where does all the love go?

have i ever told you about orange?

i’ve gotten into a habit of telling you where i’m writing from, describing what i’m doing, how i’m seating, what the weather is like, almost like i’m drawing a picture of where i am, almost like only when i do that can you truly understand me. you can only relate to me when you seat with me right here. when you’re right beside me.

i’m in this tiny cafe, but yet it feels like tiny cannot adequately describe this place. it is merely a cafe.. it’s an empty ‘fun size’ space with muffins and matcha. in front of me are three white men. white because i refuse to think further of their genealogy. yet from their conversation i hear one is syrian, another is lebanese and by the bone structure of the middle one and the way he wears his hair, i say he’s european. well not just the bone structure but also by the way he just spoke to the waiter - an emotional recluse… you can smell his air of superiority sip through, sip through the syrian and the lebanese. his perfect crumpled shirt with his beige pants that sit too far up his thigh, requesting for his americano with his very british accent. ugh, my stomach hurts.

me and my overpriced matcha in the tiny tiny cafe.

i could discuss all about the 3 men here, about how they speak of nigeria in such a way that it feels like just a business venture, tearing apart our history. wrongly pronouncing sokoto and kanuri but that’s not what this is about. this is about love and i’m not going to let anyone distract me.

i’m not sure when i began to hate my brother, the uncommonness wafted through the house somewhere around when he turned 13. i remember because i was only 10 to turn 11 in 9 days and he was my best friend but he moved to the teenage church the week after, and that was only the beginning of the change that was to come… for the next couple of years we’d change rooms. change worlds, and change who we had become - from best friends to simply brothers. he was my first and foremost heartbreak and this is the first time i’d admitting it.

let’s call my brother orange.

orange was cool and not because he wore skinny jeans or because he could dance and fix the remote when it wasn’t working, orange was cool because he reminded me that i was beautiful and that he loved me and that i was funny, very funny, he asked about my friends even when he knew i didn’t have any, a lot. i did have the boy that lived next door- but he wasn’t my best friend not like orange was.

my brother was kind and endearing and quiet sometimes, never mean just quiet. but something about a boy becoming a man chipped at his soft voice and eventually his soft heart… he rarely spoke to me and when he did it was lack luster and quick, always in a hurry like he was rushing somewhere, running . running away from me. for the next couple years i’d devote my life to being skinny, cool, obsessed with women, not too intelligent; anything and everything simply so i could have my best friend back, i’d become close to whoever he called friend so i could mimic them, after all he was my first friend, my best friend and my older brother.

yet he often felt like a stranger.

it was somewhere around when i turned 17 i cracked - i decided i had so much more to become, more than just his friend… what felt like an eternity pursuing a friendship quickly went quiet, i found myself with new friends, all sorts and i mostly forgot about my old best friend, he was simply an older brother and that was it. the world was fine again. i convinced myself that i simply was trying so hard to fit into a narrow minded world, about people who cared about superficial things like sex or how much you had in your account. i began reading again and slowly writing. but my relationship with him always hung on the edge, on the edge of being good enough, stable enough, ok enough, but that was the thing it was always ‘just enough’. i never told him a lot about my personal life.. to be honest i never told him anything.

i haven’t been very certain why i came to abuja, all i know was i needed a breather. a little slowness. to hold and to feel and to remember who i was, i haven’t really thought of the time when my brother was my best friend not in a while at least. i noticed my quiet resentment when he asked where i was going every single time i stepped out. after all if you cared so much i would’ve known, he would’ve been kind to me. i didn’t realize i held a grudge for so long, so quietly too, not letting anything in or out, just anger. hot anger.

i started reading ‘only big bumbum matters tomorrow’ on this trip and because it seriously bothers on sisterhood and the exhausting effect of silence amongst siblings it was so hard to read…. it felt like it poked and bothered me in ways i didn’t want to feel. for the first few chapters i scoffed and called it unrealistic, but in actuality i was just angry at the raw honesty damilare had. angry that she dare made me want to forgive my brother. how dare her let me see things from another point of view. how dare her make me feel and so honestly too. last night i scowered and searched for an explanation….. damilare kuku had to have been talking about her experience not mine. i looked to see if she had a sister.. i couldn’t find, in tireless search i laid on my bed that dili bought as soon as i came to abuja, in the room he emptied out and cleaned out for me and only in that moment did i realize… love manifests in different ways.

orange told me when he became a teenager he didn’t like himself very much and so he decided to change and morph into someone entirely different. he said i was the only one who reminded him of who he truly was. i was the only reminder in this brand new life that he was just that boy who lived in a not so pretty house, with a dad who didn’t let him watch television. he told me i reminded him that he didn’t know what disney was, and that we drove that rickety old camry, he said i reminded him that that he wasn’t good enough at home.

i paused and for the first time i realised, he was living life for the first time too. he was my big brother but he was also just someone else’s little brother.

how unkind of me to hate him for simply living.

and i think somewhere along the line i asked myself last night, how many times have we truly been wrong…. to our core. how many times have we genuinely concluded too fast, been angry too quick. how many times have we demanded accountability but yet hoped for grace - where it be us in their shoes.

how cruel it was for tobe, but how much more cruel was it for orange? 🍊

i hope you had an amazing week and an even more amazing weekend and remember i love you always, i hope we give everyone more grace this week…. maybe it’s time you too forgive your orange. before i forget, how is your day going joor? 💘