YOU SMOKE? I DO TOO!

“I don’t think I have the strength to keep a relationship. I listen to stories of people being engaged for ten years and I feel dizzy. How do you even date someone for seven years without losing your sanity? What are you both doing dating each other for close to a decade? Research? Experimenting? What the hell do you talk about? I think relationships are a boring cycle of emotional turbulence…or violence. Just like this dope stud here, I prefer them short and casual.

You cannot remember the last time you woke up to someone else’s morning sweat or a wake me up husky voice on a Sunday morning. You’ve been single for God knows how long and you are investing all your time in your work, then one Saturday evening you invite yourself to your best friend’s birthday party and meet a man you feel you could stand for a few weeks, sorry ,months. You’ve invited yourself because every time you are invited to such gatherings you disinvite yourself and consequently everyone in your inner circle gave up on inviting you to their parties. Your ideal evening involves dressing in your oversized Tee, lying on the couch scrollaxing while watching for the umpteenth time, Legend of Zorro.

photo courtesy:lulupants

You’re both single and so ready to hit things off. OH…And all so perfect for each other. A new relationship is exciting. He is one hell of a human being, everything your single self has been fantasizing about, all wrapped into one with a ribbon on it. She has the perfect body, a killer smile and kindness constitutes seventy-five percent of her blood. You see, it’s just like having one favorite restaurant which you frequent because you know that you will get every single thing you want, the way you like it, any time you feel like it. It feels like being on an ass hash overdose for days. Now that’s us. At this point, you are still unaware that he has anger issues or that she can go for three days without taking a shower, what we call “passport beating”. Even if you do, you’re so over the moon about your new found love and so blinded by novelty that you do not think of it as a big deal.

“Passport beating” is the ungodly act of cleaning just a few parts of your body, either because you don’t have enough water to take a proper bath or you simply do not have a good working relationship with water, bad blood if you may. Just like it is when taking a passport size photo, you just cover the essential parts .Clean your face, legs, arms, whichever parts you choose, and leave the rest to God. Not so different from tax evasion.

Fast forward to the second month, it is holiday season, December. You and bae are both lying half naked on one of the sandy beaches of the South Coast and reminiscing. Five cute kids with the girls having his hair and the boys your confidence. Everything is working out great until you find out that he wears one boxer for a whole week, or he notices your one shower in three days trend. Both of you begin to see all the flaws that were sufficiently masked with the big fall. Suddenly, there are so many things wrong with both of you.You notice that if he is not watching Telemundo, he is keeping up with the Kardashians or playing Candy Crush. Your perceived Mr. Perfect also gets crazy mad if you fail to tag him on your Instagram pictures and his Snapchat gets more action in a day than yours could ever get in a decade. Lawd Hammercy.

Seven months down the relationship and you both wish you were single. At this point,even his ever so mighty dipstick is not long or big enough to check the depth of the engine oil. Your honey pot on the other side is not so well fitted for the job anymore. It probably emits a stench that could make him go blind. Back in my village, my people call this an “Awayo ojogore gi lak” situation. It simply means that you can’t stand each other anymore and you’d probably kill each other if you had to spend an entire day locked in a room.

You then spend the next three months breaking up but not really breaking up. The bonds become weaker by the day and you begin to feel like strangers. No one owns up to mistakes. It’s a sickening endless life threatening roller-coaster of blame games and tantrums. You keep telling yourselves that y’all going to be victorious in the end but somewhere deep inside your heart you know you have reached the end of the road and before you know it, he is on top of someone else and you’re under another!

And the cycle goes on.”

Meet Zara, a fine Swahili woman with a behind that can pass for a very comfortable chair, who can make a meal out of stones, a senga and my friend who swears by all the deceased people she knows, that she will never get into a long-term relationship.