BELLA'S MEMOIRS (ENTRY #7)

TO OPEN OR NOT TO OPEN...

Okechukwu: What’s your biggest fear in life?

Me: Being alone.

We were at the beach, sitting in the sand. After our unplanned exit from my parents’ anniversary party we drove around for a while and ended up on the beach. It was dark and I was a bit scared that it wasn’t safe but Okechukwu assured me we would be fine.

We had been talking about everything and anything.

Okechukwu: You’re only twenty one Bella. You have a lifetime to find love, happiness and all the things you need not to end up alone.

Me: Yes I know, that’s why I am glad I have you.

He smiled and was quiet for a while then I asked:

Me: What’s your biggest fear?

Okechukwu: Not being enough.

Me: I don’t understand. Not being enough how?

Okechukwu: I have four older brothers. The one just before me being seven years older. My parents didn’t plan to have any more children especially because my mother’s pregnancy with my immediate older brother was very difficult. Then she got pregnant with me, it was also a difficult pregnancy and she died from complications while she was giving birth to me. My father kind of blamed himself for getting her pregnant again. I knew the story from when I was old enough to understand it and I guess I just owned it. It moved from being my parents’ story to being mine. I killed my mother and deprived my siblings of their mother and my father of his wife.

Me: You didn’t kill her! It wasn’t your fault and if could she would let you know that.

Okechukwu: Try explaining that to a five year old boy. I heard people whisper at family meetings and functions, nudging each other and looking at me with a stigma that I could never shake off. So in my naivety I tried to make up for it, tried to compensate my family for the loss I had I cost them. I was quiet, gentle, got good grades, I was extremely independent didn’t need anyone to look after me. It worked for a while and then on my fifteenth birthday, I heard my father wailing in his room on what was also my mother’s death anniversary and he said as he spoke out loud to her, “I would give anything to have you here today if I could turn back the hand of time.” I just interpreted it to mean that if he could turn back the hand of time he would rather I had never been born than lose my mother. Something in me snapped that day and I started acting out. My grades started dropping, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd and all just because I felt my family didn’t want me. Immediately after secondary school my oldest brother –Aunt Linda’s husband– took me in and for the first time Aunt Linda showed me what a mother’s love would have been like. She actually cared but I was horrible to her at first. I was rude, arrogant and difficult and then I got into university and was expelled. That was the final straw; my brother decided he had had enough so he cut me off. All he gave me was a roof over my head and food to eat and nothing more. I was completely on my own and I had someone else I needed to sort out, Ese who had also been expelled on my account. So I hit the streets and did everything I could to make money…some of the things I had to do I am not proud of but I survived somehow and here I am today. I mean I understand now that my father didn’t know how to handle his emotions and my siblings didn’t have any guidance from him on how to relate with me so I forgive them for all that happened but he really left me scarred in some ways. It made me defensive and stubborn but I am learning now and trying to be a better person.

I reached out and held his hand.

Okechukwu: I know you deserve better than me but I’m trying to be the man you need Bella. I really am.

I reached over and kissed him. He looked so vulnerable, so helpless I just wanted to make him feel better. Let him know he was enough for someone…he was enough for me.

Me: Let’s go to your house.

I whispered to him.

Okechukwu: No Bella. I can’t guarantee that I would be able to restrain myself.

Me: I don’t want you to restrain yourself.

I knew I was ready and I knew I wanted it to be Okechukwu.

Okechukwu: No Bella. I can’t and I won’t.

Me: Why?

Okechukwu: Because then you would have all these expectations of me.

Me: What sort of expectations?

Okechukwu: Love, marriage, children. I don’t know that I am ready for all of that.

Me: No one is asking you for all of that at least not right now.

Okechukwu: That’s the problem! I don’t know if I ever want that at all!

Me: I don’t understand? You never want to get married?

Okechukwu: I don’t know yet. I mean I am crazy about you, that I know but I don’t know what it is supposed to mean or how it is supposed to affect our futures.

Me: You once told me that when we had children they would be real Nigerians…can you remember that?

Okechukwu: I want to be a father someday…soon at that but that doesn’t always have to come with marriage does it?

Me: I don’t understand what you mean by all of this gibberish. So if you don’t see a future here why are we together?

Okechukwu: Come on Bella stop making me into a villain here! Why didn’t you invite me to the party tonight? Admit it you know I am not the sort of man you will end up with. I am the sort of man you need now for fun and adventure, I am not the sort of man you plan a future with.

Me: That is for me to decide.

Okechukwu: No darling. It was decided for you when you were born with blue blood and a trust fund.

He had told me his story, I had to tell him mine.

Me: Don’t judge me because I have a foreign passport and accent. I didn’t know who my father was until I was about to graduate from College. My mother got knocked up by dad when she was about my age and she took a bribe from The Duchess to relocate and never contact him again. She got to America, found out she was pregnant but by then it was too late; she had signed a contract never to contact him again. I grew up with unanswered questions and an inferiority complex. Then my mother got diagnosed with cancer and my life got even more twisted. She got really sick when I was preparing for my final exams. The doctors told us she wouldn’t survive it so guess what –she decided to mess up my life even more by telling me to contact my father who turned out to be this rich man from Nigeria. Do you know how awkward it was for me to have to move here to a new life with a new family I had never met? My mother was an only child, her parents are gone. I have no connection to her family whatsoever. I came to Nigeria to a stepmother who was barely ten years older than me. I hated her at first so I messed up. I got played by an impostor and my half-sister got kidnapped thanks to my naivety. People almost lost their lives in the process. My grandparents split right after that and I blame myself for it all. So don’t sit there and tell me I can do better than you like my life is some sort of fairytale! You are afraid of not being enough and I am afraid of being alone and that’s why we should be together! That is what love is about – complementing each other’s weaknesses and celebrating each other’s strengths.

He looked at me like I was crazy and so I said the words I prayed won’t haunt me forever.

Me: I love you Okechukwu.

He looked away and then sprang to his feet.

Okechukwu: It’s almost 3am Bella we should go.

Was he genuinely scared of not being good enough for me or did he just not feel the same way about me? I needed an answer.

Me: What is it? Is it too much for you to handle? Do you find it so hard to believe that I love you or you don’t feel the same way about me? Which is it?

Okechukwu: Please can we not do this now? I opened up to you about my life so you could understand why I am the way I am sometimes, I don’t need you to put pressure on me to immediately become the prince in your fairytale!

Me: I am not looking for a fairytale!

Okechukwu: Oh yes you are! That’s why you think you are in love with me –the bad boy with the colourful past and the power bike and the leather jacket that comes to sweep you away from the castle where you are bored of your life with The Duchess and we wander off into the sunset where I slay dragons for you and we cross seven seas to my beautiful castle and we live happily ever after because alas I am not just a soldier who came to win your heart, I am a prince of the biggest kingdom in the universe! But guess what I am not a prince and there is no castle Bella; what you see is what you get.

Tears were welling up in my eyes. Why was he being so mean? I almost couldn’t recognize the man in front of me.

Me: Okechukwu what is all this about? I don’t understand why this would make you so angry, this is unfair!

Okechukwu: Bella I have told you what I have to offer you and you still choose to build fantasies in your head; when I can’t met your expectations I would be labelled a villain and you talk about fairness.

Me: Do you want to end things with me? Is that what this is about?

Okechukwu: I don’t want to hurt you. I would rather let you go than hurt you. I have had only one relationship Bella and you have met her. You can see it wasn’t exactly a grand romance or fairytale. I was raised by five men I have no sisters, no mother. I don’t know how to deal with emotions or all these frills you want to add to the relationship.

Me: But you wanted the frills with Ese at some point.

Okechukwu: Ese was crazy, fun to be with, full of adventure we had a great time together. It wasn’t more than that. When she started trying to pin me down I had to shake her off!

Gbam! He had hit the nail on the head. You know as women sometimes we meet a guy and he is great and all so we fall for him and we take the frog and make him into a Prince charming and when he starts speaking ill of the girl that was there before us, we think it’s because we are special and better than her but sometimes it is nothing but a reflection of the guy’s emotional unavailability or his commitment issues. I had labelled Ese the villain, the one who wouldn’t let Okechukwu be so he could follow his heart…his heart being me. But the words that just came out of his mouth made me realize he was also guilty of leading her on and letting her assume for years that she was the one for him when he knew she wasn’t and as soon as he felt he had ‘compensated’ her, he was ready to let her go and be with me. So what happened if he felt I had been compensated as well…would he move on? I had choices to be make, choices that could not be made sitting on the beach staring at his gorgeous face.

Me: Please take me home.

The ride home was quiet. He didn’t even turn on the stereo to listen to his loud music as usual. I guess we were both lost in thought. I decided to go back to my parents’ house so I could apologize to them for disappearing from the party when they woke up later in the day. As soon as we pulled up to the entrance he said,

Okechukwu: I didn’t mean to upset you tonight Bella. Can we just sleep over this and talk some more in a few days?

The nerves…a few days??? Was that his way of asking for a break. I fought the tears that were threatening to start spilling down, got out of the car and slammed the door behind me.

When I got into the compound, my dad was outside sitting in a chair on the terrace, smoking a cigarette.

My Daddy: Where have you been Madam?

Me: I’m sorry dad. My friend came over, we went for a drive and I lost track of time.

My Daddy: A drive that lasted till 4am in the morning?

It wasn’t even 4am yet but I knew pointing that out to him would incur more wrath than whatever was coming.

Me: I’m sorry dad we lost track of time.

My Daddy: I don’t want you seeing Okechukwu anymore.

I was shocked! Had my stepmom told him about us?

My Daddy: You think you can be gallivanting around town with a boy and I won’t know? I own this town!

Me: Dad you haven’t even met him and you don’t want me seeing him. That’s not fair.

My Daddy: I don’t need to meet him, I know all I need to know about him and I have made my decision.

He picked up a file and handed it to me.

My Daddy: There it is! All you need to know about your knight…apparently he has a couple of chinks in his armour you are not aware of.

He put out his cigarette and left me outside. I held the file in my hand…the file that was Pandora’s Box. I didn’t know what to do. Was there really anything in there that could change the way I felt about him and considering the way things were between us, wasn’t it better to just let things be and move on with an untainted memory of who he had been to me?

To open or not to open that was the question.