I was in SHS when I fell in love for the first time. The boy was called Eric, but his nickname was The Don. My name is Diana. We called ourselves D and D. Young love feels like a fever. It makes you weak. It puts you down. It makes you do nothing but love.

I would write poems to him even when he was sitting next to me. He would read them and say sweet things to me. I would ask him, “Is it going to last forever?” He would look into my eyes and say, “It would be boring without you, if forever existed. So yes.”

We wrote our names on walls. We wrote them on petals. We wrote them on tables: “D&D forever.”

None of these things gave permanence to our young love. Petals drop for new ones to grow in their place. Walls get painted anew. Tables wobble and break. After school, our love wobbled into oblivion. I don’t even know where he is now or how life is treating him. Embarrassing, right?

But I learned something from young love: if it doesn’t feel like fever, then it’s not the right kind of love.

When I grew up, I found that same kind of love with Ahmed. It was a fever but not the dizzy kind. Maybe when we grow up, maturity takes away the dizzy feeling so we can see clearly. Ahmed felt like a boyfriend—warm and always present. Two years later, when he asked me to marry him, he felt like a husband—steady and built to last.

I said yes, and we got married. On our honeymoon, we came across a little garden with a giant tree in the middle. People sat under it for shade and also took photos for the glam. At a cursory glance, I saw names written on the trunk of the tree. The dramatic lovers had drawn a heart and written their names inside the badly drawn heart.

I told Ahmed, “Let’s do it. It means we were here some.”

He smiled and asked, “Are you a kid?”

Yet when I gave him a sharp-edged rock, he took it and stepped toward the tree. He wrote, “Ahmed and Diana.” He deepened it until it was etched into the tree. No drama, just Ahmed and Diana.

Is Bride Price Still Relevant in Modern Marriages?

We’ve visited the same place thrice in our seven years of marriage. Each time we go, we see our names etched on the tree. It doesn’t mean anything, but it means everything. It might not be a sign of permanence, but it can also mean there’s a place where we have our names together. We were not pushed by law as we were on our marriage certificate. We were pushed by a desire to have our names next to each other, just as we are living life next to each other until our forever comes.

— Diana

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