Four Months after my breakup

The weather was as hot as always. Lagos heat has a way of making you tired even when you've done nothing. It's not the kind of heat that makes you sweat, it's the kind that makes you slow. The kind that sits on your skin and makes you question every plan you had. It was Saturday afternoon, and the sun was just sitting on the roof, refusing to move. The whole compound was quiet. That kind of Saturday quiet where everyone is indoors pressing phone or sleeping off the heat. I decided to go to the pool. Not to swim, really. I don't even know how to swim that well. Just to have some fresh air. Just to sit somewhere that wasn't my room. My room has started feeling too small lately. Too full. Full of things, full of thoughts, full of me trying to pretend I'm okay. I've always been too busy to have time for myself. That's what I tell people, but the truth is, I don't even know how to have time for myself anymore. If I sit still, my mind starts to wander. And if my mind wanders, it goes back to the same place. My routine is constant. Home to work. Work to home. On weekends, I do my laundry, clean my room, arrange my things just to feel like I'm resetting for a new week. I wash my curtains, I rearrange my books, I even clean under my bed. But I'm not resetting. I'm just repeating. It's like I'm cleaning my room so I don't have to clean my heart. September 5th makes it four months since my breakup. Four months. It doesn't feel that long, but it also feels like a lifetime. Everyone kept telling me, "You'll heal, you just need time." But how do you heal when you don't even give yourself time to breathe? How do you heal when you're using busy-ness as a bandage? I haven't healed. I haven't even cried properly. I've just been... busy. Busy as an excuse. Busy so nobody asks me if I'm okay, because if they ask, I might actually answer truthfully. So I packed a small bag. A towel, water, my earpiece. Nothing serious. I didn't want to look like I was trying too hard to have a good time. I told my roommate I was going out. My roommate, Yemisi. Having a cool girl as a roommate with the same name initial is so much fun. We are Y & Y. We get to share most of our stuff without anyone knowing and sometimes even mix them together. Her clothes are my clothes, my cream is her cream, her perfume is my perfume. The only problem is when we both have the same initials on our mugs and we start arguing about who owns which one. She will be like, "Yomade, this is my mug!" and I will say, "No, it's mine!" And we will both laugh because we know we bought it together anyway. But honestly, she's the only reason I haven't gone crazy these past four months. She didn't force me to talk. She just stayed. She would bring me food when I didn't want to eat, she would play music loud so the room doesn't feel too quiet, she would gist me about people in her department just to make me laugh. If not for Yemisi, I think I would have just disappeared into my routine completely. She looked up from her bed when she saw my small bag. "Pool?" she asked. I nodded. "Just want some air." She smiled. "Good. You need it. Don't come back quickly, okay? Just stay”. That was her way of saying, take your time. The pool was almost empty when I arrived. Just a few kids making noise on the other side, throwing water at each other, and an old man reading a newspaper like he had no care in the world. The water was blue and still, and for the first time that day, the heat didn't feel like it was pressing me down. It felt... lighter. I found a chair under the small shade. I put my towel down, sat, and just breathed. I put one earpiece in, but I didn't play anything. I just wanted to hear the water, the kids laughing, the wind. I wanted to be somewhere that didn't ask me to be productive or strong or healed. I was just starting to feel okay. Just starting to feel like maybe I could sit with myself for once without running away. I was about to sit down properly, to close my eyes small, when I heard a voice behind me. "Are you Yomade?" I turned around. And my whole plan of having a quiet day to myself ended right there. Just like that, my quiet day way over!!