“I played every game in the book but you changed my perspective.”

                                                                Dream, Ne-Yo

I used to think it was a competition. I tried to take it as one. Unresolved grievances a natural part. No one was more surprised than I was when you stayed in spite of everything. On my part insistent with logic I could understand why you did. Calculate the duration of this affair beforehand. Timetable our meetings in a life it had taken me an intense year four years earlier to calibrate to every hour for the next decade. Obsessive like that. The secret details stickler.

Meeting me late at my then favourite video library, afternoon spent in the salon, you used to begin before asking me if I liked your new hair style, “I know you don’t like it but…” complaining that I was hard to impress. Blissfully unaware of the competition, my compartmentalizing life securing you from ever suspecting there was anyone else, against which self-deluded I thought I was measuring you up. Ignoring the commentators who grabbing the ball of my shoulder, creasing the corner of my shirts, kept on hoarsely declaiming, “My God, you’re lucky! Where did you find her?”

No photograph fanatic, from a taciturn family, I had never owned an album of photographs. The only photos of me that for many vital growing years exist are passport size photographs in discarded school Identity cards, then where I worked first in child labour engaged. The unconscious teacher passing down the value of documented memories, hundreds of photographs for every year of your existence, many albums filled, surprising jealousy creeping upon me. Angry that I had never been a part of your life earlier than I became.

After the mentor who often bailed me out of trouble, the one I could call any time of day or night, paid my fees when my own parents could no longer meet the costs, who inspired me to save up somehow and own a mobile phone when it was criminally costly to own a phone; your phone number is the only other one I have indelibly inscribed in my memory. The only phone number I can type on my phone’s screen and dial without consulting my phone’s contacts’ directory. I like to think now I knew we would fall in love from the start. My boastful self confidence always irritated my mother, my absent father, and it was a while before I understood that it is one of my qualities that makes you love me so much.

Forgetting when you used to send me those SMSes that you were certain I did not love you. Cancelling a few hours before we were supposed to meet unbeknownst to you because I had achieved a long desired date with some of your competition that often turned out to be a waste of my time and they thought my money paying when I was not paying, my intricate re-organization and negotiation paying off. Evidence of subdued revenge has never ceased to amuse and your apparent innocence of deviousness shock me then delight me. Like you are the one who did not get away and only I understand that.

Then there was 8^th October 2008, Wednesday, until then, until you, convinced purities did not exist for me. In shocking abundance confronted by what you were offering me. Unasked for, un-demanded for, you there; confronted by what until then was beyond my prematurely disillusioned imagination and undemanding nature. At the gift wondering. Falling in love with you when I thought you should be falling out of love with, finding you loved me more.

Accepting for the first time that, “I never saw a woman with so much beauty and heart. My heart was always a failure until you helped me pass.” Humbled. 8^th October 2008, Wednesday, in love with you more than I ever thought possible.