Scarcity is a bitch

and why you have to kill her..

I’m thinking about building another series. This one being about how a scarcity mindset will always get you got. Scarcity mindset when it comes to romance, friends, and opportunities. Helping me deduce why we keep certain people around that don’t like us or remain in certain situations that don’t serve us. My next post may or may not be part of the series. As my spirit moves me, so I will write.

Also, Gen said more dialogue, so here goes.

---

“I actually feel bad for you, baby. Because look at what scarcity is about to make you choose. Look at what you’re considering…”

I pulled Future* for a chat during work a week or so ago. I needed him. An individual from season 5 of my life, Naija*, tried to revisit in my current season 7. This post just goes to show that scarcity is a demon I am in a struggle with, and she nearly wins at times. She has been forcing my hand lately (especially since I turned 27, because literally WTF is going on??), and causing me to make costly considerations and waste critical time.

It started with a random call from Naija on a Saturday evening. I genuinely thought it was a mistake. It only rang once or twice. “Flashing the phone” is what Nigerians called it. At least back then. To say, “I want to alert you but it’s not urgent. Call me back. I don’t want to use my minutes.” And so I texted. We don’t hate each other of course. He’d reached out from time to time over the last three years, so I wasn’t opposed to a message:

“Hey, did you accidentally call me?”

No answer.

My anxiety deepens for some reason after fifteen or twenty minutes. I call and still nothing. He eventually messages me he’d call back as the place he was at was noisy. Strange but ok. He called about an hour later. There was the initial small talk. How my family was doing, how his family was doing, work, etcetera etcetera. He told me that he finally moved to the UK in 2022. I was happy for him. Within, I grew anxious because I knew something was up with this conversation. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

Thirteen minutes in, he asks if I have vacation plans, to which I say:

“I was actually thinking of taking a sabbatical off work next summer for a month or two and going back to London to chill. I haven’t made any plans yet, though.”

“Would you make plans to see me intentionally?”, he asks.

I don’t know why, but my heart sank with the question. Me and him didn’t talk often enough for him to ask that. I tried to play dumb. It usually works, but not in this case.

“What do you mean by seeing you intentionally? I mean if I do end up taking the trip, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to see you. If I book it, I’ll keep you posted.”

“You know what I mean. Come on. We’ve known each other a long time.”

He further remarked about how he wanted things to go all the way this time around. “Forever till death” are distinct words I remember him saying. It stressed me out. Where was this coming from? There was not nearly enough groundwork for us to talk about this after three years.

“My parents have been married over forty years. I don’t want a relationship that lasts 4, 5, 6, 7 years, or even a decade, then falls apart. I don’t want that shit.”, he continued.

Was this supposed to arouse flames of passion inside me? I felt like I was reliving 2021 and that inauspicious Lagos trip. There were so many details I didn’t give y’all out of respect to him, but trust, it wasn’t for me. He asked me about what went wrong back then. He descried how it started in 2018. Then I again explained myself for all of 2021. How I felt pressured.

“C’mon, I wasn’t pressuring you. If I really wanted to put up an act, I know what I could do. I was honest with you the whole time.”

How he compared me to other people. Namely the wives of his friend and another contemporary of his.

“I said that?”

I held the line this time around. I stuck up for myself. Gave examples of things he said and did. I also took accountability for my own shortcomings.

“You were not nice to me.”, he said.

I was upfront about how we should have been clearer in communication of expectations. How I briefly interacted with another man at the time. (Sidenote: Scandalous of me, I know. The insane thing is that this guy and Naija have the same name. Different story for a different day. May or may never tell it.) How I would’ve ended things sooner to prevent the nuclear fallout that occurred.

“Thank you. I appreciate your maturity.”, he replied.

In my opinion, this conversation was about burning me at the stake. Holding my feet to the fire and making me repent for the ways I seemingly “wronged” him. But thus far, he hadn’t owned up to anything he did wrong. My concerns were being trivialized. He wanted to rekindle things and start talking again in hopes of continuing where we left off, but when you start in such a deficit, where do you expect to pick up from? I told him that things felt inorganic with him.

Although I was in the hot seat for a good minute, rehashing my side of the story, I put the spotlight back on him:

“Whenever we have these conversations, everyone tries to paint me like I’m an unserious person. That I don’t know what I want. I’m being pressed, and now I’m pressing you. Since you feel so strongly about things, what is it about [INSERT MY FULL GOVERNMENT HERE] that you like or love so much?”

The moment was so intense that I literally had to stop my evening walk and put my foot up on someone’s stoop. Random passersby saw me going head-to-head with my phone. I know I looked crazy, but I was tired of being made to feel like I was.

“C’mon.”

I shit you not, I asked him what he “loves” about me at least four times, and that’s a conservative count. He responded with “c’mon” each time as if he couldn’t fathom why I’d ask such an silly question in the first place. All he was able to muster up initially was “personality” and “vibes”.

“That’s not a solid answer. People that say they love each other and want to marry them literally cannot shut up about their person.”

He went on to explain how he appreciated a time when I supported a talk of his and when I took the initiative to buy the ticket to Lagos. It made him feel seen and valued. While I’m glad he appreciated the sacrifices I made, both of these occasions benefitted him. Nothing concrete about what he likes about me and me alone, separate from others. We got off the phone shortly after. I felt unwell.

Like a fucking idiot, I called my mom and told her about it immediately. She saw it as a good thing, especially after a recent conversation I’d had with her earlier that week, bitching and moaning over having to let a man named Cycling Bae* go. To her, Naija’s return could be taken as a sign of divine providence.

Sidenote: I don’t talk religion on this page, but this instant begs that I must. As a Christian, I find myself constantly searching for signs and wonders where there are none. Over-spiritualizing things that are merely coincidences. I need to stop doing that. What if it isn’t a sign, but a test? Having the same question manifest itself in a new form to see if I finally learned the lesson? And if someone or something truly was a sign of the divine, would it disrupt my peace? Shouldn’t it be the exact opposite?

I told mumsy about my reservations. Things he said and did back then that I couldn’t overlook. How he once said women depreciate over time or when they have children. Something along those lines. I couldn’t shake it. The idea of willingly partnering with a chauvinist.

“You’re only saying that because he told you. What about what other men think but don’t say?” was mom’s response.

True, but yikes. “Yikes” is the only appropriate mental response for that. He wasn’t a child when he said this. I feel like once you know things, you’re responsible for all your actions going forward with said knowledge. That’s why they say “ignorance is bliss”, because once you know shit, you have to do something about it. So if your nigga talks crazy, you can’t magically “un-know” that. It is imperative you move accordingly as you will be held liable in the future.

“One of you should marry to open the door for the others.”, she said of me and my sisters.

In that chat with mommy, I toyed with the idea of Naija again. I mean, he has proven himself by moving to the UK like he planned, finishing school, and working. He is establishing himself well. I was almost tempted to agree with mumsy, but I couldn’t fully. My spirit wasn’t in agreement with him. Inside myself, I knew he wanted to restart things and hopefully marry just to tick the box. Especially now that he was even older (him being 36 and myself 27). It is so common in our culture. Stereotypically, a Nigerian man, after arranging himself financially, will go on to claim that he is “ready” for marriage. The emotional depth goes out the window. Any women he fucked and ducked along the way are no longer relevant because now, he is ready to run off into the sunset with a “clean”, “decent” girl. (Sidenote: Well, perhaps this isn’t solely a Nigerian man thing, but men in general. What do I know?🤷🏾‍♀️) He will marry who is available that fits his vision for his family. He’ll proceed to do the kids and the white picket fence thing. Trust, I want the family, mortgage, and the fence. Perhaps even the dog, too. But I don’t think it should be as arbitrary.

I reached out to him again, telling him he needed a solid answer to my question when next we spoke. (Sidenote: Being strict with men is so fun. It feels empowering.) In the next call, he finally said liked my sense of humor, my energy, my intellect, the way I carry myself, and my looks. Good, but even to come up with these took time. He said he was very drained that day, hence the difficulty with answering the question on the first go. How he should’ve waited to initiate that discussion at a different time. He went on to tell me about his ex, and how he had to let things go because she wasn’t spiritual enough for him. The phone call was shorter that evening.

I needed someone outside of the echo chamber of my family. A true friend. A less-biased third party. Which brought me to my call with Future. I recounted the entire story from the top in 2018 till now. We shared hearty laughs regarding the shenanigans, from my family’s marriage pressure, to the blood tests (I never told y’all this, but perhaps one day if I write a book), to the “proposal” and how it was my fault he let certain dreams pass him, among other things. Future couldn’t understand why I entertained these discussions that long despite the glaring red flags. Or why mom would be encourage it. Scarcity was the culprit.

“You need to free this guy as soon as possible. Yes, he wants to marry, but I can assure you you’ll regret it. He’ll marry you because you’re a Christian fine girl, and keep you in the house. It could’ve been you or anyone.”

Future said men don’t tend to spin the block all that much. Especially because there are many more available women than men. That Naija’s return was more of a test of my desperation to marry.

“If he could go three years and still not get married, and he is apparently such a catch, there is something wrong somewhere.”

I left the talk with Future feeling weightless and seen. Validated. I aimed to speak with Naija a couple days after. To avoid dragging things. It was a Friday. By the time I had called, he’d fallen asleep. I felt bad for waking him.

“Hey, if now isn’t a great time, we can talk later. Sorry for waking you.”

“No, I can talk.”

We exchanged a couple of ‘how was your day’s and other niceties. Then, I got to the meat of it:

“I’ve been thinking about our recent conversations, and I wanted to be upfront about things. Given the history of things, I feel it’s best for us to remain friends.”

If I told you his response shocked me, I’d be lying.

“I wasn’t trying to really trying to rekindle anything. We were just having a conversation.”, he said flatly.

I smiled to myself, sensing his annoyance and ego bruise. Not from “haha, you big mad” place, but because simply witnessing the lack of maturity was comical. I put on my best serious voice, trying to sound taken aback.

“Oh wow, I’m sorry, I must have misread things.”, I poked.

“Yes, you misread. You definitely did. You definitely did.”

As it stood, I had been “corrected”. I was the one making a grand deal of things apparently. My bad. But truly, I was relieved as this interaction was the confirmation I needed. The minimization of my thoughts, the big ego, the everything.

Could I have started things over with him and possibly run down the aisle in six months to a year? Yes, but I am sure something within me would die. I want the partnership, but at what cost? Deadening vital parts of my being for acceptance and for fear that nothing and no one else is coming for me? Shall I play a numbers game in the name of “settling down”? “Take what you can get” economics? Is it that bad? Truly, honestly, honestly, truly, it can’t be that deep.

I know 27 isn’t old by any stretch, but I’m coming to terms with the fact that my journey may be longer (but not arduous) if I refuse to sacrifice authenticity. And contrary to popular belief, I’m not a beggar. I will struggle, but I will eventually make peace with that. There really is no conclusion to this post. Just something I have to sit with for a while…