Nonso always said all the right words. I noticed it right from the first day he slid into my DM and asked permission to chat with me. He always knew how to navigate with words. That was one very remarkable thing about him. It’s not just about the fact that he is a lawyer. It goes deeper than that. He knew how to be witty, how to be funny, how to criticize constructively, how to charm and caress a woman with words. He also, wasn’t slacking when it came to intellectual conversations. He knew so much about so many different topics and it showed in the way he talked. He was articulate, opinionated, persuasive, confident. It’s no wonder I fell for him like a ton of bricks.
I fought it, of course. Hard girl nor dey quick gree for boy like that*. So I fought it. I even sent him away but he wouldn’t leave. He kept calling. We kept talking. We talked about everything and nothing. We lived in different cities, see? So words were all we had. There was talk of him coming to see me around that time. He wanted to see this pretty Isoko woman who had stolen his heart from his Twitter timeline. I was flattered.
The first time we saw each other, even though it was a very brief meeting, he showered me with compliments. I was a vision, a goddess among women, he said. A black, vibrant, queen come to sweep him away. He said he was under my spell. He said he was already deeply in love with me at that point. I was everything he wanted in a woman: fat enough to fill his arms, busty enough to make him hot for me, pretty enough to make his peers envious and intelligent enough to stimulate his mind. He was proud of my modest accomplishments in life. He was happy to have met me. He would be honoured to have me by his side as his woman. He wanted me for keeps. Yes. Nonso knew all the right things to say.
Though in the end, words were not enough. Words could not make up for the distance between us or the finance issues that cropped up when he quit his job to pursue his passion. Promises could not keep me warm at night or take me to the hospital if I was sick. Words began to sound empty when he could not live up to them. They began to sound hollow when he started explaining why he couldn’t come through for me. They became annoying when he started throwing up one excuse after the other.
He swore I was the love of his life but could not explain why I wasn’t a part of his life. I had to wait, he said, while he pursued his passion and set the stage for his landing. Then I would stand with him on the podium, in front of the crowds. I was the one he wanted by his side on his big day. I was the woman he wanted on his arm at the society lunches and state dinners. I was the woman who would bear his kids and answer his name. I was the dazzling star and he had to work to set up the stage for me. Didn’t I see? Didn’t I get it? It was pretty straight forward, he explained.
By then I was already getting fed up with his words. I didn’t care about a stage, a palace or a podium, I just wanted him. I didn’t want to wait for the perfect moment of glory, I wanted the imperfect moments of now. I didn’t want to wait for a grand castle in the future, I wanted a simple house now. Why couldn’t we start small and build together? Why couldn’t we be enough for each other? Why did we need something more to make it perfect?
One day the answer came to me but I resisted it. I refused to believe it. Nonso was still filling my ears with his words everyday, so I countered my intuition with his convictions. He loves me, I reminded myself. I am his queen, his dream woman, his perfect woman. That’s what he said all the time. I had to believe it. But the voices in my head wouldn’t go away.
The questions in my spirit wouldn’t let me be. My friends’ doubts, my sister’s speculations, time’s unrelenting stare, all pulled at me. I found myself looking in the mirror with questions in my eyes, questions that I could not answer. I shut Nonso’s voice out of my head and listened to my spirit. I also shut my heart out, because it was unreliable and I could not trust it’s leanings. I needed to find the unbiased truth.
The truth came to me in that moment but I dreaded it. I knew what had to be done, I just didn’t know how I was going to do it. I was so in love with him! I hoped and prayed that when I put my decision before Nonso he would say the right things and banish my fears. He did say the right words though, but not what my heart needed to hear. He understood my points. If my mind was made up, my mind was made up and there was nothing he could do about that. If I couldn’t see his vision, I couldn’t see his vision, and he would not force me to see it. If I couldn’t wait, that means I didn’t love him and he had to let me go since that was what I wanted to do. We could stay friends. We needn’t have bad blood between us or keep malice with each other. We were adults. If things didn’t work out, it was nobody’s fault. So logical!
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to rail at him. I couldn’t though. He had said all the right words. I knew then, that he never loved me. It was all a script to him. It was just another stage where he knew his lines and performed to perfection. If he really loved me, he wouldn’t care about civility and propriety. He wouldn’t give me up (under any guise). He would beg me to stay. He would make it work not make it easy for things to end.
In the last scene, he courteously withdrew his interest and wished me well. I made it clear that I didn’t want to be friends. I am an all-or-nothing type of woman after all. He broke my heart in two but I couldn’t cry because he made it sound as reasonable as ever. Nonso always knew all the right words: that is both his blessing and his curse.
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