The Soulmate Struggle 🫣

_{​I wonder how love was in the 1960s. Having recently gotten our independence, you’d feel free. The white men had been so tiring, forcing you to kiss their dry un-moisturized lips and doing all sort of things that you frankly didn’t enjoy.} 

_{You’re free now. You look around at all the eligible men society have for you. Men with good arms and broad shoulders, all gotten from series of manual labour they’ve been put through by people with no colour in their skin.} 

_{You gulp and smile. Maybe you could finally find love after so many years of only satisfying the white man and his wife. The cruel bunch you were slaves to. Who’d engage you in series of crazy sexual acts then beat you up for not responding well a few minutes later.}

_{You’d always been a hopeless romantic though.} 

_{You believe there’s someone out there for you, a soulmate of some sort.} 

_{Someone you could rely on, tell your problems to and narrate all about how terrible your day was.} 

_{There was trauma though, you’d flinch when anyone lifts their hands around you because you were used to the white man stroking his fingers through your cornrows and hitting you when you refused to suck his dick for the 50}th _time. 

_{When you were told ‘You’re a queen, I love you’ or any compliment of the sort, you skin began to crawl.}

_{You took it as a lie.} 

_{All because the oyinbos only told you these sweet meaningless nothings when you were on their bed, serving them and they were vibrating from sexual fantasies.} 

_{But you found love.} 

_{In a man who understood the traumas you had and had traumas of his own to compete with, who knew how to talk in all of your moods.} 

_{You did it.} 

_{You found love.}

 

_{Or outside of Nigeria? How was love in the 1960s of other countries? In the 60s like they’d call it, you’ve been told all your life that your job was an homemaker. With the rise of feminism- caused by an article that resonated with different people, you didn’t know what exactly you were and what you were supposed to be.} 

_{An homemaker  or a woman of Mystique?} 

_{You’d sit around wondering what exactly to do and play your new favorite song ‘You don’t own me!’ wondering if exactly you were doing the right thing.}

_{But you were, least that’s what the statics told people. Well, until people started dropping different narratives.} 

_{A youth movement saying ‘Sex is the only was to rebel!’ and all of a sudden, all your suitors had vanished, in fear that you were one of them having free sex when in real life, you were someone waiting for prince charming to sweep you off your feet, or maybe lose your glass sandal. Hell! You could even kiss a frog at this point!} 

_{You revert back to ‘Computer dating’.}

_{You fill in all your details and upload, hoping atleast some people would match you on here. Hoping that they wouldn’t be serial killers too.} 

_{Overtime, the amount of married people reduced and the age of married couples increased, almost an inverse proportion.} 

_{You sit there, wondering at what age you’d find a prince charming of your own and shake your head.} 

 

 

_{How love is now?} 

_{‘Just like how we allowed Oyinbos to colonize us, don’t you think they colonized heartbreak too and invited it into Nigeria?’ You say to your friend, you’re both giggling over cold cocktails.} 

_{You deserve it after all the stress you put yourself through during the week. You laugh and gossip about your previous boyfriends. How you met them and how they in-explicitly broke your heart.} 

_{‘What of Tunde the liar?’ your friend says looking at you with knowing eyes and beginning to chuckle.} 

_{You remember Tunde the liar. The one who claimed to have a billion ‘plans’ for you and for his future but would get angry when you asked him if he was going to apply for a job or what exactly his plans were.} 

_{But you’d be there, apologizing, like the sweet girlfriend you were. You let out a short laughter remembering how he always had fantasies on your own money. Thinking of how you’d pay for his flight to see you or the dates you went on.} 

_{All through this, you were the sweet girlfriend.} 

_{Well, until you found out he had 4 other sweet girlfriends.} 

_{Relationship that you thought was your safe place and your home was apparently a family house.}

_{‘Omo I don’t want to talk about Tunde the liar abeg. I don see shege.’ Your friend laughs and you decide it’s time to go home.} 

_{You pack your things and leave.} 

_{When you get home, you walk into the silence of your apartment, dump your things on the couch and waltz into your bedroom.}

_{You flop on the bed and start to reminisce all the people you’ve met in the soulmate struggle.} 

 

_{‘Kennedy the cheat.’}

_{Whose phone you checked whilst he laid beside you sleeping to find out he had 2 other girlfriends he was actively sending monthly allowances to when he couldn’t get you a birthday present. You’d settled for the message, telling your friends ‘It’s the thought that counts guys. He told me I’m his other half guys.’ while smiling like a mumu.}

_{Which you were, a big mumu.} 

_{You sat there, right next to him.} 

_{Holding your lips like a 2 years old, so your loud sobs wouldn’t wake him up while replaying Bobrisky’s ‘Good girl no dey pay o’ in your head.} 

_{Your head hurts and your eyes are bloodshot red when you confront him, expecting an apology or atleast a feasible explanation when he looks at you with anger in his eyes.}

_{‘Why the hell were you checking my phone?’}

_{Can whoever is in charge of your lifestory play ‘Mumu mumu, make them call me mumu.’ ?}

_{That song was needed.} 

 

_{‘Rakeem the mummy’s boy.’} 

_{He’d make you cry every 2 market days, switch the narrative and apologize just to be in your good books. He’d openly gaslight and manipulate you but you couldn’t have enough of him.}

_{So you’d go back.}

_{Every single time.} 

_{To the pleas of ‘I’m better now.’}

_{Well, until you met his mother and he was basically kissing her feet and edging you to the kitchen to make banga soup, on the first meeting.} 

_{You shake your head and wonder what the hell was wrong.} 

_{Well atleast, wrong with your love life.} 

 

_{Dare the Married man.}

_{You remember D.} 

_{D, the sweet Yoruba man who swept you off your feet and left your heart beating after just the first date. D, who was charming, sweet and all the other adjectives you couldn’t think of.} 

_{He made you smile, he was the right amount of flirty, a complete gentleman. D was perfect, a man that left you thinking ‘Who’s this man’s mother abeg? She did a fantastic job ahaan’}

_{You thought D was your forever.}

_{Not knowing forever already had his own forever.}

_{You remember waking up that day expecting a sweet ‘good morning beautiful’ text.}

_{You unlocked you phone, still feeling sleepy and began to scroll through your messages.} 

_{Viam! Any sign of sleep evaded your senses when you saw the text.} 

_{3 pictures followed  by 2 long messages.}

_{‘You, these whores of Lagos, leave my husband alone. Don’t you have shame? Stupid home wrecker, Trying to spoil a family?……’}

_{You? An home wrecker? This woman definitely has the wrong person, you remember thinking}

_{You scrolled down and stared at the picture and then your heart began to shatter.}

_{There he was, smiling so bright with those dimples coming out to play. With his wife and 3 children.}

_{Just as your mind began to make excuses for him, ‘It’s not possible? D? Maybe its fake.’}

_{A video came in.}

_{You clicked on play.}

_{You heard the children chanting ‘daddy daddy come and carry me’}

_{You saw him walk up to his wife and kiss her.} 

_{There and then, the remaining pieces of your heart you’ve been holding on to break.} 

_{Into dirty pieces.}

 

_{You snap out of your thoughts and wonder if you’ll eventually find your person. You pick your phone up, scroll through Twitter as it totally skips your mind that it’s Owanbe Saturday.} 

_{You end up seeing thousands of marriage tweets.} 

_{You end up dropping the phone that’s meant to take you out of your own head.} 

_{You hiss.}

_{You scoff.}

_{You’re pained. You want that.}

_{You want love, easy love with no terrible intentions. You lay back, with only one thought in your head.} 

_{I wonder how love was in the 1960s.}

 

 

 

_{Dear Reader,}

_{Are you tired of me already? Fed up with my inconsistency? Forgive me. I have a little inside information, maybe a peace treaty? Every experience written in this piece happened. Well, not to me exactly. But to people around me. Crazy, right?}

_{Please let me know what you think of this piece, or let’s spice this up, the crazy people you’ve met in the ‘soulmate struggle.’  I’ll be in the comment section, maybe I shall drop a couple of mine too. Who knows? 🫣👀}

_{Till we see the world through my very own eyes again,}

_{Your favorite inconsistent writer.}

_{(Btw, if you’re not following and subscribed to this blog, o ti fuck up dear! Click on that button and join this family! It’s really all love over here :) ) ❤️}

 

_{Image from Isha Foundation}.