My daughter is going through a heartbreak. She’s not talking about it but I see it. She disappears easily these days. She would be in her room, lock the door and not eat anything. When we sit watching TV, you see from her face that it’s her eyes that are watching the TV but her heart and mind are wandering.

I look at her and smile because I’ve been there. I’m still there but it’s not as intensive as it used to be. I still carry that heartbreak everywhere I go after twenty-six years. It doesn’t help that I still see the man who gave me the heartbreak.

Maybe if my daughter knew what I’ve been through and realized that I’m the queen of all those who carry heartbreaks, she would open up to me. She’s twenty-five. She’s not old enough to carry the burden of the story of my heartbreak. Since I can’t tell her, let me share it here and hope she comes across it on the internet one day.

I fell in love very early. I was fourteen when E.K. (that’s his actual initials. I hope he also reads this) told me I was beautiful. Nobody ever told me about my beauty so when he said it, a special light flickered in my heart. He didn’t end there. He asked me to be his girlfriend. I don’t remember a lot of the details but I remember saying yes to him that very day and even hugging him.

We kept the relationship secret until a year or so later when my elder sister blew our cover. She caught us in the dark behind our house. I’d been sent and wasn’t coming so she decided to follow up. She was holding a torchlight. She threw the light on us in the dark and didn’t like what she saw so she rushed back home to tell my father about it.

I was beaten. I was asked to mention the guy’s name or show where he lived. My mom told me I would be pregnant if I kept seeing this guy. I kept my cool. I didn’t say a name or showed them anything. If you love someone, you don’t put them in danger’s way so I kept E.K away from my parents.

On my eighteenth birthday, he broke my virginity. I bled. He looked at the crimson stain on his bed and made a promise that our love was going flow ceaselessly like the blood in our veins. I believed him. I loved him more that day.

When I was twenty, I grew wings—wings I grew out of EK’s love for me. My parents knew him. They told me to leave him because he wasn’t going to take me anywhere. My dad went ballistic on me but it didn’t deter me. The love I found in EK was greater than my own fear so even when I was sinking in the sands of my parents’ anger, I held on to EK’s shoulder and stayed afloat.

I don’t know what happened but EK started avoiding me. He disappeared for a week and I didn’t know how I was able to survive a week without him. I suffered his absence in my studies. I didn’t eat well. I didn’t sleep well. I went to all the places I used to see him. He wasn’t there. When finally I found him, I asked what the issue was and he answered, “There’s nothing wrong. I’m fine.”

I told him, “Don’t ever do that to me again unless you want to attend my funeral..”

It got worse. The disappearing act. He travelled without telling me. His brothers who used to tell me his whereabouts stopped talking to me. Out of frustration, I went to his father to ask questions. His father got angry and told me I wasn’t raised well. “You’re just his girlfriend but you had the audacity to come here asking me questions? You hide. That’s your place until you become official.”

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Again, when he returned and I asked what the problem was, he told me all was well. I’d been with him for over six years. I knew too much to know all wasn’t well so I walked around looking for what was missing, what was lost or what wasn’t. I tilted the cup of our relationship to check if it was half-full or half-empty. I was hurting but nothing I said changed him.

One evening, I sat with him under a tree talking about our issues until it was late. When I was with him, time lost its essence. I didn’t know it was that late until I got home and saw our doors locked. My dad screamed from the inside, “Go back to wherever you came from. Go and sleep there and make that place your home. You say you won’t listen.”

I went back to EK. We talked more about our issues. That night he told me he was leaving me because he wanted to protect me. It didn’t make sense. The only safety I knew was his presence. “How can you leave me and at the same time protect me?”

We talked until the dew started falling. I was cold. I could feel little dew drops on my lashes. I believed they were bringing me blessings to save my dying relationship. I slept outside the door that night because of him. The next morning, my dad threw my things outside and told me he regretted giving birth to a female because of me. My mom interceded for me and I was taken back into the house. EK travelled again, signalling the end of our relationship.

It was 1996 and the only channel of communication available to us was seeing each other face to face. I waited. Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. He set my heart on fire, especially when no one was willing to tell me anything. He was gone for six months.

When he came back I rushed to his arms begging him to love me again. We had sex that night. Three days later, he was gone. He came back again months later and ignored me totally. I was old enough to know he didn’t need me again but I begged him to pretend that he loved me.

It was hard to escape the hurt so I thought falling in love with someone else would help cure the heartbreak. I said yes to Jude. I dated him through heartbreak while I watched him enjoying every bit of the relationship. Four months later, we were married. My father couldn’t wait to give me away so he would have his peace. When the marriage proposition was made, he didn’t even ask me any questions. He accepted and married me off to Jude.

I married Jude just to put EK to shame. It wasn’t love. It was a revenge. Something I did to prove a silly point. That I’m worth all the love EK didn’t give me.

My marriage should have ended the story. It didn’t. No matter how hard I tried to forget EK, the hole he created in my heart deepened. It swallowed everything that fell inside of it. It swallowed Jude and his attempt to show me love. He was such a good man to me but I didn’t see myself loving him the way I loved EK. He tried spoiling me with money. He was doing everything a man would do to keep his new bride happy but deep down, there were holes that drain the water of his love and those holes were created by EK.

I used five years to give birth to four children thinking children would be the ones to fill the vacuum. I looked at each other’s faces and wondered how they would look like if I made them with EK. “They would have been prettier.” “They would have taken after their father’s sense of humour.” “This one would have taken EK’s sense of style and rhythm.”

One after the other, I compared them to a father they didn’t have while succeeding in widening the hole that was left in me. I sauntered through my marriage for five years. I sleep-walked through it actually, dazed by the fact that I didn’t marry EK.

I wanted to forget about him. Five years was enough to heal a broken heart but to me, it was like when my heart broke and I was picking up the pieces, I ended up picking a piece that had EK’s name written on it. I put the pieces together and ended up creating a space for EK.

My fourth child was barely six hours old when my sister came to the hospital to announce that EK had married. “You didn’t hear about it? You should see his wife. She even looks like you.”

“He left me to marry someone who’s just like me? Why leave the original and settle for what looks like the original?”

My last child should have been the happy news but I sat in the hospital bed, holding my baby to my heart, a heart that was singing the tunes of EK. When my thoughts finally settled, I felt ashamed of myself. I felt I didn’t deserve the blessings God has showered in my life—four kids and a husband who keeps loving me each day.

It’s been twenty-six years but I still carry a heart that didn’t heal. My husband doesn’t know about me and EK. One day, we turned the TV on and there he sat, EK, talking about politics and dreams for the nation. I got up and slowly went to the bedroom while the echo of his voice followed me at every step until I entered and shut the room door.

I know. At this stage of my life, it’s no longer a heartbreak. It’s madness. I can bet my last pesewa that EK has forgotten about me. I believe if he sees me today, he’ll struggle to make me out. Motherhood has done a lot to me and thinking about how we ended also has had its toll on me. If he can’t remember me, why then do I carry him through the paths of the years as if he’s my only possession, or my only memory or the only important thing that has happened to me in life?

Marriage couldn’t fill the gap. My children couldn’t wake me up from this silly dream. I’ve craved healing from things that are ephemeral. I love my husband but he couldn’t heal me. I love my kids and inhaled all the joy they brought into my life but that wasn’t enough to patch the leak so I’ve surrendered.

I look at my daughter going through what she’s going through and tell myself, “She will heal. It’s not like the story of me and EK. She needs whatever she’s going through to grow as a person.”

I’m going to watch her closely for a month—a month should be enough to heal or make progress but if after a month I don’t see any improvement, I will sit her down and tell her, “There’s always going to be a day like this—a day where we suffer the consequences of loving someone too much but we should be bold enough to let the dawn settle on this day so we can give ourselves the chance to experience new love and new story.”

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This advice would be for her and might as well be for me. If she opens up to me, I will open up to her too. After all. we are girls-girls and girls can keep a secret. But I won’t forget to warn her; “No one should know the story I’m telling you today, especially your father. He might not understand it because he’s only a man. We are girls so we do get it. We do understand matters of the heart better because it’s us who love with all our hearts.”

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—I.A.F

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