My ex-girlfriend’s heart is broken. And I am jumping for joy.

I know how that sounds. Does it make me selfish? Maybe yes. Does it make me want to rescind this oath I want to take? No please. It really doesn’t. I am a man who has been in love with her for a very long time. All of my life, I owed it to her grace in my life. And now I want to take my chance.

A few years ago, when I was still in Ghana, Janet was my girlfriend. She did the little things that made me love her more, and I believed in what they say, that it is the little things that make love. I really believe that, because of her. She gave me money when I needed it, bought groceries for me, placed money in my pocket whenever she hugged me.

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When I was about to enter the university and didn’t have a kobo on me, she came through for me. Even while I was in school, she would come to visit with food and money. My parents were in London, and because I didn’t like to ask family for help and they didn’t exactly offer it either, I preferred not to put my burden on them. It looked like I had no one.

And I really didn’t. I just had God, and Janet.

Everyone knew us as the perfect couple, and when we broke up, people said they had no reason to believe in love any longer. We tried to be the perfect couple, but there were too many holes in our clothes that didn’t carry us for too long. We were young, immature, and we took things a bit too seriously. We broke up, tried to get back together a second time, but it didn’t work, so we left it at that.

After that, I packed my” Ghana must go” bags and left Ghana to start life again. I went to London, where my parents lived.

I travelled, and Janet kept in touch with me. Every now and then, we checked on each other. That was how I found out about the boyfriend. A new one.

It broke something in me that I didn’t know was still standing.

She spoke about him the way she used to speak with me. That same warm, easy voice. Like I had never existed. Like what we had never happened. Like I was just a chapter she had closed and forgotten on a shelf somewhere. I listened and said nothing. What was there to say? She had moved on. I was the one still carrying it.

They were supposed to get married. They had plans, a future, a whole life mapped out together. But their genotypes wouldn’t allow it. He’s AS, and she’s AS. So they had to let go of everything they had built, not because they stopped loving each other, but because love alone was not going to be enough. I heard it in her voice. The kind of pain that sits in your chest like a stone you can’t put down. The kind that makes you feel like this is the heartbreak you will not survive. I know this, because she called to tell me herself.

We are friends.

I know that feeling. I learned it from her. I told her I was sorry. I said all the right things.

But deep down, I am not really.

I was lying on my bed the other night, staring at the ceiling, when it all came back. Not slowly. All at once. Like a flood that had been waiting behind a door I thought I had locked for good. I haven’t stopped loving her. Not even close. I just buried it so deep I convinced myself it was dead. But it was never dead. It was just waiting.

There is a whole lot going on in my mind right now. We have been talking more than we ever did when we were together. And I feel it. Not just from my side. She still has a place in her heart for me. I can hear it in the pauses. In the way she laughs at things only I would understand. In the way she still calls.

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I haven’t felt this way since we broke up.

Here is the thing. I’m planning to settle down around 29, God willing. She has her life sorted out. She’s going to be 24 this year, and she’s a midwife now. I’m 26, and I am getting close to the age where I have been thinking about whom I might marry. Is there a sign that we have been meant to be together all along? Should I go for her, or should I cut my losses and move on?

—Peprah

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