SOMEHOW, one way or the other we find ourselves in situations we rather should have been spared from!
It is sad, but the hard truth is we put ourselves in these situations one way or another!
Take for example, you have been in a toxic relationship; you realise it is bad for you but you have imbedded yourself so deep that you do not want to get out.
Well, sometimes it works out that you have not gotten out because you are holding on to straws!
Take this as an example — boy meets girl. One night, a very funny night I might add, a girl (we will call her Naivety) meets a boy! He is no Adonis, actually he is far from being that, but they hit it off.
He makes her laugh, he is courteous and most of all, he makes sense when he opens his mouth.
So, they click, in every way; like a dry tinder taking up a flame from a lit match!
After a lengthy intimate conversation, ignoring everyone else like they only exist at that point in time, they part, numbers are exchanged and even a little stolen kiss seals the deal!
They agree to meet the next day, just the two of them where they can carry on and get lost in each other’s eyes and ideas. It’s a date! YAY!
Boy, (we shall call him Ahem!), picks Naivety up and they decide to take a drive — see nature!
A perfect date in both their books! Unfortunately, well let me not try to make it negative, fortunately they even end up getting really intimate on the same day (we are all grown-ups here, so I will not spell out what “getting intimate” entails.
Anyway, because of life and its little surprises, they lose touch, the very next day! Believe me, they get dealt a really bad hand — Ahem! has to leave the country on business fast, and while he is away Naivety loses her phone, while he on the other side loses his sim card!
My word!
Talk about star crossed lovers! But since fate is not really that much of a bitter female dog, they bump into each other a few months later.
Sparks fly madly, it feels like even the people they are with might just catch fire!
Anyway, they sit down, have quite a brief discussion about their feelings and situations, but ultimately agree that they are now an item!
Life goes on, and all is dandy in the Ahem and Naivety world!
Then — the murky smell stuff hits the fan! Ahem!, maybe acting on his feelings or his conscience (we really will never know) reveals to Naivety that he is actually married!
WHAT! To make it lighter and save himself, he puts it to Naivety that he is telling her because he wants her to be his second wife!
Talk about originality, most guys usually come up with the “my marriage is not working” line!
Naivety’s world nearly collapses, but bless her she stupidly dusts herself and soldiers on with the relationship!
I really do not know why, but I am guessing she had fallen hard for this dude, or maybe she was just living up to her name!
Eish, that little big decision just sealed her fate and — no surprise here — gave Ahem! the courage to reveal his true colours!
He started mistreating her in so many vile ways which bring a tear to my eye when I think about it, and since I love making you happy, I will not go into details.
I will spare you the gory details and just leave you with this image — ever seen a little puppy blindly following its rabid mother to the ends of the earth?
That was what Naivety did for Ahem!
The rest of the story is sad, especially for poor little Naivety; she knew the relationship was toxic, but she clawed on! She knew that Ahem was bad for her, for her psyche and being but she stuck around, until the fateful night when he made her wait for hours and hours in the middle of nowhere with promises to come sweep her into his arms!
She says that is the day she told herself NO MORE! But it was a bit too late, the scars were a bit too deep — no amount of laser surgeries could remove them.
But she learnt the lesson that most of the time, the holes we find ourselves stuck in, are those that we have actually dug for ourselves.
So really, holding on to a carcass will only end in disaster — you will find maggots crawling all over you, you will have flies buzzing all over you, and as Naivety put it “the stink lasts a lifetime”!
So, bathong, let us really take a step back, fill our lungs with clean air, and stop getting ourselves into situations that are surefire disasters like Naivety!
And as usual, you know this has so many versions, each of us can and will relate to Naivety’s story somehow, and we all do realise it does not just apply to relationships, but to life situations as they come!
Let us get rid of toxins in our lives!
Moleboheng Rampou is a freelance writer based in Maseru.
