Gone, but not forgotten

Dear Otero;

I have taken time off the politics of this country to relive my love life. I have always asked myself what my chances have been with this thing called love. I won’t dwell on my ability to love, or on the love I have for my mother Lucia, or my father, Daniel Kasela. I won’t in any way question the love I have for my siblings, Fred, Justus or Grace or even my grandma. But I still have issues with my love life and the people I have rubbed shoulders with in the name of love, a love that we all believe transcends parental love.

My first encounter with this kind of love came about some years ago, eight years ago to be exact. Back then, when I come to think of it, it wasn’t really hard to fall in love since I, and many of my peers, never knew how it felt to be in love. We just joined in the bandwagon and proclaimed ourselves to be seriously in love! All you needed back then was a fine tongue and a conviction that you were mature enough to win a girl to occasionally steal kisses at. All my relationships at, and before, that time were purely platonic. I can’t remember a single time when I got intimate with any of those I claimed to be in love with.

So when I got to campus two years later, I was grappling with a discovery that love extended beyond those platonic kisses and hugs behind the church during ‘keshas’. I discovered that to win a woman who was considerably mature and at her natural threshold of losing her virginity was quite a tall order.  However I came to realize that I was gifted with a natural charm, a gift that coupled with my theories about relationships came in handy. This is what led me to this one lady I would live to remember. She is the lady who taught me that the best one can get out of love is a broken heart.

I can’t quite well remember how we met but I can vividly recall the place of our meeting. It was at the registration arena at the university where we had gathered as new students for some sort of orientation. Afterwards I began to pursue her, in my imaginations and dreams.  It was about two months later that I picked enough courage to approach her about my feelings. I didn’t get the shock of being rejected but still I didn’t get the relief that comes with being accepted.

When I sit back and recall that period in my love life, I am left wondering what I could have done to fully and correctly understand womenfolk. What followed was a string of false hope, and love. It was a period when I felt loved but still unwanted. There existed a large vacuum in my heart and could feel the emptiness it brought. I never understood any bit of it until that night I got myself drunk enough at Columbano Bar and confronted myself in front of a large mirror at the washrooms. I stood before the large mirrors and spoke to myself…”you still don’t understand it boy, do you? Throw the emptiness in your arms out into that space we breath; maybe birds will feel the air thinning as they fly deeper into themselves…” I sobered up and went home that night and wrote, ‘Parting is just but, nothing’ in my diary.

I could not, at that time, comprehend what really came over me at the washrooms. Perhaps it was the effect of the beer, but, looking at it much later, I came to realize that something was working me up in my sub-consciousness, something that enabled me to gather the remaining bits of my love and move on without necessarily having to wait for my walking papers to be signed. For once I was gone, but not forgotten. That experience had laid a foundation block for something else, some strong bond of love that I could only compare with the way I felt toward my siblings.