Kissing on the first date
Every year since I was born, Ebube would remind me of the need to take life as it comes and make beautiful memories. Even when you died and it seemed like my world had ended, Ebube was always there. She would remind me of how much you loved living and how much I glowed while with you because your love for living rubbed off on me. “Why, then, do you choose to go this way now that he’s gone?” she would ask. I don’t answer. I never answer because I don’t know what to say.
Love stories are beautiful. Cute couples in lovely outfits, their eyes mirroring each other as they hold their hands and give a middle finger to life. Sometimes, the videos they post on social media capture beautiful moments in their relationship, and it’s easy for the onlooker to crave that. It’s easier to crave the life you think you want than to appreciate the one you already live in. I don’t know who taught us that the future is more important than the present, but this mindset has turned us into adrenaline junkies.
So when Ebube told me on my 19th birthday that it was okay to kiss on a first date, I smiled. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I knew that the type of free, adventurous spirit it took to do that was the kind I already had. And when the guy with pretty eyes who always wore glasses asked me out on a date, I kissed him before I entered my bus. And then I looked back before he was out of sight and caught the last traces of a smile on his face. I think he liked it; I liked it, too.
Then I met you, and you redefined the meaning of love. You showed me that it was impossible to love love and not love life because life is beautiful and love makes it go round. You opened my eyes to the beauty that existed in the world, and I fell in love with both of you: you and the universe. And maybe the universe was you, and you were also the universe because when you died, I couldn’t find the universe anymore. I searched and tried to draw strength from Ebube, but I didn’t find the universe. It died with you.
But today, I went on a date with a new boy, and the knots in my chest loosened a bit. For the first time in a while, I felt my heart open up, and the world looked beautiful again. The boy is beautiful and I like him, but I didn’t kiss him even though it was our first date. When I think of him and I think of you, I do not feel guilty—I guess along the way, I have learned to let you go, and somehow, my world was getting alright. I can’t find Ebube because she was never real, and the medications I’m on for Schizophrenia chased her away, but I will never forget everything she taught me:
- Kiss on the first date if you like the person. There is this butterfly effect you get in your tummy.
- The world is beautiful in ways you can’t even begin to imagine because you’ve not seen a fraction of it.
- Your life is whatever you make of it: you alone can make it beautiful.
- It’s okay to be a flawed, perfectly imperfect mess.
- Make memories; you can do no wrong with them.
So, maybe this is how it starts. The vicious cycle of loving, losing, and repeating it. But if all I have control of to a large extent is my present, why should I spend time worrying over a future that might never come? And if I love and lose, isn’t that better than to never have been loved at all? Isn’t that the best way to live, knowing that you are a walking memoir of everyone you’ve ever known, loved, and/or lost?
