Some hair-splitting wonk has just told me that nothing good can come out of a breakup.
“When you break up, your whole identity is shattered — you are no longer alive.”
As you can tell, gross exaggerations are the stepping-stones of her existence. Typical romantic. Of course no one is entirely pleased with breakups. They are probably the only things, except the naked shock of seeing Madonna’s new arms, that the whole world might ever have in common. Still, like the arms, I find them reassuring, commendable — a sign of consistency. Like debt and corruption.
A friend of mine just broke up with his girlfriend for reasons of a tribal nature. You know, the sort that a couple might have after years together in a faraway kingdom, only to come back to Lagos, have your parents disapprove, turn into a whimpering coward, afraid to offend mummy and daddy and KAPOW! Your story ends up in front of a Sunday blog. Yes, that sort. It seemed utterly tragic.
Yet, I felt no sympathy.
Not because of the whole, “I’m a lily-livered tribalist” part. If I went round hating every tribalist, I’d be out of friends. My friend Ada, often the purveyor of most of American culture, is the most stringent relationship tribalist I know. For her, it’s strictly Ibo. Enugu, if you can swing it. But she’ll settle for the eastern less if things get desperate.
So, if anything, I find the whole tribalist “culture polarisation” thing a little charming in that whole “wear one designer, trend or colour head to toe” sort of way. I’d never be caught in it but, hey, whatever floats your boat.
But I digress. I felt no sympathy because everything about it seemed so painstakingly cliché. I’d heard the “she wasn’t Yoruba” line before. Boohoo! Look at me; I’m a victim of tribalism. Woe is me. Sorry, mate. You’re hardly unique — everyone is doing that one these days: breaking up or not dating because of tribal pressure. “I love ankara kimonos, Eurasian cuisine but I could never date a Caucasian.”
As it happens, the only thing that did go through my head was: who was it? Who was the tyrant who devised most of those clichéd breakup lines? “It’s not you. It’s me”, “I’m in love with your best friend and I just want to be happy”, “I need to find myself”, “I’m gay”. Seriously? Who? No cliché woke up one morning and decided, today I begin life as a cliché. Some awful series of coincidences led it down that path.
I contend that it generally starts as a heartfelt gesture. Which probably drew tears from the first recipient’s eyes. The first man that said, “I need space” was probably an artist who actually genuinely needed space. Creative space. A large white room where he could paint. But the bugger at the next table also initiating a break up, heard it, thought to himself “why hadn’t I thought of that?” and promptly used it. Suddenly, three centuries later, we have a cliché.
This is not a story that saddens me. There’s comfort in knowing those clichéd lines and stories once had some sentimental value. In fact, I hope that one day, a breakup cliché that has been used on me will somehow get transformed into a movie. It’s every dumped person’s dream. To see a movie called I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE. How can you hate something you can turn into a pointless audio book, a movie or a platinum selling album?
There’s also the autopsy; the unbearable ritual of getting over the heartache by living through the pain, ladled with raw emotions, begging to be debauched, recycled or sedated. I’m with sedation. The dignity that accompanies a silent mourner is something we can all learn from. I remind my friends, the kindest ones I have, that whenever the opportunity arises, especially in a time after I might have lost count of how many breakups I have been through, I sure hope they will be refined enough to sedate me, lock me in my room with a spectacular choice of alcoholic beverages and Wole Soyinka’s indecipherable play Mad Men and Specialists.
But people don’t seem keen on that sangfroid building solution. We’re more likely to engage either in the less terrible debauchery or in the new age ritual of hauling friends out for a night out only to drone on with the drably details of your once blissful union. The same friends who weren’t invited along for the thrills of the dating.
Why in the good lord’s holy name would you think they’d be up for listening to you go on about how you couldn’t see a future with her? Truly baffling.
And after hours of hmms and ahhs, pretending to be listening and mourning the death of a relationship, you get a call at 3 o’clock in the morning from the same tribalist friend
I’ve decided to give it another go.
Couldn’t this have waited till morning?
I mean, we’re still broken up but we’ll just see how it goes.
And the tribal situation? Your father shouting Biafra?
We’ll deal with it somehow. Not sure it’s wise to let go just yet.
But why? What’s wrong with some alone time, even if its five years long? I call it self-loving. You develop some new habits, like laughing loudly at your own jokes, finding time to watch all those TV shows and being comfortable with talking to yourself in public or coming up with reasons why white is black.
Exactly, Rukks. Most People call that depressing or at best, madness. I’ll rather “go with the flow”
Suddenly, I remembered what it is I hate about break ups.
It’s a dying sport. No one ever does it properly anymore. The world is full of people “going with the flow”.
by Rukky Ladoja
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