A MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT

A full bottle of Skye Vodka, a full packet of Dunhill [Switch] cigarette, an empty purple plastic cup, a BIC lighter courtesy DJ Sean, 1 blank scroll, full ink pot and a tip-dry quill. My table was a blend of the archaic and the future.

Striking a match, lighting a stick, smoking a cigarette and watching the ashes fall from the stick; falling in love is as easy as that, but to get over love, that is, to recover from love well, it wouldn’t be easy to retrieve the ashes and convert them back to tobacco, form back the cigarette, return the fire back to the stick and watch the burnt match stick turn new and unused again. And now, it’s my task to un-love the love of my life. After several wondrous periods of adoring her, caring for her, putting her before myself, constantly searching for new ways to express my devotion and affection, I must abruptly give that up. I have been told that it’s time to move on, forget about her, let it go, find someone else and a variety of other polite versions of what amounts to “get over it“. Thus, it would seem that I’m expected to simply not love her anymore. Would one suggest that droplets of water not drop from the heavy clouds? That music never be made and listened to? That the nose never receives oxygen in a mode of inhalation? Yet, I am supposed to make a soul-deep love die. I have seen and read a lot of books on “How To Love“, but never one on “How To Un-love“.

How Does One UN-LOVE

Can anyone tell me how to break love’s hold? How do I escape the clutches of this unyielding source of aching and emptiness. How do I un-love? Oh! The advice flows freely from my unknowing friends. “Stay busy” they say, but the love sits heavy on my heart no matter what I do! “Don’t think about her“, they advice. And am I not to listen to music as well? “Find someone else“, they recommend so casually. True love is not replaced, certainly not with acquaintanceship or casual romance. Love would punish me for any disingenuous effort to find relief through substitution.

So the question remains, “How do I un-love?“

Picking up my phone embodied with my “Private Line“, I had made up my mind to call just 5 close friends and pop up the mysterious question to them one more time.

……….

Call 1: Smoke Igbo!!! *Weed*. Make your eyes close, make u dey see b****es and beaches. You no go fit differentiate… – Kentro

Call 2: Hmmm, *stays mute* :X *beep tone* – DJ Sean

Call 3: Same way you fell in love, fall outta it. By the way, blah blah blah, *beep tone* – Demmy

Call 4: How does one un-love? Good question. Just fall out of it. Loose all commitments. It’s a psychological thang. Your mindset changes. Your emotion opposes the time you felt actual love. I sabi say you go ask me how you go do am. Just die the communication! If it was me, I go apply the “silent treatment”. Falling outta love is not really easy sha, even though I wan dey form gangster. – Skah D’IghoBaby

Call 5: You’ve got a lotta girls flocking and wanting you, yet you Sit down there asking me how to un-love. You better go for someone who loves you and love her back as well. – Ibukun

*sigh* … No fruitful reply to my question. Would applying all 5 replies solve my problem of how to un-love? I had to come to a conclusion, to believe that there simply are no strategies, techniques or rules for how to un-love. Love comes of it’s own accord, and leaves when it is ready and not before. The greater it’s strength, the more it determines that it will take it’s time. Oh! Yes, time, as I started to dip ma quill into the ink pot again.

TIME! The great healer, as history says, the only known relief. But it provides me no respite today; nor shall it tomorrow or perhaps, even the next thousands of tomorrows. Indeed, who knows if time would ever diminish this love? Are there not some loves, so great, so true, so profound, that even time cannot break their hold? For this love of mine grew to immense proportions and crept into the deepest reaches of my soul.

I loved – NO, love her with a desperate passion, not just in the way a body would, but with an intense passion for her soul, her essence. Now I miss her with the same fervor and ferocity with which I love her, and it’s almost as if my pain is now my passion in how it consumes my heart and fills my days. Why do I grieve so? After all, no one close has died. Except for Goldie though. I am still alive and my ex-partner still lives on, yet I have this sense that someone or something has died. I suppose I’m grieving the loss of “us“. Not me, not her, but me with her, “WE“!!!

As I watched the scroll go wet, from “ocean splashes” courtesy my eyes, I flipped open the packet and pulled out the last stick. Purple plastic cup half full, bottle almost empty, packet of Dunhill [Switch] cigarette tossed off and lying empty close to the UPS. My heart was heavy, outta my mind, vision blurred and mood – tipsy. Flipped my wrist close to my face to check my G-Shock. “11:59“? It was “A MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT“. I laid my head on the table, and moments later… ZZZZZzzzzz!!!

She was right in front of me. Her beauty radiates like the moon in the sky. Yet I still have this hurt in me, I fear what may become of us. I rather die than feel this pain again. Our friendship grew stronger, time, the great healer, felt to have answered the long asked question. The clock developed wings and I found myself in a web of confusion. When do I pop the once used remark to her again? Like a bird on it’s first flight, smiles accompanied the flightful in a swift move in the air, and I found myself speaking the words once again. I LOVE YOU. She laughed hysterically and I felt foolish. Could that be it? Is she joyful? Would I be happy once again? Have I converted the question from how to un-love, to an exclamation, Wow! I love her even more? …And it was like the cloud raining stones and the ocean flowing sand. “You are a good friend, let’s just stay as friends. I have a boyfriend I love so much already“. My reaction, I couldn’t remember, as I __________.

I was back to reality. Dear God! If sleep be the cousin of death, then love must be a sin synonymous to suicide.

It was just one of my dreams powered by my previous thoughts. I stared at the not good-looking table-top, turned on the desktop and started typing off the scroll from last night.

DONE

Copy

Paste

Sending write-up to AceWorldTEAM’s official e-mail.

e-mail Sent.

6:39AM, time for coffee.

*Phone rings*. It was a call from my ex-partner. I never was this confused. Should I say the words, “I LOVE YOU?”, Or do I still go hunting for “how to un-love?“.

Someone please help me.

“How Do I UN-LOVE?”

Written by:

@IAm_BigDan