GRIEVING THE UNDEAD

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Today is the funeral, together we’re burying the undead. If I told you anytime in the last six months that I was taken, I'm not so pleased to inform you, or let’s just say you're pleased to hear from me that they have returned me back o. Sorry, thrown me back in the cruelest way imaginable. It’s the funeral of a living, breathing, walking ghost. Details of the event are attached in the flyer below. Let’s start digging……ouch, it hurts, this labour of love.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Àlàkẹ́ Akọ̀wékọwúrà third of Sunmonu, the second generation of Sule Elegusi was ghosted.

I have thought long and hard about the best way to break the news to you but there’s no easy way to announce grief. And as you can already tell, I have not been fine. I’ve had moments of unimaginable happiness in the past months. There are quite a lot of things to be grateful for but all of it has been splashed with the colour of what should have been. It is going to take a while before I can truly and honestly answer the question “How are you?” with “I’m fine” because quite frankly and truly I'm not fine.

At this point, I'm taking a break from writing this because it's so damn hard writing about this. But I realize it is something I must do, for my sanity and to prevent myself from descending very low. Just in case you haven't heard I fight really dirty. Currently, in my mail drafts lie about ten very strongly-worded emails that I wrote to send to this person but then I remember what happened the last time I sent a strongly worded message, I almost lost one of my best friends even though I wasn’t really angry with them, I was just horny. Shitty stuff, I know. Will I send those mails? Maybe, maybe not. Will I text their friend again to talk about things that are absolutely none of their concern, hell yeah I would. Because somehow I want them to get the message - that they're being a fucking asshole.

Oops, that kind of slipped out. I planned to be civil and polite. So edit ~asshole~.

I mean meeeeeee

Emi Alake Akọ̀wékọwúrà. Haaaaaaaa

Do you ever get scared of your own awesomeness, like how it affects mere mortals and semi-mortals? Sometimes I get scared, genuinely horrified by the thought that there are people who would experience my goddess aura and then move on to the muggles. I get scared that the people who ghosted me would have to settle. That everyone else that comes after me will pale in comparison to me and they'd take it out on them. So, as a #womensupportingwomen advocate that I am, I try. I try to salvage situations and people that are clearly irredeemable. Just because I care about the rest of womanhood.

Now cut that crap, as you have probably figured out that's a lot of bullshit. Maybe it's partly true. I was, I am and will always be amazing. But no one is really that great. No one is that perfect so sometimes even when I know that my legend will be missed, I get scared that I will never find the kind of love I want. Love that is soft, almost effortless because we carry each other. Love that doesn't question friendship between us and between other people, love that is kind and respectful and of course love that is rich. For a moment you thought I was noble. No my dear, there’s nothing noble about poverty.

Grieving the undead is hard. Only a widow of the undead can truly explain it, it’s like something lost and found but you can't reach it. You see it, but you can't feel it. Like its fucking there but its not yours to keep and you want that shit. It's hard because even when you worry whether they're alive and breathing and are almost panicky as to their wellbeing, you realise as well that they had a choice in the matter and they chose not to talk to you. And when you realize they're talking to other people and are leaving their digital footprints all over the place but would not knock at your door or open theirs, you realise it's you not them. Crazy shit.

It's been fifty-four days now or is it fifty-three, yes I’ve been counting. Fifty four days of deafening silence. They are not coming back from the “a lot” they were going through, That was an out but I still hope that they would one day deem you worthy of an explanation. That somehow the universe would whisper to them about my existence and they'd listen without me having to dial in one more time. Three menstrual cycles, one thousand two hundred and seventy-two hours since I last heard from them and I still wonder how it is possible that not once did they miss me enough to want to call. Perhaps I'm not as important to them as I thought. It's hard not to make this about me when in fact it really isn't about me. "It's me not you" - this line has been playing in my head over and over again and it's sad but I'd admit that I wish they'd actually told me this because in some ways I needed that reassurance that I'm actually not the problem here.

For a moment while writing this, I considered making some edits because on some level I still believe it had to have been my fault. I still want to appear like I've got all this figured out, I still care about how they'd come off to a stranger reading this but the question is why should I really care? If someone didn't care enough about my feelings to ghost me and refuse communication on all levels, why do I still care this much? No it's not my fault a person can't communicate. Yes, it's okay to get it wrong with people. Yes, it’s okay to not know how to fix things that are broken. The other day, I had to make breakfast for my family while forcing mine down my throat. Such a great irony, making breakfast while eating breakfast. Well, in the middle of that ironic exercise, we ran out of gas so I had to replace the cylinder. We've been using a gas powered cooker in my house since I could remember and somehow more than a decade later I still can't fix the knob. So I had to beg my little brother to fix the gas knob for me. If that was the criteria that I used to judge my intelligence, then I'd be called dumb. What's my point? Am I dumb ? Emphatic no, I'm far from dumb. It’s just that my genius lies in other things and fixing broken people is not one of them.

So will I finally let go? No. A blogpost is not going to erase 43,200 minutes of considering someone your G when you were actually just an F. But would it prevent me from disgracing my ancestors one more time. Of course, because one way or the other, if I'm not spending my time in this very moment to write and edit this and to care about other things like my diction and flow of emotion in this piece, I'd be doing a despicable act like calling them multiple times. So. thank God for the ability to take anger and pain and hurt and disguise them in words. That right there is a superpower.

Am I worried they'd see this and somehow think it's a personal attack on their person? Yeah. But is it a personal attack on their person? Maybe. This whole thing is personal. Making yourself invisible to me specifically is very personal. And quite honestly, there's really no nice way to tell someone they're being a douche. You just have to rip off the bandaid. And if they're not answering the phone for you to tell them, then you have the permission to send the message through the universe. They'd get it one way or the other. Let's pretend I'd not send this as a broadcast message to all my contacts, their friend included.

So, if you ever had any doubts in your mind about sleeping with a writer, here you have it. They will tell everybody, about the good sex or the bad sex as the case may be, about the little things you do that makes them happy, about all the things they love about you and God helps you you fuck up, they'd tell the whole world in very colorful words too, how much or how little of a person you really are.

Like the Yorubas would say, we should not lie, we should not steal, maybe this is the problem —my need to tell people I don't know what's going on in my life. I’d like to think that’s what being an essayist is about, that this is what means to document my journey, from a hungry writer to a bestselling author but I also know that a part of this is about my pride. My need to show off as a good writer and my need to redeem my bruised ego coming into one in this piece. Of course, it is about my pride. My pride has been hurt, very badly I must add and what better way to redeem it than to remind you how much of a genius I am.

Suddenly I am reminded that in my next relationship, I should only date someone who is willing and able to read anything I ever write because this shit means the whole world to me. There are very few things I feel very strongly about - My family, my friends, my faith, my looks, surprisingly, this shithole of a geographical contraption called Nigeria and of course, my writing. Okay that’s a long list but any other thing I’m sorry to say is secondary to all of the above. So if you are going to be a part of my life then you are going to have to care about my writing almost as much as I do.

Why have I written a whole paragraph about how much I care about my writing? I'm sorry but that paragraph wasn't really for you. It was meant for the next man I decide to get into bed with. Because I expect that when I tell them I am a writer and send them a link to this blog as I would inevitably do, they would visit this blog, read everything on it and somehow get the memo —-that this shit is important to me.

Another reason is to tell you to avoid people who really don’t care about the stuff you care about. I have a colleague who cares so much about anime, it's hard to imagine him with someone like me who would say without any remorse that anime is crap but animation is the real deal. I actually mean it when I say it. Funny, but that is what I really think. He can't stand me when I say that but I get a kick out of frustrating him and I love that there are other people in the office who think the same way too. Yes, we exist, we watch cartoons but we would not watch anime because quite frankly it is not the same thing. It really isn't the same thing!

Just like it is not the same when you choose to be with someone and they just don’t fuck with shit you fuck with. Will your interests always align with your partner’s? Of course not, that would crumble the entire creative structure of the universe as designed by the Supreme Being but there are things that are fundamental to you that you should never compromise on because when you do, it will end in tears. Inevitably.

Now that’s what that paragraph was really about —Breakfast.

But, to be honest I be seeing a lot of nonsense in relation to my writing, both commercial and creative, especially from these phallus swinging creatures we share the universe with. There was the one who would never read anything I wrote but would lie about it. There was the journalist who thought creative writing was a joke and by extension I was a joke and then there was the one who claimed to be supportive and read everything but never actually read everything. Trust me I'd know. I leave little pieces of me in everything I write fiction or not. It's there. And if I'm sleeping with you atm, you would see it too. It’s there, Habibi. Surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly, they are the kind of men that would say women don't like good men but the fact is women don't like foolish men. In your mind, you are a good man because you have called me early in the morning to say good morning and ask about my plans for the day. Yes, you get a point for that but you also lose a point when you ask me why I'm running when I'm already skinny. Okay bro, I'm trying to disappear. Why would you call me early in the morning to say I'm too skinny to be exercising. Asides the fact that there’s too much foolishness in that statement to be ignored, are you illiterate? But you went to school now. While I understand that the world has been unfair to some people and they are naturally not smart, they can’t help it, they need help understanding things, what I would not and never understand is you refusing that help when it's being offered. Because trust me I would not explain the benefits of exercising to you twice. Just like I would not explain to you why I don't watch superhero movies. I just won't sleep with you.

Will I come back to tell you how this period of mourning went down? Maybe, maybe not. But till the next time someone offends me, Stay jiggy. Since it seems like anger is the only emotion that gets my creative juice flowing these days. I’ll be back, but for now, I need to get back to digging the grave for all of these feelings to die and never come back to life.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Funeral arrangements: A big bowl of ice cream to be shared with one of my favorite persons today. You’re welcome to join virtually by sending me your best wishes and funny memes.

(Google, play me Fulfillment by Yinka Ayefele)

Bitter experience…. sweet experience…. something else…..divine intervention….and now fulfillment.

Till the next time someone offends my spirit.

Àlàkẹ́ Akọ̀wékọwúrà🍒