So This Is Love

‘Get up.’ I opened my eyes to see her staring at me with a loathsome look of disgust and impatience. I shut my eyes tight and let out a yawn that I for a moment hoped would rid me of the anger that was quickly rising in my chest. ‘What time is it?’ I asked calmly, trying to hide my frustration behind a demeanor of tranquility and composure. I had had a long night. For the past three weeks I had been sleeping on the sofa, and it had not been a great experience so far. I had wanted to book a hotel room every night while I drove home from work but I never got myself around to do so. I would find myself at home however much I hated it, and I still wanted to see her. ‘I don’t know.’ she answered curtly with a smirk on her lips. ‘I want to clean up the room, you can find somewhere else to prolong your nap.’ She added after a minute of ominous silence during which I had sat up, put my hands on my thighs and planted my face to the ground, weeping silently that I was in this hole of torture. In response I lifted my face to hers. Our eyes met and I saw that glow that had won me over years ago while we were still in Medical School. Those were the same eyes that had driven me mad with infatuation. When I first met Alshie, I never thought that I would come to love and adore her as I did.

I used to see her in Medical School Christian Union, and I would quickly say hi to her like I always did with other ladies, careful not to prolong a conversation into anything awkward and unseemly. She had about her a venerable air of composure that revealed an unmistakable and solid sense of direction in life. She was not outspoken but seemed to have a close friend who was her exact opposite. I never thought much of Alshie until we found ourselves serving in the Hospitality ministry together. And then bit by bit we got to know each other, and soon realized how similar we actually were. We loved the same things, we hated the same things. We went on to confess how we were both introverts. We also were first-borns. She was a writer as she was a reader, so was I. I had asked about her favorite read, and she had said she loved John Bunyan’s A Pilgrims Progress more than anything else; so did I. After she sent me the link to her blog, I stayed awake the whole night revelling in every single word of beautifully curated articles that it was impossible not to love. She was an inspiration. When we shared about how we got born again and how our journeys in salvation had been, I saw in Alshie a partner. I knew it in that instant that I was speaking to my wife. It had been said that for a Christian, there was no better place to find a wife that in Christian Union, and that it was particularly important to get a woman who loved the Lord. Here we could begin a relationship that would be guided by principle, and we would have so many people to guide us. Alshie had to be the one; she was decent, few of words, and she had a beautiful smile. I had told my then roommate Njoroge Maina, that I desire nothing less in a lady, and cared less about anything more.

I just didn’t know how I would get past my fear and confess my feelings. And such a disposition of restrain was inspired more by the fear that my feelings would be unrequited than it was because of priggishness. I had had crushes for a million ladies, but I had never dared to ask them out or tell anyone about how I felt. In the end I was glad that I never did, because such feelings soon revealed themselves to be useless and distracting infatuations. Even so, I knew that to win this fair lady, I couldn’t afford to be faint at heart. I would soon need to tell my feelings if I would ever get Alshie to be with me. Every time I looked into the beautiful blue glint in her eyes, I wondered if she felt the same way for me.

It is difficult to hide the flame of a candle with bundles of dry straw, for it soon dawned on me that my boys had sniffed me out, when one of my forebears stood me up after service one Sunday and questioned me on what my intentions with Alshie were. I immediately realized that my ways had been found out. When a man is in love, sooner or later the world will know, however much he hides it. ‘This cannot be a mistake Daniel,’ he had said, ‘if you are not sure that you love her, please don’t get it any further.’ I had stayed silent, looked down to the ground, my heart still racing hard as I had not expected the confrontation. ‘I am sure I love her,’ I had said with a kind of solemn and certain conviction that surprised me as much as it did Michael whose face softened and lit up into an encouraging smile of someone who seemed to have been moved by what had to be a genuine confession. ‘Well…’ he had remarked and gone on to share insights from his own experience when it came to the murky waters of romance.

I didn’t ask Alshie out until a year later when I was completely sure of my feelings, or at least when I thought I was. ‘I’ll give you my response on Friday, after the service.’ That was the response she gave me and the only words she spoke after I seemed to be done with my prolonged speech about eternal devotion and fidelity. This was on Monday, and I immediately knew it would be torture for me. Never has five days been an eternity. I did not sleep a wink, neither did I properly study. Everyday my love for Alshie seemed to be multiplied by a factor of 1000. I loved her more with the passage of every second, and adored her the more with the dawn of each day. I soon knew that as long as she walked the earth, I would never be happy with anyone else. That Friday I arrived a little late for the service as I first needed to finish up a report on a Medical Camp we had had a week ago. I got in when the worship team was singing Yahweh Yahweh by Nathaniel Bassey. I surreptitiously swept my eyes across the room. She was not there. I kept looking during the praise session, through the teaching session. I couldn’t bear to face the reality that she had not come for service until the Chairperson had given the benediction, until we had shared words of the Grace and we were dispersing for tea. I was cooked. Not coming for service meant one thing, she didn’t want to have to face me and give me the bad news, at least not so soon. I was broken, and did my best to avoid the chatty parties that would notice the streak of sadness in me that evening. While I was scrolling through Uber looking to see if I could get an affordable solo ride home, the message came up: ‘Hi Henry, I had to rush home this evening. Everything is alright. Let’s please talk on Sunday.’ I smiled, and read it all over again. I now strangely knew what her answer would be.

When we got married, we truly loved and enjoyed each other’s company. Everyday was bright and exhilarating. We couldn’t get the fill of each others love. We kissed, we embraced, we caressed; we did everything imaginable that a happily wedded couple would do. Alshie was the evidence of the one thing I ever did right in my life. It was a win. ‘The greatest mistake a man can make in his life, is marring the wrong woman,’ I had heard it said and repeated a thousand times. I was proud at what I accomplished. I had bagged the price, what more could a man want in his life?

As days went by, so did the happiness slowly fade with it. Everything was perfect until it was not. Slowly but surely we soon realize that we never liked each others company as much. We had drunk to our fill from the pitcher of love until it was empty. Suddenly we did not love one another anymore. Everything soon became mechanic and artificial until it was impossible to put up with the facade anymore. I would look into her eyes, and I could see coldness where I had seen a fiery passion. She was not beautiful anymore, she just looked like any regular lady I would meet in the streets. I hated the shape of her nostrils and how tiny her ears were. There was no longer any joy in going back home. Her presence was suffocating, she gave out an air of death. As each day passed, it became clear that even though I had never hated her, I had never loved her either. She soon, with a chilling air of insouciance, confessed that letting me into her life was surrendering to a chimera and a whim she now regretted every second of her life. We had thought we were soulmates when we never were; we had only forced ourselves to believe it, and reality had soon intruded. Alshie was a great lady, but she was never supposed to be my wife. It might have turned out much better if we had stayed friends. Everything might have been fine if nothing ever turned romantic.

‘The Papers?’she asked. A tear fell from my eye. I had still not mustered the courage to sign the divorce papers. Maybe I still believed things would take a different course for the best, but would they? Divorce? Who would have thought that I would be caught up in a divorce? ‘I am yet to sign them.’ I said and rising up. ‘So this is love,’ I stuttered silently as I made my way up the matted staircase to take a shower.

It was him

It didn’t sit well with her that she had fallen in love with a man three years younger than she; she had done the arithmetic in her mind a million times already; 2003 minus 2000. Was he even a man or just a boy? She did not understand herself, neither did she understand her waving affections. Just like other principled ladies in the field of medicine, even though she never put it out explicitly, she had desires and ambitions of being anything but a wife; she was a career woman before she was a family woman. Maybe she would get married, maybe even fall in love, but it was not something that nagged at her heart the way she was drawn to creating her space in the professional world of health care. She was well respected, probably feared a little by her peers who thought her such a resolute and stern lady to indulge trifles. Yet her kindness and amicability was known to everyone of her acquaintances. Her smile had a bright glint in it and a warmth that made it easy to engage her in conversation. Her attention was so pleasurable and her lady friends and male alike always seemed to revel in it. The only passion that had seemed to greater than her desire to succeed in the medicine was her love for God and an unquenchable desire to be a vessel of his using. Her dedication was to eternity and her life had very little to do with the vile things of the day. That’s why romance had been out of the question until he got to meet the young man who had strangely taken the reins of her heart and stole her peace.

That morning, it was unusually cold and she had covered herself in a blue fluffy shawl. Her steps seemed heavy and measured, and in the depths of her smile she was miserable and shaken. The whole of her knew she was clutching at sin but her heart had been really stubborn in letting the thought go. Just the thought of the idea had something despicable and unseemly about it, and after a few minutes of analysis seemed obviously repugnant and unrealistic, but as the consciousness of its clandestineness grew so did the vehemence of her affection. The ongoing realization that such a kind of affection was not only unacceptable but impossible caused the roots of her desire to grow deeper and more obdurate. It was not something she could openly confess to her peers and so she concealed it in the depths of her heart that was clearly growing more desperate and forlorn. Maybe she had allowed her heart to grow so cold and she was becoming a little carnal. Had she forgotten all the lessons she had learnt about purity and reasonableness. It was not that her desires for her colleague had anything to do with a sexual underpinning, it was the kind of fondness that made her to pine for him when he was absent from fellowship and prayer meetings. It was always delightful to have a conversation with him. She loved how he looked into her eyes when he spoke to her about anything. She might have wanted to be shy but she never was, instead, his kind gaze only warmed her heart and made her hope the moment would last forever.

She soon understood that her feelings were clearly an infatuation that needed to be nipped at the bud, and surmised that she only needed to set her priorities right again. Her love for him meant nothing, if it was love at all. And so it was that she gave her time to reading a few books on love, dating, and marriage. None of them made any mention or gave any illustration of how a lady would handle the reality of falling in love with a man younger than she. How she would handle her fate was therefore left to her conscience and the scriptures. As she lifted her hands in worship, tears flowed from her eyes, her knees wobbled a little bit and she almost lost her balance. She gracefully went on her knees and a cry rose up in the depth of her soul. ‘Lord, take this vile thing away from me. I can’t bear to sin against you in this way!’ She sobbed herself away. Those around her admired how ardently she prayed, and hated themselves for their self-consciousness that made it impossible for them to raise their hands and call on God with such passion. She would have laid prostate on the floor was it not that the worship session had just wound up and the praise session was beginning; she might also have soiled her dress for the floor of the hall where they held their Sunday services wasn’t as clean and as pristine as her hostel room; besides, she had trained herself to keep a guard over her religious passions that might have been seen as excess and unseemly zeal. She managed to gather herself up in the same graceful way she had gotten on her knees, then she reached for her purse to get her handkerchief and dry her teary eyes. All of it did not matter anymore, it was now time to praise the Lord. Someone came in to occupy the seat beside her. She didn’t look, she knew she looked awful, and she didn’t want to show it to her neighbor. So she didn’t turn to say hi to the person as she would normally do.

‘Turn to your neighbor and give them a high five!’ came an imploration from the stage. She managed a smile and turned to the neighbor she had hitherto been avoiding. It was him.

Anthony

It had been a long and boring day. Anthony had opted to stay indoors as he was usually drawn to do. He had hoped to get far reading a book he had borrowed from the county library exactly a week ago but he was yet to get past the first two pages which he had read on the night of the day he borrowed it. He had laid it aside to go through a few slides of a document on the pathology of the skin, he had never picked it up again. Tonight as he went through his pathology notes, a feeling of great weariness overpowered him and brought him to think of what hour of the day it was exactly. It was still nine o’clock, and even though it crossed his mind, and his bed was just beside his study table like most of the other students who stayed in self-contained rooms were, he quickly dismissed the thought. Though he felt so tired, an irrepressible feeling of guilt kept him from going to bed, for about two minutes, and then as fickle as most of his other resolutions also were, his fatigue won over his guilt.

As he got into bed, he remembered all the things he was supposed to have done before the day ended but had not gotten himself to do. By now it was clear to him that he usually took a lot into his hands than he could possibly manage, and just like most of his colleagues, when there was so much to do, he did nothing. “Terry,” he whispered. Terry was a second year pharmacy student he had met during a talk that the university administration had organized on the ‘Administrative Positions in Health Care Student Medics Should Think About.’ Had he met Terry somewhere else he wouldn’t have been thinking of her as he had had all through the weekend. He had wanted to sit next to her but she had gotten up to leave immediately Anthony seated himself beside her. She went out to pick a call. When she came, she chose to seat in another section of the room that had relatively few people. Anthony had not seen her come in, neither did he ever see her again. If he had, may be he would have asked her to be his girlfriend.