The eighth wonderfully weird but normal thing about me...

...until the age of 16 I thought I’d be married at my age.

Since I was 6 years years old I have been designing and altering my ultimate wedding dress. I would draw sketches and paint pictures in my head about the big day. Getting married, making a man happy and giving him beautiful kids has, if I am going to be completely honest, been my primary aim in life. I know it sounds stupid but I always was best at loving someone and making sure they were being taken care of ever since I was little. I knew that I would do a great job at loving and supporting my husband to the fullest and I knew this at a young age. Well, until I changed my mind anyway.

But if you think about it when you are little being 20 seems so old, I must have thought I would be done with uni or at least half way through and would have found some amazing intelligent prince charming in the campus library who sweeps me off my feet and proposes to me at his grad ball LOL according to those expectations my life has been a complete fail. Thinking about it when I was about 15 I realised it wasn’t going to be that easy.

My first proper relationship started when I was 15 and ended a few months before I turned 17, I was quite positive I would stay with him and meet my deadline but as life goes, it didn’t happen. I started to think about things more seriously. At the end of every relationship you tend to think about what went wrong, its what psychologists call grave dressing. I had accepted the change in circumstances but just had one last look at how things planned out. I realised that as much as I may be ready at 20 to get married, most guys in the world wont be. Apart from the fact that most guys in my age range still think like 15 year olds I realised, even then, that by the time I’m 20 the guys in my age range wont even be financially ready to get married. Even though at 17 I no longer dreamt of horse carriages an 24carrat diamonds I knew that I wanted my wedding to be beautiful and I wanted the last thing to affect my marriage to be financial strain. So that year I kinda resigned my self to the fact that I wasn’t going to meet my deadline. To make it worse however my crazy aunt (we all have one don’t we) actually confirmed the fact that I need to be married by the age of 21....it might have been a year more but it still didn’t look like a reasonable goal. It just wasn’t going to happen.

As time went by factor after factor just put me off marriage completely. Firstly my father died, I can confidently say that in all x-teen imaginations of my marriage ceremony my father was there to walk me down the isle. He would order people around and make sure all his friends were around to his little baby get married. I just didn’t see it happen any other way. As I grew up and getting closer to the time he died I startedd learning more about tradition and how the akan (the tribal group I originate from)celebratee marriages and being the AFF person that I am I knew I would have to have a traditional marriageas welll as a church wedding. Problem was, I now didn’t have a father and the only people that could represent him would be one of his brothers. Err thanks, but no thanks. I would rather have my society look at me as a woman of no virtue or worth and give myself to a man for free than have my bride price paid to one of my fathers brothers. Where they there when my brother in-laws had to pay my dads hospital bills? No, so they definately shouldnt even expect to receive my bride price. I'd rather die a spinster.

Over time I also lost trust in men in general and if you read 'the 7^th weird but normal thing about me' you will notice that for some time now I have found it hard to have relationships in general which is due to certain events in my life. I just started thinking well what’s the point in loving a man if they are just gonna leave you. I love my father unconditionally but he died and left me without a single good bye, then a few years later my uncle on my mothers side dies, he only person I could have seen as a replacement for my dad. I am not saying no man will ever love me, they loved me, but eventually they will live. God will call them up n with my luck it will probably be before I go which will just leave me on my own again so what’s the point.

There's also the big link between marriage and kids. For me having kids is going to be a gamble and without putting too much of my business out there (not like i aint done enough of that already) I can say that unless god shows his abundant mercies and blesses me, it ain’t gonna happen. I refuse to bind a man to me in any way whatsoever if I cant give him the joy of cradling a baby. I ain’t up for seeing him have babies by another woman, I probably wont leave him for cheating but if he gets another woman pregnant especially when I haven’t had any he will be the one leaving me ...in a casket! I have been trying to convince myself that maybe having kids might not be such a good idea anyway, I know its a lie, I know I would be a great mum, I have always been great with kids but I’d rather it be my decision than my disappointment. However, not wanting kids usually don’t go down well with most guys nowadays, you'd think they’d be happy but of course responsible men don’t just want a wife they want kids too and this will delay my getting married by a quite some time.

As time goes by and factors pile up I realise more and more that not only might it take much longer than 20years for me to find a soul mate but I might actually not find him at all

If I am going to be totally honest (I use that phrase a lot don’t I lol) I do still fantasise sometimes what it would be like to at least be engaged. To know someone wants to spend the rest of their life with me and that am going to have someone to drown in my love and that I will actually have someone to trust. I guess a lot of girls do, even those that try and act like guys ain’t shit and say they independent, I think even they would rather be in a strong pair of arms sometimes rather than at the club buying they own drinks. I guess its just a general human desire to want to be loved and taken care of by somebody special to you.

so in hindsight, wanting to have been married by 20 maybe slightly weird but is absolutely normal.

The seventh slightly weird but absolutely normal thing about me is

I am absolutely shambles at relationships

weird right? Well I guess that’s the whole point lol

I was actually on twitter and this guy was asking bout why its better to be in a relationship than single for his blog and I thought about sooo many reasons. First of which was the fact that for a girl, it means you are not riding up your mileage if u get what I mean but somehow I still cant convince myself to want to be with some one like that

funny thing I’ve got this friend who used to tell me all the time how she’s jealous because I seem to have a way of making guys fall in love with me and quite frankly I have noticed that there are a few qualities in me that might make a guy wanna wifey me. I assume one of them is the fact that I not only CAN cook but I actually enjoy it. As a matter of fact whenever am on a date n I mention the fact that I am not letting whoever I marry in the kitchen to cook (EVER!) I can almost see their little faces light up like they just did a little mental somersault. I have always loved cooking, mainly because I love eating lol and I find some kind of sick satisfaction in serving people food and seeing them full up and of course I enjoy the compliments. I enjoy being different and being told that I have done well to be such a great cook (especially of African dishes) at my age kinda makes me proud. I am also very specific at how I serve people food, especially the man I am with. First and foremost I always make sure the food is ready at the right time, provided I have access to his place in time. I wake up before him to make sure breakfast is ready by the time he comes out of the bathroom and I make it as requested by him, lunch usually varies depending on what we are doing that day but I always try to make sure dinner is done by approx. 8pm and its always a well rounded meal. Usually I bring it to him (or set the table with bowl for washing his hands in if appropriate) with a glass and a bottle of water. Lol thinking about it now I probably should be a housewife married to some polygamist in the village somewhere considering how AFF I sound but I just like to please my man like that an d they do say the best way to a man’s heart is his stomach. When I was living with my ex (another story all together) I would wake up extra early on a Sunday and bake just as a treat and honestly I loved doing it and still do.

Another thing is that I just love to pamper a guy, if you treat me like a queen I will do much more than to reciprocate the favour. I can get cheesy to the point of turning up at the door when you come from work in something sexy, run you a bath and by you/wash your back whilst you bathe, feed you, rub your back and then later on...well, we all know what happens later on ;)

it just so happens that above all this I am also a reasonably smart little girl and give good advice, I happen to be way too wise for my age which means people usually feel the need to ask me for advice. Most of the time I am able to think rationally about things and not let emotions get in my way which can be very useful to a guy with a bit of a temper but thinking about it it might be exactly this rational thinking that makes me rubbish at relationships.

I always think about things in the worst case scenario because I know that logically speaking everything is possible. I also never fully trust anyone because logically speaking everyone has the ability to betray me. I expect very little of a man because logically speaking he is bound to disappoint me. As a matter of fact I don’t remember the last time I was upset about someone cheating on me because I kinda expected it...men are driven by testosterone half the time so logically....am sure you get the drift.

The reason I do the things I do when I am in a relationship aren’t done because the person is special to me but rather because what I am doing is special. I give my man daily massages because I like giving them I am good at them and I enjoy the praise I get for giving them, i'd give a stranger a massage if he asked nicely and had a nice body lol. Some say this is a good thing but for me it just means that when the person I am with stops saying thank you or noticing the effort I am making and/or I get bored of what I am doing the relationship goes downhill. If I was doing these things because I love my man then I would keep doing them for him even when he’s being a dick head because I know I am making him happy, that however, is not my aim, I am trying to make me happy so when these 'little acts of love' stop exciting me then we kinda have a problem. I have been told that I am selfish because of the way I am and I do not deny that, unfortunately for many men out there I put my happiness before theirs and it might be pushing it to say that I expect whoever I am I am with to put my happiness before theirs too but that’s just how it is. I guess the lea way in all this is that I am open for conversion. If you can make me care about you enough to stop thinking logically and just committing to you emotionally then its all good but as said before, the only way to kinda do that is to let me know that even when I am being a heartless bitch (which I will at one point or the other) my happiness will still be your number one priority and then ill be more than happy to reciprocate.

Also, I think I am a little bit too independent. Some may call me cold but I really prefer the previously used word. I just don’t see any way of sharing my life with anyone else.

I have grown up to learn (the hard way) that it is your own and only your own responsibility to make something of yourself. To be quite frank I could make all the money in the world but if I didn’t make it on my own I would still not be satisfied. Don’t get me wrong I am not greedy, its not the fact that I don’t like to share material things but I just like to know that I got things done on my own without anybody's help. I have lived my life meeting people that may help you but will make it very clear to you that they are doing you a favour and you owe them, that without them you wouldn’t be anything. I would rather live in a council flat off benefits and starve than work for a person who fails not to remind me of how 'lucky' I am that they helped me. To be honest its not really anybody's fault, we are humans and we crave gratitude but I just don’t like giving it when I could have just done it on my own. Well, the way this relates to relationships is that I do not ask for favours, simple as. People think I am a gold-digger because I happen to receive nice gifts from people I have been with but honestly I am quite the opposite. As a matter of fact I have NEVER asked a man for money (other than the odd pound for some gum, don’t get picky people) or anything else really. What ever I ever received from anyone was either owed to me or given voluntarily. I wont deny accepting the gifts I was offered because honestly if I did, that would have been stupid. I really cant live my life knowing that I wouldn’tt have found certain solution to my problems if itwasn’t’t for soso'n'so, it binds me to the person, makes me wonder how I am going to cope if theweren’tnt around and its stuff like that that makes girls think irrationally when the blatant end of their relationship is drawing near but they just refuse to see it. They let these little things draw back into it so many times before they finally see the light. I on the hand have no problem leaving if I know you really didn’t make a difference in my life anyway and that I can do it on my own and that is how I like it to be. Maybe if I change my mind and get married I may have to change the attitude but I guess if am marrying the guy then he must have broken down a few precautionary walls already.

So basically these are the reasons why I am rubbish at relationships and as much as I meet guys that say they have never met a girl this 'hard' I know there are 101 others out there but I just happen to be very honest about it. And just to point it out I am NOT scared of commitment lol quite frankly I have had my fair share of madness and settling down wouldn’t be such a bad idea , however, I have not the time or temper for that matter for getting hurt. Nursing yourself out of a heart break takes time, time is money and well, I kinda need more of that so maybe, just maybe, being rubbish at relationships may be a little weird but its still perfectly normal ;)