Bleeding LOVE!

To be loved is a powerful thing. I just got done reading one of what my new roommate and I categorized as a self-help books. We just moved in together *two days ago and we finally got around to organizing her books into the bookshelf. Anyway, the cynic in me just got through the first chapter and realized that these books are not bestsellers for nothing. This one really put some things into perspective for me and I realize about myself that I prefer to just push my issues to the back of my proverbial cupboard. Like those cans of canned cranberries or sweet potatoes we randomly bought or were given, but as every thanksgiving and Christmas comes and goes we never use them, but won’t throw them away for some reason. They take up space, expire, but stay there even though we know we have no use for them.
I got to the end of the first chapter of this book and it had some really good exercises that required some jotting down answers and saying out loud some affirmative and self-reassuring thoughts. I didn’t actually write anything down or say anything out loud, but I did them in my mind. [That is a problem in itself]. I smiled a little bit because even doing them mentally they had the intended effect. What more had I actually done them whole-heartedly? Part of the reason I didn’t do them is because of a level of denial I have yet to overcome. Why should I write down everything that has ever been done wrong to me in a relationship if I haven’t actually admitted to the fact? Catch my drift? A la Colored Girls type sweeping under the rug 
A power thing happened next. I felt this powerful urge to say a prayer. In the recent past I have thought my prayers, but not actually said them. Something about this one made me turn off the light, get on my knees, take a deep breath and start talking. It took me a couple of seconds to organize my thoughts, but before I could say anything tears welled up in my eyes, vision got blurry and huge drops ran down to the corner of my mouth. [It’s happening again].
Ever since the death of my best friend about three weeks ago I’ve had so many conversations with friends whom we all grew up together with. I went through so many emotions like anger, sadness, bitterness, confusion, gratefulness, selfishness, fear, loneliness, homesickness, regret, pain in cocktails and individually. I am still. November 18. ‘Twas my first day at work at a new job. It had been so busy and being the trooper that I am running on shear gung-ho eagerness to make the perfect impression, no pun intended, I had been so oblivious to my hunger that until I was asked if I would take a break I hadn’t even thought about it. So I drove to the nearest eatery I found, ordered a quick bite with some coffee lest I go back and –itis sets in after eating. That “2 o’clock feeling”! I came back and was well within the hour given so decided to check and respond to or call back my missed calls. @redIvoire had called me twice during work hours so I figured it was urgent. Customary hey, ca va, what you doing was said, but I could tell something was wrong. Milena is a tough cookie and for her to have called me about something wrong was touching so my compassion was immediately aroused. “What’s wrong? Everything ok?”. She responded by asking me where I was and I told her she said I should call her when I got off. That was enough to pique my concern even more. It was that much more necessary to hear what it was now. To cut a long story short she told me that Aisha and Fatima had just died in a car accident. Like about 5 hours earlier. Details were dodgy only because it had really only just happened and it was all the way in Nigeria.

The last thing I ever wanted was to fall apart at work. I did not want to. Cry! Shuddering uncontrollably, mascara running down my face, eyes red, nose running. The hardest thing to do was crying silently when something so excruciating and painfully heart wrenching like that happens. Short of breath, lightheaded, humongous headache forming. I just couldn’t.
[I had never attended a funeral in my whole life until New Year’s Day of this year, 2010, when another very close childhood friend of mine died in a tragic accident the night before shortly after dropping me off when we hung out on New Year’s Eve. I had travelled to Zimbabwe for the Christmas holiday. I found out what had happened after I came home from bringing in the New Year with some other friends. Everyone, grandparents, mom, maid, cousins and uncles was up wondering if I was coming home because I had been the last person seen with him when the news was broken. After some probing and questions to figure out the timeline of what had happened to him, my granddad told me that he had been in a “very bad accident” that’s why everyone was worried. I was stunned. The joy and good times of the preceding hours was just wiped away. I told my granddad that I wanted to go to the hospital to see him. He told me it was too late. He had died on the spot. I never thought those wails I used to hear while sitting in the car waiting for Gogo and Khulu at funerals because it was taboo for children to attend would ever come out of me. It was a wail that couldn’t have come from inside me. It couldn’t have. The loss hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t believe it. He had JUST dropped me off. JUST! 4 hours ago.]
11 months later, my best friend. In the whole world. Gone. Just. Like that. Not a moment’s notice, she and her sister. Beautiful girls, the model of sisters. They were each other’s sisters, best friends and best friends of each others best friends and sisters to the other’s best friend. Amazing women.


I couldn’t cry the way I needed to. On my first day. I washed off my face. Put some lotion on my face, glossed the lips, dripped some clear eyes into my eyes and waited for the red to clear out. I had one two more hours to finish. There was nothing I could do about the puffs around my eyes but at least I would pull a few smiles and complete the day’s tasks. Honestly, I was dying inside. My mind was really trying to understand and accept what I had just heard. I couldn’t. I needed that wail and I never had it. All I have is tears. As I was unpacking I found pieces of her all over my room. The work pants I thought were so bootylicious on Fatima that after I complimented her on them three times she took off and gave to me. The pictures we took on a Polaroid camera when we went to The Hague for Model UN and had the same host family, the red dress I was supposed to send her, Claudette Ortiz and Wyclef duet (Two Wrongs) on my iTunes, the celery in the fridge. Those may seem either superficial or deep to an outsider, but that was the dynamic of our relationship. We could have long conversations where we would be “gisting” for hours about so and so, kohl eyeliner, our most recent encounters of utter uselessness, to development issues in respective African countries as far as corruption, the brain drain and the Diaspora’s need to realize that Africa’s future is theirs to shape.
As much as I loved Aisha Kyeptin Yahaya and her sister, and as much as it sucks not to have them, one thing that seems to give me a semblance of peace about the whole thing is how much they were loved. That’s why I say “to be loved is a powerful thing”. The circumstances under which I learnt this lesson are unfortunate, but it makes me grateful. I loved and absolutely adored those two and what happened was beyond anybody’s control. I knew I loved her, but it’s only now with these past few weeks that I realize how deep my love for her was. I loved her from the bottom of my heart and I was blessed to have a friend like her. Given the course of my life and the places I have been to and all the countries I have lived in and schools I’ve attended, it’s really hard to encapsulate the feelings I have for the relationship we had because there are very few people who have experienced it. Loss, yes has been experienced by all, but I’m not sure how exactly to describe it. She very well might be the only person who would have been able to understand it. But alas. Here I am writing trying to somewhat make sense of it and I guess maybe talk to someone. I got it out. Yet still. This does it no justice. I could have sat in a room with her and said a few things or nothing at all and not only would she have understood, but she would have made me feel better.
Wow, I love that girl.