Dolby’s box: ‘Slay queen my foot!’

This girl fooled me and I fell for it. Herhh, most of these slay queens you see on the gram and Facebook have nothing they can boast as their own aside the Brazilian wigs and Togo bags which they bought through “Felicia” (word used to explain when you buy something and pays in installment). It is 10:00 on a bright Tuesday morning which happens to be a holiday, the sun is shining so bright and the weather feels so warm with the atmosphere indescribable but here I am, still in bed, lost in my thoughts with sore eyes from crying myself to bed. Everything seems out of place this morning. I am not happy as I should on a holiday that I get to stay home and have the whole day to myself. I don’t feel like doing anything. I feel so hurt and sad and disappointed at myself at the same time for allowing some bad slay queen I met get a better hold of me to destroy my life beyond repair. I feel so many things. My heart hurts a lot, my eye hurts and my head is throbbing but I don’t know what to do to make it stop hurting. And to top it all, my job is at stake as well as my life because debtors are on my neck for buying stuff I don’t need to please people on the gram who I do not know. As an ordinary young girl, I can say that I had saved enough money and was ok with my life than most girls my age. I have a good job in a prestigious company, a few friends who we hang out from time to time until I met this lady on Facebook who sent me on a money spending spree, which has left me crawling and trying to get back on my feet. I got a friend request from a lady on Facebook one day. After going through her pictures, I thought she looked good and seemed to have everything figured out for herself. Looking at the places where she took pictures, one would think she is a big girl entrepreneur. Not too long after I accepted her request, she came into my inbox and said she wanted us to be friends. I was super excited that an exquisite lady like her wants to be my friend; little did I know she was the devil incarnation whose only aim was to turn the naïve girl I was into a broke, pathetic homeless girl on the streets of Accra. Things moved very fast after I accepted her as my friend. We exchanged numbers and began chatting and talking. She lied about everything including her very existence on this earth. We had a lengthy talk on the first day we met one-on-one at Pizza Hut at Accra Mall (she chose the venue for our meeting that day). She told me she is an entrepreneur who is into selling hair, body and beauty products and had about five shops. I felt I could take her as the big sister I never had so I made myself comfortable around her, more so, because she created that kind of environment for me whenever we spoke or hang out. Before I forget, I was the one who did foot the bill even though she was the one who ate almost everything on the menu. I did not think it as a big deal. Less than a month of becoming close friends with this slay queen self-acclaimed entrepreneur, I started staying out late than usual and spend a lot whenever we went out and she would just pay something very little. I never complained because I did not want to lose her friendship. I observed that she would ask me to request for an Uber to go home every time we go out and she meets a guy and they start talking. So, I started to suspect that she was one of the professional prostitutes who do business right under your nose but you would not even know. When it started to get messy That would have been good for me because well she is of age and knows what she was doing so it is none of my business. How naïve of me if that was the case. It started by making me buy stuff I did not need because she knew I would pay for hers so she would push me into buying dresses, shoes, bags, name it, things that she needed. She was using me. It gradually moved from impulse buying to asking for loans. She started asking me for money with the assurance of paying at the end of the month when her sales girls render accounts. I loaned her money month-after-month with her giving stories that she would pay back. I started giving her money from my emergency bank account because I had gone broke and run out of cash in my normal spending account. She would take me with her when she went to buy things on credit and tell them I am her little sister so she will be giving me the money to bring to them. She took advantage of my kindness from the first day we met when I decided to foot the bill. She never took me to her place, she always had an excuse to give when I asked to pay her a visit. She could tell me her cousins are with her for few days or her aunt came without calling. She would tell me she was going for goods in Dubai or China and won’t be in town for a week or two all because I asked to know her place. She would make me drink certain hard liquor, smoke shisha and do things I would not do on a normal day, that always left me with such headache that I would either have to get to work late and lack concentration or call in sick.  I thought I was exploring. My friends saw the change and tried to warn me but I ignored them and blocked them on my phone. Eventually, my bosses also noticed that I was not living up to expectations and did almost everything wrong at the office and never met deadlines for assignments given to me which they decide to give me a second chance after begging them to not fire me. As I was begged to maintain my job, my rent was up so I decided to go and withdraw money to settle my landlord who was on my tail only for me to have the shock of my life: This slay queen had gone to withdraw money from my account and vanished into thin air.  I stood grief-stricken as my eyes were stuck on the -00-account balance on the sheet in my hand. Yes, I know right, you are probably asking why I gave my card to her. She had my card because I was drunk one night and I misplaced it and she found it (well that is what she said but I know she took it without me knowing) and asked me for GH¢100 which I gave her the password and asked her to go and withdraw. I was so depressed, it was then that I realized that I have been duped! One of my friends that I blocked saw a neighbour of mine, who told her about how the landlord has threatened to send me packing and how I have locked myself inside. She told my other friends who came to me and raised the rent money and have been helping me with bills as I work two jobs now to save enough money to pay off the debts she left for me. The people she bought things from are now after me. Dolby, as I write now, I do not know her whereabouts. But I have already involved the police. She has deleted her Facebook account and does not go to the places she took me to. It’s as if she never existed. Use my unfortunate story as an eye opener and be aware of these slay queens who only give pressure on social media and take advantage of other girls who are not mature enough to know what they are up to. They will make you feel very comfortable and make you trust them and think they actually mean well. You have a stable job, they don’t, you eat three square meals, they eat once or none at all. The only good thing they are good at is living big on social media. Men are not the only ones who dupe people. By Nanaakua Yeboah The writer is a final year student of African University College of Communications. Editor’s note: This is a real-life story of a young woman in her 20s who was duped by a slay queen she met on social media and thought she could trust her as shared by the writer. If you have a real-life story that could cause a change in the life of someone, kindly share with the writer via email: yeboahsandra.sy@gmail.com