The heat, yes the heat was what woke me up and then the mosquitoes humming in my ears so loud I wished their species would become extinct. I started tossing and turning in bed and I knew what was to come. My memories were about to come awake. But tonight I didn’t try to push it away as it was the thought of D that came to my head. D my first true love, my favorite toxic love and the man who showed me love I never knew I had the power to exhibit. I had met him on my way to school one time and he had stopped and offered to give me a ride. I was scared at first as Aunty Sandra’s words rang loud in my eyes still.
“Don’t trust these men in this town. They have the most weird fetishes and are just looking for girls to use. “
I turned him down and he kept insisting and kept driving slowly besides me as I walked to the bus stop. He came out and showed me his ID card and where he worked to reassure me he wasn’t a kidnapper and he asked me to trust him. I hopped in the car and he dropped me off at school on that day. I remember thinking in my head “How can one person be this light skinned?”. I didn’t imagine myself dating someone so light-skinned. Later when talked about how we met, he would joke about me being proud and scared at the same time because I refused to enter his car. He would say “I just needed to know you, the way you were walking with your head held high, I was so curious to know who you were. ” I would laugh and tell him how I never was attracted to him from the start as I couldn’t imagine myself being with someone so light-skinned and we would laugh about how lame that was…. Well, don’t blame me but I had a thing for em chocolate bros back then as I liked them brown, chocolatey or just like coffee. Another mosquito hummed and I hissed loudly as I went back to thinking about D.
We would have worked out, we could have had a beautiful home and made such lovely and smart babies. D was intelligent, came from a good and well to do home and he was the only son. But I knew from the first time we met that he had his demons that he tried hard fighting but I couldn’t place a hand on what his demons were at that point. We kept seeing each other off and on and he started calling me ‘wife’. When we drove, he would hold my hands as if I was his prisoner or just make sure I was there with him. He was so obsessed with me and everything that smelled like me. He wore our love so boldly and when I met his mum eventually, she grew fond of me in a way that wasn’t ordinary cause you know how mums in law can be. And on that day is when I learnt about his addiction.
Everything started to make sense now. His cold hands, his inability to eat. “Friends” he was always hanging around that I wasn’t allowed to meet. “Codeine ” or “Lean” they called it. And then he started smoking later on. He also stopped turning up for work. This was so crazy till one day I got a Call on how he was in a bad state after being involved in a road accident. At first I was scared. Thoughts of his dead body were the only mental pictures I formed. My heart kept beating at an unnormal rate. When we got to the hospital, we found out that he was alive but the site that was infront of us killed me inside. It was as if he had a half head cause his jaws were in a bad state and his skull was distorted. Thoughts of us on last years Valentine’s flashes in my mind on that very moment. I remembered him sweetly whispering in my ears “I’ll be fine baby. Don’t cry” .This years Valentine’s was a few days away and I remembered how me spent the previous one. It was painful but I just had to swallow the fact that I would spend this valentine’s by his bedside in this hospital. I had earlier withdrawn from him before the accident and I blamed myself alot for what happened to him.
February passed, so did March and eventually D was discharged from hospital on April. I just had to be there for him. In the process, I got to know his family better. I went home for the holiday break but we always kept in touch. I always told him to never relapse and start using again but it all fell to deaf ears. His mom always called and cried over the phone about how this addition was more of a spiritual thing and how he visited pastors to pray for him but all this never worked. Break was over and I resumed school. I convinced him to go for bible study sessions with me which he agreed to. We would attend mass together but all this couldn’t stop his daily want. “More codeine “ .the moment we parted ways he was sipping lean. I would later on find out about what he was doing and he’d apologize and the same process from start again. “I just need you here with me baby”. I was getting tired of the very same lines especially after we had been through three rehabilitations. All this time while he was in rehab, I would run off after class just to see him and spend some hours with him. Take him some self-help books and his favorite novels to keep him busy. He would always creep and ask one of the janitors for his phone to call me and talk to me for some minutes before sleeping.
As I thought about D that night, my heart was heavy and I couldn’t control my tears. “It’s a cold world out there baby, most of the guys out there just want to mess with girls” he would say. And his words were actually true because after leaving him as a result of being tired with his continous addiction despite everything, I fell for the wrong man and it was a toxic situation that took prayers, tears and so much bitter lessons before I was able to get out of. That night I wondered if things could have worked out better between us after all if maybe I stayed with him a little longer. Maybe if I kept trying it could have worked out. But I had been tired and so drained then. A lot had happened. Last time I spoke to him, he sounded like his old self and called me ‘baby’ but ooh well, life moves….
