The Rich also Cry.............

Mama Im so depressed xxx has cheated on me
"Ah that's not important you have a good job."
Can you believe what That Uche has been going around saying about me I'm so hurt
"You complain too much sha thank God you have so many degrees."
I feel so lonely I wish I had a friend
"with the amount of money you earn I wouldn't be worried about not having friends, go shopping"
I'm feeling suicidal I feel like I cant cope
"Don't be ridiculous, so many guys are falling over themselves trying to date you."

Its not that I don't count my blessings, I do, each and everyday, when I wake up and when I go to bed. It would not have mattered though if i didnt, for I can almost name more than 30 odd people who will most certainly be ready and willing to count them for me. Not that they need to wait for an invitation, my ears are already ringing from their constant remainders of how lucky or blessed I am .............. "You lucky you have a good job," " you lucky you so intelligent", "you are lucky you have such a close family," " you are lucky your parents. have so much money," "you are lucky that all your family members I still alive," "you are lucky you got that promotion," " i really envy you," "i wish i was like you," "you are my inspiration," "God has been really kind to you"...arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Wouldn't it drive you crazy as well? As if this was not enough they have voted me 'the most envied' person in my social network on facebook. I'm sick of it. Its not that I am ungrateful I more than anyone else am well aware that God has been more than merciful to me but I feel suffocated by the need / expectations from people to show how eternally grateful I am for the small mercies...well actually big mercies. Its not the fact that people remind me to be grateful that gets to me, its the fact that for some reason people believe that the trauma/ill will/bad luck/misfortunes/problems/catastrophes (yes catastrophes I have had my fair share of those in my 26yrs) that I go through are simply inconsequential/ or not worth recognising since my countless blessings make up for whatever hurt/pain/humiliation I might be enduring. Consequently I'm the type of purpose who has to wail loudly before some recognises that I am in pain, weeping silently will not cut it, and even when recognised my feelings are instantly dismissed as if they do not matter as if they are inconsequential simply because.....simply because I have achieved more than the odds for a 26year African woman.

I never get to have a voice ........this is the story of my life, I feel as if I'm being punished for having achieved more, having conquered despite the odds, even though I am where I am through blood sweat and tears. I hate the life I have, not that its not wonderful but that I don't matter enough, people have stopped seeing the real me and started seeing degrees, intelligence, a privileged upbringing etc, somehow I feel that were I to commit suicide the first comments would not be concern but would be reproach........ 'what a waste her life was great.' or 'she killed her self why? I thought she had a good job and all' (no i dont plan to commit suicide).

In fact this business of thinking that somehow it was justified for me to have painful or whatever experiences just because the odds were always in my favour, started when I was quite young. I remember my parents sent me to an extremely expensive private school. So expensive was it that it took my dads two months wages to pay a terms fees and even at that time he earned a lot. My mother never made me forget this. Somehow it was okay for me to be bullied (we were only a handful of black kids) at school (not that it was okay but simply I was supposed to be grateful because my other siblings although they were at private school as well their fees was not nearly as high as mine) It was 'okay' for me not to go on holiday simply because I went to the expensive school. It was okay for me not to have as much holiday pocket money as the others after all they were going without (yeah right) so that my parents could fund my expensive education. From a very early age I learnt to shut up about my pain. I did not want to complain or let anyone know that I was unhappy I learnt to feel guilty for being unhappy which even made me unhappier which then made me even guiltier and ashamed of myself which made me even more depressed then i would feel even guiltier (if there is such a word) for being depressed when i should be grateful.......in short it became a vicious circle.

It probably still is up to now, i still have to think twice before I say my problems to people then I have to say them 5times before they are taken seriously. I remember once after a very traumatic incident absolutely no one comforted me, when I tried to reach out to people they simply told me not to be silly, my life was good, how they envied me....I remember calling my cousin in tears telling her that I was feeling suicidal and I couldn't cope anymore, I remember her telling me not to be silly and to compose myself I was the luckiest person in the world and that a lot of people envied my life....she said to me she was cooking and that I should call her back when I have had a grip on reality...don't be silly she said..if only she knew that at that precise moment I was very close to the brink. Do you know that a large percentage of suicides are committed by people who are middle class and above? Not that its a sport of the rich fabulous or fantastic only but statics show that they are more suicides committed than by poorer people.....guess that's why people say money doesn't buy you happiness.....which is not true..... its because people are too busy thinking that your money should buy you your happiness that they don't make the effort to ensure that you are really and truly happy like they would for a less well to do relative.

I guess I'm sick and tired of having to shout to be heard, having to stand last in line when it comes to receiving compassion, kindness, cuddles or warmth from other people simply because I have been unduly blessed. Just because God has been merciful to me doesn't change the fact that I am still human, I've insecurities, I have days that I feel ugly, periods of time when I feel that the world is closing in on me , crushing me and I can not breathe. There will be days when I could use a shoulder to cry on, months when I would gladly trade my life for yours, there will be weeks when I don't get out of bed, mornings when I weep and cry to God why me Jehovah? It doesn't mean I am ungrateful or have lost sight of the countless blessings that I have....its just that I'm human, and countless blessings or great mercies if you cut me open I bleed... (sorry Leona Lewis). So next time if I'm in despair and I could do with a friend, please don't recite my numerous blessings, just give me a hug . I could do with a friend and not a blessings accountant.

For sometimes late at night, when they lay naked in their beds with only the clock ticking to keep them company, long after safes are locked and the banks have closed, well after expensive clothes lie in the laundry basket, the jewellery is removed and the jaguar is parked in the garage. Long after the stock market has closed, when the house help has gone home,and the curtains are drawn, and they are overwhelmed by a deep sense of loneliness................ sometimes the rich.......actually........ sometimes I, just like the rich also cry.

Flabby wrote a similar post only saw it after i had written mine but its worth checking out My Side of the Story!: My right to hurt
PS: This post is in response to someone who was concerned that my posts are rather 'dark'. I am happy with most aspects of my life, career, home etc but i struggle in others. I normally have an outlet for my joy but i struggle in terms of expressing my pain (hopefully this post has explained why) and thats why i blog. PS: I am not rich!!!!!!!!!!!

Blame it on the Weatherman .............

* long ass post as usual*
This week what was supposed to be a promising week full of sunny spells, bright mornings and a cool calm gentle breeze , turned into gloomy dampness and loads of rain, actually it rained twice to be precise.

The first time, it was nothing too serious, light showers falling softly against my 'window' pitter patter..pitter patter ever so softly, if you blinked you would have missed it, but it was rain all the same. The other 'thunderstorm was more damaging. The weather forecast had read 'expect gloom and heavy rains, the flood warning signs on the motorway were on green, but still when the heavy hail storms came crushing down I was unprepared and got thoroughly soaked. ........here's how it all started.

I finished reading a novel on Monday night and I cried. I cried because the two main characters in the novel were so in love, made for one another, you could almost reach out and 'touch' their love from page to page, so in sync, where one breathed in the other breathed out. A love so intense that it knew no boundaries, he was determined to possess her, he crossed oceans, scarified career, family everything just to be with her. It took years, bitter sweet years filled with deep regrets failed marriages, divorces suicides and broken dreams before they finally realised they were made for each other but in the end they did. It was beautiful, so magical, to find someone who is your universe your world the centre of your being. To find that missing page in a book, the knife for the fork, the lid for the pot, the ink for the pen ....sheer perfection.

I cried for i wondered why such love only exists in storybooks and dreams, why our men are never knights in shinning armour but male Jezebels, Cains and Lucifers. I cried for it taught me that my previous relationship (not that there was a current one) was folly and not love, for although true love means you give all you have without expecting anything back,when that sacrifice means you forget your own needs and self-respect just so that you can give all you have to make the other person happy, then it becomes "foolish"(folly), not true love.

I cried because the story described what I wanted, dreamt of, wished for, what I needed. A love so beautiful, a love so tender, a love so unconditional, a love so whole yet i knew that it was just a dream as such love only existed in story books. I even found a picture on the Internet to illustrate that this kind of love did not exist.

So it rained. Softly and gently, showers filled with lost hopes, dreams and desires, rain filled with disappointment , heartbreaks and countless heartache, pitter patter pitter patter into my pillow, tears so soft ....if i blinked you would have missed them, light showers falling down my cheeks.

I once had a good man and I let him go. There I have said it, finally admitted it without putting a but at the end. I wont bother listing all his positives attributes I'm sure you all have at some point in your lives come across or in the very least heard about/ dreamt about what a good man would look like. That was he. Note i said good man and not perfect, he wasn't perfect, according to me anyway. I broke up with him because he cried, he was very emotional and he had issues in his past with his relationship with his dad. I resented him for this, not because it made him bad in anyway but because seeing him experiencing his pain made me feel like a coward for denying mine and pretending that the issues I had with my mother did not exist (enough said, that's a post for a drunken night).

So I kicked him to the curb and told myself I did not love him even though he made me feel good about myself, with him I didn't have to pretend, when the sex was mind blowing my screams could attract the police, when it was not so mind blowing he would know and make it right. Iknew he wanted whats best for me, and i wanted what was best for him too. I could say anything to him without being judged, and with me he didn't need to prove him self. I could read his mind, he made me want to be a better person, helped me be where I am right now, showed my family a lot of love, and not once not even once in the time we were together did he make me cry.......................................well up until last week Friday.

Last week Friday the weather forecast read 'danger expect plenty of flooding and heavy rains, but I ignored the warning signs. My cousin had phoned that morning and asked if she could come and visit. She wanted to bring her 'newish' sort of fiancee, they had been dating for 8 months now were engaged to be married but to me he would be new coz I had never met him before. I agreed readily said I was excited to finally meet this man of her dreams (flood alert went up on green). They arrived at my house he was text book perfect, looked good, smelt great (not that I sniffed lol) and paid for dinner, lunch and drinks without flinching ( flood lights went to amber). They were so in love only had eyes for each other, it was as if they were the only two people in the room. I wont give a blow by blow account ....this post is already long enough, but looking at them two together suddenly personified Monday's novel for me, it was as if i was seeing a live performance by those characters in the novel. It was as if the author was talking about them, had plagiarised their story their love. He still wanted to be with her, wanted to marry her even though he knew she could give him no children, knew that she had her ovaries taken out, and her chances of completely beating the ovarian cancer were 50 50. he knew this before they were together and yet he still loved her, wanted to be with her. I went upstairs to my bedroom, there was no space in the lounge for all three of us, their love filled the room to the brim, suffocating, filling my nostrils and I couldn't breathe I had to flee.

I rushed upstairs to my room, hunted fervently for a dictionary and looked up the meaning of love. This is what I found.

"Love is believing, sharing, dreaming.Love is Honesty.Love is friendship, companionship, and more.Love is completion. Forgiving. Understanding and inspiring.Love is the attainment of life's greatest inspiration.Love is supporting, but not overbearing.Love is the free and complete expression of oneself to/for another.Love is being open to an other's expression definition of love.hat love means that you trust the person, would do anything for the person, know that person is with you through thick and thin, isn't afraid to be seen with you. make sure they treat you right true love starts with companionship,then followed by friendship,which was bonded by respect,then develops into crush or mutual understanding..finally evolves into lovers/admirers that was built by love and affection..made in concern..tied by loyalty and honesty..and hardened by trust.Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual trust of the old."

Images of my ex boyfriend (the one who cried a lot) flashed through my mind. he had been love personified. It was as if Collins dictionary was defining the couple in the novel, my cousin and her boyfriend downstairs , defining my ex boyfriend who cried a lot, defining what we had, what I lost, what I could have had right now, defining what my life could have been..........It was then that the floodgates opened, the skies were filled with thunder and lightening and it poured, a storm filled with regret, longing and more regret ....................the hailstorm the mother of all storms had began ................................... sometimes our love lives don't turn out the way we want them to, simply because we don't know the true meaning of love in the first instance,for you to be able to give your heart fully, you need to know the definition of love.................. Oh how i wish i had owned a dictionary back then.

Conversations with my inner man ............

*long post as usual*
The past week has been quite hectic mental wise for me. I meant to post this last week (which is the week im referring to) but like i mentioned in my previous post there was a lot of stuff in my head I couldnt make sense of , loads of squiggles and scribbles. I've been doing a lot of soul searching this week and this post probably reflects a lot of the turmoil and confusion as I had conversations with my inner man.

Several things have happened some which are life changing in the great scheme of things but are too boring to blog about, some which I cant blog about without seriously invading the privacy of some extremely private individual, some which I promised never to blog about again...which then leaves me with very little I can share about the events of this past week. YT has been in touch not that its in anyway relevant to this post but i thought I would give him a mention in case some of you might be wondering what happened to him (and no a bus did not run him over like a fellow blogger wished, he is still alive and kicking.. lol) but its good that we might have come full circle back to the point of just being msn friends like we were in the beginning.... nothing complicated.

I'm kinda annoyed that I'm no longer affected by my previous relationship with YT not that I wanted to carry on hurting forever but now that my friends and family know that he has been relegated to jus being one of the X's and a friend they are no longer willing to keep bank rolling the MDM must recover soon project. they are no longer willing to be ready and willing with special favours, treats and spoiling me in a bid to get me on the road to recovery quick quick. Like during my period of mourning my aunt didn't think twice about giving me her designer bag and just this previous week she has come to collect it saying that now that I have recovered I don't need it (the cheek). My friends who about a month ago this time would have gladly taken me out and paid and bought drinks are now asking me to contribute to the night out kitty. So you must understand why i miss the pampering which has rapidly disappeared coz im happy again.....ah well guess will have to be content with waiting until the next heartbreak lol.

I think this week was a roller coaster week for me, loads of rainbows, sunshine, silver linings kisses and cuddles that like the pessimist that I am I'm thinking this ship is bound to crash pretty soon. Work is great, home life couldn't be better, relationship wise I'm content, it feels really sexy and liberating to be able to say to potential suitors who come aknocking 'yes Im single but I'm not available', but the attention is good (well annoying sometimes) but being called beautiful/sexy/hot etc has never really landed anyone in hospital has it. But for some reason this week I have also been doing a lot of soul searching. Which brings us to the subject of the post today

Conversations with my inner man...........

And lead me not into temptation
but above all
save me
Save me oh Lord I pray
deliver me from my worst enemy
for she threatens to consume me
From my tormentor within,
rescue me from myself
Save me from what my experience with him is moulding me into
Rescue me from this person that I've become.

?
How is it possible that one can do/perform/take part/participate/experience a perfectly ordinary normal 'thing' but feel remarkably ashamed and guilty afterwards? is it the act itself that makes it wrong or is it your feelings after the act that makes the act wrong or is it I have crisscrossed emotionally so many times between doing whats good and that which is bad that in the confusion my conscience which dictates my morality can no longer distinguish whats right from whats wrong? (and no I'm not referring to sex lol)

I'm wondering why?
Its just one of those days and Im wondering why.......
Im wondering why you said you would never leave,
yet your feet were halfway through the door.
Why you asked for my heart
yet all you needed was to hold my head.
Why you made me your princess
When what you really needed was a queen
Its just one of those days and im wondering how
How you could say I was your star
and forget to tell me you owned the milk way
How you can promise to make me happy
yet all you do is make me cry
How you plan to take me to the moon
when you've never owned a spaceship
How friends can swear to have your back
yet stab you in the front?
Im wondering how you planned to bring me the universe
When you yet to conquer the earth
I wonder why we claim to be lovers
yet all we are, are fcukers
Im wondering why those we love never stay
Or why we never love those that stay
Im wondering how one can use a million words
yet say absloutely nothing
How one can lie naked on the floor
and yet not reveal nothing
why someone can say forever when all they mean is we will see.
Guess its one of those days I'll have to keep wondering why?

For the first time

For the first time in my life (well not strictly true but near enough) I apologised to someone first. I said ssorry without adding a but at the end or tryna justify myself. For the first time I didnt care about being always right or thinking I know everything or winning a fight. For the first time I said Im sorry without expecting to be automatically forgiven, I apologised and meant it. For the first time it wast all about me, and what I want, what I think and me having my own way. For the first time I understand what it means to be humble and its a good feeling. Although Im yet to get an acknnowledgement of my admission to being wrong, I dont mind, for I think I have learnt an improtant lesson that sometimes its okay not to be always right..........and admit it.

Questions for my pastor that will at best remain 'un-asked'

Can you 'do' somebody so many times that you earn the right to be called a legitimate fcuk and absolve yourself of the guilt that is normally associated with being the other woman........?

Since when has being some one's girlfriend/concubine/person he is seeing/ earned the same 'though shall not trespass on my land legal rights as you would be entitled to if you were actually married to someone?

should I feel any shame/remorse/ guilt and ask for forgiveness for my trespasses if i break up said not biblical or traditionally officially union?

If God intended said not yet legal unions to be unbreakable instead of saying 'what God has joined together let no man put asunder' would he not have chosen his words differently and said 'what God is most likely to join together in the future do not put asunder right now lest it will not successfully be joined together in the future because of your putting it asunder?

If it is perfectly okay (biblical and traditional wise) to have two or more wives, should then the other women not be referred to as sluts/prostitutes/hos/goldiggas and be respectfully referred to as 'legitimate wives in the making?

I ask my dear pastor not to absolve myself or anyone else of any guilt, but I ask so that maybe I can find some justification for that which once upon a time in my ignorance I swore I would never become............

Of spiders, webs and intricate snares

"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi.
Scottish author & novelist (1771 - 1832)

She's got a face; I found out that day, that she had a face. Not that I thought she was headless, or faceless or had a huge hole where her head should have been, I just never imagined her with a face that’s all.

It wasn’t a mirror, neither was it on the wall. It was an email with 163kb worth of attachments I had no prior warning, got the ping to say 'I got mail' scanned for viruses, spyware and adware, 23kb worth of attachments given the all clear. And there she is staring me straight in the eyes, a close up, a full frontal view and a half body shot to show off the jugs. In one she was smiling, in the other she was frowning, and in the rest she struck a defiant pose as if to say 'sowatcha gonnae do??????'

Not that I was going to reach out through the computer screen and punch her perfect almost Eurocentric nose out of line, but I had spent 7 bloody months wondering how she looked like, almost to the point of obsession. I used to wonder if she was fat or she was slim, if she was pretty, stunning or just plan ugly. Not that it would have made a difference or given her or me a defence. Part of me wants to call her the other woman, but that would be lying, for she calls me too the other woman. But to be fair with all the hoo-ha and the palaver that has surrounded out three way relationship, like the earth our positions have rotated, so much so that somehow the lines got blurred about who was the bitch and who was the rightful heir to the throne as the flesh of his ribs. Not that the position was vacant, we have both occupied it at so many stages of our lives that we could probably not do without the other.

Whilst I held a carefree indifference about her or her apparently tragic situation, (I say apparently for what I knew I had gleamed whilst he was cushioned on my bosom), she loathed me with a passion that is best reserved for those intimate of lovers, or with so much venom that were it from a snake it would be none other than the black mamba or the Fierce Snake (Oxyuranus microlepidotus) which has 100 times more venom than any snake known to men.

My crime is not that I stole what belonged to her, for what I stole she had already taken from me before I snatched it from her after she grabbed it from me..... (Let me stop coz it’s making me all dizzy), my crime was I had lied about her which apparently to her was tantamount to rigging the vote or foul play, or whatever. Personally I think she was just grasping at straws trying to find a reason to hate me and hate what I represented, I think deep down she feared that had she given her heart the chance to get to know me, she might have grown to love me, and that could not happen. At the very least it would open up a can of worms, that commonsense would dictate was best left unopened. In the great scheme of things, the dimensions of our three way relationship are so complex that they are best left undefined.

Okay back to the no longer headless body, strange that curiosity did not kill this cat, instead it gave it another lease of life, it what sense I could not best describe but I felt complete as if another piece of the jigsaw was firmly in place and I could delegate that piece of my brain that had been so pre occupied with wanting to put a face to the persona on to other perhaps more productive business than that which it had engaged in. Conflicting emotions, as I gazed at her image, almost passing for a body double of my very own and yet we were very different in a way that complimented each other, otherwise we would not have managed to co-exist and rotate on the same axis Mother Nature would not have allowed.

Somehow by having a face she has humanised the whole plot, added another complex moral dilemma to this intricate web of confusion, anyone who has listened to a show on the radio and then later had the opportunity to watch it on TV would know what I am on about. Although I deleted the images for my hard drive capacity will not allow me to do otherwise, I’m sure her image will remain emblazoned in the secret cove of my brain that I dare not open unless held at gunpoint. Somehow I wonder if having now been alerted to the fact that there is indeed a face to the body, will that change the dynamics of our relationship.

Do we want to change the complex web of confusion? or as I suspect we have become interdependent, metamorphosed into one being, one soul....maybe we ought to accept the uncomfortable truth that just like the true meaning of light would be lost were it not for the presence of darkness, we can not all exist without one another.....but looking at the images again confirms what I already fear.......that we already have.........

Just like you, I’m probably struggling to make sense of this post, this muse, this complex web of confusion. Somehow it feels right to flow with the confusion, for some intricate tales are best illustrated in abstract form.

ThE JoKeR ...........

The Circus
He ran the circus.
The Joker, he should have won an Oscar,
His performance was immaculate,
spectacular, unbelievable,
so out of this world
He deserved a hollywood star
A performer, a comedian, a Joker...
It was one of those jokes
Subtle,
The witty kind
Complicated humour,
The type that nearly crossed the line between sarcasm and cruel humour.
They laughed,
the Audience, the spectators, the crowd
They all laughed.
Big belly fulls of laughter,
some snickered, some hooted, some danced with glee
But mainly everyone laughed, at the spectacle in the circus ring,
except me.
I was oblivious, I did not get it.
I'm normally the witty, comic type, but this time the joke was lost on me.
But everyone else got it and so they laughed
They laughed and they hooted the whole show through.
It was a freak show, they laughed at the helpless clown all tied up in knots it couldn't loosen.
The joker, damn he was good at his act, for they all got the punchline,
yet I didn't, I failed to grasp it.
Months later
when the circus had left the town, when the freak show was over
long after
when the laughter had all but died down, when the snickers had faded and the Joker's show was nothing but a 'hit' from the past, a distant memory
It sudenely dawned on me
I got it,
The joke
I understood it,
after all this time I finally got the punchline.
For it was simple
I could see the circus ring more clearly
Name the cast and get the joke,
But,
whilst they had laughed,
The audience
the spectators
the observers at the circus ring
whilst they had giggled, and snickered, big belly fulls of laughter
As they watched the joke unfold
I didn't
When I got the joke months later
I never laughed.
I cried
and I sobbed
Big belly full guttural cries
For I knew now what I had failed to see back then in the circus ring
Our life together, a circus
He was the joker
I was the clown
I realised now what I had been too blind to grasp then
that for all that time and all that while
From the very first Act to the final curtain close
The joke was me..............the joke had been on me.