Loving A Suicidal Man

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“I need to close the door” I said as I stood against the door with my hands wrapped around my chest. Kunle stood with his arm on the door, he could stop me from closing it if I tried.

“Why do you need to? I have seen you bathing a hundred times” he said earnestly. His voice was a voiced pout.

“It doesn’t matter. I still want the door closed” I replied, my shoulder already slouching as I gave in, inch by inch.

“It does! It means you don’t want to be with me. You are hiding from me” Kunle said, his voice quivering. I looked at him and felt tired. I feel tired a lot these days. Shaking my head, I left the door and walked into the bathroom, there was no point arguing with him.

The first day we met, Kunle had been strolling through the faculty of life sciences corridor with his friends Mark and Kester. I and my friend Janet were walking back from class. We met in the middle. Janet was an old friend of Mark and Kester and stopped to hug both of them in turn, laughing loudly.

After an awkward “hi” to both of them, I began to feel out of place and irritated. Was Janet aware that we were heading somewhere? Did she intend to keep standing here forever? I shifted until my back rested on the wall behind me, it was the best I could do to ease my calves. I had always hated standing for a long period of time. I was pleased to discover I wasn’t the only one being the third wheel.

“Hey” I called out the fair, lanky guy who stood with his hands in his pocket. He turned to me and I saw he was an upcoming Yoruba demon. His face was handsome and his lips were so pink.

“Hello” he greeted me and turned back to watch Janet and the guys.

“My name is Tasha, what’s yours?” I asked. “Kunle” he replied, not bothering to look at me this time.

On our way back to our hostel I asked Janet about him, she told me he was Mark and Kester’s quiet friend. He was also from a rich family and their money plug. I felt strangely defensive of him when she said that because I knew what it was for friends to exploit you for their own gain. Janet asked me if I liked him, I refused vehemently. She smiled and said it was just as well I didn’t fall for a big baby like Kunle, I needed a real man.

I was on WhatsApp chatting when his text popped before my eyes. “Hey, it is Kunle” and that was how we started chatting. I loved his dark humor and the way his voice sounded in VN. When I met him in school corridors he would frown while we spoke but when it was time to leave he would give me one of those his rear smiles.

I always chided myself for feeling those butterflies in my belly. I was too old to be chasing butterflies. My mother would throw up in her food if she knew what I was doing.

The road these feelings were taking me.

The number of things I planned to risk, including myself.

We went out for dinner, Kunle dressed in his signature Jeans but this time he wore an oxblood turtleneck shirt that set off his eyes and made the skin around his hands the center of my attention. I was the sun, he was the earth and an unusually strong gravity was pulling me towards him. I wasn’t looking forward to everything going up in flames.

He told me about his parent’s anger at him for being a rebel and refusing to study Medicine, how they pushed him and pushed him until he ran away from home. He couldn’t stand to be around them so he left. Being with them made him want to hurt himself – and he did. I asked him how long ago he saw his parents he said three years. I asked how long ago he hurt himself, he said two years.

Two years and he had been clean, he said it as though it was an addiction he had conquered and we both smiled. I, in relief and his, reassuringly soft. I told him about my mother, how she chased me out of the house because of a man. He asked if I had any other family and I said, yes, I have my aunt’s family which took me in and a father I hadn’t seen in ten years.

He squeezed my hand, we moved towards each other. Kissing Kunle was rewarding. It felt like a price and a purging, with my head resting on his chest and my mouth on his, I felt I had finally met someone like me. Someone who hurt more than me and needed to heal him as he healed me.

We tumbled into his room, our legs barely touching the floor. Kunle’s mouth drew fiery sunflowers on my throat, he was not taking no for an answer and neither was my body. When he touched me, I discovered there was a river of wanton tears beneath my skin. He didn’t take me, he inhaled me through all the love holes in his body. I had never had anyone touch me so reverently – as though I would break.

And I broke

I shattered

I couldn’t believe what Kunle had done to me, it wasn’t sex, it was making love, it was nothing. He saw my tears and gathered me into his arms, rocking me to sleep like a baby.

I came back from classes one day and saw a message on my phone from Kunle. It said “I’m sorry” I was puzzled as I sat down absentmindedly on my bed. What was he sorry for? We had not had a quarrel or even an argument. Things had been going just fine with us. Was he trying to break up with me? After three months? I felt a sucker punch in my gut. Kunle was not different from the other men.

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I arrived at his house thirty minutes later, I tried my key on the door and it opened. He had not gotten around to changing it. The house was eerily quiet as I walked in, Kunle was not in the living room or the kitchen, I checked the room and didn’t see him. There was no noise of showering in the bathroom so I didn’t check until I had done around the house.

I came back and cracked open the bathroom door and everything changed. It was like in one of those horror movies where one minute the light is off and everything is fine until you put on the light and there’s a dead person in front of you. I screamed as I saw him lying there, dead, with the cup of drugs and the bottle of alcohol lying empty beside him.

I rushed to him and hauled him up, he was still warm so I knew there was hope. I put my hand around his belly and pushed up. I knew that he would survive only if he could cough up all those drugs. I gagged him repeatedly and finally the drugs came rushing back up. I picked up my phone and called his friends, I couldn’t carry him to the hospital alone.

***

Perhaps it was the residual fear from Kunle’s near-death experience that pushed me to do what I did next. I went in search of my father, he was very happy to see me and welcomed me into his home. I got to meet my three half-siblings, Chike, Drake, and Mimi.

We talked about everything, how his life had been since he met my mom. He asked me about my relationship and I told him about Kunle, desperate for someone to talk to. I couldn’t talk to my friends. I didn’t trust them enough not to tell anyone else and somehow I felt responsible for his suicidal tendencies. I was his girlfriend, I should be able to push him away from the edge.

Funny how he was dragging me to the edge with him. I didn’t know how to live with a suicidal person. A violent person, yes, that was my mom. An aloof person, yes, that was my aunt. But what do you say to someone who wants to take his own life? Every day was beginning to look like two steps from a crisis.

That night I sat on a chair in the kitchen by 1 am when my dad entered, he walked to the fridge and got a bottle of fruit juice. He poured two cups of the stuff and pushed one towards me.

“Thanks, dad”

He sat down opposite me, ” You are thinking about him, aren’t you?”

“Yea, I am” I replied. My dad shook his head.

“I have been in a toxic relationship and I will tell you the truth. It doesn’t get better, he will continue to hurt himself and you”

“I..” I began

“Your mother was like that, I had to leave for my own sanity” my father said, his voice full of regret. I looked at him, I was still trying to get past knowing that he abandoned my mother all those years ago. My mother had drummed it into my head with every beating, a man would always leave you. That was why when she threw me out of the house it hurt so much. It meant that she was more willing to take the risk than to keep me. I was gutted.

The next time I met Kunle, it was in the corridors again. I was in no mood to apologize for leaving him in the hospital with his friends because I was in very bad shape. I was having doubts about our relationship and didn’t want to talk to him. He stood in front of me, I tried to dodge him but he grabbed my arm and stared at me with pleading eyes.

He looked so vulnerable, so broken. I wanted to take care of him. Two days later, I left my father’s house, lying that it was because I wanted to go back to school.

“I got the job!” Kunle shouted, skidding to a halt in front of me. I was sitting on the couch watching TV. I screamed in both shock and delight. He did not wait for me to say anything but lifted me off the chair and wrapped my legs around his waist. We danced around the small living room, our laughter bouncing on the walls.

Finally, he would be able to stop relying on his parents’ monthly allowance – money he hated to spend. I was so proud of him. As far as I was concerned, everything was going to be alright and it was for a few months. Our love grew, I became so comfortable in his house that all the neighbors knew me and called me “our wife”.

Personally, I wasn’t stupid enough to assume Kunle wanted to marry me but I knew how much he needed me to center him. He told me every day. All the other men I had dated had been authoritative and hard-headed but Kunle was soft and vulnerable. All of them had left me when they no longer needed me just like my mother had promised.

Men will always use you and dump you, just like your father did to me she would sing into my ears from when I was as little as seven till when I became an adult.

***

I came home that day and I found Kunle in a pool of his own blood. He had used new razors to cut his wrists. I fell on my knees beside him and my insides screamed so much my back arched. I recovered myself and began to tie his wounds with a cloth to staunch the bleeding. I knew all the processes as I was medical laboratory science in school.

When I was done, I ran out to call the neighbors. I knew he needed to get to the hospital before he lost too much blood and gave up the ghost. Already, his skin was pale. They came and helped me take him to the hospital. When I got there, I was asked to pay for his treatment and I did, using the little savings in my account. I sat on the chair, waiting to hear if he made it.

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African Tales: The Witch Tree

My head was bowed and I trembled all over. I made up my mind then that I couldn’t take it anymore. He was hurting more than himself, he was hurting my mind and my soul. I couldn’t keep fighting to keep him alive.

“I can’t keep fighting for you when you are not fighting for yourself!” I yelled in his face. This was a week after he had been sent home from the hospital. He was still weak but I didn’t care. It was all his fault.

“I am sorry baby” he begged. He looked contrite but I was done taking shit from him. I went into the room and picked my handbag. When he saw me come out of the bag he leaped from the reclining chair and cut me off from the door. My eyes were red with anger.

“Get out of my way Kunle” I snarled. He held my arms and I brushed him off. He knelt down and held my legs.

“I won’t survive without you, ” he said. Tears spilled from his eyes but for once I felt no pity.

“You will, you just need to get over yourself” I said. Then I wrenched my leg away from his hand, bypassed him, and slammed the door behind me.

My mother had kicked me out when I was thirteen, that was ten years ago and since then I had lived with my aunt. All the memories I had of her didn’t prepare me for what I saw when I visited her for the first time in ten years. My aunt said she had heard I had visited my father and she wanted to talk to me. On a normal day I would have refused, but I wanted to be as far away from Kunle as possible.

He was making me suffer. My grades were suffering. I worried about him every hour of every day. What was he doing? Was he safe? Was he having suicidal thoughts? It was a little like having a suckling child when your home was miles away from your workplace. My mother was wrong for the first time in my life, Kunle hadn’t left me. I was the one walking away to save myself from further hurt.

She met me at the gate, she looked plump and well cared for. She even had a happy smile on her face. I reflected on how unfair life was, that someone who damaged me could be this happy was just wrong. I endured the short time I spent with her, then I went back to my hostel. Weeks passed and Kunle did not come to look for me and it hurt on some level.

Three weeks later, I got a call from one of Kunle’s neighbors. She said Kunle had not left the house since the day I left, which was almost a month ago. I was shocked, what had he been eating all this while? What had he been doing to himself? I packed some food and went over to his house, I cried as I sat inside the cab. I knew I shouldn’t be going back but love is a terrible thing.

Kunle was lying on the bed when I got there, the house was pristine. He had been cleaning the house and bathing regularly but he looked hollowed out from lack of food. He shot up from the bed when he saw me. He stumbled and caught himself. His neighbors said his friends had tried to get him to open his door but he ignored them. They had gotten angry and left him to his fate.

“Baby” he said when he was very close to me. That simple word wrenched my heart. I couldn’t believe I had been so insensitive to leave him when I knew he couldn’t take care of himself. I stood on my tiptoe and kissed him on his lips. He drew me to him, his grip surprisingly strong for a starving man.

It was Kunle’s idea that we go on vacation. ASUU was on strike so there was nothing wrong with his request but what pained me was how much I needed it. I needed a vacation, can you imagine. Before I met Kunle I had never needed to go on any vacation. I was whole, not this broken mess of fear, fatigue, and fledging woman. I wanted out but what would he do without me?

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That was how we traveled from Benin City to Delta state on tour. We were happy, there were parties all day and all night. We had lots of sex and alcohol. I immersed myself in Kunle and got familiar with the ins and out of the community we camped in. The tour would end in two days but we still had one month of “strike holiday” to enjoy.

When it was time to go, I stood beside Kunle as we waited for the bus to come to pick us.

“I’m not going back with you,” I said. He turned to look at me, he wasn’t sure he heard me right. We had already made plans for the entire holiday.

“What did you say?” He asked.

“I’m done Kunle. This is the last time you will see me” I said. I couldn’t look at him so I stared as the first bus arrived.

“I don’t understand you Tasha. Talk to me!” He said tremulously.

“Goodbye Kunle” I said. Now on the bus, I watched as he stood dumbfounded right where I had left him. I wanted to tell the bus to wait, stop! But I knew better.

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