To ALL THE GIRLS I'VE LOVED BEFORE (4)

"Mancee, Have I lost you? Are you going to leave me? Do you still love me?"
"I love you Rukay, but I can’t go through life constantly watching my back and wondering what next I'll unearth round the next corner..."

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So I was going to be away from school for at least 6 months-if ASUU didn’t pull anything funny out of its hat, as it would normally do.

We hugged and I promised to visit as often as I could afford to. I left with her last words ringing in my ears. "Mancee, if tomorrow, you stop loving me, please tell me immediately-don’t keep me guessing". I hugged her and left wondering where
She got the thought from; you see I entered this not even with the notion of "Let’s see how it goes", I was in with no reservations.

I remembered with a smile how on St. Valentines day, she had remarked that I seem to be more excited about the relationship than normal. I wondered what that meant- I guess she expected the famous Mancee to be a bit more aloof. lol.

Where I was in my faraway station, we would find ways of scheduling call times. She would go into the township to wait for my calls...I would queue up faithfully at the NITEL boots to faithfully make my calls to my sweetheart. (Of course this was before gsm phones became affordable for the masses).

Then gist started filtering to me - gist I thought impossible. How can my Lovely babe have such secrets? You see, in the week of our official engagement, knowing in my heart that I wanted to do this right; I had called for a "Tell-It-All" session. I encouraged her to tell me ALL about her past that I wasn’t aware of and I told her ALL of my issues, the good, the bad and the ugly. She did too, or so I thought. I told her her past wasn’t that important to me IF they were indeed her past but that we needed to know everything about each other thus ensuring deeper trust and giving each the choice to decide if he/she could live with those things. No surprises.

It all got to a head however, in the fourth month and I couldn’t intelligently ignore the unsolicited rumors anymore, so I delved into my savings for a trip back to school.

Later that night, I asked her “Rukay, is it true that...?"

After a while, she started crying saying it was true.

My heart broke.

I cried too, 'Why? Rukay why? Why did you hold this from me?’. ‘I’m sorry Mancee, I'm sorry...'. 'Rukay, I told you nothing in your past mattered to me and I so needed to trust you...why Rukay?'

"Mancee, have I lost you? Are you going to leave me? Do you still love me?"

I held her closely "I love you Rukay, but I can’t go through life constantly watching my back and wondering what next I'll unearth round the next corner...I'm sorry but I just cant. I sooo need trust and openness in any relationship.

'Mancee', she said in between sobs. 'If you don’t leave me, I promise I'll love you forever...'. My heart wept, more than my tear-macerated eyes could un-dam. But I knew I couldn’t go on...I just couldn’t...

I left next day for my station-convincing myself that it was for the best...afterall, trust was so not negotiable. I made her a promise though, that were she to hear the true gist from anywhere else, she can be sure it did not come from Mancee. That was a promise she could trust and take to the bank. And I kept it too. After all, friends keep each other's secrets. Innit?

My friends were worried about me though, seeing that when I finally did decide to foray into a real relationship I had to meet with this obstacle which I wouldn’t talk about...

My dear Rukay is since married with a kid. Of course we are still friends, of course I was invited to the wedding and of course I was there with pictures to prove it.
:-)