As we look forward to the success of #lowerfoodprices,
My crazy friend Kananu dares me to write on how the abused becomes very toxic and abusive in their other relationships. I know she thinks this is a piece of cake for me but am stammering all through. How do you even share how abusive you were! But we can dig right in from the easier side, the bull is for slaughter.
She owes me dark chocolates.
I share from my experiences.
A woman, a man, a child who’s gone through abuse tends to shed their weight off their close associates such as spouses, friends, colleagues, guardians, siblings and generally their surrounding has a pinch of their weight.
Even the abused spouse reacts in abusive manner towards the abuser without knowing; to them they’re now defending themselves.
And I realized that orphaned children carry it all the way to their marriages and it’s such a plague.
I was abusive in my past relationships.
There are some things that I still do and call myself on the side and issue a warning, “Emily clean up your lenses!”
My friend Kananu has had the guts Lots of times to call me and say “you were such a toxic friend, I don’t know how I put up with you” Then she unleashes such a thunderous laugh and I echo it more thunderously at my end. We’re in frenzy in such moments, I have embraced wholeness and she’s not scared about my reception of such sentiments. There was a time, she couldn’t dare tell me such things or else I’d mute and even pray for 6 months. Yes I was toxic.
Sometimes in 2017, this Kananu girl disappears on me. And I embarked on the search, from calls to messages to visiting her place where her gates communicated clearly. Then one Sunday, I slithered in and am up in arms why she had to disappear on me like that. She listens or maybe she heard me blubber then she opens her mouth and utters; “I think you’ve gone through so much in the past that you still see things through your past pains “!
Wueee, me seeing things through what….. It’s like the wound overwhelmed the band aid I had on it all that time. I didn’t forgive her; in fact I left never to come back. She was seriously silly and not born-again, yes. Ooh the pure power of deliverance!
You see the relationship I had assumed I had greatly invested on wasn’t working and so any other that I was “investing “on had no option but to work, my sick self had no boundaries of knowing that Kananu needed a break, my ailing self had no idea that healthy people take breaks from relationships more so the ones that suck up their energies.
Naturally I give myself fully into relationships, I go all in as long as our spirits are connecting and so you know I loved my friend so much😊 even unhealthily-Is this English?
I feared abandonment.
In my marriage I already felt I was alone and so I didn’t want to lose Kananu.
And even earlier in my childhood, I had felt abandoned so there was no way Kananu was going to bang the doors on me.
I don’t want to say that it worries me not, today I focus on the inside than outside, whoever walks out it’s for their good and it should never affect me in any way.
Kananu suffered in my hands😅😅😅 but you see am irresistible and she didn’t vanish.
Since I was married and the order of my marriage required that I dress in a particular manner, I always had that kind of eye mothers give to their young daughters when they dress in their comfort. I would actually tell her that her kind of dressing wouldn’t send a husband her way. I presumed that women were created for men/husbands and the latter was to be impressed at all costs the woman’s discomfort notwithstanding. Kananu now laughs and says I should burn all my magunias that embraced my 20s, I obeyed, I’ve kept a few for memoirs.
You see no one was supposed to see my well-toned arms and also my behind had to be covered well, even in a trouser, the blouse/shirt had to cover my derriere well and again my dresses had to be a particular length.
Add my then religiosity to it, my attitude towards girls who dressed in some type of way was indescribable; I reasoned like my perpetrator and acted like them in every way. Their opinions were ideal in every aspect of my life.
From the age of 9 I had lived from one home to another that when I had my own home I subscribed to its regulations without asking questions. Someone now had to tell me how to live my life even as an adult and I followed through even with my deepest desires to live freely.
In 2019 when I started breaking free, I wore that round dress Mary Atemo made just for my kind of lean frame, I was told am competing with small girls. And you know the small girls tickled him in some type of way and now I was joining them.
Kananu has since kept slaying her petite self in her comfortable attires with a shauri yako attitude. She’s actually born-again, prophesying and she brings my house down when she’s high with the Holy Spirit.
By all means I kept dragging Kananu into my prison, but that girl is a tough healthy woman. She turned my offers down but stuck around😍.
Am laughing at myself…I’ll keep sharing these series.
May our former associates that our toxicity turned off forgive us.
We’re unlearning and learning.
Some like Kananu stayed on till they started seeing our whole selves emerging.
By the way just for the records, I’ve become so gracious with young ladies that I shock myself each time.
~Emily Omondi