Photo: Ex star couple Dennis Okari and Betty Kyalo whose marriage crumbled 6months later, ended in tears..
“Bro, how does one overcome a heartbreak that happened 11 years ago?”
A friend in Perth, Australia asked me earlier today.
The heartbreak came back to him and fell on him like a ton of bricks and he had to drive home and go drink all the whiskey in the house, crying.
It is one of the toughest questions I have ever been asked. How long should one grieve a love lost or gone?
The past is one of the most disrespectful thing that I know. It walks in on you when you are naked and vulnerable. In the last 48 hours, two unrelated events from long time ago, walked in on me, and they fucked me up completely. I had locked those memories in my mental dustbin, but the past is like a vulture, sometimes it goes for the carcass and rummages through it and leaves it there in the surface.
And the people we let into our lives are bound to leave pieces of their lives with us. That favourite song of theirs. Their perfume that slaps you when you walk into Art Cafe, their car that suddenly becomes ubiquitous, an old photo and worst, the Facebook memories.
People who break hearts, don’t have hearts. This I know. They have avocado seeds where their hearts are supposed to be. Some people were born so cold-hearted. I know a girl here who does smashes people’s heart, and I have never seen sad, even for a day. She is always smiling, this Hitler smile. I know a guy who ruined my life in more ways than one, but the snake he is, he always has this smile that I am sure Satan wears too.
The worst thing about life is that, there is no closure. Life is like a beautiful novel whose second part is torn and thrown into the ocean, you will never know how it ends. Only death offers closure, but even that it is painful closure, and sometimes even death strikes when we least expect and doesn’t give us any closure. In short, life has no closure.
So, how do you deal with a heartbreak?
I don’t know. For me, the worst things that could happen to anyone have already happened to me, so I have learnt how to deal with loss. Doesn’t mean that I don’t experience loss or pain, it just means, the biggest heartbreak have already visited me in my short life.
Even so, there is only one escape: Art.
For me, books have always provided me this respite. For some it is movies. For some it is sex. Whatever, for me, the knowledge that something is gone and may never come back helps me internalise the loss, and move on. I use a replacement strategy. I replace whatever or whoever who has been lost. I know the replacement maybe overwhelming or underwhelming, but there is no formula for these things.
I recently read somewhere that the more you try to forget something, the more it slaps you harder. So, you might as well think about it, until, you can’t think about it any more.
Then you go back home, serve yourself gin and tonic, or your favourite whiskey, plug in some good music, and grab a big ass novel and get lost in it.
Lastly, heartbreakers have no feelings, and have no heart and have no memories and they do it all the time. I once run into a girl who performed a proper heart transplant in Club Ornxy, pale Marsabit Plaza, Ngong’ Road. She looking sexy as usual, not even sexier, perkier. She was in the company of her new catch, a cool Luo dude whom we happened to be sharing a mutual friend. The mutual friend knew about the girl and the man, but had never disclosed to me. I looked at the man and I pitied him. I could see his heart on a tray about to be fed to a dog.
A little over three months, the mutual friend called me, and I met him at Nairobi West Mall, where we were joined by my successor. The surgery was worse than mine. And to date, that man has remained my friend and it is one of the most unusual friendships I have.
Sometimes, the past comes in the name of an ex. There are exes here who hold a key to relationship or marriage. Always pray for them to be busy, or to die. Because the moment they come for what is theirs, it is over man. It is the worst past that can come to haunt you. Because exes wait until you have settled with a man or a woman.
And then a ‘Hey’ message is all it takes and before long, you are left kwa mataa. Yaani kwa roundabout.
Anyway, we need to study the human brain and memory, because sometimes events that took place this year sound so distant and something that happened 10 years ago, seems so real.
Finally, if you are heartbroken, know the other person moved on, is piling a serious body count and you may want to find a way to live your life.
By Silas Nyanchwani via FB
Leave a Reply