I was showered with the blessings of a real man from conception.
This man gave me his time, his money and most of all his love, that when I grow older, I would want nothing from any man.
This man taught me to walk, to read, to speak and to respect.
He taught me not to fear but conquer,
He taught me to discuss and not to argue,
He taught me to think before speaking.
This man was my first love.
After many years of thorough teachings, the training wheels were removed and I was thrown into the wild to put my teachings to practice. With every daring challenge, I rose after every fall much stronger than before. As I placed one foot after the other, I found myself walking into uncharted waters and discovering unspoken realities.
With every challenge, my father’s principles applied until the day I fell…
I fell so deep and so hard, I had to search so hard and so deep in hopes to find even the barest glimpse of a past lesson from my old man.
After looking through the archives of my mind, I searched within the repository of my heart, but there was nothing on the topic, “falling in love”.
This was new, this was strange.
This was real, in fact surreal.
I had met with an unrecognized, undiagnosed feeling. This feeling was like no other. It was not a crush!
I had a series of those before.
It was more real, intensely intoxicating, unparalleled to even the most euphoric memories. This feeling sent me back to my knowledge archive, where I placed this emotion and titled it ‘unlabeled’.
I became sad.
It seemed that I had been caught off guard.
I, Independence.
I, who had it all under control. I had been caught off guard. After deliberating over this emotion and thinking up solutions to what I considered a problem, it hit me. Dad never discussed the possibilities of this happening to me, not because he forgot, but because he wanted to remain my love. In realizing the depth of love and fear of losing me to another man, I called him up to discuss ‘unlabeled’.
He was shy. My dad was shy.
As I carried through the conversation, he stopped me half way and for the first time in twenty years, he said, “ask your mum”.
Off to my mum, I buggered off. Seeking solutions, in hopes of an easy manual. To my surprise, ‘all things love’ had multiple facets, with in-depth analysis. Love was nothing like success, power, wealth, knowledge, respect or anything I had studied in the past. Upon completion of her teachings, the summary was “Love IS love”.
Was she kidding me? There was no solution? But simply to love?
To overcome, I learnt to let myself go, pants up, heart open.
I opened up to what could have been the better years of my life.
I allowed him in.
He was a new man. A different man.
I opened up to a complete stranger, simply because he took me off balance.
I invested time in knowing him. I was eager to learn of him.
He made me weak.
I wanted to give him everything but I remembered mum’s teachings on saving the best till the papers were signed, so I gave him my heart…60% of it, whatever that meant.
Mum had said not to give him my whole heart so if he were to break it, it wouldn’t hurt as much. At the time she got to that chapter of her lesson, I had given up 80% of my heart so I kept going and counted that chapter as a lesson lost.
It felt good to be in love. So I thought…
What I didn’t know was that this man felt nothing. He was not in love. He was not crazed. I, Independent had called kindness, “love”.
Realizing my emotions were misplaced, I went back into my knowledge archive, retrieved my file, ‘unlabeled’ and accurately titled it, “kryptonite”.
Unlike other lessons, “Kryptonite” was the toughest to learn.
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Guest Author Bio
Dami Ajilore
Dami is the Creative Director of the website, dudunorth.com. She began writing at a young age but did not discover her passion for writing until she started her blog on ‘love’ in 2010. In 2011, she exposed herself to writing on other topics, which is when her blog, Dudunorth was born. Dudunorth is centered around encouraging Africans in the Diaspora to achieve more and become better. Learn more about Dami and her blog posts by visiting her website.
Blog / Website: http://dudunorth.com/
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