Ahhh, Young love!!!
I sound like an old lady…. Which I am not! Forever young please.
As usual , let me digress first. I heard something recently and it stuck. “When you know where you are going, you only keep the people who help you get there.”
I looked at my very very small circle of friends, and I realized that to a large extent, I am content with the people that I have. I don’t go out much (at all, if I am to be honest) and the few times I do, I just mingle with the same old people, but truth be told, my inner circle are people who urge me to be better versions of myself and help me chase my dreams. Not a single one of them would I leave behind. and how did I come to be in that state where the people around me are just right to get me where I am going? I do not know, I would say God really. I guess I still need do figure that out, cause there must have been obedience from my part at one point or the other
Anyway…
My first love story. It’s not that spectacular, it’s not the typical movie ways where we accidentally hit each other in the hallway and I spill my books and we bend down simultaneously to pick it up, looking at each other, everything seeming like a well choreographed dance routine.
No. It was more subtle, and cute. And in retrospect, I wouldn’t even call it love, more like an infatuation.
It was a boy from school, he was tall, light skinned and had a bright smile. And at first, I didn’t even look in his direction but eventually I noticed him cause we would sometimes take the bus together.
And did our eyes meet? Yes it did. It was that sheepish moment where you are in a conversation with your friend about you steal glances at the cute guy across the room…. Well in this case, the bus.
At that point, I thought that was the best there is, that that was the highest intensity of love I could feel, cause that was the only explanation for how giddy I felt whenever he would speak to me.
I was not a fan of dating in the secondary school level but I was willing to make an exception.
It was an instantaneous, magnetic connection….. At the time. My best friend would tease me about it then, she was the only one I told.
I would cross out our names with that weird FLAMES formula, where the addition of the letters that don’t cancel each other out in both parties’ names should fall somewhere between the letters of the word FLAMES. Ours landed on the letter M, which represented marriage, and oh the bliss, it was a match made in heaven. Cause coincidences were not a thing to me at that point, and it was funny how delusional my friend and I were.
I pulled out petals of many sunflowers and most of them told me he loved me, and I walked on sunshine.
My friend then went behind me to ask him about me, if the crush was mutual, and turns out it was. I couldn’t even be mad at her that she did such a thing cause I was excited by the though of him liking me back.
But I never did anything about it, because I guess that deep down somewhere inside of me, I knew there was nothing to it.
Like I said, it was an infatuation, cause eventually, he left my school and that was the last I saw of him. The whole experience barely lasted a month but it was something. Since then, I have grown as a person and as a woman. I have felt love more intense and beautiful.
I started my writing journey quite early. It wasn’t the best work of art, I mean I have grown as a writer a lot since then, but having those emotions at time, it was one of the things that made it easy for me to be able to communicate that in my books as well.
I had characters that fell in love in my stories, and yes, it was one thing to watch it in the movies and to read it in novels, but it was another thing to experience it. The way you write the kind of love you have experienced would be different from the way you write one you haven’t.
I mean even as a writer in this age, one of the things I write about that I know that I have never really experiences is the grief of losing someone to death. I have never had someone I cant live without die and yes there is a formula to writing about grief but for someone who has experienced it, its different. I hope to keep using said formular for a long time anyway, I don’t want to lose anyone I love.
Well, that last paragraph sure took a dark turn real quick, I don’t even know where that came from.
As at of the time that I am writing this article, I am very much single. And all this talk about love makes me want to fall in love. I am smiling from ear to ear thinking about it. I always tell my friends how much I want a family. I want to wake up and make breakfast for my husband and kids, i look forward to the days of love and laughter. funny enough, I even look forward to the days I want to sleep-in but I can’t cause I have to take care of the little ones.
Maybe the next ERWL would be about that, who knows?
In the meantime, Remember to spread love, and reach for the stars.
I n