Love Happens Eventually by Feyi Aina

Author:Feyi Aina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: womens fiction, africa, contemporary romance, nigeria, african culture, polygamy, african authors, nigerian writers, african romance, yoruba culture
Publisher: Love Africa Press

Chapter Eleven

Forgiveness is a conscious, deliberate decision to extend grace to someone who doesn’t deserve it. It requires letting go of what someone has done to hurt you, and forgoing the desire to seek revenge, no matter how painful it is to see the other person go scot-free.

Forgiveness is the essence that builds relationships, the variable that adds depths and layers to friendships. Few people understand it, because it’s easier keeping scores and holding onto offences. Fewer still practice it, because it’s a very, very difficult thing to do.

Bitterness locks you in a prison that slowly poisons you. Forgiveness opens the door, and gently heals you. It’s an act that tells you more about yourself than the person who hurt you. It’s a sign of maturity, a character strength that makes you stronger on the inside and weaker on the outside. Many people will tell you they exacted revenge from the people who hurt them and didn’t feel any better afterwards. Rarely will a man say he forgave someone and didn’t immediately—or sometime afterwards—experience peace.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easy. It’s not a once and for all time package that makes you all smiles with the person who hurt you immediately. It is a hard agreement you enter into with yourself every day before your mind is free of anger. Every time the matter resurfaces, you must forgive, because the heart might soften but the mind doesn’t forget. Forgiveness is tough but liberating, painful but therapeutic, and easier to say but harder to follow through on. It is something we must all do ever-so-often on Earth as long as we live on it because offences will always come, people are not perfect, and life is not a fairy tale.

So I’m thinking about this as I look at Yinka ‘with a C.’ I can’t help envisioning her and Esosa entwined in each other’s arms. I know I ought to forgive them, but I’m finding it really difficult.

“I wonder how Olamide is doing,” Aramide says as she packs up her bags.

We are all going back to Lagos in bits. Aramide’s husband and children had left after lunch, but she and I had stayed back to help clean-up.

“The first night of marriage with an eager new husband can be a lot to take,” she continues. “I did try to prepare her, but you know Olamide—she believes Korede is a gentle guy and everything is going to be splendid.”

I stand beside the window and fume. I don’t know what Yinka is doing back, or what Toba is doing entertaining her.

“What’s going on?” Aramide asks, perplexed. She has stopped folding her dresses and is looking at me with a frown.

“It’s that skinny two-by-four,” I reply, leaning into a tiptoe and peering through the glass of the window. “She’s back.”

“Are you serious?” She drops the dress in her hand and hurries over to stand beside me and peer outside.

“I don’t even know why she would show her phony face here again. Worse, I don’t know what Cousin Toba is doing listening to her.

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