It’s Never The Right Time To Say Goodbye – A Short Story.

It’s Never The Right Time To Say Goodbye – A Short Story.

There’s never a right time to say goodbye

It’s a very ordinary Sunday and the only thing that I’ve done different from all the other Sundays is that I was taken to brunch by a good friend of mine. It was in a new hotel in Nairobi and I must say the food was excellent. Before we left we took a tour of the hotel to see if the rooms were as sumptuous as the Brunch and we weren’t disappointed.

I got home and I’ve been watching football and just basically winding down. Randomly, I’ve just told Alexa to play me some Chris Brown.

I’m not the biggest Chris Brown fan, but I will never deny his talent. Maybe I am a fan but I don’t feel like one because he releases so much music that I can’t keep up with his output. Maybe I think being a fan means I should know all of his music, which for me is just impossible. However, I digress. So I’m chilling and this song just came on.

“There’s never a right time to say goodbye
But I gotta make the first move
Cause if I don’t, you gonna start hating me
Cause I really don’t feel the way I once felt about you
Girl, it’s not you, it’s me
I, I gotta, gotta figure out what I need, oh

Funny how art can imitate life. Why would this song come on now when I’m going through one of the biggest break-ups of my life. It’s got me feeling numb and, truth be told, I’ve been feeling this way for a while. Let me share a bit of what I’m going through.

We fall in and out of love continually throughout our lives, it’s natural. Sometimes we find the kind of love that lasts forever and I guess this is the Holy Grail for us all. All the money and success at the end of the day will count for nothing if we find no one to share it with. My late friend Richard Antwi told me this one day as I was telling him about another relationship that I was running from, “G” he said, “Success with no one to share it with is failure” – I miss that brother.

Fast Forward to now though, all I ever really wanted from this relationship was too share all that I accumulated throughout my life, I wanted to share my experiences, my world view and, selfishly, I guess, I needed someone who would allow me to express myself and all of this.

You see love is an equal measure of give and take and I gave what I had and took what I needed and for a long time it worked. Recently though, I woke up and it all felt different. I began to feel that I wasn’t getting what I needed any more and maybe neither were you. Now you’ve got to forgive me if I get my adjectives and descriptions and first person tenses wrong during this article because it’s hard to write about someone you’ve loved this long in past tense.

I’ve began to feel numb and I’ll admit I strayed, as they say on “Love Island” my head was turned a bit. When you’ve been in a long term relationship you know what it’s like when you begin to get attention outside of your love nest. You become vulnerable. So I made excuses, at home I was sullen and down but outside I was life of the party and it left everyone confused. I began to spend more time away from home and every month I made an excuse to travel.

It’s time to be honest and I’m gonna use my own platform to get it off my chest.

I think that I’m no longer in love but I don’t know how to break this off – Chris Brown is still playing in the background

There’s never a right time to say goodbye
But we know that we gotta go
Our separate ways
And I know it’s hard, but we gotta do it
It’s kind of killing me
Cause there’s never a right time
A right time to say goodbye”

I’m a coward and I should have told you this to your face instead of penning this eulogy. People will take this and interpret it in so many ways but that’s the choice I’ve made.

I’m gonna ask you to pass on the message since I’m scared to do it, when you pass it on, please apologise on my behalf, tell her how sorry I am that I couldn’t make it work.

Tell her all the usual stuff that men say “It’s not you, it’s me” and that “I’ll always love her”

Deep down I know I will always love her.

If you see Kenya,

Tell her I’ll always love her