The Single Girl Diary (Part Seven)

I could not admit to my sister that she had hit the nail on the head. What then would she think of me?

I wasn’t supposed to be jealous of my twin.

I shook my head, indignant. “How could you think something like that, Taiye? What are you insinuating?”

I had come to learn the act of going on the offensive if you wanted to wriggle out of a potentially explosive situation.

But then I had forgotten that this lady was another me, we were cut out of the same cloth so she could always see through me.

I shifted my eyes from hers, uncomfortable with the way she was looking at me.

“If you say so, Kay,” she finally said. Then she opened her arms and enveloped me in a hug. “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you sis. I’ll try harder. “

And just like that I was awash with guilt. I hugged her back with fervor, resisting the urge to cry.

When I got back home that day, I found my thoughts wandering towards Biyi. What would it feel like to be loved by him? By someone again?

I knew it was wrong, to seek love without being willing to give it. But then i’d been dealt that hand before and it was only fair that I didn’t make the same mistake twice.

I didn’t want to do the loving anymore; it hadn’t paid me in the past and so I had become one of those who had given up on the idea of love.

I won’t let anyone come close. Men are supposed to be playthings because that’s how they saw and treated women. I knew I had become a cliché, one of those women who’d been hurt and cowered away from life but I really didn’t care. No one had the right to tell me anything when they hadn’t worn my shoes.

When I first propounded this theory, my friends thought I had gone crazy. Behind my back, they had called it Left At The Altar Syndrome. They didn’t know I knew what they called it and that it hurt me to hear it.

They thought it was a phase that would pass, I knew this wasn’t just a phase. This was something more; a definition of something, perhaps a definition of a new me. I also knew they won’t understand. How would they when they had love lives to be envied?

As I sat at my work table, marking the classwork i’d given my children today; my phone interrupted with its loud GodWin ringtone.

I had been promising to change that ringtone but somehow, I had grown fond of it. It gave me hope that in everything, God Win.

I froze as my eyes settled on the caller ID.

In a million years, I wouldn’t have expected this call. He had not called me once since he left me at the altar without a word. Almost two years and he hadn’t called, so why now?!

Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.