Naked: An Introduction

It will be painful. And slow.. but the process is necessary. It’s taken me years to get here. Here being a time when I feel ready to take on life with my eyes open. You got that right! I had been sleep walking through life before now. But I woke up. I think!

Layer by layer, we will peel. The scales must come off. One by one the masks, the make up, the lipstick, all of it, will come off. It has too.

Naked will remove the shackles till we get to the truth. Our truth. My truth. If you can talk about it, Naked will amplify it. So in a nutshell, Naked is about life, love, living, women and our issues, children and their issues, mental health and just being.This is not a political blog, there are other places for that. Naked will talk about things we over look, things we sweep under the carpet. Issues we rather not talk about. Naked is not about me, but about us and our collective issues as women.

Is there one truth or multiple truths? Whatever the truth is. We will find it and when we do, it will be the most beautiful thing.

It won’t be easy.

Naked we are born. Naked we return. The unexamined life is not worth living. The truth about us lies in the nakedness of our souls. Join me weekly, as I uncover truths. Naked. Are you ready?

Episode 1

Desperate. Anything will do.

This is not something we talk about. But it’s there: the need for companionship. Real friendship: the need to be with someone. The ache, hunger, desire to find love and perhaps even the ‘one’. Coming from a cultural background that glamorises the wedding band, it becomes needful to examine whether or not there is a ‘one’ for every body? Every once in a while, your family sticks a knife in your wounded heart by asking what you are doing to find the ‘one’. It is an innocent question, but one that crashes your world momentarily.

The ‘one’?

The truth is he is already married with children. He was married ten years ago . … the pictures are on Facebook. There are so many reasons why he is not coming for me. He cannot commit, he is into men now. He has been all along. He lives a lie. I don’t know. I haven’t found ‘the one’.

Some men are messed up too.

He is a polygamous bastard. He has five children with three different women, none of whom he married. He said I am not the ‘one’. He became spiritual. His spiritual father told him to stay away from me. He saw me in a dream. It was not a good dream. He is not the one for me. I wasted five years trying to get him to marry me. I should have dumped his broke ass years ago. Shame!

I should have told my family that he became a Christian missionary and went to live in the slums of India. I know India is great and all but I am not moving to India. I could have mentioned to my family that he is at a train station in Ajegunle, Madrid, Kigali, Islamabad or Mogadishu waiting for me. Seas, mountains, deserts and everything in between separates us.

There is no one out there. There has never been. If he is at a station in Kigali, he is not coming to Beds alright?

That’s the truth and I am not going to cry about it.

My biological clock started ticking at 25. It was still ticking at 35. It will keep ticking till I am 55 I think. Or whenever menopause hits. There is no such to thing as ‘the one’.

Not for me. Any ways. Nor for many women out there who prefer to be live independent lives away from men they once loved.

We tend to deal with the absence of a patner in our own way. Some of us focus on our jobs, careers, aspirations, goals, kids and so on. This is good but we tend only to bury that need for love. Momentarily. Till Mitch calls at 1030pm wanting to come over. Its either randy Mitch or no one at all. You climb down your high horse and let sleazy Mitch into your arms.

We comb online dating sites looking for the ‘one’. We live on social media waiting for the next comment, next like, next recognition of any kind. Desperate. Desperate for conversation. Hoping to hide that need to find love under a canopy of a messy online profile. That hunger is still there and it is not going any where.

You are reminded at Valentine that you are alone. You hate Christmas and holidays because it shows you up. No one is bringing you a card, your phone is not going to ring, no one is coming for you. There are thousands of birthday greetings on your page, but not one from anyone special. Meaningless.

Alcohol becomes a steady companion. Reliable. You try drugs. It is okay. Your friends do it too. You console your self, sinking into your worst self. They bring it to the office car park and you can afford to buy it. You are with the ‘in’ crowd. It’s okay, or so it seems, for the moment.

The need for love be it philio or erotic lies deep within each of us. Tormenting us. It wakes with us. Well hidden under our sophisticated make up combination. Or macho build.

Our compact and self contained lives hides the fact that secretly we want more. More from the relationship. More talk. More communication. More understanding. Just more of someone else. Period. Sometimes it’s hard for our partners to fulfill the need as it is deep. We are insatiable. We keep wanting more. It’s ugly. The question is could a human really fill that void?

Many of us though long and live for the erotic love. The love that is meant for married couples. The love we see around on TV when our protagonists have mind blowing sex making us wonder about our own sex lives. Erotica love. Over played in our TV screens. Over played in the novels we read. Over played, everywhere.

Some are into porn. The momentary fix. Fantasies. Unrealistic ideals of a sex life behind closed doors. Porn. Enslaved and embarrassed to admit that Russian, Serbian and Chinese girls have gotten you hooked.

Some flirt with men. Single or married, it does not matter. Its being flirtatious. Flirting is not a crime. Or is it?

Erotic love is not enough. It works for the moment. But it does not satisfy. Deeply. It does not guarantee commitment. It does not promise ‘happy ever after’. It does not guarantee marriage. It’s nothing to be honest. Even with the right person, there is still that longing for more. There is still that question ‘what more can I get?’, ‘what more can I give? ‘

Desperation.

For love.

For anything.

Could the answer be in another type of love? Agape love. The unconditional love of God. They say He is all we need. Will He make this go away? Perhaps, we need God. More of Him? Right now, anything will do.

I have been naked.

Tundun Adeyemo