Poignant, heartbreaking, breathtakingly intimate, raw, engaging, cutting, profound, and unflinchingly honest are some of the superlatives I can use to describe Sara-Jayne Makwala King’s latest memoir.
Sara-Jayne has outdone herself with her latest offering and she should be congratulated for her bravery in putting her life once again on display for everyone to learn something from her.
In Mad Bad Love, Sara-Jayne narrates her own personal love affair journey with a drug-addict. Inside the pages of this book there’s betrayal, love, addiction, broken promises, lies, truths, trauma, pain, healing, and co-parenting, which defines Sara-Jayne’s rollercoaster relationship with the father of her daughter.
Perusing through the pages of this book, I went through an emotive rollercoaster at every turn of a page. On one page I would have a hope that she will cut ties with madness that comes with loving this man, while at the turn of another I will be disappointed, and to some extent angry with how Sara-Jayne allowed love to turn her into a mad person who keeps doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome.
Mad Bad Love explicitly provides a mirror through which we can see how love can also be a dangerous addiction that can easily turn one into a mad person, especially if there are underlying unresolved emotional pains and traumas from the one who is loving the most.
The scribe forces the readers to appreciate how childhood trauma and pain have a way of finding expression and destroying our sense of self in our relationships.
The scribe’s personal narration of pain, trauma, addiction and love is one that will resonate with many. This book will teach us a thing or two about putting an end to the madness of being in love and addiction that comes with loving someone without first loving the self.
Throughout the pages I appreciated Sara-Jayne’s honesty and bravery to open her heart to all of us, particular some of us who are currently dealing with addictions of different types. Her tone throughout is one that places this memoir as one of not reliving old pains, but one that places the scribe at peace with her own mad bad love decisions.
This is one honest memoir that will stay with me for a very long time because of the lessons it provides about the love addiction and its dangers.
I was hooked from the first sentence to the last.
The only bummer for me was that the story had to end.