HAPPILY EVER AFTER

I usually try to impress girls when I meet them for the first time.
My speech will usually sound more eloquent than usual, my manners will all of a sudden noticeable. I will sound deep and weave my way in and out of intelligent conversation like a seasoned scholar. My words are the stuff of a musical, my confidence peers with Harvey’s. Most times, this façade works, you will be amazed just how gullible some people are.

Most young men will fail a polygraph about the facts they throw around feigning too much intellect. But who’s to blame a young man? I once rolled out this theory for a group of friends, and they agreed with me unanimously. The sober ones at least.

You see, most relationship are born in high school. And the way it works, with constant circumstances and variables, is that a boy will approach a girl and declare his undying love for her, and the girl will stage a ‘hard -to-get’ act. She will eventually say yes, play along with the lad’s politics of romance and then boot him for a campus guy not too far afterward.
In  repeat itself. The guy will find love and a sponsor will sponsor his heartbreak. It is therefore understandable why guys go for the ‘Deep Guy’ formula. It is the only thing you can offer a girl. Your rich words , coming from a hungry mouth, will keep the girl up at night, after she puts her sponsor-bought iPhone to charge. The only bargaining power you have is depth. For every shopping spree, three poems, for every new heel, five poems. If Mr. Moneybags speaks of Prada, remind her of Plato. When he’s talking about Gucci, put your hand in your pocket, and in your Morgan Freeman voice, speak of the historical significance of Galileo.

Against this background of norms, would you believe me if I told you I found love? Yes, I am 21 years old, I am a student, and I found true love.
Well, to use the word found would be to insinuate we knew each other recently, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Here’s the Story, in the briefest way I could draft it.

When I was a boy growing in the village, my mother owned a retail shop. She dealt in all sorts of village survival starter packs. Rice, Sugar, Tea Leaves, Kerosene, etc. It was law that whenever I was not in a boarding school far away, it was my responsibility to man the shop. I had been doing it for a while and actually enjoyed it. The small talk was to die for especially.

          “Mambo…”
          “Poa Sana…Uko aje”
         “Eh, habari zangu utaziweza kweli, Hii serikali si itatupea Sukari sisi wote”
Well, the view from behind the counter was very interesting. To see kids play in the mud, a couple fighting, cows grazing, everything was interesting to my amateur eye.

Then one day I saw her. Dressed in a jeans skirt, and a denim blouse. She was carrying books under her arm and books have never looked as appealing to me. Her face was beautiful, and she smiled an innocent smile. I was smitten.
When I finally said hi, it was two weeks later and not a morning had passed by without me waiting outside the shop for her to pass. We began sneaking around to see each other, but that’s a  story I will tell later.

Our juvenile relationship was discovered , thanks to her younger cousins, and she was grounded. We still saw each other, and she wrote me letters. Beautiful words curved beautifully on a piece of Kasuku paper, and I blushed each time. In 2014, while I was 15, she moved to the city. I remained in the village.

In the six years I stayed behind before I came to the city, life shaped us both differently. I became more streetwise, went to three high schools, had a really bad adolescence.

I grew up, the flightiness left me and I summed up enough focus to secure a place in Law School. She grew up, became bold, got a job, and opened her own business.

Earlier this year, I bumped into an old friend, and he just happened to have her number. He gave it to me , and I texted her for the first time in six years. It was pretty long and insecure,
   ” Hi, its Dave. I’m from your village. We used to be Friends…. We actually were close…haha, can you believe it? Anyway, just saying hi, how’re you? If you remember me..”
It was bad. However, I still got a date.
We reconnected, and the chemistry was unbelievable.

In those six years, she had become a woman. She talked like Michelle Obama now, she had embraced her physical hot self, She was working. I was intimidated.

Here I was, two years her senior, and the only thing I had going for me was Law School.
In my mind, a woman like her was top of the food chain. My high school principal always said women don’t look down, they look up.

She must have way better choices. But the more we talked and hanged out, the more I was reminded of how comfortable it was to be yourself. I was too intimidated and she knew me so I couldn’t use any fake moves on her.

So I opened the doors to my world and showed her. My law school career, my ugly student finances, my campus lifestyle. (Broke, broke and broke)
She would invite me for lunch at Lapado and pay up.

She still said each time ‘I believe in you. All that brain cannot go to waste’
It took a while,  but we got into a relationship.
One where I do not struggle to impress, one where I share my dreams freely, but even more importantly, I am challenged each day to become a better version of me.

Do I miss the old lifestyle? I haven’t even forgotten it yet, but I feel like I’m making progress. I haven’t written about this and so tonight, I felt the need to sketch, albeit roughly, this incredible story of my girlfriend and I.
I can only hope we stand the test of time, but I’ll rest my case here with that famous J. Cole line.
Would you believe me if I told you I’m in love?