The Truth I Always Wanted You to Read

 

Hey. It's been a while since you left, but I still don't know how to start writing what needs to be written. But I've never been good at starting things. I find myself in the middle of a thing without knowing how I got there, and I guess that's what happened to us.

Talking with you was easy. I am always double-checking my words, holding them up to see if they would match the image I'm projecting. But with you, I never had to do that. Maybe because you talked less and listened more. I believe that people have too many opinions. They forget that life is not a one-size-fits-all. We each have our unique experiences of the same things. You understood that and listened more. In hindsight, I wish I had encouraged you to talk more. Now I feel like all I did was take, take, and take. 

They say history repeats itself, and I was determined not to repeat my parents' history. I know I told you my mother and I were estranged, but I never told you why. It was because my father was an idiot. He was the sweetest man on earth, but when it came to my mother, his brain turned to akamu. Sometimes I wonder if my mother used a love potion on him; everyone else thought so. Because why else would the tall, dark, and handsome man go through all of the shit my mother put him through?

The only reason we lived in Nigeria was that my mother said she didn't like living in the United States. My father was forced to abandon his career and bring us all back to Nigeria after just a year because his wife was being selfish and irresponsible. She was more preoccupied with her social standing in Nigeria than with providing us with the opportunities that life in the United States could have offered. She missed the owambes and being the Alaga Iduro at weddings. She missed being the only child of the highly esteemed late Chief Dr. Adekunle Balogun Olusola. She didn't want to be a Mrs. Nobody in America.

But America wasn't the only thing she disliked. She didn't like my father's family either. Probably because they saw her for who she truly was—a vain, selfish woman who wouldn't even spare a drop of urine to douse my father's flames if he were engulfed in a raging fire. She disliked them so much that she bothered to exercise parental control by forbidding my father from taking us to the village during the December festivities. This was particularly difficult for my father because he was particularly close with his siblings. I have memories of him on the phone talking to one of his brothers or the other in Igbo—a language she had banned. Afterwards, his whole demeanour would brighten, his eyes sparkling and a faint grin tugging at his lips. Maybe she was jealous of the bond he shared with his siblings. Perhaps she feared our allegiance would lie with his family. Why? I don’t know. I can’t comprehend why children are forced to choose one half of their family tree, to sever their ties with one side of their heritage. It seems like an unjust and unnatural burden.

My father had always been a compliant husband, granting my mother's every wish. But when I was in the university, the time I met you, she wanted something that she had scorned before; she wanted to move back to the United States. The people who had cared about her pedigree were now dying, dead, or too beaten by the economy to give a shit. She was becoming irrelevant. So she wanted out. But the immigration rules had changed and the Dollar was constantly knocking down the Naira. Besides, who was going to offer a 60-year-old man a job when there were thousands of hungry ambitious graduates everywhere now? This time, it was out of my father's hands, and she began to despise him for it.

One time when I was home for the semester break and heard from my brothers how my mother no longer cooked for my father, I asked him why. I asked why he put up with her rubbish and selfishness. He smiled wistfully and said, "I love her." When I stared at him with what must have been disbelief, he added, "Do you know that in our vows, I added a line? I was a poet in those days and she was my muse. In my vows to her, I said that from that moment on I would live for her."

When he said those words, a cold heat settled on my chest. Then, if you told me my father was bewitched, I would have believed you. Or maybe he was crazy. They say love makes us do crazy things, but I think it gets to a point where one has to be assigned to a mental hospital. Love shouldn't bear all things. Love should be able to say enough is enough because you are killing me. 

This letter is not to rant about my mother or my father. It's about why I couldn't be with you. But because it looked as if history was about to repeat itself, and I still have scars from its first visit.

That morning when I woke up to a text saying you loved me, I felt giddy because that's how I felt about you too. But your next words filled me with fear—that being together made you want to live. I know you are not my father and I am not my mother, but a life is much too heavy to carry in my heart. I needed a man able to live for himself, not for me. I didn't tell you any of this at the time because I didn't know how to tell you I did not want to be responsible for your happiness. It was already hard dealing with your mood swings, but to be committed to you? I'm not sure I could have done that.

But now, I will never know. My therapist said I am not responsible for your death, but it's hard to convince myself otherwise. Maybe if I had encouraged you to talk more instead of listening to me all the time, we could have found help for you. Maybe if I told you why your words overwhelmed me and responded to your text, you wouldn't have killed yourself.  

I still think of you and our late-night talks. But I hope that by putting my thoughts on paper, I can replace the gnawing guilt with cherished memories of your warm smile.

Goodbye,

Alice.