PAPER TOWNS

I ran out of his room crying, clutching my mitumba high heels. It was well past midnight. It was insecure outside, but the inside of his self-contained room taunted me. The feeling of home had been replaced by silence and the cold grip of shallow reasoning and hostility. I has sold myself short, and  I was afraid.

I loved him…but I had to ran save me from myself. I had to run for my ever failing heart that forgot all the torture and hurt it had grown through, I had let him in again. The last time, I had made up my mind,but my heart was undecided. Blame it on the woman nature. As I ran,I swore never to go back again but deep down I knew it was the emotion talking. I convinced myself that this time was different the same way I convinced myself the last time.

***

love is such a beautiful thing, but just like roses it has its own thorns. Young love was the best thing that happened to me . It made me feel at home when home was a wreck and all I wanted was peace. Being loved by this young man meant so much to me that I held on to it like the last breath. Being a part of my life made more sense to  me than most things had in my entire life. I was young, I was foolish, but the one thing I was so certain in my life, being with him was beyond the limits  of perfection.

His name was Brian. There was something about him that I could never discern. he had so much charm to him than most men have in their entire life. His charm did things to me; that  that ever composed self could never comprehend. I loved the way he touched me and the meaning he gave to every single touch. I loved every time he smiled at me because my mind would drift to utopia of how I would get babies who had his beautiful smile and how he would come home to me with the same smile.I loved it when he spoke. I would shut up and watch his pink thick lips go on and on about things that I barely knew about and matter of factly cared very little about, for instance, the way he had played FIFA with his friends what was happenning in the stock market blah blah blah…

Just like roses fade and loose all that is beautiful, so did we.  Brian said he loved me no more. He said that things had changed and he no longer felt the same as we did the first time we met. I tried to call and text him back saying that we could work things out and we could build what we had. With every desperate call, I made, the more depressed and  disappointed I became. My friends told me that I had put all my hopes and dreams together just like eggs in one basket, and now I had none. I never knew how little energy and Safaricom credit would be used to destroy so much perfection until that instance.

I loved Brian and I don’t blame him for each tear I cried, instead, I blame me because he blamed me. He said that I wasn’t good enough and no woman to his discretion, but he did no use the exact same words. He found a reason to console me and show me that I was the bad and he was the better person. He said that I was hard to speak to and I did not have people skills…in short, I was boring and irrelevant to him. He even insisted that I should read self-help books to learn how ho have a conversation naturally.  Every time he asked what was wrong with him, I told him that I loved him just as he was. I insisted that I had learnt to oversee his weaknesses and in the same way I expected him to overlook mine or rather help me through them. His excuse, however, was that he was being truthful and that he was just created to see fault in other people.

I knew that I should not be throwing in the towel, but he was doing the same. I understood that we are both people. We are a lovely mess and masterpiece all at one go. I wanted him to understand that I did not expect a man without flaws and he should not expect a woman without them. I was not about to give up because we were arguing once in a while, and I wanted him to hold on too, because in relationships worth something, there will be fights about everything. I did not expect perfection but respect and honest love.

Being boring to me, was just a cover up a story. I was just a mere PAPER TOWN to him. Every time he needed somebody to  kiss and touch my relevance came into existence. Every time we tried to make love  and it didn’t work out he said it was okay, “we will try it the next time”, simply  because he needed it but as soon as it was a success I became the bad one in bed. It was  always my fault. Nothing  I did was ever good to him I was simply never enough but good enough to always be at his disposal.Being a paper town simply meant that just like an unmapped town I was only important when it was necessary. It didn’t matter if I loved him…I was only a necessity for him.

Love is a two-way street. I should have been treated the same way he expected me to treat him. But I was convinced that he was not willing to return the treatment. I expected a breathtaking love story but too sad, I was writing it on my own. At that point, I started to believe in what the world was telling me. The signs indicated that i was unrealistic being loving and giving my all. It was all some sort of fantacy because I craved for a meaningful relationship, for having higher standards and wanting high value of friendship in my relationship.

***

This is all that went through  my mind, as waited for Gods grace to send a matatu my way. All I wanted was to be home. I had let loose  again Brian had used the same old charm to lay me  only to say  that he sought affirmation if the spark was still there. What he had enjoyed for twenty minutes would haunt me for the next twenty years since I had given it my all only to be left bare. I was shortchanged.

As I  stood there in the burning cold, I took every frostbite with courage, as a punishment for offending nature. I prayed that this was the last time. I continuously told myself that relationships end;and I could not sit there every time looking forward to a life of no heartbreak. No heartbreaks meant no lessons learnt. They end, I would cry, I would hurt, but at the end of the day, I would go on. I consoled myself that it ended simply because it was not  meant to be. It was no ones fault, and no matter what, my absence of fulfilment, my emptiness was my problem.

All this consolation made me smile at myself as I boarded the first matatu towards the city center. I knew that I would hurt and take the time to heal, but I deserved the best. A soulmate would come along eventually. One who would be thrilled to meet me and learn, love and appreciate all my perfect imperfections.  T his was the beginning of my journey from apaper town to unicorn island.