This nigga had me f*cked up
One recurring conversation I keep finding myself in at work and in my social circles is of people complai
Ever sat down and asked yourself how you got yourself in a particular situation and end up feeling like the meme above? That was me when I met this one man whom we shall call Femi. That’s right, he just had to be a yoruba man. Also, sorry to all the Femis in my life, it’s just one of the most common yoruba demon names.
Rewind to 2017, I was minding my business after my last official relationship ended in May. I was there healing, doing me and living my best life. Then the relationship demons had a meeting and said to themselves,
Nah this girl has been happy for too long, let’s go start some shit up in her life.
And who answered the call when they said “Whom shall we send? Who will go for us?” None other than Femi.
Femi and I met at a charity event sometime in the summer of 2017. We apparently went to the same gym and that was what struck up the connection. Numbers were exchanged and a friendship had formed. Before I knew it, Femi and I were always on the phone talking and chatting. As fate would have it, his office was 5 minutes away from mine and we started seeing each other almost on a daily basis. One day, my colleague asked me if were officially together and I said no. She advised me to get clarity because we were spending way too much time together to just be friends. Made sense. I will never forget how hard it was to bring up that conversation as it was so out of the norm for me to have to ask if someone liked me and what we were doing. I rehearsed it soo many times and even the day I eventually asked him, I kept stalling for as long as I could till the words just tumbled out of my mouth. He admitted to having feelings for me but said he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Shebi that should have been word enough for the wise? At all, someone in my village was holding on to my sense.
This is how we continued consuming each other’s emotional space till I realized that I wanted a relationship but oga still wasn’t ready to make things official. I decided it was time to start moving on, 5 months after we met. Luckily for me the year was coming to an end and I was busy with my sister’s wedding so I was temporarily preoccupied. I tried to distance myself but by the time January rolled around, Femi rode in on a scooter, like “hey big head“. When I had to move to Lagos in March, I thought Baba God was intervening and putting distance between us so I could move on fully. For where, uncle followed me to Lagos and we continued the unhealthy pattern where we were doing relationship things without actually labelling it. For him, it worked, he got what he wanted but at my expense since I wanted a commitment. It didn’t take long before it started to take a toll on me emotionally. Here was someone I talked to everyday and really liked who claimed he liked me but didn’t want a relationship and yet didn’t want to let me go. Some demonic activities going on there.
I would get tired, try to move on and start something new with someone else. Find that I didn’t like them as much as I liked him and then come back to him. I wasn’t helping myself too by leaving the door open for him to keep coming back. It wasn’t till summer 2019 that I had finally rid myself of emotional attachments to Femi. But I made the mistake of remaining friends with him because I enjoyed our connection. When he realized I didn’t like him as much anymore, he would tease me saying I had replaced him, even though I was very much single. On a visit to Lagos in October, he said the words I had wanted so much to hear a year earlier about wanting a relationship but I was truly over him so I didn’t entertain his revelation. We continued as friends though, talking everyday and flirting here and there. Still unhealthy, I know. However, by the beginning of 2020 the lines stopped being blurred and I think he accepted that we were just friends now.
Here’s where it gets interesting. I have a childhood best friend we shall call Samantha. One day after the Insecure episode aired where Issa saw Lawrence doing all the things she would have appreciated with Condola, I put up a thread by someone on my instastory, see below. She replied saying she agreed to an extent but that some of these reasons give toxic people a pass. We got in a conversation where she revealed she had been in a back and forth with a man for almost 6 months and I replied that I too had been in that position with someone for almost two years. Conversation ended, life continued as normal. Some days later, I had posted a picture on my instastory in which Femi appeared and she replied saying, you know Femi? I said yes and she goes that’s the 6 months guy. I laughed and replied, that’s my 2 years guy.
Na from there clap entered dance. A lot was revealed that day. Her 6 months had overlapped in my 2 years. All the lies he had said to the two of us. Now, you may want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t know we knew each other right? Nope. One day, Femi was at my house and Samantha called him. When her name appeared on his phone, I asked him how he knew her. He threw the question back at me and I said she was one of my childhood best friends. I didn’t think too much of it. He replied that they were part of an NGO together. At this point, I was already moving on, so I didn’t give it a second thought right? Now this was at the early stages of when he was dating her, so he knew our connection but continued because he thought he was a sharp guy. The gag is she had also mentioned my name once in a conversation between them. Do you know what he said?
“I know Bondi. She’s my G“.
Hey God, emi? reduced to G? Wawu. I found out a lot about his character and things I had overlooked because my emotions were involved became glaringly obvious. This man was manipulative AF. Where he had presented a front of not being ready for a relationship with me, he had revealed the opposite to my friend coming strong with marriage. I just want to know one thing, was he trying to have me come to her as a woman in 2020?! My God will not allow it!
After the truth came to light, I just jejely deleted him off my social media and his contact from my phone. There was nothing else to be said. Though I had moved on emotionally, I remained friends with someone who had broken me like you wouldn’t believe it. Ask my best friends the emotional roller coaster I went through in 2018. I had even gotten to a place where I questioned if I was not good enough to be in a relationship with. I had to embark on a journey of healing and emotional growth in 2019 but I didn’t completely cut him off. But you see God ehn, He truly looks out for his own. He said “child I did not heal you from this man to still be hanging around dead matter. I’m gonna show you who you’re dealing with“, so he revealed this man’s true self to me so I could shut the door on him once and for all! Like Maya Angelou said
When people show you who they are, believe them the first time
After all, Femi did say he wasn’t ready for a relationship and even though I had somehow fooled myself into thinking he was doing relationship things with me by talking to me everyday, zooming out revealed a much bigger uglier picture. Do you know in all our back and forth, Femi and I never went on a real date? LOL, Bondi smh. When I tried to move on and it didn’t work out and we got back together, he said to me he was really hurt and jealous when we stopped talking. But we got back together and he never made any serious effort to change our status quo, shouldn’t that have been telling enough? For two of my birthdays, he also ghosted. Not a birthday card talk more of present. I’ve suffered sha.
The most important lesson I learnt from this back and forth with Femi was this: Men are very intentional about their actions. It cannot be stressed enough that when a man wants to be with you, he will be very clear about it. His words cannot be saying one thing and his actions another. If you find yourself solving calculus on where you stand with a man, run sis. I mean it, take off your shoes and run for your life. That man knows exactly what he’s doing, he just doesn’t give a fuck. Excuse my french.
