh blood. It's a sight that stained my memory just as it had done my maternal grandmother's floor.
My mother groped her palm, her boyfriend fled the scene. Less than a year later, my mother had a daughter with him and then she had another child with the man that chopped her hand before her pre school daughter. She had two children with a man who tried to dismember her.
My mother forgave him, just as she'd forgiven my father for saying that I was a jacket. Two years later, she had another baby for the my dad who didn't own her first child until after a Paternity test. Two children for the man who deemed get a whore and her child a bastard. Me a bastard.
My mother despised me for allowing Dre to treat me like shit. What did she expect? I am after all my mother's child. Taking bullshit from men is in my genes.
Like my grandmother whom I witnessed being repeatedly beaten and cheated on by her husband.
Mama would go out of her way to cook the best dinner for him. One plate with ground provisions, the best yams, dumpling and banana and a rare dish packed with large chunks of meat. The tallest glasses of soursop juice. Some nights he didn't turn up. Some nights he came home and didn't touch his food and mama cried, and read psalms twenty three facing the rising and setting of the sun.
Mama would cook the best dinner after an evening of beatings, crowds gathering, police car siren deafening and my father holding a bloody clothe at the side of his head after he defended my grandmother from the tyranny of her husband.
I the perspicacious, introverted five year old, seethed with anger and promised myself that no man would ever do this to me.
Until I met Jerr and I met Dre...
Taking bull shit from men is in my gene.
Them say you can't just get up and hurt people so... But what would they have you do when you don't love someone anymore.
Is it better for you to remain in a loveless union because this person " no do you nothing? Than try and find happiness elsewhere.
It is what makes break ups complicated. But anyone who has remained in a relationship where all love has been lost, knows that next year you won't feel better but worse. If you stay for five more year, you will end up with scores of regrets, cheating partners and an overall miserable life.
If you don't not love your partner anymore, be honest with them and leave the relationship. Seeking happiness can sometimes be selfish but a loveless union will not work. You will overtime become resentful of your partner.
Cheating becomes a factor too. People in relationships where the love is lost sometimes end up cheating. Instead of staying with your partner, and having extra relational affairs, leave the relationship and start a new one. Instead of cheating on them, why not set them free and then begin the new relationship.
People sometimes hang on to loveless unions because they are afraid of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. It is better to settle for the little that you getting here than leave and risk getting into a worse situation.
Your partner won't understand. Your ex will probably hate you but they might thank you later. They will see it as selfish when in reality, you doing them a favour. It's unfair to lead them on because you don't want to hurt him/her and then to find out in the end that the love has been dead for sometime now.
I said it.
The hand on the clock stroke eleven pm and I smiled.
The insecure b*tch always loses and I knew her joy would soon turn to ashes in her mouth.
I glanced down at her through the bedroom window from the second floor, curtain slightly pulled back so that I could peek at the other woman whom in less than four months I had successfully usurped her position. She stood with a small travelling bag in her hand; tears speckled her cheeks as she pleaded with her palms turned upwards.
Dre spun his head violently. He raised both hands above in aggression and then interlaced his fingers behind his head. The girl’s lips puckered and she knelt on the ground. She turned puppy dog eyes up at him and begged with her hands clasped as if she was praying. He gritted his teeth and gently pulled her up.
I could not hear what he was saying to her but his furrowed eyebrows, pursed lips and tensed shoulders told me that anger smoldered inside him. The other woman was a blubbering mess.
Why wasn’t I happy?
I won!
Or did I?
I had spent the last three months since I discovered she existed, hating this woman for casting doubts on my relationship. He never told me about her. He said he was single. He did not ‘diss’ me, he dissed her for when I met him, he said she never existed. How can you love someone who does not own you to the women he meets.
I heard her scream. “I hardly ever had any choices in this thing. I just do what you want me to all the time”
I could not be happy at the scene unfolding before my eyes. When I looked at her; I saw a younger version of myself. Me: Ten years ago chasing the man I loved, making him my focus, our relationship my ultimate goal. I wanted to shake her. Why was she putting herself through this? I‘d done it before and when a man runs me from his house once, he does not have to do it twice. Giving up everything to make some cute boy the center of your world was a recipe for a tonne load of regrets.
I could not blame her entirely. I knew why she loved him. I imagine she loves the very same things I am fond of him for. The way his lips pull together like an insolent babe and he gazes with intensity when I say something witty or insulting. The way he sleeps with his arms wrapped around me and my head nuzzled in the crook of his neck that flowed into broad shoulders. The way he looked cute and innocent asleep and how he wakes me up with wet sloppy kisses. I imagine men made love to women following a pattern and if she was his main chick then she had experience those extraordinaire moments.
I grinned remembering how he rubbed his foot-bottom on my thigh and asked if they were rough and I laughed and said yes. I was in love with him and my tummy fluttered when he rubbed his toes against my instep. What woman would not go crazy over him? He had a way of making you feel like the most loved woman in bed.
He flailed his arms and I knew he would explode any minute now. “Girl you cannot stay here” He shouted.
His mother charged onto the Verandah. She shoved the little girl into her bedroom and spat.
“A so you expect fe live your life? A so you want treat people pickney?”
He retorted. “Ooman left me business. You chat too much!”
I scurried from the window and dashed into the bathroom.
I called my girl and chirped into the ear piece mike. “ Girl the lilly gyal outta door now”
Cion sucked her teeth. “ She’s a stalker”
I mumbled. “ I know right, I feel terrible for her”
Cion chuckled. “ You a ediat. Me woulda go down there go shame her. She no have no shame? Her shame tree mussi dead”
I chortled, whispered “I gottas go” and ended the call.
He plodded into the bedroom and gently closed the door. He grinned and peered at me from the corner of his slanted eyes. He sat on the bed and muttered. “ Saf large and in charge!”
I shrugged his hand from my shoulder and his pupils dilated. I refuse to celebrate this occurrence. This was no victory.
He took up the television remote and his jaw line hardened. “ A never this you did want? Every day you cuss me fe left the girl and now me do it. You a come act like you sorry for her”
I scoffed. “ Not really, I just don’t like how you deal with her.”
A sly smile crept across his blueberry lips. “You think me ago do the same thing to you don’t?” He asked softly.
“I do not know but a smart woman knows that when a man breaks one woman’s heart to make her happy that her dose of karma is never too far behind”
He pursed his lips like a toddler and muttered through clenched teeth. “Man can’t do nutten fe please you”
I wanted to throw my arms around him and taste his soft lips but I could not. I felt a wave of anxiety that had nothing to do with the girl sleeping in the next room
downstairs. He grinned and crossed his legs at the ankle. He turned the television set on.
He grimaced before throwing me a seductive smile. “You win baby! Hope you can handle it?"
What did I win? I was not happy. Instead I felt an immense level of pressure. I was not sure if I really wanted him or if i could be all that he needs. The future was uncertain. All i knew was that i loved him and karma was a bitch.
The morning was cool. the grass wet from last nights dew, the railing on the outside porch of the villa cold and uninviting like the arms of the man who slept in the bed, snoring loudly. Between the trees at the horizon, a cotton like puffy cloud with rose like billows of smoke and shone like silver against the gray blue sky.
Cloud colors changed quickly in two minutes they went from pink to orange ten to silver much like my relationship had soured quickly in the last few hours. It was much like those bruises and lacerations on the man I was in love with feet, this relationship festered and hurt.
Owls twittered in the background and birds hummed from nearby trees.
Cars whooshed past in the early morning, and my thoughts were interrupted by the loud roar of a toilet flushing in the next room. Everything was distant, like a far away noise, nothing could drown my racing thoughts and my heart ramming away in my chest.
I wanted to cry but nothing came. I was all wrung out. I had a good sleep last night but the memory of the penis that died as I hoisted my fat legs atop him was enough to send me on another crying spree but I didn't. He was not worth it. He probably never did. I knew that now. I am liar. I knew that all along.
I thought about all the people that really cared about me and that made me cry. I was not going to bawl over bad, I vowed from today to cry over the good. Here I was hoping that if I showed him love that he could learn something from it and all he learned was that I was weak and stupid. He only understood that I was open for exploitation.
Our interactions cost me money, it only cost him time. Something on many occasions, he could not even give me. I can't get anything from him. Whether it was free or not. I was not good enough for him.
He said he couldn't just leave her. He said she didn't do anything to him for him to end the relationship. I had done everything to him.
I wanted to wish him the best in his new life but I couldn't. Why was it that whenever all the terrible things he did to me, I only wanted
to make it right. It was because I spent my entire life trying to make people see and think that I was good enough.
I spent the last four months trying to convince this man that I was good enough. But you can only tell a man where to look, you cannot tell him what to see.
I had to be careful. Before long... I will begin to see myself the way he did.
