Stay with Me

“Di we ever really know what we will do in any situation until the situation presents itself?”

A mother must be vigilant. She must be able and willing to wake up ten times during the night to feed her baby. After her intermittent vigil, she must see everything clearly the next morning so that she can notice any changes in her baby. A mother is not permitted to have blurry vision. She must notice if her baby’s wail is too loud or too low. She must know if the child’s temperature has risen or fallen. A mother must not miss any signs.

The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones that others will remember. Sometimes.

“The road stretches before us, shrouded in a darkness transitioning into dawn as it leads me back to you.”

“My mother had become a obsession for me, a religion, and the very thought of referring to another woman as Mother seems sacrilegious, a betrayal of the woman who had given up her life for me to live.”

So love is like a test, but in what sense? To what end? Who was carrying out the test? But I think I did believe that love had immense power to unearth all that was good in us, refine us and reveal to us the better versions of ourselves.

What would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits.

I understand how a word others use every day can become something whispered in the dark to soothe a wound that just won't heal. I remember thinking I would never hear it spoken without unravelling a little, wondering if I would ever get to say it in the light. So I recognise the gift in this simple pronouncement, the promise of a beginning in this one word.

I loved Yejide from the very first moment. No doubt about that. But there are things even love can’t do. Before I got married, I believed love could do anything. I learned soon enough that it couldn’t bear the weight of four years without children. If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.

Before you call the snail a weakling, tie your house to your back and carry it around for a week.

But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I bit my tongue because I did not want to ask questions. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe my husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier than doubt.

there is no god like a mother

But even then, I could trap those thoughts and keep them caged in a corner of my mind, in a place where they could not spread their wings and take over my life.

I would learn later that Akin could keep himself neatly folded in while he drew out other people. He was the kind of person that many claimed as a dear friend. Many of those people did not even know him, but they never knew they did not know him.

Even the tongue and the teeth cannot cohabit without fighting

Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world when we are gone.

If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But when it's in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love.