Love and Gratitude ❤️

You are the love I did not know I needed

The love I wasn't sure I was ready for

And the love I wasn't even looking for until I found it.

- Me to him (January 13, 2023)

A few months ago, I fell in love. I wish I could give you people a long ass story of how great things turned out. While he is an amazing person, things did not work out and for the longest, I treated the pain as nonexistent. Hard guy for life. Well, I’ve decided to finally face it.

About a month ago, I was out with a few friends and a couple of strangers. One of the strangers (who is a fine-ass man with a well-paying job) asked me why I was single and I remember laughing and saying “That’s not the bone of contention please”. A friend answered for me and said single me was better than dating me and frankly, I agree. My thinnest selves have all been when I was in relationships. That’s all you need to know. If you want to lose weight, fall in love.

Anyway, that question shook me to my core and I decided to face it. Why am I single? The easy answer would be for me to say that God asked me to take some time off dating. However, e get wetin God see before e talk “Oya e don do. Rest abeg”. I saw a blog post I started writing in 2020 but never got around to finishing. In it, I said, “I wonder if I’m still single not because I haven’t met the right person yet, but because I am not the right person yet”. Reading that now with the level of growth I’ve had to go through these last couple of years, I am of the opinion that’s an issue in itself. I’m not sure I’ve become the right person for a healthy and thriving relationship yet. There’s still a bit of work to be done.

Since my failed talking/liking stage, this year has been one of sober reflection for me and bruh, I’m not sure I’ll date myself sha. Yes, I’m sweet, romantic and all of that; which does give a relationship a romantic vibe. However, there are a few inconsistencies that do not support healthy love.

For starters, I am faultily self-reliant. There’s this black American movie titled “I can do all bad by myself”. That has been my mantra for so long. As long as I have myself, no matter what happens, I’ll be fine. I guess I sometimes unconsciously treat people as dispensable due to this. Due to the therapy I’ve gotten (I kuku dropped out), I have come to realise that this is a trauma response of mine. I had been let down a lot of times growing up and I came to learn that I’m the only one I can count on. On some level, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m always waiting for them to come to the realisation that they do not want me anymore. Because of this, I refuse to relax in relationships and I’m always braced for the worst. I do not explicitly trust them and there’s an ingrained need in me to run. A need for me to leave before I’m left. It’s easy to look at this flight response and wonder why I am cheating myself out of a good thing but trauma responses do not make sense to anyone except the people with the trauma.

I am also a grudge-keeper that doesn’t like to have “hard conversations”. This means that I’ll let things slide but one wrong move on your part can tick me off and you get to hear about how you do the same thing all the time then apologise for it. That’s very annoying by the way. If you do this, stop being badly behaved. Change! Because I hate having “hard conversations”, I have to cut people off sometimes. It’s not because I want to without a good reason, but people tend to take you for granted when you are quiet about their misbehaviours. I expect that people around me should have common sense and be at the most basic, decent people. I also believe that “people are aware of the wrong they do to you”, so if someone moves mad, it simply means that they’re not worthy of a position in my life. What happens is that people exhibit huge misbehaviours and get away with them. Then the smallest one is the drop that makes the proverbial cup full and overflowing. Me, I can defend this one as a good thing but some people say it’s a red flag. Hmmmm, it is well!

Speaking of red flags, I have an ex of mine that I genuinely like and think he’s a great person. I listened to one sermon in February and decided to ask my ex what my red flags were. This was a very stupid move on my part because I got a 9 paged PDF document in return. This man took his time to design it and even gave it a title, “Blowing in the breeze- On red flags and others”. Like how incorrect must my head be to collect a PDF document? God please!

I think my favourite “red flag” is my mood swing/grumpiness. I can be all over you one day and the next, I want to be left alone. I call it the cat kinda love. All I want is to read books, eat and sleep. “No you didn’t do anything. Yes I’m fine. I’m just tired”. The thing is human interactions can get tiring and energy sapping and I need space to recalibrate and recharge. I guess there’s supposedly a proper manner to go about this (communication) and I have not been applying it.

The moral of this directionless post is that there’s still a bit of heart work to be done before I can be with anyone. Also, due to my largely poor choices in choosing previous partners and the things I’ve been through, I have come to doubt myself. Once I see that I like someone/find them attractive/interested in knowing someone, I see it as a sign that something is wrong with them. At some point, I used to joke that you can leave me in a room with 100 good men and 1 bad one and ask me to pick someone for us to get to know ourselves and I’ll pick… Your answer and mine are the same, please!

I know that all this is in my past and now that I’m in Christ, there is a change as I am now led by God and I will choose with Him. However, I’m just scared that I will still be picking stones instead of beans. Next thing we know, 5 of my teeth don crack. Dentist cost abeg. If anyone has tips on how to learn to trust yourself again after a lot of bad decisions, I would be glad to be pointed in the right direction. I actually want to use this single season to get better.

Anyway, search yourself, find out the work you need to do and actually put in the work. No one, absolutely no one, deserves to be with someone who is yet to deal with past hurt and trauma. As I said in my blog post "God still has sons",

God still has sons and daughters. He has children who are meek and will inherit the Earth starting with your heart. He has children that their heads are correct and their senses intact. The ones He has worked on their hearts, made them kind and healed of all past traumas (Children of the King are freeborn and are not slaves to anything!). The ones that are ready for love as God designed it to be and will make you wake up at 2 am to weep hot tears while saying "Shey na me be this? Na me dey enjoy zero stress and 100% love?"

He has children but first, you have to show yourself approved. He will not carry His beloved child into a situation that will break them. As much as He loves you, He loves them also and he's quite impartial. While you're praying and crying for the kind of partner, first work on being that same partner. Senator material no go with bathroom slippers. No ruin premium drip abeg!

God still has sons and daughters. Please be one. As always, I’m rooting for you. God has blessed you.

P.S: The next time anyone asks me why I’m single or any variation of that question, I’ll just send them this blog link. Abeg abeg! Make nobody stress me. Take and read!