First of, I need you to know that this post is not about you, it may not even be about me, but it is definitely about rage and bottled emotions even after providing outlets to escape but it never seems to end.
You know that moment when you decide to start your life over? Oh, if you don’t have any experience with this, I can walk you through a quick crash course.
It starts with thinking real life works like a block and delete button on WhatsApp or IG. You tell yourself from today, I am going to move on from everything that has ever betrayed me and start to think about all the beautiful moments I have been fortunate to experience, and so you start the cleanse.
One picture at a time, one chat wipe after the other. Then, you pause to read a chat, and the memories come flooding back. Quick tip: this is what you should avoid, stopping to reminisce.
A cleanse never works when you stop; you’ve got to run like you are being chased. Run so much that you don’t even have the will to stop because you are trying to outrun every demon, past, present, and future.
How will any of this make sense if we do not start with an example? Let’s use Sade as our case study.
It was a typical Friday, and like every other Friday, Sade’s favourite day, but this Friday was different; there was a planned date. She doesn’t want to go on this date if she is being honest, because she just had a really serious disappointment from her last talking stage.
This guy became hostile because she made it clear she was not interested in pursuing a sexual relationship with him, so you can imagine that she was not ready for a repeat with this gender anymore.
Against her better judgment, she goes on this date, and instantly, she feels some trouble brewing. Something about this guy struck her as off now that she has had the time to reflect on it. She couldn’t quite place it, but it felt like he was putting on airs. He had all the camouflage of a sleek and refined man, but the exact mannerism of a practised liar.
As usual, she overrides her instinct and allows herself to be impressed, which, of course, happens because what else can you expect from a con artist?
It is not long before this guy wants her all to himself. What is funny is that he never makes them official, but he gives enough impression that could suggest, although arguably, that they are now important.
Listen, this is why she says this: he whisked her away to his parents’ estate close to the Christmas season and introduced her as someone important to him to his immediate family. Funny enough, she asked if this was the first time he was doing this, and he said no. That should have been her sign that she was not special; this was just a play book.
Do you know what is even funny? She met a friend of his who mentioned that back in his university days, he always had a new woman on his arm for every class and liked to strut into class with his latest acquisition, she actually filed this as a red flag in the moment but she got swayed with the delusion that he is a different man now, older, wanting different things so there could be no connection to the man he was now.
Fast forward to the end, he said to her, ‘I never want to get married. ‘This is different from the time he said ‘marriage is not important to me, but if it is important to my partner, I will do it.’
I mean that should have been her answer, but as we know now, she was busy overriding her instincts. He shows her exactly who he was, a coward, and she was hurt from it, as he kept lying just because he was too scared to end it with her in person after sharing a traumatic experience together.
In his crooked mind, she ought to pick his needs over her dream just to appease his ego because he, in his estimate, is better than her, and his mere presence was making her life better.
This was just one of the many relationships that ended catastrophically, but this guy takes the cake because he almost managed to ruin her sense of worth. For the first time in a long time, she wondered if she’d ever be worthy of the love she ached for. She cried, in fact, she “crode” but promised herself never to return to the place of her shattering.
Sade learnt then that sometimes the person you choose to love you is a reflection of how much you love yourself in the first place. Now she is chasing this cleanse, but how do you forget something that also buries a part of you?
Xoxo,
Dcconoissuer.
Connoisseur of Memories 