Reflexion

On Saturday I have been invited to a wedding by a friend who is visiting from Accra/London. This is her very first trip to Lagos and so she is staying with me for part of her time here, which I am looking forward to. Because she knows very few people in Lagos apart from the couple, she has asked me to go along with her to the wedding. Now, my first instinct was one of dread. I didn’t really feel like going to a wedding but now, after a few days of deep breathing, I think I’m good to go. You’re probably wondering what I have against weddings. The answer is nothing. I have nothing against weddings.

In fact, I really like weddings, and this year, since moving back to Lagos, I have had a robust introduction to Naija-style weddings. I have fallen in love with that heady combination of Veuve Cliquot and small chops - it is a recipe for sheer joy. Most, I have actually been invited to, and others I have been dragged along to by friends as their +1 only to find that one half of the couple is someone I went to primary school with aged 6 but then lost touch with, for example. You might call that wedding crashing, but please, everyone in Lagos inadvertently does it at one time or another, so hold your judgement. But you are probably still wondering why I initially balked at the idea of going to this wedding. I’ll tell you why.

It is because I had a bit of a panicky moment on Tuesday. When I woke up on Tuesday morning, the enormity of what a huge year it has been for me suddenly hit me. In May last year when I still lived in London, I got engaged to the guy I had been dating for 4 years. In November, while I was in South Africa looking after my mother after her treatment for breast cancer, after a tumultuous 6 month engagement, I broke off the relationship, returned the Tiffany, and exactly a month later, relocated to Lagos, having moved out of our flat and quit my job, and sold off all my earthly possessions. My whole life changed in the space of 4 weeks.

In the aftermath of the break up, my strategy was to put one foot in front of the other and to keep going. I did not really have the capacity or the inclination to wallow in feeling anything because I was dealing with the turmoil of how close we came to losing my mum again, the stress of what was actually a very trying engagement, the logistics of the resultant break up, and the prospect of starting a new life in my own country, Nigeria, where I have not lived in 17 years. When it rains it pours, right?

There was so much going on that I couldn’t afford to stop and indulge my feelings because I knew that I might not be able to cope. The last thing I needed was to collapse into a blubbering mess. So I put my practical, no-nonsense problem-solving hat on and just got on with it. I have been in this zone pretty much all year, just going at 100 mph and not really stopping to take stock. Obviously, some amount of healing has been happening in the background because there have been those quiet moments of reflection and so on, but the true weight I have been carrying all year, and the true magnitude of the dimensions of what I have been dealing with suddenly broke over my head on Tuesday morning. It knocked me for six, I can tell you that now.

I think it’s a similar feeling to when you’re for example, running a marathon, and you suddenly catch sight of the finish line. That feeling of relief that washes over you because you didn’t think you’d make it and you suddenly become aware of the fact that your feet hurt or you grazed your knee and you didn’t know you were bleeding. That’s how I felt on Tuesday morning. I was like whaaaat? How do I process all that? It dawned on me, and I couldn’t believe that this might have been my first married Christmas, because on the 25th of September 2012, at about 1pm, if I had not decided to leave, I might have been at that very moment, marrying the wrong man, saying the wrong vows, smiling in the wrong pictures, creating the wrong memories, throwing the wrong bouquet, getting dressed with the wrong bridesmaids, clinking glasses to the wrong toast, going on the wrong honeymoon, planning the wrong children, beginning the wrong life, living the wrong destiny.

On Tuesday morning, I was so stunned, I couldn’t even cry. I just lay here gasping, trying to breathe and thanking God that everything worked out the way it did. At the time everything was happening, I just kept saying to God, I don’t know how this is going to work out or why this is happening, but please make me OK. I hate this, but please don’t let me be damaged. I still have this dream of my married life and my family and my kids and I know it doesn’t come from nowhere. Please take care of me and make this all good. That was all I could do. Internally, I was braced to crash through whatever barriers I needed to crash through to breakout of that disastrous time in my life, but I also felt drained and limp. I just did not have the energy for high emotion and drama. It was all I could do to keep it together and keep smiling. So I outsourced my feelings, disconnected my tear ducts, poured myself a cocktail and checked out of emotional-ville for a while.

I don’t think this is the forum in which to get into the whys and wherefores of why my engagement went tits up – that is maybe a post for another day, or maybe for never; I don’t know yet. But because of what happened, I have an even greater respect for relationships and marriage and family. They were pretty damn high up on my list anyway, but if it is possible, they have gone higher. My family saved me from that disastrous situation - they literally fought for my life and I don’t say that lightly.

But now, having come back from the brink of almost making the biggest mistake of my life, and having ventured out of my 100 mph aloof, damage control mode, I am particularly fascinated by the relationships around me and by weddings. There are so many people getting married these days. If you aren’t careful, having your ears pinned back and stinging from wearing a gele will become an every Saturday occurrence. I look at the marriages in my parents’ generation, and in subsequent generations – some of which have worked and some of which haven’t – and I am reminded again and again what a big deal it is. It is a huge freaking deal. But people are still just waltzing into it anyhow. I mean, once you’ve met the right person, and you know they are right, I can see how it’s quite simple in that the plan is to get married and live happily ever after. But I wonder about people who are getting married, hoping the fact that they are married will change the man or change the woman into what they want them to be.

So in the light of everything, you can imagine why the thought of going to a wedding this week presented a challenge for me. All the other weddings I’ve been to this year, I attended in my carefully detached state if mind. I did not engage with the couple’s love or lack of love, period. Because I was in a phase where I wasn’t even downloading my feelings, I could breeze in and breeze out and studiously avoid noticing all the minute details - reading the couple’s gaze, observing their body language, trying to decipher what those things meant for good or for ill; or overhearing stories from the next table about how the bride’s sugar daddy paid for the red velvet cupcakes or the groom’s jump-off had wangled her way onto the bridal train unbeknown to the bride, disguised as a distant cousin. There is so much nonsense going on with marriages in Lagos these days, that no story shocks me anymore.

See, I cannot be dealing with that crap, I just can’t take it. Because if how I felt in those 6 horrendous months of being engaged to the wrong person was just a little taster of what life might be like when you’re married to the wrong person or for the wrong reasons, then man oh man, I don’t even want to know what that’s like. I want nothing to do with any of that. It’s not that I am skeptical of marriage. Quite the opposite – I told y’all I still have a dream – but I think there are far too many people getting married and not enough people thinking. People are so desperate to carry the Mr and Mrs title that they take leave of their senses and just jump into it. I have heard of people getting married this month, December 2012 who as at June 2012 were very single with no prospects on the scene and then boom, they are suddenly entering into wedded bliss. OK, I get that a rare few people have whirlwind romances… I get that and I even know a few people who after 25 years are still married after dating for just 3 months.

But how many people does that happen for really? Let’s be honest. How are you going to bet your forever on some chick or some guy you’ve known 5 minutes? And then when it goes tits up, there’ll be deafening prayers and petitions and all this long-suffering discourse about how God should help you. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, and some people may not like this, but people need to think. And some families don’t help either. I mentioned before how I am grateful to my family for supporting me all the way when I decided to walk away. I have heard stories of people expressing concerns and their families being like meh, invitations have been printed already so it’s too late. Or you are marrying the child of Big Man XYZ so you better suck it up and get on with it and don’t let us hear any nonsense. That’s the most cruel thing in the world. You are effectively handing your child their death sentence because they will not be their best or their fullest self, married to the wrong person.

If it is not right, then WALK THE HELL AWAY. We need to encourage people close to us to walk away if it’s not the right match. I feel so strongly about this now and I didn’t understand the enormity of my decision until I realised what a HAPPY and PEACEFUL year I’ve had over all because I escaped from all the toxicity. I have been honest with some of my girlfriends who are in similar situations to those that contributed to my own problems and I am always shocked when it emerges that in some ways, like me in the early naïve days, they thought the issues would go away and would sort themselves out over time. No honey they won’t. Some issues are resolvable and some aren’t. WALK AWAY.

You will heal. You won’t die, and one day, you will feel normal again. I didn’t think so before but now I know for sure that it is true. And having come full circle, almost a year later, I feel like my life has been enriched. My knowledge of myself has grown, and my understanding of what I need, where I need to work on myself, and the value proposition I might hope to offer to someone some day have become clearer and clearer.

I never usually share personal details like this on my blog and I didn’t do it because I suddenly feel like putting my business out there. This kind of outpouring is usually reserved for my journal. But I did it because it is natural as a year draws to a close, to be caught up in a bit of sombre reflection. It is normal to review the year and try to chart how far you’ve come and try to forge an idea of where you want to go next. My little freak out on Tuesday reminded me of just how much has happened in the last year and how much has changed. I felt that apart from my usual ranting and raving about extraneous material on this blog, I would like to do a meaty post that meant something and that would be useful.

The main thing I learned from my various episodes this year was this: If you are in a situation and you need to make a change in your life, don’t set yourself a date like oh next year or oh next month, blah, blah blah. DO IT NOW. Because your life take a different course at the snap of your fingers and you have the power to change your situation if you are willing. Also, you may not have the strength or the focus or the resources or the energy next month or next year to do what you know you need to do today, and you will allow yourself to remain in that situation when you deserve to be free and happy. I feel it is important to say this now, as people being to think up their resolutions for next year etc. I have never really been one for resolutions and all that but if you are, then one of your resolutions should be to start acting immediately to change the things you don’t like.

Because this post was inspired by my little freak out earlier on in the week, I would like to appropriate what I said above for relationships especially. If you are a good man or woman and you are reading this, and you know that you are in a rubbish relationship that is really only going to drain your spirit and ruin your life, please don’t go into 2013 carrying that baggage. Leave him or her now and you will both be happier for it. You can still each have a shot at a happy life. If you are a bad man or a bad woman and you know that your behaviour is causing your loved one pain and anguish and you have been giving empty promises to be better but have not yet bothered to do so, please don’t wait until 2013 to change your ways. Do it now. And if you can’t then be honest with all of mankind and cut your person loose so as not to be unfair to them.

We have no idea whether our lives will be long or short. We hope for them to be long, but in any case, we should not shackle ourselves to the wrong partner and then expect the three legged race through life to mysteriously be fun. Look after yourself and do what you need to do. So as I go to this wedding on Saturday, I will be praying for the couple and wishing them well. I hope that they are right for each other and that they find the happiness they are looking for. I pray that they have asked themselves those tough questions and found the right answers. This is what I fervently pray when I hear couples are getting married.