Tired, Bored and Unhappy

I read a short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie today. It was published in the New Yorker. The name was ‘Birdsong’. It is about a girl who has an affair with a married man. I liked it, it was good.

I also chatted with a married man who used to want to go out with me. He advised me to find an upwardly mobile young man to share my life with. If only it were so easy.

It’s weekend tomorrow. I seem to spend all my life waiting for the weekends. It’s not that I enjoy them so much. Weekends are just free from the stressful commute I have to deal with on weekdays.

I keep thinking how the life I’m living is not the life I want. What is the life I want? I’m not sure. A life without the stressful Lagos commute? A life with wealth and privilege? A life with romance? Yes!

The life I have now is not something I can abandon though. I try to make it better all the time. But I have no choice but to live it. There is nothing that makes me unhappy right now that I can just turn away from.

This is beginning to sound like a sob story. It is not. I’m not that kind of person.

Schindler's List

Did you see Schindler's list

Did you see the little girl in the pink coat?

Did you see her wander, up and down?

And finally hide under the bed

A smile in her eyes

Her hands over her ears

Maybe thinking

It was all just a game

Did you see the girl in the pink coat?

Among the dead

Among the moldy dead

Bound, in a barrow

For the incinerator

Her coat still pink

covered in mud

The little Jewish girl in the pink coat

Who like you and I

Really did deserve to live.

I saw Schindler’s list recently. I have had it for a while just never seen it despite recommendations from friends. It’s been a while since I wept like that movie made me weep. I broke down. Holocaust movies get me like that. The only other thing that gets me like that is the world trade center. Just mention it and I burst into tears.

I loved Fiennes portrayal of the cold blooded, hard hearted, damn sexy Amon Goeth, but it was the little girl in the pink coat who really got me.

What is a Relationship Autopsy?

What is a Relationship Autopsy?

It’s self descriptive isn’t it? Relationship Autopsy. It’s the choice of words though that’s strange. An Autopsy? On a relationship? For God’s sakes?

I was thinking of a past relationship this morning. Just musing on stuff that happened. I do this in my spare time. This time I was finding more things to blame myself for... as I do all the time. In what ways did I change from the person he fell in love with. In what ways did I reveal that I wasn’t a safe bet...? (I say reveal because most of the time I don’t think I’m a safe bet anyway, God help the guy who finally ends up with me). Anyway, as I was musing it occurred to me that what I was doing could be described as carrying out an autopsy on my dead relationship.

So now I’m asking myself. How necessary are relationship autopsies. Do we really need to delve into the heart, liver and stomach of a dead relationship, to see what went wrong, so that we can a) Move on b) Not repeat the same mistakes next time. Or should we just throw that corpse of a relationship in the next available coffin, nail it shut and bury it under a pile of concrete.

Relationship Autopsies hurt. If you conduct it too soon it hurts because the pain is still fresh. At this time though you’re still convinced it’s all his fault. The bastard. How could he? And your friends are usually very understanding even as they apply liberal amounts of ‘I told you so’s ‘I told you he was no good’ ‘I told you he had a girlfriend’ ‘I told he looked a bit weird’ ‘I told you he was just too good to be true’... whatever.

It still hurts if you conduct it after a while. By this time you know it wasn’t all his fault. By this time it has become quite clear that you really didn’t have to tell him to get the hell out of your life because he said you best friend looked like she needed a man... because you now realise that he was right, at least about your best friend. It hurts because the little things that used to piss you off so much about him that made you decide to dump his sorry ass... well you can’t remember most of them now can you? Even the ones you can remember seem downright charming. So he liked to sing Bob Marley in the shower, so what? I bet since he left you’ve caught yourself singing Bob Marley in the shower more than once... and then remembering him with a smile. Sad but true right?

What happens when you don’t conduct an autopsy though? You go into the next relationship blind, that’s what happens, you go in there still believing that you are the best thing that ever walked the face of the earth and can do no wrong. Well in this case you’d probably have another dead relationship in no time, and this time, well, I would advise that you conduct that relationship autopsy.

Me... Complicated

Some people have spent time trying to understand me. Even I do not understand myself, so they might as well not bother.

I am in one of my moods. I have deleted all my other blogs, maybe I was unhappy with them, maybe not. I don't know for sure.

I miss my friends, I detest the routine of my life at present.

I'm still at work, though work is long over. I'm not eager to face the traffic. I don't want to waste time on a movie. So I'm trying and failing to write something sensible.

I'd like to run away, become a hermit. I wonder if I would find the world perfect if I had everything I wanted with no one to trouble me.