The first fight we had, it was because I bought a rice cooker. He came to meet me cooking with it, and while I was excited about my first big purchase, he saw it as a “distraction.” I questioned what he meant by that.
“You are going to leave school soon. You don’t need a rice cooker.”
I lived in a hostel that didn’t allow gas cookers, so it only made sense that I would purchase an appliance I could make most meals in. He was screaming at the top of his voice that it was a useless purchase. Me too, I was screaming.
“Is it your money? Line nsu ben nie?”
My floor mates could hear us, and that was the only thing he cared about, so he begged that I should keep it down.
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As he left, I looked at the back of his head and wondered how strange he was behaving. This was not the man I met on my first day of school. The man I met was gentle, one who always came to comfort me.
In the early days of our live, he would bring me food when he cooked and I will do same. We were in the same level in school, just two years apart in age, but we acted and moved like adults in love. I even introduced him to my church as my “beloved”
After that embarrassment of a fight, he started carrying himself strangely, so I was on the lookout. We stopped talking about our future. I know you would say we are young, but it was a risk we were both taking. Isn’t that what love is about? Risks?
Whenever I talked about our future, he shut his lips as if they had been superglued together.
He wouldn’t talk. He grew moody. Some days, when I pushed too far, he would burst out and tell me the things on his mind. And at last, he said the truth, just as I had been expecting.
“You smile too much with every man. Every day your mouth is going up and down. You don’t respect me. With the way things are going, I don’t think we can continue like this.”
I was so desperate to keep him that I started trying to fix things I hadn’t even broken. Some days after, when I thought we had made up, I went to surprise him, and he surprised me.
I went to his place and found the door locked. I knocked again and again, with no response. Just when I was about to call him, the door opened. When I peered into the room, there she was, guilty.
It was an uncomfortable situation, walking into my boyfriend’s room and finding him with his side piece. That moment stayed with me.
He spoke as if he didn’t do anything.
“She is nobody.”
Another time, I went to his house again and met her there. I couldn’t even go inside. I had to beg him to come out so we could talk.
Embarrassing, isn’t it?
After some time, he dragged himself out, when we talked, I left feeling completely broken.
That period was one of the hardest times of my life. He apologised, I accepted. Unfortunately, and somehow almost fortunately, it was almost working out, until he flipped the coin again.
He said he didn’t want me.
“I am going to have to choose between you and her, and I choose her. Me and her, we are two seeds in a pea. We make the best couple.”
I thought we made the best couple.
But I didn’t say it.
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I thanked him for not keeping me in limbo, for days or for the rest of my life. It was two years, and it was one of the greatest times I had.
Maybe I really should have focused on my studies instead of falling in love with a man.
He says he would still like to be my friend.
But I am not going to give him that attention at all. I’m here, hurting and healing, and writing exams and asking God to take the wheel and lead me. It’s not easy.
But I will survive
—Angela
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