She Fell and Broke Her Heart

shikungigi

I’m in bed. I have tried to sleep. I have really tried. It’s 00:54. I am tired. My legs feel worn out. I was trying to ice-skate. My cousin’s idea. I got into bed at 9 sth. Took on Taken 3. Liked it. Cried a little. Embarked on using a bit of my night bundle then decided to sleep. Wapi?

The cock is croaking now. No, we don’t call it croaking. Somehow I thought they go together. It’s crowing. I might be going crazy. Or maybe it’s all the thinking I should be processing that I’ve decided to forget about that is haunting me. I honestly don’t know what’s up. M-Pesa is apparently undergoing maintenance, so I can’t top up and text. I can’t watch something else. What am I? A couch potato? No. So I’ll do the only thing remaining. I’ll tell us all a story. It goes like this:

There was a girl. That girl had friends she kept very close. New friends. Old friends. Sometimes she tried to imagine…

And then sleep showed up. So I am continuing the story today.

Here’s the thing. I have a story. A story about a girl. A girl we will call Ann mostly because I have forgotten her name. My memory can be something else these days. What I know is that she was not a very flamboyant girl. For one, she could not bring herself to wear makeup, let alone stand in front of the mirror doing anything but combing her short hair. She seemed to be living the life. She had a great network of friends who challenged to be better than herself. Her job was as challenging as they come but still allowing her to breathe after 5. She had acquired one of those tiny vehicles that ladies love, those tiny vehicles that seem to only be comfortable for one lean individual. That’s another thing about her I remember. She was pretty slim, slimmer than Slim Possible ever makes anyone. Every weekday, she’d drive her little car out from under her little apartment and cruise the highway to work. Sometimes, she would stop by a bigger vehicle in which a couple was riding, either talking or quietly doing their own stuff. Mostly the latter. She’d wish there was someone beside her too.

She believed in relationships. Relationships seemed to work out for everyone around her. Everyone except herself. Believing and being are too different things. So, it’s safe to say that she was living the life except that one tiny aspect.

His name was Ian. Ian stepped into Ann’s life when she least expected it. When she was sure she would only meet someone in her thirties. When she was focusing on her marketing career. She had given up on her expectations, thought they would be easier met when she was older. When he was older wherever he was, whoever he was. Ian made her think. Made her question whether she was right. She always thought she was right before she met him. A man that gave her brain a jog was welcome any day. He went full throttle, right from the day he announced his intentions. They met at a concert, though they had “known” each other for a while by name. You know how you know someone but don’t know them? Like the way you have 1000 friends on Facebook? Like that. They were Facebook friends because someone knew someone who knew someone who happened to have Ann on the “People You May Know” list and clicked send request. The cycle went on until Ian sent the request. Ann accepted it almost immediately back then. I mean, back then, you accepted anyone’s friend request. There was nothing else to do other than accept friend requests from faceless people on Facebook and poke them for days on end. Before social media was a catchphrase. Anyway, where were we?

Ann, Ian. He was romantic. He was into surprising her. She was into surprises. He wanted to listen to her. She wanted to treat him, pay the bills sometimes. He was completely against the idea at first but eventually warmed up to it. He always had a plan for the weekend. He respected boundaries. Yeah, Ann was one of those “boundaries” ladies. And he understood. Plus for Ian, right? Ann’s network of friends wanted to meet him, to know the guy that broke his way into Ann’s heart and stole it. Pffft. Who says such lines anymore? Anyway, Ann was not sure he stole her heart or her mind. She’d always believed that love was not a feeling but a decision. (I might agree with her on that. Story for another day.) Anyway, days flew, marriage became the new joke that Ian played around with every once in a while in conversation. She laughed it off. Always. She was not getting married before she was 30. That much had not changed.

What was she waiting for exactly? A bell? Certainty? Was Ian the one? Was there any such thing as the one? Would there be a point of certainty ever? Of course not. She knew that. I know that. We all know that. Even the consultancy firm she was going to start in one year, after she knew what she was doing, was not going to be out of certainty. It was going to be a risk. The only problem is that she had trust issues. She had serious trust issues. She was happy with Ian, yes. She thought she trusted him, yes. She fell for him and became vulnerable because she had a high level of trust in him. Until it happened. The news broke her heart into tiny little pieces and she made a decision right there and then. He broke it to her. That was a relief. She would rather he tell her than some random person. At least he was being open with her. A little later than ideal but open all the same. He had lost his job. A month before he told her. Why? He misappropriated funds, a little at a time, covering up the evidence and the bosses found out eventually. He did not want to tell her because he did not want to make her worry.

Make me worry?” she thought “How about you don’t steal in the first place? What happened to the man I thought I could trust with my life? Is the gorgeous bracelet on my hand right now a result of this theft? Do I even know you?

Because she was nice girl who did not like hurting people’s feelings in return, she acted like she had not made a decision. Only that she had but she was not going to tell him at that point. She expressed her disappointment, her shock. But that was it. She was going to wait. She was going to pray. She was going to simmer down. She was going to erupt alone. She was going to discover the meaning of insomnia. (I had a little taste of what that feels like when I started writing this.) She was going to drop the bomb when she gathered the guts to do so. Was she going to give Ian a second chance? Would she move on and hope that another Mr was going to show up in a few years? Could she ever trust Ian ever again? What is trust anyway? Could she rebuild it?

End of Chapter 1.

She Fell and Broke Her Heart

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