DEAR JAMIE

By Nyambura Mwangi

Dear Jamie,
I love you. I know it’s true somewhere deep down in the recesses of my heart, I do love you, but I wish you had died. You see it’s not that I hate that you’re alive; I just hate who you have become. I hate who I end up becoming when I am around you.

I want you to understand that I am not a bad person. I mean I took care of you when you were sick. I gave my life, my youth, my sweat, blood, and tears for you. Devoted my time and my freedom to you and then you got better and forgot all about it. You know the funny thing is, this has actually happened to me before. I loved a girl, she took ill, I nursed her back to health and never left her side then she got better and forgot about me. Almost as though the memory of our love was the tumor that the doctors had taken out.

Now I want you to think back to those days when you were weak and in constant pain. Think back on who was there at the drop of a hat for you. Was it me or was it him? Was I not the one who lay with you in bed to make sure you were okay through the night? While he, the blaggard, spent all night with his arms around liquor bottles and misshapen women who went to his head. Yet now you treat me as though I am your enemy and her your saving grace. You treat me with contempt; you hurt me in every way you possibly can.

All because I ask for respect. For you to remember that I am a human being. A free human being. Not your slave, not anyone’s slave. You think the money you have now makes you greater than me but mark my words: There will be a day of reckoning. A day is coming when you will have no sway over me. When he will leave you once again, and you will come back to me. I will look at you and speak exactly as I do now, “I love you but you are already dead to me.”