I have few role models or should I say I hardly call people mentors to avoid future stories that touch. However, Tyler Perry is one of the people I look up to. If I am asked to mention two people I look up to, it has to be Shonda Rhimes and Tyler Perry. My reason is simple – they create content. Tyler Perry is living my dreams already. I recently granted an interview to a platform where I told them my major aim and passion is to create contents which draws attention to issues and get people talking. I LOVE conversations and anything to start a conversation – offline or online, gets me. In Nigeria, MTV Shuga is doing this. Quite commendable.

Tyler Perry has done it again with his Movie – Acrimony, and we are talking. Acrimony is special because it left me torn and not on anyone’s side. I was blank for some minutes, emotions I can’t explain and one thing is clear, I couldn’t blame Melinda (Taraji P. Henson) or Robert. I was hurt.  I am not writing this to review the movie, rather to share my opinion. Stay with me and do share yours too.

1. I think Melinda invested so much into Robert. It’s not unhealthy. I think it’s what we should do for people we love and believe in. But his energy was just bleh. He didn’t try from the beginning because we didn’t know it was going to be successful, neither did Melinda. But she believed and loved him. He loved her in his own way and he was living life on his own terms, while she toiled. Robert focused on just one thing – which thankfully became successful at the end but I still think he started doing jobs really late.

If an extremely supportive wife who has spent all her inheritance to keep the dream alive could work two jobs, then doing one at least, to support should not be too much to consider while he keeps keeping the dream alive.

2. Robert really loved Melinda. There is no doubt about it. But he had his own way of expressing it. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t fight. He just feels and go with the flow. There are men like Robert and its difficult loving them but they are who they are. Considering the past and what they have been through, he should have pushed harder even after the divorce. But there was another woman who seemed to be the linking bridge to the dream. She was there and he had options. For men like Robert, they easily go with the option because they don’t know how to fight or push. It’s freaking annoying though. Coupled with the fact that another side of him felt indebted + gratitude for and to the other woman.

3. It’s easy for me or anybody to say she over reacted or has a mental illness. It’s easy for us to say we’d take my $10m and try to start afresh. But I won’t say that. Robert was her entire life. She dreamt and lived him. Believing in him for years. Living to see all he had promised her being given to another woman will hurt so deep. It will. She over reacted but I understand why. I mean he left a lonely woman. Asin lonely! She can’t have children, she doesn’t have children, and she has always been the odd one in the family. Having to even try to mix with them after a side of her can comfortably blame them for her failed marriage is almost impossible. So she is ALONE and LONELY.

No friends too. You can’t be in such relationships and have real friends because they will never understand the love or the struggle. She was in a world of her and him.

4. The cheating part too. You can’t blame her for over reacting. I mean, there was history between her husband and this other woman. Not just a random babe. Remember she was complaining about their sex life before her nosy sisters showed her the purse. So there was history and a hunch plus an EXHAUSTED woman.

5. We need to take care of our mental health. It’s important. She’s always had anger issues. Rage. If she had gotten help earlier, she probably won’t have reacted the way she did. That therapy didn’t have a working chance. She was already eaten up. Which is why I think we should recognize mental illness early enough and get help.

Kudos to Tyler Perry and his crew.

Have you seen ACRIMONY? What do you think? Use the comment section or meet me on twitter – @elsieisy