Day: January 9, 2020

Young Love

Young Love

Here’s a story. Boy meets girl in campus. Boy promises girl the world. Boy impregnates girl. Boy takes girl to his parents. Boy’s parents are ecstatic! He had been a problem child. To have found a wife for him would have been an issue…but here was Boy, with a girl. A university one nonetheless! Cause for celebration! Boy’s parents go to visit their in-laws.

Now girl’s parents have their doubts. They try asking if this is what Girl wants for herself. If she is sure. She says yes because what other option is there? Raise a bastard child in her parents’ home? That was never the plan. The plan involves escape. Freedom. She prays Boy would give her that, and leaves with him.

Boy drinks. Obviously. He has a wife and child on the way. He is a legend in his early twenties. His village friends call him “Mheshimiwa”. He might run for office. But for now, Boy enjoys being in the moment. Nothing phases him. Not his pregnant girl nor his failing grades. Not even the birth of his daughter. He will love her, without a doubt. But Girl will be in a different prison to that of raising their daughter in her parent’s home. The world Boy promised becomes the eyes of her 4-year-old daughter. She gets pregnant again.

This is a classic story, deserving of a place right up there with “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “The Notebook”. Everyone has heard this story. Most have lived it, either in the eyes of their parents, siblings or in first-hand experience. But there is usually more than what meets the eye. Boy has struggles. Girl has dreams. Sometimes they overcome and achieve whatever they wished for themselves. Other times they drown in a pit that life and circumstance dug for them.

It might be cliché that I want to write about love. You may be sitting there thinking “Well it’s about time this blog took a normal turn” just so you have the excuse to dismiss me, but I won’t have it. I want to write about love, because I love Love. It’s a curse in this day and age to have a heart that believes in people. That thinks there is someone out there who will at least come close to the famed soulmate. But after writing on alcohol all through last year, I realized one thing. People die. And yes, it might be sadistic to think this, but go with me for a minute.

Life happens once. There is no do-over, no matter how many movies have lied to you and how much people will tell you about coming back reincarnated as an animal [But, universe…a panda please, thanks]. So, yeah. We only get one chance at life. And with the way we are structured, we are born to love. However tough you want to look to the world, however much you proclaim that love is for pussies. The heart is a fragile thing. It sees what it sees and takes what it wants. So let’s write about it.

This year, I want broken hearts. I want stories of people who loved and lost through death and through society. People who believed and had their wishes washed with the waves of disappointment. I want dread of that four-letter word. I want hate, because…well, it is a thin line. I want loathing so real you see someone you once loved and want to run to Paris and bury your face in croissants and forget your sorrows in the Seine River.

I also want tough guys. Those buff ninjas who say they have never loved. I want to talk about their tender moments. To talk to men who have no fear of this word. To men who have grown from a world of nameless sexcapades to giving their hearts to one. But I also want men who loved and got broken, and then decided to get into the societal agreement of what a man is.  

I want love. Stories of people who saw each other across a room and heard the rise and fall of Ed Sheeran proclaiming the gospel to their hearts. I want movie love. To know where and when you bumped into them and how and if you knew at once they were the proverbial “ONE”. I want to hear about letters and text messages and late night phone calls.

I’m not going to lie to you. When I started writing on the first blog, I wanted to write about love. I have always written about love. Maybe it felt familiar. Maybe I wanted to write about what I knew truly existed. But then I felt I didn’t know enough. And I would have made two posts and left it at that. But doing AA last year has really put a lot into perspective. Going for what I wanted to do and actually doing it, has given me so much belief in myself. That’s why I’m doing this. You are right. It’s about time.

Tell me of how much you love your cat or your pillow, or how that one book changed your perception on fairy tales. I want pure love and the toxic kind. To hear of nights filled with shouting matches followed by tight cuddles. I want to at least hear of a love that made you forget to breathe. A love that shook you to your core. A love that you will tell your grandkids about.

I want photos of letters they wrote you and memories that bring pain in your chest. Bruised hearts, stitched back together hearts, unloved hearts. I want it all.

But I am not going to give you love stories from fairy tales. There will neither be Belle nor Cinder. I will tell of pure, raw experiences. Might throw some of mine in the mix…but…all I ask, is that you trust me with your heart the same way you trusted me with your liver in 2019. We will call this “Young Love”.

The rules are the same. You get to pick your name. Please pick something cool. Something you would have wanted to be, or do, or are trying to become. Pick something random. A cloud, a shoe, a city. I will give you the power to become whatever you have wished to be. And I will tell your story in the best possible way. I will love your love and your pain.

Sincerely, Mirawu.

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Do you have a Young Love story? Find me on Facebook (Mirawu), send me a DM on IG and Twitter(@mir_awu) or just text me On Whatsapp (+254 729288583). I will text back. We will send voice notes and memes and I will listen, without judgment.