I was posted to the Ashanti Region to work in 2019. Abena was one of the first few people I met when I got there. I liked her immediately. It was just one of those moments when you meet someone and you know in your heart, that your life just made a whole lot of sense because of their presence. I didn’t waste time beating around the bush. Neither did I attempt to rent myself a room in the friend zone in the name of getting to know her better.

I am a man who knows what I want, and when I see it, I go after it. So I had an honest conversation with her. I told her, “I like you. I may not know all there is to know about you but I want you to be my girlfriend. We can get to know more about each other as we go along.” Just as I was blunt with her about what I wanted, she was also not dishonest with me.

She politely turned down my proposal saying, “Sorry, I already have a boyfriend. We can be friends though.” Although I was disappointed by her rejection, I accepted her offer of friendship. I called her once in a while to check on her. She also called whenever she wanted to talk to me. It was a friendship that bloomed over the course of time.

I had no expectations of her outside the boundaries of friendship. Then it happened that she got sick. I was there for her. I visited her at the hospital and at home until she got better, and resumed her normal activities. All this while I didn’t see any sign of her boyfriend. I would ask about him and she would tell me, “He is there.” Before I knew it, she was no longer calling me by name, Kobby.

She started addressing me as, “darling,” “sweetheart,” “my dear,” “honey,” and all those sweet things women use to show affection for their boyfriends. It messed with my head and my heart. I interpreted her behavior as, “I am ready to be your girlfriend now,” so I proposed to her again. To my surprise, she also turned me down again. I found her behavior very confusing but I did not make a fuss about it.

I did not allow my disappointment to eat into our friendship. I continued to be by her side and supported her wherever she needed me to. She would call me, “Baby, I need money urgently. Can you send me something?” I would say yes, and send her the money. Sometimes she’d say, “I am having a bad day. Can you come and spend time with me?” And I would drop everything and show up for her.

Sadly, she lost her mum at the beginning of this year. I was the one by her side through it all. Right from the one-week celebration to the funeral itself. This time too, I didn’t see any sign of her boyfriend. When I asked her about him she told me; “We broke up.”

After the funeral, she has always been around me. She wouldn’t give me space for me to even entertain the notion of another girl. So once again, I convinced myself that she was doing all this because she wanted a relationship, seeing as her boyfriend was no longer in the picture.

This time around, I didn’t rush. I gave it a lot of thought and time before I finally asked her to be my girlfriend one more time. She shook her head and said, “I like you but I am afraid a relationship with you will not work because of your tribe. You know your people and mine don’t mix.” That day I told her, “If that is the case then allow me to move on. Let me go and find a woman who will love and accept all of me.” When I said that, she started crying.

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After that conversation, I blocked her and deleted her number. She used different numbers to call me, begging me to hear her out. Eventually, I agreed to listen to what she had to say.

“I don’t know what is wrong with me,” she explained, “I am just so afraid to love you because I am afraid to lose you. Please don’t leave my life.” I tried to stay but it’s hard. How can I stay in her life and love her from the sidelines? How is that fair to my heart?

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Just last week we had a big argument concerning this issue, and she told me to move on. I said okay. After a few days, she came back again crying that she didn’t know what was wrong with her.

“You tick all the boxes for me. You are everything I have ever wanted in my ideal man but I am afraid to let myself go and love you. I also don’t want to let you go.” So I have given myself until the end of next month. If she still insists that she cannot be with me, then I will block her and delete her number without going back. I hope I am taking the right step.

—Kobby

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