Why Doesn't Love Go Far Enough?

Okay so you know you love this person right. As in not a minute passes on your watch that you don't think of them. You're generally very happy and very contented with things. On the flip side though, you get the down times.

Like the times you get so angry you dont wanna speak to them. The times you just don't give a toss about being kind or doing and saying the right things. Why cant love intervene at these crucial times? Times where you two just speak but are actually not hearing or listening to each other, or times when every little thing the other person does just riles you, or you row about the simplest of things. Why cant love step in and save the day?

Where's love when that blinding fury comes to the fore? Did love take a flight at the exact moment those horrible words spurtered out of your mouth? Where was love hiding when all you see are faults? Why cant love help you to be patient, not to say unkind words, to understand the other person better, to suppress that brewing fury from the pit of your belly, to be more appreciative. Why cant it just be there always, present everytime and makes everything sail smoothly and guide you on the right path?

Dear love, why can't you just be damn enough!

Some Friends

...do go past their sell by dates.

In the past 2 weeks I've had some profound experiences and they are all connected to people that I call friends. It is nothing new that different friends play different roles in our lives, while some are important, most one can live without. I have a habit of calling everyone 'friend' but it's purely for lack of something better to call them. The ones I chat to almost weekly but hardly see, the one's I've never met but exchange emails with, the ones I went to school with, ones I met randomly. They are all friends but different kind of friends. Some of them I can't even stand either for their aggressiveness, inconsistencies or whatever but I put up with them anyway. Lately however, I've asked myself, why? Some friends I actually care deeply about and wish us to be closer but I hardly make a concerted effort to make that happen, again I ask why?

One pattern I've noticed about me is that the people who come through for me at the most dire times are those distant friends. Distant in the sense that I don't know them very well, we hardly hang out or even communicate. Only lately did I have one friend that I know she's done more for me and I've trusted more than I've trusted anyone in my entire life. Generally I've just lived my life meeting different people who have had both good and bad impacts in my life and those I question why I met in the first place.

Last week I was out of town in a foreign land and one of those I'll call a distant friend was there for me. I was extremely surprised about his magnanimity and that of his wife. This is someone I hadn't even picked my phone to call in a year until the week I was due to take my flight. I only just called him to let him know I was going to be in the neck of his wood but he dropped everything to show me round and keep me company. I'm still left wondering if I could do the same for someone I don't know very well.

This week however, another friend I've had for about 7 years let me down. He simply couldn't be happy for me with regards to certain developments in my life and that hurt me real bad. But I've asked my God to surprise him and sooner rather than later he'd be sorry. Sometimes we think certain people are our friends when in actual fact they are simply jealous of us. Some even think they are better than you while others are just interested in sharing the latest gossip with you. When you really look at it you have very little in common so why bother with the so-called friendship in the first place?

Today I celebrate friends, true friends. The ones worth having, the ones who love you in-spite of your flaws, the one who plan your future with you, the ones who laugh and cry with you, the ones who share silly nothings as well as the serious stuff with you, the ones you never see but who's got your back no matter what, the ones who scold you when needed and do not shy away from the truth, the ones who you feel comfortable to bare your heart and soul to. To Afrobabe and the special man in my life.

It'd be a Shame Really...

...if I let January go without even putting up one post. So here it is. Happy new year my peoples. Not that anyone will be reading this anyway since I haven't done blog rounds in eons. I don't even know what's going on here in Blogville anymore, well except that Aloofar put up a post. Wow! A little bird tells me that our very own loved up couple Chari and Buttercup are back too. Happy days. I'm not joining the am back crew as I didn't go anywhere but it's nice to finally get around to writing something. So hey once more, happy new year.

I know a lot of us would have made resolutions and broken them already. Won't say welcome to the club cos I stopped making them a few years back. Resolutions are one of those 'jump on the bandwagon' things that most of us do. They do it, we do it. But as we become individuals in our own right we realise what it is we really should be doing. I guess am there when it comes to that.

So what's the new year been like so far? It's been somewhat okay. I've noticed I've turned into some sort of rebel at work. Scary! Always the first to tell management where to shove it! Am loving my new notoriety actually. Home front things are not great. Not really getting on with Mama at the moment and I couldn't help but think am getting a little too big for my own boots. Maybe it's not arrogance, maybe I just want change and I know being a jelly and a yes woman ain't gonna work anymore.

Personally am trying to develop myself mentally. You know wean myself off some bad habits in readiness for the great things I know is coming my way this year. Omo e no easy. Does anyone out there have patience in abundance? Parakeet needs some biko. I think am gonna start a charity for patience donation. I also need to learn to relax. Worry is like my middle name. I'm obsessed with planning so if there's something in the way that causes me not to have a good idea of what the near future holds I start to panic. I like to be in control of what happens around me so much that I forgot that God is really the one who runs things around here. So I'm trying everyday to call to mind the mercies of God more and more and to remind myself that he is God after all.

I've missed the partying scene a bit. Girlfriends have gone and got themselves boyfriends so everyone is cosying up with their man. Not that I have a problem with that. My man won't be complaining neither would theirs so everyone is happy. The other thing though is this winter. This has got to be the longest winter ever. Weytin! The cold is mercilessly relentless and I know we humans are never satisfied but mehn this one too much. This winter practically finished my mojo so right now I wanna skip spring...bring on summer sharp sharp. But in this UK that'll probably last only one week.

A lot can really happen in a month...

Nigeria is My Country, I Have a Right to Discuss It

It is possible to live in decay and not know it
It started right before your eyes
You noticed the first crack but you procrastinated
I'll go back and fix it another day
Then that crack causes another crack
Yet again you noticed but failed to act
Afterall you have your hands full with other stuff that needs immediate attention
Until the whole thing bloody cracks
That you no longer notice it
Even though those cracks cut you here and there
It's nothing you're not used to it
So you don't see it as a big deal
People on the other side see how damaged things are
But you live in the damage so you don't know
When they mention it you tell them to keep shut and mind their own business
Yet in your mind you feel perplexed about your plight
Nothing a brave face in public wont cure, you assure yourself.
No matter how much you psyche yourself up
No matter how much you refuse to see the problem
It doesn't take the problem away
It is there and will always be there no matter how much your denial grow.
Nigeria has a problem, let us see it
If you're going to make an enemy of the person who points out a problem but profers no solution
and make a friend of the person who just fails to see the problem
then you're a bigger fool than I thought
I kid myself not
I am overwhelmed by the multiple problems we face as a nation
I dont even know if there's anything I can do to help
But please let no one tell me I cant discuss my country
Discussing a problem is not the same as tarnishing the image of the country
Please know the difference and keep your peace.

This Love Palaver Sef

So it's another Monday and while making my commute to work I was listening to songs on my Samsung Tocco. As I settled on my choice train seat my best heartbreak song came on; Think Twice by Celine Dion. Thinking of it now I don’t know which is my best between that song and that of Whitney Houston, Heartbreak Hotel. Having suffered two heartbreaks within the last two years those songs never fail to remind me of the pain I actually went through and the various things I did to cope with them. My dating life is rather chequered and full of drama and while I loved the highs in my early twenties, I think as I've grown older I've become less resilient.

I thought specifically about my heartbreak before the most recent. That happened more like a dream really because I wasn't expecting it. I mean we were planning on moving in together and starting our own family after deciding that the marriage route was not for us and zap! he was gone! I failed to believe I was never going to see him again after that fateful morning that he kissed my sleepy head goodbye. If I had known that was the last time I would see him I would have got my lazy ass out of bed and at least seen him off to the airport, hugged him tightly and cried on his shoulder. At least let that scene haunt him for the rest of his life…if he has a heart that is. How did I cope with it? Well I splashed out on a party and just hit the club scenes until I danced him out of my system. The anger and betrayal I felt kind of helped too and the fact that I soon got myself involved in a lusty relationship soon afterwards that I knew wasn't going anywhere. Lust did help me a lot but when that ended it was just as bad as the heartbreak because once again I felt empty and betrayed. I have no one to blame but me.

My most recent heartbreak started really from the inception of the short-lived relationship. Not having met someone to remotely like in the past year I met this seemingly plain looking man but with bags of personality. It wasn't love at first sight but after sleeping and waking up the next day and dreamt of him, I started to pay him a lot more attention. The sail went on from there really and I didn't know what it was but I just couldn't get enough of this guy. I wanted to speak to him all the time and spend all my days with him. He on the other hand was trying to be cautious and he claimed he didn’t understand how I am so into him since I seem to have a healthy social life. He was right, even I didn’t know especially as he didn't have a good profile. Here, I was dealing with a divorced father of two who listened to dodgy music and had zero social credentials. But who understands how these feelings work eh? Apart from that he clearly had a lot going on in his head because he kept questioning my 'realness' and he was pretty mean to me on so many levels. I didn't mind though. I wanted to prove to him that I was the real deal and while doing this I over-compensated for my worldliness and did a few stupid things which marked the end of the relationship. He called off the relationship out of the blue and all my plea fell on deaf ears. I literally felt my world was coming to an end. As a fighter and not ready to let go yet I somehow brought things back on track but really things were never the same again except for the sex which could never be bad even if we tried.

After we got back together, his questioning of my realness didn't stop and coupled with finding out some unpalatable facts about him I decided it was time to dump his ass and I did. I revealed what I found to him and said hurtful things to him thinking that was it. Only my stupid feelings for him wouldn't let me. I went back grovelling and true to his meanness he told me where to go. He even spurned my friendship. That was a first. Looking back at how I coped, I figured I actually didn’t cope because the whole drama started two weeks into our relationship and it was a real rollercoaster. So this wasn't one massive heartbreak, it was a systematic one and one which when I had the bad days it was pretty bad and the good days were really good. It was hard for me to be angry at him. In the end he came out of the relationship smelling of roses and me as the scarlet woman. Somehow in the whole charade, what really went down was lost on both of us and I was left with heaps of blames even though deep down I know I wasn't to blame. We were just two mis-matched people who couldn't make things work.

I am on the other side now looking back, enjoying the little things of life. I guess in life we go through certain things so as to appreciate little blessings.

Have a good one guys.

No Sir, We Actually Just Want YOU!

Okay this is getting really ridiculous. Is there any single man out there these days who actually doesn't think that women are a devious lot who will do anything to get whatever they want?

I am totally up to my throat having these arguments with a growing number of men. My question is what do you have? You're not David Beckham or Denzel Washington neither do you have the brains of Eistein nor the quirkiness of Freud. You are not the best there is neither are you the most gifted. So what exactly is it that you have that I will be so after to resort to some grand planning just to lay my hands on?

Men need to get this unfounded thoughts out of their heads. Women are better equipped now to deal with any relationship/marriage eventualities so get your big heads out of the clouds and get with the program. The world has moved on so check the facts before making assumptions that have no basis.

Even a man who's worth nothing more than his pair of tattered jeans has the courage to spew such diatribe just cos the number of single women now outnumber men and more promising women are ending up with divorced fathers of two. Somehow the rest of the bunch who has zero to offer suddenly feels qualified to comment on women's morality.

Funny how men have been letting women down for as long as we could all remember but women still always manage to find something to love about them and to accept them irrespective of their flaws. Yet they wont stop bad mouthing women. Why dont you back up your opinion with some action and not go near a woman with a barge pole rather pursuing a woman while scheming and progressing with your hidden agenda.

Men are such bad loosers. Get over it. Women are getting better and there's nothing you can do about it. You either accept it or die in mysery. Mscheeew and no apologies made for the generalisation.

Two-Timing, And You Know It.

Thank you to everyone that commented on my last post. It was something weighing heavily on my mind and I needed to get it out. I'm so glad I did because not a word of condemnation was written but those of encouragement and positivity. Thank you all so much.

So today's post. I am aware that we girls like to snoop around our man. We like to know things he may be hiding away from us. Big question though, if we do find out he has secrets, what do we do? So you look through your man's phone to see if he's been sending or receiving texts from another girl apart from you. Or you hack into his emails to see if he's making the same promises he's making to you to another girl, and indeed you do find something. The 'I love you' he sent to Sarah. Or the 'I'll see you later' he sent to Bisi when he'd told you he was going to be held up in a long meeting at work. If you confront him with your information, how do you explain to him that you came by it in the first place? If you decide not to tell him, how do you deal with these other girls? This is a man you love and have dreams of spending the rest of your life with. He's almost near perfect other than for this new development. In fact you do not have a doubt in your mind that he loves you, but if he does why chase other women or keep secrets?

I've always said to myself that what you don't know would not hurt you, but I'm beginning to think that if it doesn't hurt you now, the likelihood of it coming back to bite you in the butt in future is higher and by then you may not have enough support system in place to help you cope. So sometimes it may pay to know early depending on what the nature of the information is and one could use this as an effective argument for snooping. The downside is though it forces someone to make decisions one may not be quite prepared to make at the time of the information coming to light. Say for instance you find that your man is seeing someone else who he seems to be into. If you confront him, he'd know that you've been through his stuff and if at the time of confrontation you were yet to make up your mind to leave him for his infidelity or not, then things may turn the other way. If what my idea of how a man will treat this kind of situation is anything to go by then I'd say he's likely to take a walk saying he could never trust you even though he was the one in the wrong from the outset. If this happens one will never know if he would have chosen to be with one or the other girl in the first place. Of course this argument will only hold water for a woman who's prepared to forgive a man of infidelity.

Truth is I don't know if I'm for snooping or not because ultimately the problem will always be now that I know what do I do with the information? Say if I find my man has been engaging in internet dating with girls he's not in the same location with. While they may not pose an immediate threat to our relationship, it is still a form of infidelity and if I bring it up with him, he'd know I've been snooping and then becomes more secretive. Is his internet relationship enough for me to walk out on our relationship? If I decide 'no' and do not bring it up then trust is damaged and enjoying the relationship becomes difficult.

What do you say guys?