TRAVELING BROKEN AND ALONE…

Sharing the happiness and optimism of the day from Alley Bar, I felt things might eventually be okay, even if the wary stillness in my eyes betrayed otherwise. The air was misty with laughter and the sweet hum of possibility, even as my mind fought to recall the burdens I’d been carrying for months.

I’d just returned from a ten-day trip around the Central Region: Assin Foso, Twifo Praso, and my hometown, Ajumako Bisease. A haggard traveller, fresh from the Abangye Festival, where I’d taken fun too seriously and sleep too lightly, retiring each day at 5 a.m. It was no surprise then that I spent most of the week dozing off in taxis, even in this city, famous for its weaponised decibel levels.

The drowsiness lingered, and in that groggy haze, I found myself spilling my woes to anyone patient enough to listen. Whether it helped or not, I couldn’t say. But her memory, hers, had become a kind of apparition. A surreal, flickering image that was vivid and yet unreal. That was the mood I wore most days. Withdrawn. People noticed, of course. I masked it with the clumsiness of someone trying not to be found out.

With every new morning, I asked myself whether I was nearing the end of something essential. Had I broken a part of myself I couldn’t repair? It felt so. This wasn’t the future I imagined when, as a quiet, dreaming boy in boarding school, I longed for a life marked only by joy; the aesthetic kind, the philosophical kind. A life of my choosing.

I hadn’t even given my children the gift of being truly seen, something I never had. I hadn’t chosen her because she was exceptional. I chose her because she made me laugh. Her spirited inventiveness balanced my quiet, collected soul. But I began to suspect that my very sense of clarity had deceived me. That innocent faith in bending life to my will, without compromising joy, had left me stranded. I had grown into someone composed and unreadable, even to myself.

A year had passed. One long year. And it had become clear I could no longer live a life of hollow comfort and wasted promise.

There was too much sameness. The last twelve months had collapsed into a loop of monotony. What I wanted was companionship, the kind that lights you up inside. I kept having these jagged thoughts, in flashes. And though people would point to loneliness as the root of it all, I knew I was nearing the end of a long personal battle.

Even the air between us knew it. We were still technically together, but the bond had dried up. We were perched like weary birds on a shaky branch, waiting for the moment to fly off in opposite directions. Some changes had taken hold, yes, but not quite enough to matter. Not yet.

The cab driver quietly veered onto the back road leading to the National Museum. We drove in silence. I must have looked far away, eyes glazed, ears deaf to the chaotic orchestra of honking cars jostling for space on roads that felt like relics from the 1950s, now burdened tenfold.

I’ve always wondered about the logic of lane-switching in Accra. It’s chaos but a kind of chaos with consensus. Drivers understand each other’s madness. The unspoken rule? Expect the car beside you to switch lanes at will. If you’re lucky, you’ll get an indicator blink before they swerve in front of you like it’s a Formula-1 overtake.

Trotro drivers allow each other this madness, nodding like old comrades. But let a private car dare the same and suddenly, you’re the object of multilingual abuse. The Ga insults? Let’s just say they leave scars.

I was slouched at the back of the cab, fingers hopping between TikTok and Instagram. Aimless scrolling. Until a video caught my attention, a millennial Ghanaian socialite named Ama Dope clapping back at someone called Pearl (I think). No idea what the backstory was, but Ama had me watching the whole thing. Parts of it were hilarious, others… deeply troubling. I don’t get the obsession with bleaching. That segment lost me. But I’ve recently begun a slow study of the wig economy, so I was curious, still learning.

Traffic in this city is a disease. It was already fifteen minutes past two, yet the roads were packed. I found myself mesmerised by the rhythmic footwork of my cabbie; brake, accelerate, brake again; all barefoot. Why? What compels a man to drive barefoot in a cab? Is there comfort in it? A technique I’m yet to understand?

This afternoon felt quieter than usual. Accra is no city for bicycles. Every inch is monetised, sold, squeezed. As we passed the Sam Okudzeto & Associates office, just minutes away from Alley Bar, I felt a jolt.

From Nyaniba Estate to downtown Osu, past the Parliament house area and into Ridge, the affluence was seamless. Effortless. Detached. The Ghanaian bourgeoisie lives in a parallel country. And just five hundred metres from that legal palace? The dense, chaotic reality of working-class Osu. What hopes do the children from those streets have of becoming the next Sam Okudzeto in this supposedly meritocratic Ghana?

What’s our Gini coefficient again?

I switched back to my melancholic playlist. I’ve been leaning toward songs that ache. Right now, Brymo’s Illusions fills my ears. As always, he pours philosophical fire into his art, though this time, he skims over the historical weight of slavery more lightly than I’d expect. Still, his poetic force hits the gut. But just as Brymo’s dissonance begins to unsettle me, Sasha Alex Sloan’s Dancing With Your Ghost arrives, like balm.

Sasha is criminally underrated. She writes for the broken, no fluff, no frills. Her voice tugs gently but persistently at whatever ache you’ve buried. Dancing With Your Ghost is a song of loss, though I can’t quite tell what kind. Death? Abandonment? A love that drifted without explanation? That ambiguity is part of its ache.

I realise I’ve been staring at a painting in the museum for too long. A young American couple notices and walks over. “Is the mosque still intact?” they ask, pointing to the image of Wuriyanga Mosque. I nod. Yes. A proud piece of Djenné-inspired architecture. Two centuries old. Still standing.

My mind slips back to therapy. I’d never considered therapy before, but the grief had worn me down. I needed to talk to someone, anyone who wasn’t family, wasn’t friend. Just a stranger detached enough not to judge.

It had rained that first day. I drove from Tema to Korle-Bu in a heavy drizzle, determined to honour the appointment my old secondary school friend had helped arrange. I was silent throughout the drive. Then, out of nowhere, I started crying. Alone, in traffic. The tears shocked me.

When I finally sat across from the therapist, the first thing I asked was: “Why would a grown man cry in traffic?” She smiled gently. “Crying is therapeutic,” she said. “It helps you heal.”

That evening, I played Sharon Van Etten’s Every Time the Sun Comes Up on repeat. Every time the sun comes up, I’m in trouble. I understood those lyrics in my bones.

I was afraid. Of what the future held. Of what I had already lost. I was reading My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, and there’s a moment when Muhtar tells Korede: “Good. Marriage isn’t what they say it is.” That line haunted me.

Later, he says something more devastating: “The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are.”

I told my therapist I didn’t understand religion, its grip on people, the pageantry of it. I ranted. She just smiled.

Then she asked, “Nathan, why did you marry?”

I wanted to channel Muhtar’s son Sani, who once said, “It’s just money. Isn’t my happiness more important?” But I didn’t have that kind of courage. So I gave three reasons. All lies. And she knew it too.

Books used to be my escape. In pain, I’d binge-read for hours. But now, not even Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen can numb it. The days drift. I drift. I’m empty.

It’s 2 a.m. The traffic’s gone, but I spot police officers at lonely intersections. I’m driving slowly back to Oxford Street, Kojo Cue’s Shii the Song playing softly. I cry again. Silently. I’m used to it now.

But what stuns me is how easily I hide it. My friends at the pub will greet me like all is well. We’ll laugh till sunrise. They’ll never know.

What am I crying for? My options? The people I’ll disappoint? My cowardice? I don’t know. But I know I’ve made a grave mistake and there’s only one way to fix it, no matter how painful.

Oxford Street is quiet. The neon lights of the 24-hour pub shine ahead.

I think of Oyinkan’s Korede and O. Henry’s After Twenty Years. What is loyalty? How do we betray others by trying to be loyal to family, to the past, to the wrong things? And when our loyalties crack, what then?

I drive on, toward Akosombo. I need to watch birds. I play Sara Bareilles’ She Used to Be Mine. I’ve just finished watching James Baldwin’s 1963 speech, The Free and the Brave.

I know this much: I am neither.