http://penastory.com/2016/02/08/regretting-ijeoma-the-one-who-moved-on/

My heart aches heavily as I toss and turn on my bed, unable to sleep. The clock by the mat reads 2:07 a.m. I have been tossing and turning here, trying to get some sleep for the last four hours to no avail. My heart knows no peace, but could I blame anyone else for this restlessness of my heart since I was the one that has placed a heavy burden placed upon it. How can I lure myself to sleep when these images and thoughts haunt me? I like this sharp pain from the mosquito I can feel on my thigh, sucking contently on my blood. This pain is welcomed, it makes me know I am still alive and not totally numb yet; I can still feel. I have been scared these last few days because I have felt nothing but a chilling numbness and emptiness so this feeling of pain is a comfort to my bereaved mind that I thought was now devoid of emotion. I am still alive. Did I say alive? This isn’t much of a life when my waking thoughts and entire being are settled on someone that has tossed aside the knowledge of my existence.

She had to move on, that was what she called it. I haven’t been able to ‘move on,’ not in this state of confusion I am in. How can I move on when I am being consumed with the shame of what I have done? When my unrepentant heart still longs for the one that has brought me pain. Loving memories of her clog my brain, leaving no space for reasonable thinking. I still remember the nights we spent in each other’s arms, those nights of passionate abandon. Those nights when under the cover of darkness she would sneak me into her parent’s house and right under their noses we made love till the gradual yawning of the sky reminded us another day was about to begin. The nights when the first crow of the cock was my reminder to get ready to leave because the cloak of darkness was beginning to fade and to tarry much longer was to face the peril of discovery. Can I forget so quickly the ardent passion with which she clung to me every time I bade to leave? But now she has moved on. She said she has moved on from the memories of the cold nights when she had shivered in my arms like a leaf dancing senselessly to the song of a raging storm. How could she have moved on from the memories that it was my body that had brought her warmth? How she would hold me close to her like I was life itself. But she said all that was a distant memory now, I should move as well.

Can I undo the wrath of my father that I had incurred when I willingly defied him to be with her? Can I wipe away the tears of mother as she begged me not to be a fool? I had been only too willing to receive father’s curse so long as I had her. But where is she now? She is not lying next to me, she is far away in the land of her new lover. The white man has taken my Ijeoma. It didn’t take her three months after our elopement to realise that this life of poverty wasn’t for her. The fancy life the city boys had to offer her appealed more than any love a boy from Akokwa could ever offer. Then she grew an obsession with the pale skinned men. The ones they call white men. She grew tired of sleeping on threadbare mats when she could have water beds promised by her pale skinned lover. Without so much as a proper goodbye, Ijeoma left. She left, disappearing like a smoke vanished, leaving no trail. “Tell Emeka I have moved on, I am going to Obodo Oyibo,” that was the message she had left with Iya Busola, the nosy woman next door who had only been too gleeful to fill me in on the details of the pale skinned man that took Ijeoma away. I am here trying to make sense of it all and wondering if I will ever move on!

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