The story I'm about to share might be fictional. But who cares? as long as you get the gist... ;-)



My last boyfriend and I were always quarreling. Each time we met, spoke on the phone or over the Internet, we were sure to have at least one fight. It could be about almost anything- from the fact that I was the one always calling him to the way I tended to withdraw into myself whenever we hung out with other people. Then there were the times we teased each other. One person was always bound to take offense and soon it would lead to the other person recalling a past hurt and eventually, an epic rant from either one or both of us. We were always polite when it came to the rants. We took turns at it.

Still, we stayed together for over a year. We blamed our fights on the distance between us- he was studying for his Master’s in Canada while I was a first year undergraduate at UNILAG. We met just a month before he went abroad. His impending departure ensured that those four weeks were filled with a lot of intense emotions. The emotions were so strong that by the time he left we had already declared our love for each other. In fact, they were so strong that they remained forever etched in my mind and try as hard as I could, I could never manage to get him to feel that passionately about me again.

I started to sense the emotional distance between us a few weeks after he got to Canada, though we spoke every day via the internet.

I couldn’t get over the feeling that he kept me around as his “Nigeria hold-body” for when he came back on holidays. And sure enough when he did come back, he came back for sex. In between the times that we met up to rekindle our romance- twice on a two-week holiday- he practically ignored me.

Then he went back to Canada and this time around, I was the one initiating everything- phone calls, emails, skype- everything! When I complained and asked if he was tired of me and seeing someone else, he replied with his own questions- “Have I broken up with you yet? Why are you so paranoid?” But he practically never called anymore though he was friendly and enthusiastic when I did.

I felt like he was toying with me and was going out of my mind. My boyfriend before him had humiliated me by cheating on me with another girl that lived right on the same block as me. Everybody had laughed at me then because it was so obvious how foolish I was. This one in Canada rescued me from all those feelings of self-loathing, telling me how wonderful I was, how it was not my fault and how the fool did not know what he had. But now he was doing the same thing. Seriously, I thought, it must be my fault. There must be something about me that make boys want to treat me so.

Then he changed his Facebook settings so that I was unable to see his wall. I wanted to make sure that it was a general setting, applicable to all his Friends, so I asked his cousin to help me check. She refused to encourage me in my “obsessive behaviour” and instead advised me to ignore him and not contact him for three days “so that he can regain his respect for you.”

Coincidentally, one of those three days fell on my birthday. He did not call.

I didn’t sleep all through that night. The next day, I did not go to school. I did not lie when I told my mother that it was because I did not feel too well. After she left for work, I went to the medicine cabinet and helped myself to some of her sleeping pills. Then I came back and updated my Facebook status. My boyfriend may ignore me as much as he wanted to but he always checked my Facebook status for any post about him that he might use in a quarrel the next time he decides to speak to me.

I decided to take a bath. I filled the tub with water, stripped and went back to get my laptop. When I checked my Facebook, there was still no reply to my latest update. I got into the bath and placed the laptop on a board that I had put across the tub. I refreshed my page and still nothing. Feeling totally humiliated and unloved, I climbed out of the bath and got a razor blade. Slashing my wrists was not as easy as they make it seem in books and film. My hand shook and the blade kept slipping out of my bloody hands. Finally I had made deep enough cuts on both wrists to have blood spurting into the lukewarm water in the tub. The sleeping pills were also now taking their toll. I refreshed my Facebook page again and there it was, the reply I had been waiting for:

You are such a drama queen! I am sure you only wrote this to get my attention! If you want to kill yourself, just do it already! Who really cares!

It was with a sweet sense of justification that I finally allowed myself slip into unconsciousness.

Of course I died! My mother cried, poor woman.

And my boyfriend, his guardian angel told me that he just got married to that girl whom I rightly suspected that he was cheating on me with. And he did this a year to the day of the anniversary of my death. The significance of that day never even occurred to him!

And this is why I am here now, your ghoulishness. I am seeking a Ghost Permit that will allow me go back and wreck havoc in his life for the rest of his days. You have to agree that I deserve that right!