LOVE IN THE FIRST

It was your first day in your new school: one that you had dreamed of since childhood but was deprived of the opportunity to attend earlier because of a rather strange Federal Government policy.

It was senior High School, the one they referred to as Senior Secondary School back in Nigeria and aside coming to dominate the academic circle in this school of your dreams, you really wanted to have a taste of love.

In your previous school, you had seen close friends “fall in love” and “enjoy” their relationships and you wanted to have this feeling…It was not like you didn’t “fall in love” back then but the problem was that it didn’t take you more than a week to “fall out of love” with them girls.

Perhaps, that was why you “fell in love” with virtually every girl in your class; Nnenna, Jennifer, Nkiruka, Jessica, Oluomachi, Chinecherem, Chidimma, Chinenye, Oluchi, Chioma and so on.
In fact, you resolved to “fall in love” by any means possible in this your new school and it appeared as though your chi had finally heard you when you saw her in your first day in school, just as your parents were helping you with your registration.

Fortune appeared to be on your side as you discovered that your parents were even familiar with hers; you knew this was God, the gods and your chi coming together to answer your prayers as they fashioned an opening for you.

But there was a problem; you thought she was way too beautiful for you…she was taller, extremely beautiful; the kind of beauty that made you feel like this one no fit mess, and for the first time, you felt helpless in your “ambition”. 
Upon consideration of her discriminatory pulchritude, class and even height, you merely resigned to the usual que sera sera, what will be, will be and decided to move on with your life and “break up” with her unless by some cosmic intervention, God qualifies you for her.

Somehow, you found yourself in the same class with this incomparable specimen and perfectly crafted beauty, and she seemed to be giving you the blue light but you didn’t read meaning into it because you felt she was just pulling your legs as though to show you that “you can see but you can’t have me”.
With time, you started to get convinced that she might indeed like someone like you; it was your best friend that gave you this foolish confidence as he took it upon himself to eavesdrop her conversations with her friends and report to you on how she was hopelessly interested and “in love” with you.

You started to believe that she might indeed like you when you started seeing love letters in what you thought was her handwriting, slipped into your notes; what else did you need? The gods had given you palm kernel and went a step further to crack them for you.
Everything appeared to be falling into place for you but there was one big problem; You were shy; actually very shy. In fact, you had never spoken to her before. You only spoke with your eyes and to you, that was enough as your eyes spoke way more than you could ever speak. 

To confirm this, the kind of chemical reaction that took place in your stomach any time you made eye contact with her was way out of planet earth and it was only a matter of time before she’d become your girlfriend.
Life was beautiful; you felt in love for the first time, and even better, you felt loved as well. You knew that all it’d take to officially seal the relationship was just to ask: that sounded easy but doing that was the farthest thing from easy that you ever had to do.

Everyone encouraged you to just ask. Even her friends told you how much she fantasized about you and how you needed to just ask before other “eligible” suitors would steal your crown jewel from you.

Then, one Tuesday evening, you decided to grab the snake by the tail. No! You didn’t! It was fate working solely to your advantage! You went to read in the afternoon and you bumped into her in your class; just the two of you! At first, you wanted to just walk back to your hostel but you remembered that the wicked Senior Students were on rampage.

You had nowhere to go and you eventually went in to be with her. With the chemistry that had built overtime, it didn’t take long before you left your seat to go and sit right next to her. As though on impulse, you started talking; You talked about everything with her in the sort of eloquence that had eluded you every other time that you were called upon to answer questions in class…she told you everything about herself; her favorite food, colour, hubby, and dream job. You can’t remember what happened but the next thing was that you found yourself professing love to her in a way you had never imagined and when you were done, you got your most perfect news till then; she told you of how much and how deeply she felt for you and how she had decided to pour out her feelings to you if you had wasted more time.

She agreed to be your girlfriend and for once, you felt fulfilled and accomplished.
Two weeks into the “relationship”, you were yet to overcome your shyness and for once, you acknowledged that a relationship needed more than just love to stand the test of time. You basically had no idea what next to do after she became your “girlfriend”.

You’d see her and not say anything to her, not that you didn’t want to but because you didn’t know what to. You kept on hoping that since she loved you and you loved her, she would bear with you till you grew balls but that was where you got it wrong!

You heard she had gotten a new boyfriend and you were shell shocked. "How could that be", you asked. Why did she get another boyfriend if she loved you as she said earlier?  You tried all that you could; you started listening to Adele and Taylor Swift so you could relate to the heartbreak. You became a philosopher, overnight and you made quotes on how women are so unreliable and how love was a ruse.
You even wrote her poems and called her countless times but she couldn’t be pacified to even take you to the friend zone. You decided within yourself not to ever “love” anyone like you “loved” her; in fact, you thought it was not possible for you to “love” anyone like you “loved” her. You believed that she was the one for you and that fate would bring you together once more, and this time, as husband and wife.

Oh! You were a true believer!
You believed you loved her and she loved you too!
But fifteen years later, you are married with two kids.
Not to her but to someone else; someone you truly love and who loves you in return.
You still think about your “first love” and you wonder if you truly loved her like you made yourself believe back then.

Maybe you loved her back then; maybe she was really your first love.
But then, you are sure that you have truly moved on and found love elsewhere as well; you are assured that true love didn’t reside in her alone.
Maybe It was love in the first, but then there’s love elsewhere with someone else outside the first.