UCHENNA ONYISHI

I understand, you know, what it must feel like to love a man who insists that he loves you, too, but would rather be alone. The desire to convince him that life is better when it is shared. I understand that too. I do not disagree with you. 

I believe you will love me until the day you die, and that gladdens my heart, and breaks it, too. 

You will die. I know it. You will leave me before I leave you. The men in my family, they live a long life, they fall carelessly, they break easily, and they spend the elder half of their lives mourning their women, long before they are taken away by the plague. You too will die and leave me to the suffocating mass of your absence.

I have to be alone now, to prepare myself for tomorrow. I would rather watch your happiness from afar, with this man that tells you that I do not love you. He thinks he understands love. He does not.

The men in his family do not live long enough to watch their women die. Their lives are short and full of force as is their understanding of love. He did not grow up with lonely men. He did not suffer, in his childhood, the gashing wound of a father broken by the loss of the only person that knew how to love him.

He looks at your full breasts and he is pleased that you are carrying his many children. He does not care that they will eat you from the inside, that they will tear you open, that they will bite and suck you dry, until your chest collapses.

He does not see what his desires will do to you. He thinks they are natural. That they make him human. He holds onto them, and onto you, knowing well enough that you are without a heart for him. He refuses to let go because he thinks it makes him strong. But he is weak in spirit. Like his father, he measures love in effort. 

You are a better woman without him.

You must not settle for a life measured in sweat. There is no virtue in mindless commitments. We should live a life that is fully aware of the pain that is ahead of us. We must be wary of happiness. It will turn on us when we least expect it. And we must be wary of men and women who profess to us their love and devotion knowing that we do not have a heart for them. Men and women who are glad to break their bodies for us. We must be careful not to respect people who believe there is virtue in loving a heart that does not beat for them. 

Nonetheless, I understand what it must feel like to love me when I have insisted that I would rather be alone. The desire to convince me that life is better when it is shared. I understand that too. I do not disagree with you. It is hard to lose someone who understands how to love you. 

Much easier, someone you love.