One dawn in 2019 I was going through my Facebook timeline when I came across my Facebook memories. I started going through the memories, trying to figure out the situations I was in when I made some of the posts on my timeline. Some of them sounded childish. Some of them were simply embarrassing. I got to a point where I asked, “Who wrote this?” Because I don’t remember saying what I said. I thanked God for growth and was also grateful to my stars above for the kind of transformation I’d gone through as a man. There was one post that caught my attention. I wrote, “There’s someone for everyone, they say. So where’s that someone for me?”

That post was made in 2010. I was new on Facebook. I was going around trying to find new friends and also discover the real use of Facebook. I had ten comments on that post. I tapped on the comments button. All the ten comments were an exchange between me and a girl called Rosalyn. She said, “I wonder if that thing is true because I’m also looking for that someone.” I responded, “Then we match. You don’t have one and I don’t have one too. Why don’t we pick each other.” She laughed. I said, “I’m serious. It can work.” She said, “Then I’m waiting for you. Come and pick me.” I asked, “Where?” 

That was where the conversation ended. 

I tapped on the girl’s name and went through her profile. We were no longer friends on Facebook. I asked, “How come? Who unfriended who? Did we fight?” I checked her wall. The last time she posted was three days ago. She shared a flyer from a pastor and wrote, “You ought to be there to experience the special grace from God.” I went through her profile pictures till I got to the first picture she posted in 2010. Her face didn’t look like someone I knew or someone I’d met. It didn’t stop me from wondering about her. What if I message her and remind her of our memory in 2010?”

I tapped on the message button and guess what, we already had messages between us. We talked for over three months before everything stopped. I went through the messages. I was the one who sent the first message. I said, “Rosalyn, I’m here. I wasn’t playing when I said we should come together. I’m not a bad person. I don’t know why nobody wants to be my girlfriend.” I laughed at the audacity of the message. I told myself, “Wow, the young me was very daring and straightforward. What happened to me? What changed?”

Rosalyn’s response was, “I was only joking. I have a boyfriend.” I said, “That’s too bad but we can be friends. Just ordinary friends.” She said, “My boyfriend is very jealous. He won’t allow me to have another friend apart from him.” I said, “Tell him God didn’t create you for only him so he shouldn’t keep you all to himself.” She said, “Hahaha. I will tell him that and see what he will say.” We kept talking for months until she stopped responding to my messages. My last message to her was, “I’m still waiting for your number. I want to call and listen to your voice.”

I started asking for her number on the second day of our chat. She said her phone was spoilt. She said she was going to give it to me after it had been repaired. When you go through the chat, you will realize I kept asking for the number every day and each time I asked for it, she gave me an excuse. Until that last day when she stopped talking to me. For a whole week, I was sending her messages. I sent her messages in the morning, afternoon, and evening. None of the messages got a response. There’s a point a man gives up no matter how desperate he is. I gave up somewhere and didn’t contact her again. 

After going through the messages I laughed but I was impressed about who I was nine years ago. I didn’t sit back. I didn’t play diplomacy with love. I don’t remember how deep the love was but I was happy that I made my intentions known to her. 

That day I said, “What if I contact her again. Just for old time’s sake.”

I wrote, “Nine years later, I’m still here waiting for your number.” She read it. I waited for a while to see her response. It took her a very long while before she asked, “Who is this?” I said, “I’m your friend. That guy you promised a number but never gave it to him. I’m here today to ask you to honor your promise.” She sent a laughing emoji. She said, “I can see our messages but I don’t remember anything concerning those messages. It looks like they were planted in my inbox because I have no memory of them.” I said, “Let me jog your memory a little bit.” I sent her the screenshot of my Facebook memory. Again, she sent laughing emojis. She said, “That was so many years ago. How can I remember? How come we are not even friends?” I said, “You’ll have to explain it to me.”

She sent me her number. She said, “An answered prayer at last. You can now call and hear my voice.” I said, “Wait for my call.”

But I didn’t call immediately. I was thinking of what to say. It took me two days before I called. I said, “Dreams come through. After nine years, here we are talking on the phone. Who would have thought?” She laughed. She had the voice of a teenager. I said, “Wow, I can imagine how your voice sounded like nine years ago.” She asked, “You came today to tease my voice or what?” I said, “I’m only wondering.”

She said, “So I went through our messages over and over again and I started getting the images of those days. I remember what happened. When you were pestering me for my contact, I told my boyfriend about it. He took my phone and read the messages. After reading, he unfriended you. He even asked me to give his number to you instead so when you call, he could insult you. Yeah, I remember. That’s how come we are no longer friends on Facebook.” I asked her, “So where is he? Is he not going to be angry if he sees that we are chatting?” She said, “Oh that boy? We are no longer together. We broke up long ago. Those were the days when we were young. I was just being naive.”

She sent me a friend’s request and I accepted. Days later, we met. She got to the place before I did. Immediately she saw me, she buried her face in her palm. I went to her, removed her hands from her face, and said, “Good to see you. We were meant to meet each other that’s why we are here today. Even that boy’s jealousy couldn’t separate what the universe wants to bring together.” She said, ”I’m sorry for ignoring you. I said, ”It’s all good. We are here now.”

When she was eating I was looking at her. She picked her food slowly. She chewed with care. She spoke slowly and made beautiful faces when she was shy about something. I asked her, “Tell me about your present life. What is it like?” She said, “Boring. I go to work in the morning, come back home in the evening, and sleep. Nothing in between.” I asked, “No one in between?” She made that shy face again. She said, “Nothing in between means no one in between.” I said, “I don’t regret looking for you again. You’re worth it.” She asked, “So what made you look for me again?” I told her the whole story about that dawn when I came across Facebook’s memory. She said, “Wow. You did well. I wouldn’t have done that.”

Weeks later I proposed to her. She said yes. It was December 19th, 2019. 

January 2020 she got transferred from Accra. It was something she was working on even before I came into the picture. She said, “I want to be closer to my ailing mother so I can care for her. I was traveling to her every weekend and it was tough. I needed a way and that was the only way.” It didn’t change anything. When the lockdown happened, we both looked out for an escape. She said, “You won’t go to work for that period so why don’t you come over?” The day after the announcement, I packed the little I would need and traveled to Anomabo to stay with her. We spent our evenings at the beach and went crab hunting during the day. 

We stayed together all through the lockdown and discovered what we love about each other. We knew we were going to need each other for the rest of our days so we made plans to get married. Her mother’s health came in the way. Apart from that, Covid issues also threatened the beauty of the kind of wedding we intended to have. We kept postponing until I said, “Come rain or shine, May is the month the Lord has made. Let’s make it happen.”

On May 15th, 2021, we got married. It started as a joke until the joke turned into an awesome fragrance. Here we are now, married and happy. I’m thankful to the guy I was in 2009. He laid a perfect foundation so something this graceful can happen.

–J.A 

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