A BRIDE'S DELUSIONAL HAPPINESS

Have you ever held onto a couple of ballons on a string then let them go? Up, up, up and away they go, beautiful and colourful - utterly beautiful - and they glide away .... gone. Forever...

That image is often in my mind when I think of what women are told when they get married, mainly because I was given the same thoughtless lecture when I was a young bride:

“… and now, you’re going to be MRS. SO AND SO…, SO.. you have to forget all those things you did in the past and embark on a BRAND NEW LIFE as MRS. SO AND SO.”

Maybe that’s why I don’t go to weddings anymore.

Because contained within that sentence is an old outdated belief that causes more damage than any other single decree that I have ever heard uttered.

Back then, sadly, I believed it, and in a dizzy delight, I tore up old pictures of me laughing with former male friends - group photos comprising of delightful times when I was either in campus, or in Youth Group - or pictures taken in those old PHOTO ME INSTANT booths, 6 to 8 of us crammed in a tiny space constructing weird expressions on our faces as the machine flashed a continual burst of brilliant light – contorted with laughter; pictures of mad escapades to Mombasa or Nyeri or Garrissa or Marsabit or Malindi or Kisumu – many a number in the UK; and others in France, and more in Nigeria.

I tore them all up. Because – I was told – I could not carry such trash into my ‘NEW LIFE’.

Well, today, I know better – and – yes, you can argue with me all you want but it’s my blog (LMAO) so I’m going to give some out of the box advice based on experience and a surprising question - how many of you ladies have Khangas? Write down the different uses of those khangas NOW. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow, but right NOW in your present circumstances. That one khanga can be used for a variety of different purposes in the present time, things that you never ever thought about when you bought the Khanga. Yap. When you bought it, you may how thought, ‘oh, how pretty. ‘

Memories are like that. They are a part of our lives and they make us who we ultimately are. When we take a picture and save it on FaceBook, or Twitter or stick it onto a Scrapbook, that picture carries us back into a singular moment in our lives that inexorably molded and shaped us into the who of what we are today. Looking at past photographs is a veritable visual 3D that thrusts our minds back to that moment. Colours, smells and emotions can climb out of a single photograph and overwhelm us, which is why I guess our new Husbands don’t like it when we giggle at old Facebook photo’s…

Literally, a single picture is similar to ‘a thousand words’.

But.

Take away our memories and we cease to be who we are. Take a simple look at accident victims or those with memory loss, amnesia or Alzheimer’s. Who are they? If they themselves don’t know, how can we know? We are made up of our memories. Our writings, photographs, pictures, keepsakes, and ‘stuff’ – that is what large organizations call a DATABASE.

And yet, as young women, we’re told to forget that Database.

??

Forget too – the servers and the service providers. Forget our friends, delete our memories, refer to the past ‘no more’.

Hahahahahahahahaaaaaa….!!!! ß------- that’s a sarcastic laugh…

Yes. And change the Browser while you’re @ it.

Because we’re told we need new friends. HIS. Not mine. For some reason, I had to get rid of my ‘unmarrieds’ and ‘my’ friends. But No. Not his. He was allowed, for some reason, to keep his friends…

[by the way I hear tell there are some women who do the same to their new husbands and tell them to get rid of old female friends cousins included...OIA I tell you. Sad]

… And if I didn’t get rid of ‘my’ friends, little word bombs (read grenade) would be inflicted now and again to inflict such a terror of hurt and internal destruction that I would eventually drop said friend(s).

Not only from him, but from society. Just listen to your local radio. Your pastor, best friend, godmother, best aunty, everyone – it seems, the young woman must be isolated from her former life and it must be killed.

It is easy, all too easy to isolate young brides and confine them into a box. Into a Coffin. Where they became a zombie. In proper English, we say Living Dead. Cut off from the life line of former friends, denied permission to laugh and revive themselves over old memories, and forced to interact with new strangers … they begin to rot.

And we wonder why half the marriages lately last like 10 minutes? Because unlike [ME], of a former generation – young ladies of today cannot and will not and shouldn’t confirm to such idiocy.  Destroy and delete and utterly cut out our past lives in a single week?

We are who we are because of the choices that we made back in the past. We are defined by our choices - even the simple choice we made 2 minutes ago to read this blog.

Every single thing we do reveals us – we grow continuously – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. When we stop growing, we die. When we stop learning, our brains die. When we stop anything at all,  we, duh, STOP.

This then is the quandary to the laughing happy girl who had many friends in her life before she got married. She could, for example, go through her Facebook albums and laugh at past memories and silly things she did [good or bad] which ultimately made her who she is today.

Wait… I can hear you begin to Judge – don’t. God isn’t hiring.

Think of this and think deeply.  What are Friends ?– That a new bride is supposed to let go of her entire support system – her network - is as terrifying as telling an Insurance Company that their old server has collapsed and a new one will be brought in .. maybe .. next year.

Oh. And that that  ‘new server’ is actually an ‘old server’ that belonged to another firm and suited their specifications very well so it should work well for your enterprise.  That is, her new hubbies friends and their girlfriends. Even if she can’t stand them.

Just change all your passwords and codes and … well… what’s the fuss exactly?? Really. Young ladies of today are so fussy. What’s wrong with her husbands’ friends?? She really shouldn’t go see her former single friends… they will spoil her..

Nyakio’s out of the box advice.

As women, we wear different types of uniforms. We wear aprons in the kitchen. Skirt suits when we go to work. Hijabs for the mosque. Skimpy sexy negligible bits of material for our lovers.

But, underneath our covering, we’re still US. You are still your soul essence. 8 to 86 you are YOU.

And we change our clothing depending on the occasion. When I became a new mom, I learnt that I could use a khanga to tie my child firmly onto my back as I worked in the house. Before I had that child, I never used a khanga like that and neither did I need to.

SO it is with life, we are who we are in our souls and spirits and we are not defined by our exterior self. Those are uniforms and clothes that we pick up and use when necessary and discard when not necessary. Many can be set aside for the next generation, so that we can tell our children – here – use this, I used it as well.

Do not be delegated into becoming a plastic consumer – to use and discard. Especially friends.

Carry old memories, books, pictures, friends and the entire SERVER with you into your new life. As you grow, you decide what to retain and what to refresh. And what to store for the archives. DO NOT DELETE.

The second piece of Nyakio’s out of the box advice is this: If a man is threatened by your friends, past, current or future, male or female, or by your hobbies, work or anything that makes you who you are, and begins dropping grenade words unexpectedly in your life to terrorize you into submitting into his demands – honey - leave.

Don’t blink or think. Just leave. Because insecure men feel just that – threatened. If a mosquito lands on you, they will feel threatened. If you walk on water, they’ll say it’s coz you can’t swim.. so – pack and go.

Your past is YOUR past. You are the only one who can decide what to keep and what to archive, what you need and what to delete.

Nyakio J. Munyinyi for the XpenSieve Report© 2014

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