10 years since Oge: a kind unforgiveness and knowing how to love you right

Dear Oge, Kedu? I imagine that the sound of me writing you, clit-clating away at my keyboard at midnight with nothing on my mind but you is something that we have both missed. I have missed it terribly too and that is one of the reasons that I have not been able to write. I think something is broken: I'm not able to think of just you. It is a decade since that wet day in May when Ada called me during my law school study session in Bwari and began with 'Are you sitting?' The day I that I realised that certain parts of one's body can ache and that the body can also cook itself in grief. The day that I learned that we lost you. I would later learn that through seredipitous swing you lured my ex-girlfriend down to your funeral. She had not known that her Port Harcourt bound bus was actually headed straight to the venue where you would be laid to rest, while I was trapped in Bwari, too broke and too disconnected to know where anyone was, and to uncertain if my openly griefing for you is something that should be done, given that ... In the decade since I lost you, I have become everything that I dreamt I would be and more. I have also taken on new dreams because I have learned that dreaming is one way to feel safe and rooted when everything else loses its simplicity. In this decade, I've also bid farewell to quite a number of people. Don't worry, its not that bad. Only a few of them are dead. The rest just are not here any more. But I have also learned that a quieter life can be richer than a tactless festival. In the decade that I lost you, I have missed you terrribly. To an extent I have unconsciously sought a piece of you in everybody that I have been with. And when it was not glaringly obvious, I insisted on seeing if it be conjured. I have not always been fortunate. But when I get lucky I find it most thrilling, most safe. And that part of you is what I am now learning was yourtendency to hold a grudge, demonstrate it and yet be there. A sort of kind unforgiveness. A kindness in which your demonstrating your anger was not so much a retribution, but a rather articulate 'you are hurting me'. Looking back now I realise that your ability to communicate in the ways that you did was something that was out-of-this-world about you. No to romanticise you, but you did do this quite often, and it would be followed by a gap for a response, a gap in which you would expect some response. And this gap would usually be your eyes paying attention. But then this was my experience of you. And I thought and still think it was perfect. But you are not the world, and you are not everyone else that I have hoped to share this with. In a world of minimised face-to-face interaction, the bridge of tact that communication was is wilting. And people are saying alot and communicating little. And worsestill, because we delude ourselves into thinking that we are being heard, our retribution for what comes across of being ignored becomes pure acid. And this goes on to create a vicious circle of people falsely brokering how they are in the world. We are yet to find each other again and our communication seems like we are slapping each other around in the darkness. Of course someone is going to get hurt. When it comes to building or fostering intimate communities, we are neither speaking nor listening right, and there is no universal model for how that should be the cosmpolitan, globalised communities that has emerged postcovid. Worestill, it seems that there because we have grown thinner tolerance levels because we expect that people should just know. But people don't know. I don't know either. And it is fucked up. But that's okay. Looking back to when you were next to me, I realise that it was not often that I heard you, but that 'have you heard' gap, is something that I will always cherish. Your kind unforgiveness. It is a difficult space to be in, especially when anger makes you imagine the worst of people while becoming the worst of oneself. I think of you, and I think of the other times and other people that I could have shared this with, alot. It is still something that I need to embrace. It is hard to take one's unforgiveness and be kind about it. It is tough. But I want to be that person who does stuff like that. I hope this is okay. Yours, Nnanna