I hate love, and for a good reason. For five months now, I have been courting this girl that makes my stomach turn, in a good way. The one that gives me butterflies when she says that we should meet or that she will be passing by over the weekend. Even though I’ve never given her the satisfaction that that’s how she makes me feel, the feeling has always been there, seen in this unforced urge to care about her, get my shit together to the finest of details. Not that I’m a lousy disorganized brat, but it’s just to say that I leave nothing to chance.
I’ve been intentional in not laying myself bare, knowing too well how the fire that burns with love can quickly turn into one that burns with detest. I have been intentional in not letting myself get carried away, not be persuaded by the “good feel of the moment” to lure me into showing my vulnerabilities.
Albeit I cared, I was intent on minimally expressing that care, fearing that it would draws us even much closer contrary to my liking. I was decidedly mean with some of my words but caring with my actions. I was often quick to shrug off any conversations when I sensed that she wanted to have me tabled for some form of emotional conversation.
Ashley and I had met at a supermarket in Ntinda where she worked as a sales attendant. I frequented the supermarket for their tasty cup cakes and tiny cake-donuts that always nursed my sweet tooth through lunch. Always tacked in her black jeans and a creamy shirt that served as their uniform, Ashley was fairly light skinned and wore spectacles. She bordered small and medium—and stood a couple of inches taller than Deejay Roger.
Before we became acquaintances and eventually friends, she had become my point person if I found myself struggling to locate something in the supermarket. It was during those moments that we low-key bonded, exchanging chit-chats, Ashley quick to mock some of my item choices before recommending something else.
The most memorable was after she had switched to the cosmetics section of the supermarket. I found myself feeling the need to change deodorants. After having a sniff on a number of options, my choice couldn’t have been more amateurish, a pure show of a lack of class if not just poor taste. She teased me quite a bit about it before recommending one that has since become my favourite. It was on the same day that we exchanged contacts after almost a year of running into one another in between shelves.
Away from the supermarket, we had continued to bond over a few dates at a local sports bar in Mutungo although she described these dates as boring. To be honest, I would be bored as well if I were in her shoes. Given her work schedule, our meetings had often been limited to late Saturday evenings, the time dedicated to watching football on my to do list. I had figured that dates at the sports bar was my easy pass to shooting two birds with one stone. So, my eyes were often glued to the screen with chit-chats in between and at half time as she sipped her mocktail and munched her chips.
Over that time, although she came by my place more than just a couple of times, she was always hesitant about spending a night, noting that it was “a recipe for desaster”. So yeah, although we had kissed, we had both been intent not being intimate, a topic we always seem to tip-toe around as though we were walking barefooted in some freshly burnt bush.
Anyway, it’s all been good, at least from where I’m standing until recently when I stumbled onto a secret of some sort about her. I’m not sure it was a secret; I get the sense that she hadn’t just found the right time to be open about this one. Although five months seem a bit long for her not to have disclosed such a vital piece of information about her life, I get the feeling that she was still waiting for us to find our rhythm. It’s not to say that we hadn’t had personal conversations during which we shared some of our personal selves, the fun and dark moments of the past, the struggles in our present and some of our aspirations for the future. Perhaps I’m just giving myself all these justifications as excuses without realizing how far down I’d started to fall in love with her.
I knew she had been looking to change workplaces, for reasons that you will often find almost everywhere, that could be summed up as a “toxic work environment” depending on how you define it. It’s for that reason that she been actively looking for a job although remained diligent in serving the one she already had. So, when she left a brown envelope on the table during a trip to the washrooms, I had taken it upon myself to have a glance at her curriculum vitae, hoping to get an insight into her work experience and capabilities if I were to point her in the right direction—and that if there were any wrinkles in it, I would help her iron them out to improve her chances of landing one.
But underneath it all, the CV, the academic papers and everything else in that line was a medical form of some sort that unearthed a stunning revelation. Ashley was sick. The quick glance at this piece of paper indicated that she had sickle cells.
Upon the unpleasant discovery, I don’t reminisce feeling hurt or disappointed, but I remember feeling sorry. My memory quickly ran back to some of the cancelled engagements that we never had. For about three months, every once in a while, she would throw me that infamous line of “we need to talk”, before emphasizing it was not the type of conversation to be had over the phone. “I will tell you once we meet,” she often concluded. And yet at every turn, whenever we met, she would pretend to have forgotten or dismiss the whole anticipated conversation with a simple complement, something like; “you’re such a good guy and I’m starting to like you”.
I have often heard, whenever the topic of sickle cells came up, that most sicklers don’t live beyond their 30th birthday. With Ashley at 28, I get the feeling that we are literally tiptoeing around her ceiling, that her candle will soon or later dim. I know that she has been in and out of hospital. I now find myself at a crossroads, pondering whether my stay with her would be out of pity or the guilt of even entertaining the thought of walking away. I have pondered what the potential implications of walking away would be, not just for me, but for her as well, how it could damage her spirit.
I have labored, and yet still failed, to shade off the thought of me staying would literally be digging my own grave, that I would be setting myself up for failure. I fear that me staying will further draw me closer, that I will fall in a little deeper than I already am, for something whose fate seems to be already sealed—that I may well be just waiting for the inevitable to happen.
I have tried to disabuse myself of the negativity, wanting to dismiss the facts of what I have heard but never experienced as just a stereotype thing about sicklers. She doesn’t know that I know. I have been wondering on how to even bring it up in our conversations. I have considered ghosting her, to leave without saying a word but the guilt of going through with that plan eats me away in equal measure.
The humanity in me also can’t help it think that if I walk away, I will be doing the same thing that all the others that came before me did, walking away as soon as she told them about her illness. Would it make me selfish under the disguise of self-protection!
R.K.Circles 