IT’S ENOUGH

I was at the salon the other day, a place where tea is served hot. And all you have to say is ‘ Hii serikali ya Uhuru’ and you’ll have two hours straight of uninterrupted tales, which are usually very interesting. They’re a wide variety of topics to be discussed ranging from politics to the weather to locusts invasion but somehow the news on the rising number of corona cases usually turns to the girl who was dumped last week and is still sobbing, it’s inevitable. And all you have to do is nod your head in agreement and occasionally throw in an ‘ Eeeh, aki’ So on this particular day, there was this lady ranting about recent disagreements with her better half, which went on for about twenty minutes. What really drew my attention is when she said, ‘ Ata ni juzi tu nilikuwa natembea na braids kwa mkono after amezing’oa kwa kichwa, sijawahi skia uchungu hivyo’ and I cringed so hard. I couldn’t begin to fathom the kind of pain the lady went through but what completely broke my heart is the fact that she’ll be going back to the same man at the end of the day, I honestly lack words to explain how sad that is.
Anyway, I go ahead and ask the lady why she is still together with the guy and she hits me with the ‘ you’re too young to understand this’ talk. I know I am young and probably naive about certain things. I may have the life experience of an amoeba but this I know, there’s is always a way out of an abusive relationship. Whether you have three kids and no job or you just started out but feel completely dependent on the guy, you can always start over. You don’t have to wait till he hits you so bad that we can barely recognize your face to realize that the relationship was toxic, that you should have walked away sooner. It’s difficult walking away, that’s probably ten anniversaries you’re walking away from, but you know what’s worse, sticking around hoping that things will get better, that he’ll go back to being the man that you fell in love with, your best friend and you’ll stay up all night thinking about what you did wrong and you’ll probably try doing a few things differently. Hit the gym so you can look ten years younger, you don’t realize the problem isn’t you.
He’ll still come home drunk and frustrated, just like yesterday and the day before that and he’ll hurl abuses at you and hit you again and again and leave you gasping for air and do you know what he’ll do the next morning? Fix you breakfast and apologize and you’ll forgive him for the a hundredth time. And when you friend asks about the scar on your face, you’ll say you fell down the stairs, that it was an accident. So there you are again defending him, hiding the monster in your own living room. And do you know what you teach him? You teach him to trample on you like a door mat because he’ll get away with it anyway. So how about you stop accepting crap and demand for more, demand respect. Walk away from negative energy, from all the hurt and all the pain. It’s difficult and it seems impossible but it gets better, it always does. And I know it’s difficult taking advice from a twenty something year old girl who has barely lived but if not for me, then do it for yourself, choose better, you know you deserve it. I’m honestly sick and tired of seeing pictures circulating on social media of battered women, it tears me apart. So please love yourself enough to know when you are being treated less than what you deserve and walk away.