You found love in a human who chronically despises you. He is jealous of you, hates your guts, your beauty, your background, your influence, and how easily you settle into your “job” as a travel writer.
“Is it still travel writing when you travel in luxury?” he asked one time.
What you feel for him is not love, it is the desire for shege banza—the kind that is a shrinking of yourself to allow him to glow; a fearful retreat of your spoken words to avoid offending him; a forgetting of yourself.
It is walking on eggshells. You are not allowed to touch his phone, and you’re too fearful to confront him about the texts he receives, the ones that make him storm out of the house even after making serious plans to be together.
His name is Darnell. And you, Chiamaka.
The same Chiamaka whose mother is a peacock. Beautiful, proud, and gutsy. She holds her shoulders high and forgets to be the Nigerian kind of humble.
Who did you take after? Not your papa, who built wealth from the sales of palm oil, bold, rich, and daring. And obviously not your cousin, Omelogor, who, after dinner with you and Darnell, says, “You hide your worth with him.”
Because you really do. You forget to stand up for yourself or even respect yourself.
Why should you be afraid to look eye-to-eye with the man who sleeps with you? A man who makes you feel beneath him, undeserving of even a compliment from a stranger.
When the airport official said something miraculous about your eyes and you blushed too much, because you’ve been starved of attention, he said, “It’s common.” That you should already know your eyes are beautiful.
You try to express your feelings, and he hushes you with, “You’re hormonal,” as if your body were a mistake. As if it fails to function the way he wants.
He says, “Get a grip of yourself. We’re outside.”
But you sit there and smile through the embarrassment, the belittling of yourself. You laugh the disgrace off and wish you could change him. That he would make you feel better. That he would appreciate your writing and the you who is rich, has a house-help, and can book expensive flights.
For a man who went ballistic because you ordered a mimosa in a French restaurant?
Ọ na-apụ ara?
How do you forget to be a woman, even when the example of one sits in your mother?
Notes By Emmanuella 