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| Thirty Dates... One Truth |
*******
Brian looks grimly at his phone, swiping at its screen from
right to left with impatience.
This is the second time she has stood him up, or rather, come
late.
“Why on bloody earth is she late?” he cusses within himself.
He then decides to call her… The call goes through but she
doesn’t pick up.
He is now burning with anger. It is eating him up. He is
infuriated.
He stands up, fidgets with the coins and the USB thumb
drive in his left side trouser pocket, holds his phone in his right hand, opens
his contacts app and scrolls down the call history to see how long ago she had
promised (or lied) that “she was just 10 minutes away”. He recollects that it
has been an hour already.
“One bloody hour!” He cusses again.
He then swipes to the left within the dialer app to access
his “favorites” or “most called” and just below his “bae” Betty is his dude’s
number, Sam.
He calls Sam.
He has now moved on to the other end of the café and is
looking down at the streets as he plucks on the potted plants in their vases
right at the grills. He is absent-minded at most as his call to Sam goes
through. It drizzling outside, and a wind mixed with moisture hits his face
bringing with it palpitations of both dread (due to the anger he already is
feeling) and calmness (due to a decrease in temperature). The drizzle causes
the soil on the outside to smell both rusty and chunky.
“Niaje jamaa? I hope
zinakuendea poa leo. Imagine huyu mrembo ameamua kuni-standup tena raundi hii. Si
hii ni mchezo!? Ni kama hii date nitafanya na waiters tu kama last time before
aingie na petty excuses. Hii ni kuzoeana tunazoeana.”
(Hi dude! I hope
you’re doing just fine. Imagine my girlfriend happens to have stood me up again.
This is ridiculous! It’s like I am going to have a date with the waiter just
like last time, after all, before she comes in with her petty excuses. I think
it has now turned into a game of taking each other for granted.)
Sam, being the dude he is, a solid member of TMF, and that
he is either into all kinds of chiqs or no chiq at all, throws his buddy a
bummer:
“Hey, man.
Nilikwambia hizi story za kukazana na kutreat mrembo as if anakupatiaga kidneys
unatumia mchana halafu unamrudishia jioni zitakuletea noma. Si you lenga her
for a month or two tuone atafanya nini.”
(Hey, man. I told you
not long ago that when you treat a lady as if she hires her kidneys at a fee will
deal you a blow. I propose that you break up with her for a month or two without
notice and see how it rolls…)
“Okay acha nione.
Wacha aingie hivi na mimi nitoke, nimwambie kama ni hii kubebana tutaendelea
kubebana, wacha tubebane after one month or two.”
(Okay, let’s wait and
see. Once she’s here, I’ll pick myself up and leave. I’ll let her know that I
can extend these mind-games of hers to a month or two.)
So he waits.
It starts raining. It pours, actually. There is even a
thunderclap. He waves at the waiter and calls for coffee. It’s 6pm. He feels
the chill but smiles at the prospect that the coffee will help. He had come out
of work early for this date. He has even skipped his evening classes. See? He
is that kind of dude that sacrifices both his time and commitments in order to
spend time with his girlfriend of two years. This thing is serious to him, and
he is intentional about it.
After he’s sipped his tea halfway through while clutching
the cup with both hands in order to feel and tap from its warmth, Betty comes
rushing in, umbrella in hand and literally dripping of rain water. He looks at
her with the “did-Steve-Harvey-just-announce-that-Uber-left-Kenya-just-a-few-seconds-ago?”
look mixed with the “haiya!-this-Wi-Fi-just-got-to-10mbps!”
look.
She is dripping, or at least her shoes are. And he doesn’t
care… Oh, well, he does. But not like he used to.
“Hi babe!” he quips while making a paltry gesture with his
head.
“Hi!”
“Sorry for the rain”
*Silence*
“But you should have been here an hour and half ago! You
promised, remember? You wouldn’t be dripping like a donkey if it were so. At
all. What happened?”
She gives him the “come-on-duuude!!”
kind of look.
“Nothing happened. I just ran into friends, one thing led
into another, and then here I am. Ain’t you gonna order coffee for me, or even
pull me a chair? Or even, in the slightest manner, offer to take my umbrella?”
“Oh, sorry. I am just not sure what you take nowadays. I
could order coffee, but you would end up telling me that you are not doing
coffee this week or month; or I could order tea, and you would say someone just
advised you against it yesterday. So, I can’t. But you can tell me what you
need and I’ll call in the waiter for you.”
She gives him that look again, stomps her dripping feet, folds
the umbrella, hands it over to the waiter and requests for black coffee.
“So, do you think we can talk? It’ s almost 7.”
“Yeah, I thought that is why we are meeting. No?”
“Yeah”
Her coffee is served.
“I just wanted to complain about how you are treating me these
days. I feel like I am playing second fiddle in your life all the time.
Everything else but me, is a priority.”
“I’m listening”
“I hope you won’t see that I am trying to judge or condemn you.”
“Mmmhuh”
“This is the second date you almost stood me up and I never
hear an apology from you at all. It seems like our good sides just vanished,
huh?” he rants.
“Babe, how many dates have we had so far? Thirty-something?
Probably forty? Have we had the best of times? Yes, I think we have. And have
we had the worst of times? Yes, I do think so too. Have I been perfect? Yes, quite
minimally. And have I been imperfect? Yes, numerous times. Have you been
perfect? Yes, you have. And imperfect? Yes, multiple times. We have tested both
ends of what a relationship can have and bear. According to me, the one truth that we cannot all escape from
is this: we are evolving as individuals and we just need to keep up with it. We
all are evolving. Our relationship is changing us. We keep changing. We are neither
who we were yesterday nor who we were when we first met. There are things I
expect of you today that I never did before. Why? Because we are growing,
changing, evolving every single day.
Our expectations keep changing. Our bodies keep changing.
Our questions keep changing. Our visions keep being
reviewed all the time.
Even the way we show affection keeps changing. That’s why
you didn’t pull my chair when I came in… And in the course of changing, baby,
we will always have friction. Only unchanging people lack what to fight over. I
didn’t have a job before, but now my job demands both my commitment and
attention. So am I to stop everything else and take care of only one part of my
life? No. That will be an imbalance…”
Just before she finishes saying all she was saying, Brian
jumps in…
“I understand your point, and I totally understand what you
are saying. And it seems that that is
the same thing I am talking about: that although we are evolving - which I
understand - why are we now switching priorities? Doesn’t our time together
matter anymore than our jobs or friends or time alone? The fact that we are meeting
to talk about stuff even after having numerous dates and arguments is proof that
we truly are good friends. And friends care to keep the fire within the
friendship burning. Ours is fading. Yes, we are changing, but the spark is
dying. I care that we should rekindle it again. I am not working hard to keep
this fire burning as I used to, and I feel the same about you… What do you
think?”
The rain outside has subsided. There is a breeze of
chilling air sweeping across the room in which they and several others are
seated. Their coffees are done. They are now blankly staring at each other.
Betty offers to give him her spare pullover which she pulls out from her hand
bag and gives to him.
“You know what babe? The one thing I love about us is that
we can solve our differences without involving other people.
(After saying this, Brian now feels guilty that his friend
Sam knows almost everything about this relationship as he does, and Betty too
knows pretty well that her friend Ann has grown weary of her tantrums
concerning Brian. So she is careful about what she says next…)
“Even as truth unveils itself before us, the question to
ask ourselves is: are we really ready to
accommodate each other as far much as we are very different people from those
that had their first date just over two years ago? Are we? Okay, am I ready
to understand that you don’t see it a big deal today to not pull my chair
anymore even though I would really thrill in the moment when you do so? Are you
ready to accommodate the fact that my job now takes too much of my time and I
can no longer be as available as I used to be? Are we ready to evolve together or are we going to end up evolving
apart?”
Brian now realizes that his one-month or two-month break
threat was a petty strategy. It could not work here in this very situation if
he was to remain to be the man of integrity that he truly is. He calls in a
truce right within his mind.
“I think acclimatizing to who we are right now or who we
are becoming is a journey and a reality we cannot avoid. We truly have changed.
I have become more inquisitive, more demanding, pettier… Can we work on
evolving together? One step at a time?”
Betty gives him the “come-on-duude!”
look again. Which means she agrees with him.
He later escorts her to her place. His heart isn’t racing
like when he brought her here for the first time, but the assurance that they
still love each other and that they both care where the relationship is headed makes
him have a bounce in his feet again. Their next date, the thirty-something date,
’d better be exciting…
*******
The story above is derived from a true story.
Within the story is one lesson: that after two people have been together for a while, they tend to grow
fond of each other and therefore take each others’ needs (or love language)
for granted. But if the two realize that their relationship is eroding due to
this tendency of growing apart and decide to light up the spark again, the
relationship (or marriage) may find itself on its feet again. They only need to
agree to grow and evolve together.
Bonface Morris.
