A Graceful Exit

Stop trying to repair your heart by putting it back into the hands that broke it.

It’s like a bee trying to get past your clear glass windows… it keeps hitting on the glass and …. Nada. It then flies back a bit in reverse and comes rushing back even harder… only to smash against the glass again. Those of you who watch science fiction movies know the importance of a Force Field Shield, that invisible thing that encircles a Ship to keep it safe while under attack from enemy alien Ships…

That’s what men do when they decide that a relationship is done and over.

They drop the Force Field Shield around themselves and the woman is considered an enemy. Most women don’t get that. After all… she gave BIRTH to his kids!! Doesn’t that count for something?

Heck yes! It’s his blood and he cares for them as an extension of himself (sometimes)… but you? He’s moved on. He’s probably also moved out of your matrimonial home. Or thrown you out. But the relationship is – over. As in #dead.dead.dead.

And it hurts me when I see a beautiful gorgeous intelligent young woman batter herself mentally, whacking her soul and spirit incessantly by ‘trying’ to gain back ‘her man’s affection’ when a relationship is either dead, or in its' death throes – rattling and clanking around and pouring blood all over the place from severed arteries. Note: this article is about stopping the woman from self-mutilation, not on how or why men switch women off. Because they do – like a light switch. Flip. Off. Enter Dark Territory. And once a man has decided that the woman doesn’t deserve his affection – he gives her the opposite – pure mathaa.

Ladies. Stop trying to repair your heart by putting it back into the hands that broke it.

There is that place in all relationships where there is a chalk line – that place where ukipita, ni basi. You’re offside. Draw out your own boundaries… for your sake. Because insisting on handing your heart and soul to him over and over again is going to result in a terrible outcome. Many women stay in abusive marriages for the sake of their children, or so they say - and it might be true to an extent that it IS hard to be an earner when you have young or school going children and you’re used to a certain lifestyle (or lack of), but the point here is that there is no reason to continually and persistently give your heart to someone who will break it again. And again. Nothing is gained.

Change his mind? No honey. As much as you have his maybe 3 or 4 kids, he’s not going to change his mind. Or switch it back on. You have an old boyfee who bugged you back in the day don’t you?  It’s over now isn’t it? Do you give him time of day today? No you don’t!! Now.. that’s how your present heartbreaker feels but because of emotional misdirection, as women we often go back time after time to the site of the grave where the relationship ended, crying needlessly, pointlessly and unsuccessfully, for a resurrection.  

Less than 30 years ago marriages ‘lasted’ only because society frowned upon men rejecting what was termed as their marriage responsibilities. The church as a local entity was involved in marriages and single women were called spinsters and were virtual outcasts in society, their children branded as ‘bastards’ and bullied terribly in schools. Divorce was uncommon -  a divorcee seen as ‘rejected goods’ a ‘wanton loose woman’ often portrayed as having colossal sexual appetites and scorned by members of the local Mothers Union. The divorced man was pitied and often got remarried to a younger ‘girl’ who raised both his kids and theirs.

So, if this was 30 years ago, maybe, just maybe, I would ask women to try and reclaim the lost ground in their marriage relationships if they are not mentally or physically abused. Maybe. Because the wounds of the heart heal much more slowly than the wounds of the flesh, not only in you Honey, but also in the children who do see their mother crying daily, their mother sad, mistreated, abused, insulted, degraded, hated, disliked, shouted at, despised, ignored….

And Honey-gal, please take a moment to think about the way some children feel totally helpless and harbor intense rage internally because of the defeated feelings of their utter desperate hopelessness. Children DO pray, and when their mother is constantly unhappy and beaten violently, who do they get mad at? Yup. God -  who isn’t answering their prayers; or the government system, which doesn’t provide solutions. So I ask once more, why stay? Why ‘give the heartbreaker another chance?’ to do what? Break your soul and spirit AGAIN?

We’re in 2014. A single mom is a single mom and Obama is a son brought up by a single mother.

Envisage a plan where you see your heart as fertile ground for growing a fruitful crop of love, laughter, peace and calmness, interspersed with many moments of glorious joy and intense instants where you can love and are loved so deeply – moments where you can become breathless again from the sheer wonder of life.

But you cannot achieve this if you keep giving your heart to someone who relentlessly breaks it.

    

So. Take your heart back gracefully – think of it like this. Have you seen (or maybe it IS you) how certain women pick up their Birkin bags in a restaurant, slinging them elegantly on the crook of their elbows and walking out gracefully – when done right it’s beautiful to watch - people may even turn their heads and look - wondering, ‘who is she?’  Do this with yourself. Pick yourself up gracefully from your current situation and walk away elegantly. Take your heart back and fix it yourself. Treasure your heart!! Concentrate on your children – raise them to be respectable members of society. If they are boys, raise them to treat women with grace and respect and that can only come from you first by treating YOURSELF with grace and respect. Healing takes years, it’s not an overnight miracle, but there has to be a starting point where you take matters into your own hands.

Darkness cannot ever overcome darkness. But a little candle flame can light a dark cavern, so grab your heart from the hands of the person who has switched you off, and take it back into yourself where you can begin to mend it by filling it with light and love.

NYAKIO J MUNYINYI for The xPenSieve Report © February 2014

A really Fussy dude

Photo credit
http://themetapicture.com/on-valentines-day/

I really really dislike Val Entine.

I shouldn’t say hate because that would be a furious word and I’m trying to be calm here. But seriously, who does this dude think he is? First off, in some places they call him SAINT. Psheeewwhh!! The things people get up to (or down to) in his name are far from saintly unless by saintly we refer to the state of Heavenly Bliss of those who perform or are performed on, go to.  Then again, we don’t need Val Entine to get a Visa into the State of Heavenly Bliss.  I can give you the name of my Boo, (I won’t) but he does the job quite well thank you – gets me there pap! And I know I’m not alone -  many of you have reached that State without Val Entine and his help, or am I wrong??

So two crosses against this dude.

Another one is, he hails from I don’t know where and is invading our culture. (Jeeeez…). I totally agree with a friend of mine who enunciated clearly and flatly with not a glimmer of his sparkling white teeth showing (maybe that was because we were chatting online), that he ‘doesn’t do Val Entine’. Phew.

·      Dudes, don’t do another dude for the sake of your chickas.

·      Dudes, if you do dudes, then maybe you can do Valentine.

Actually, that would be pretty neat, a day set aside for Gay Love… hmmm…

And the lovely ladies can have Val’s twin sister, Valery, be the honorary patronness of the day – say, 15^th Feb?? hmmm…

Ok, I’m side-tracking.. Snap! Yes, culture..  got a joke the other day on my WhatsApp regarding this Val Entine and his culture of how ‘dudes’ must give out ‘gifts’:-

The Kikuyu girlfriend and her Luo boyfriend:

On Valentines day, he M-pesa’s her 500ksh.

Njeri: (furiously) Swity Seriously! Mapenzi yetu ni 500? Kwanza Val Entines’ day? You are so mean! I regret meeting you Otis!!!

Oti: Jaber, stop torturing yourself with lack of informations! I only sent you M-pesa to get youa full names. Am at DT Dobie and I didn’t know which names to put on the logbook…. Donge!

Expectations: Val Entine demands excessive overspending. Large sums of money that should normally be spent over a period of say..3 years, are expected to be spent on his behalf between sunrise and midnight.  And where I wonder, is all this excess supposed to sprout from? Hardly 13 days after the harshest and longest month on the calendar (January), Val Entine expects exclusive hotel rooms, the finest wines and champagnes and exorbitant gifts, including colour coded everything ---- oh la la!! Whoa!! I’d forgotten!! The colour theme!! I understand weddings and colour co-ordination, infact, I totally agree that Brides can get very frenzied, over excited and over-hyper about the colour scheme, colour co-ordination and colour themes of their weddings, that they can go glassy eyed and look like someone has given them an electric shock if just ONE colour is just 5% off the wrong shade… but Val Entine? A dude who goes terrorist-ballistic when you dare to wear another colour other than RED and more recently, RED AND BLACK??

Sigh.

Shaking head…

A rose is still a rose even if it’s another colour, but NO!! Dare you to give Oti’s girlfriend a bunch of YELLOW roses for Val Entine. She’d probably attack you with the whole bunch. Her and the whole female population of Kenya.. and without understanding. Because, si, a rose is still a rose even if it’s another colour… isn’t it the THOUGHT that counts??

Should I go on??

Aha! Food… and did I mention culture? Ok. Food and culture..

We didn’t invent it. The Swiss did (I think)… so.. why should the product Chocolate be such a huge seller?!! Yes. Pity the dude who goes home bila a box of (excruciatingly expensive) chocolate. And not the chocolate in a tin with the name “Cocoa powder” or “Ovaltine” or “Milo”, which would make sense because you can both sip a cup of deliciously Hot Chocolate later on after the Val Entinexercises but … NO!! don’t even try that!! You may be put on nil-by-mouth!! Why only this particular food product Valentine insists that is given to each and every female so she can … hmm, I don’t know. Seriously, on seeing that box of ridiculously priced Chocolate what are we supposed to do? Jump up and down like a puppy dog and lick him all over his mutt? For me, if you want to make me really happy where food is concerned a good Nyam Choms will do the trick. See, I’m all for culture!! Chocolate makes me gain weight plus gives me pimples anyway. PLUS I am not depressed. It’s a known ‘anti-depressant’, so I’m apt to ask you rather sarcastically, ‘do I look depressed?’ No to chocolate sales. Bring on the BBQ’s!!

Last but not least is that Valentine is a dictator the likes of Mugabe (sorry Mugabe Lovers!). His master idea incorporates the fact that if you’re a member of the Single party then you’re an X. A sad x. A crying x. Valentine’s X is a negative. It stands for Xcommunicated. And Xcluded. Not fair game at all!! He forgets that many singles are infact an Xuberantly Xtraordinarily happy bunch of bananas (both sexes included) and that more often than not, those singles choose to remain in the Xcamp* (*details of membership include entry into various cites within the State of Heavenly Bliss more than once a year).

As for those in a relationship - Gals, a word of advice: if your man chooses to tell you he loves you on every other day but doesn’t mention the word in the presence of Valentine, does it mean your man suddenly dislikes you? NO!! Bring your expectations down and stop believing in non-cultural shoulds and shouldn’ts. Sigh. Val Entine marches into our world every year causing mayhem and havoc within relationships - and so many young girls and women mistakenly bundle their relationship status on a single factor – being ‘acknowledged’ on Val Entine’s day. If your man doesn’t give you a CARD on Val Entine’s day it’s a Crime of Herculean proportions – triggering off nuclear bombs in a perfectly beautiful relationship, where the fall out lasts for months if not years by such statements like, ‘you didn’t buy me a rose on Val Entines Day in 1988’….

NONSENSE!!!  

You’all – Val Entine like I said, is a typical dictator -  your emotions and your man’s finances are distressed by a fickle economic character who benefits the hotel, food, printing, and advertising industries…etc. Pahleese!! Let your love relationships be founded on the heart and soul and in the reality that is present and true, not for  ‘Saint’ Val Entine’s  drama Queen hoopla.

It is for these simple reasons that many men are all up in arms against this Dude. I shall close by saying that I totally agree with this currently circulating WhatsApp statement from NAOBAH.

Nyakio J. Munyinyi for The xPenSieve Report © February 2014.

why it's called an ASSumption

I was wide awake at 3:00 pm on that sweltering hot afternoon, as wide awake as I was exactly 12 hours before at 3:12 in the a.m…. yap. Honestly, the stuff I’d found to keep me awake that night and day was totally potent and would probably replace miraa, Lol!! And although I’m laughing now a few days later, let me assure you that on that particular night I was thoroughly downright upset as my brain ticked at the speed of some meteorite in outer space – out there somewhere– hurtling itself towards Earth. I had pulled every stunt imaginable to induce sleep… including going onto FaceBook to find some night owls – zip - opening the windows wide open to let in cool air -  wapi? Reading a book off Kindle – boring!! But to no avail, I was stunningly wide-awake.

So how did I get to be so wide awake and STILL wide awake for over 24 hours without a headache, a hangover, and so super hyper that my daughter said I was like, 13x a Duracell battery??

Rewind to scene a few days before:

Last week I’d been having this strange on-off frog-in-throat-blocked nose-fluey feeling for about 2 days and when it flared up into a painful sore throat, I trooped into the neighborhood pharmacy and asked for ‘something to stop this’, and the kind Doc gave me some over the counter Cough syrup and then asked me to pick some Coldcap tablets from the shelf behind me.

Weka pause.

I’m a mshamba, I’ve been in Nairobi all of nine (9) months, and I didn’t know they had Coldcap capsules in BLUE and ORANGE… (stop laughing!!) when I left Nairobi in 2010  Coldcap was PINK- so my hand hovered uncertainly over the many options, then picked the brightest one after seeing the delightful inscriptions  - DAY TIME, NIGHT TIME.

Done.

Bounced home.

Forward to hours later, and I was in my bedroom sleepily looking at the box wondering - so what is the difference, really, between the day time and night time?? My 1^st Assumption: Surely the daytime orange is simply minus the ‘whatever makes you sleep’ chemical?

Well…. the incredible state of being wide awake was via the 2 orange coloured - perfectly legal (simply because over-the-counter-drugs are legal, and this super tab was not even a prescription drug ) pills. My mistake was I forgot to read the instructions. Well, I didn’t forget per se.., I did read them, but because I was sleepy, I ignored the instructions and swallowed the wrong coloured pills (you may heave big sigh here!!!).  My 2^nd Assumption was made 24 hours later: The orange capsule is not ‘simply minus’ a compound, it has an added additive that keeps you clearly awake!!

Sasa, before some trooper comes along and asks if I’m trying to advertise some miraa based ‘legal pill’, let me be quick to clarify that there’s a point to this short blog – and that is that often, we make terrible mistakes through ‘assuming’.

Apart from the sarcastic slogan which amplifies that ‘assume makes an ass out of u and me’, an assumption is an ugly ass vehicle to drive  (kind of like a Probox ), because it is a solid belief held by the ‘assumer’ – and it’s based on nothing. Just as we avoid Proboxes on the road, we also avoid people who walk around making assumptions about us. Why? Because an assumption is a solid belief bila Proof.  And unfortunately, I will raise my hand and say YES, I have often been under the influence of this mistaken form of thinking.  I had been for a long time rather assuming about various people’s lives, making wrong judgments and being a hard liner, refusing to see that there are large gray areas in-between the black and the white.

Fine, sticks and stones may break my bones, but that thing about ‘words can never hurt me’, oh, HA HA!! They do. Especially when someone real close to you makes a careless remark probably punctuated somewhere in there with the apologetic (or not) statement : “oh, I thought….!”  Unfortunately, depending on your mindset, that particular statement may stay with you for a long time, festering in your thoughts and slowly brewing a simmering anger. Yes, there are those who couldn’t give a damn about what you think or say about them, but there are souls out there who do and they hurt when assumed – and not all hurting people believe in turning the other cheek.

What changed my hard liner thinking?

Wisdom, age, an appreciation of life itself, and human nature made me stop this terrible habit and I no longer make careless whispers or talk, regardless of the authenticity of the information set before me. Experience too, because I have also resided in the house of being ‘assumed’ – when some around me thought I was ‘ok’ just because I often smiled and told a lot of terrible but extremely funny jokes.  The truth is that no one likes to see hurt, pain or neediness in others. So we quietly throw our fears under the Assume Blanket about those who are hurting, or in pain, or in need – we make up stories about them based on ‘air’ and despite having no proof, stamp that person as ‘WRITE.ASSUMPTION.HERE’. Whether in the negative or positive, sticking a Label onto anybody is a nasty habit.

I now take the time to divide my priorities between those who I truly care about and those who are on the peripherals of my life, taking the time to listen carefully and meditate on what I have been told by the individual themselves, rather than listen to a whole litany of hogwash of nonsense from some third party.

But there are those who lie, you say…

Duh! Yes, there are, and that is when you listen ever more judiciously to the lie, sorting out the truths from the half lies and the full lies. Sorting out the ‘gray areas’ that instead of assuming, we should individually take the time to carefully decipher before making an ‘oh, I thought’ comment. And yes, you can tell the truth from fact. This can be illustrated simply: Take a piece of music that you absolutely love, put on headphones or earphones then pick out each instrument as it plays, one by one. Plus each vocalist, including the background singers.

By practicing and repeating the above we can train our ears to hear individual players in each and every orchestra, if we so wish. It’s also by dropping it like it’s hot – ‘IT’  being our Assuming Habits,  that we can learn to really hear those we care about.

My assumptions about a simple capsule led me to take a wrong one. Assumptions about people are much more devastating and may have far more serious repercussions than a simple loss of sleep and some super hyperactivity, and if you have ever been judged by someone bila proof, then you know exactly how much it sucks, so instead of repeating that Karma cycle onto ourselves, let us all stop being assuming Proboxes.

Nyakio J Munyinyi for The xPenSieve Report © February 2014