Do you remember when you were younger, how KBC and KTN were full of Telenovelas?  That all you day-dreamed about as you watched them was when you’d be old enough to fall in love the way the heroines did with the handsome hacienda owners.

You knew before there was a happily ever after, they would have to be some intrigues and possibly an evil seductress who would try to whisk your love away. She’d probably do that by using some type of amnesia, or by replacing you with an evil twin, or maybe by faking your death. It would definitely have to be something cinematic. Point is, is that you knew that there would have to be the struggle before the ultimate triumph.

Then in a two-hour special, your life would be neatly tied up in a pretty bow, complete with a large white wedding to your true love. At his hacienda, no doubt.

Yes. That’s precisely what you expected to happen. And all before you were 30.

Well, you finally got older and amid your dating misadventures (as some would call them, lol) you meet this guy. Let’s call him Tom. So you meet Tom and you’re sure that he’s The One. It’s long-distance. He lives and works in a town that’s three hours away but that’s okay. That’s your huddle. The struggle you have to overcome before you can get your happily ever after. You can make it work. Phone calls become the lifeline of the relationship and thank goodness you were born a talker! You know that meme of a couple talking on the phone, and one of them ends up pitched on top of the fridge, or hanging from the doorframe? That’s you.

The relationship survives on the shared plan that he’ll soon move to Nairobi. Right off the bat you knew you were not his first love, even though he was yours. You pretend that this doesn’t hurt, but it does. When he finally tells you he loves you, your heart sings but then your brain pops it’s wiggly ugly self into the song and reminds you that you’re not the first recipient of these words.

It’s a year down the line and the fresh blush of love has worn off. It fills you with perpetual anxiety that he may feel the same and you picture an imaginary axe, suspended over the delicate thread connecting you both.

You travel down to the coast together to attend a close friend’s wedding that first December, and tell yourself that it is very modern that you are each paying your way. You’ll share a bed, but you know that he’s very serious about celibacy. You will not take it personally.

For some peculiar reason, a great part of the trip will become a blur. Your memories of the week-long holiday consists of scattered recollections.

A visit to a non-profit run by his friend where your jolliness with his friends impresses him, which in turn delights you. Later you will question yourself why you felt the need to impress him. You will have the bizarre memory of the fact that neither of you could do a ‘number two’ that entire week while the other was in the hotel room. This will become a strange barometer of intimacy for you. (You will often tell people not to laugh at that.)

You will recall a karaoke night at a beach hotel where you both sat on the sidelines but where you secretly wished that he would take up the dare you’d tossed out. “No one knows who we are. We’ll get away with massacring the song,” you’d excitedly whispered only to get a casual decline. The house band had performed a cover of Turn Your Lights Down Low and the memory of how sad and alone you felt sitting next to him at that moment would make you hate all Bob Marley songs from then on.

Sadly, you will remember very little of the actual wedding that had taken you down there. Probably because the sun was boiling and you ate so very little.

And lastly, you will remember the bus ride back to Nairobi. This was when Oxygene buses from Modern Coast had just been launched – The Jambo Jets of the time. You will remember how you were dreading reaching your destination because although the trip had left you with mixed emotions, you were too afraid of the idea that this may not be your Telenovela.

Another year rolls by, another dismal December. You’ve begun to associate December with disappointment. He’s back in town again, but this time his distant nature no longer elicits your worry and concern. It exasperates you. Tires you. Are you supposed to always feel like this?

Would you like to spend an entire day with him and his circle, he asks on Boxing day. The way you did a few months back.

“No”, you say. You’d rather not.

His circle had not been what you’d expected when you first met them. They were all polite, that’s for certain. But theirs was a closed circle. One that made you feel you were on the outside looking in. Made you feel like that one weird kid who carried egg sandwiches in primary school, wore Urkel glasses and tight knee socks.  No one wants to feel like that kid longer than they have to.

So, no, you say again. You’d prefer to meet up later in the week, you add.

There are always two sides to any story. In another version of this two-year saga, you must be the villain. The demanding, uncompromising starlet who did not want to spend time with him. The unsociable, difficult dame who no longer cared.

He doesn’t take your decision on the Boxing Day plans well. Not at all. Your refusal is taken so badly in fact that he finds all your weak spots, the ones only he knew about, and presses them. Squeezes them hard.

In a fit of anger and frustration, your wounds bleeding and blood racing, you break it off. And in a flash, your happily ever after (and hacienda I may add) turns to smoke.

You would think having been the initiator of a breakup in a relationship would help. It really didn’t.

That he does not immediately take back all the hurtful things he said wounds you further. He does not try to win back your love (don’t men watch Telenovelas for Pete’s sake?!). He doesn’t send you 772 long-stem red roses to symbolize the days he spent loving you. That’s a move you feel you would make if you had been born a man and ever messed up with my lady.  He does nothing of the kind.

Instead, you meet on the Saturday after Christmas break at the Standard Chartered near the Tom Mboya statue in town to close your joint bank account. You try to make eye contact; maybe you speak a word or two. He does not extend the same courtesy. You barely recognize him. He looks darker. Did you even know him? You relegate yourself to sitting on those benches in the banking hall (again, an innovation of the time) as he fills in the forms at a desk nearby. The bank officer points, and you sign. Your think your heart must be breaking as you hear little shards of ice falling hollowly in your chest.

Hours later, or maybe it’s minutes, it’s done and the account is closed. You may have gone dutch on the holiday, but you had never committed to saving for your future together. That must mean something. The small sum you had got round to putting in the account is pushed into your hand in a brown envelope. You look dumbly at it as he heads to the revolving door. You open your bag to put the offense thing inside and hurry out the banking hall too. You glance this way and that and finally make out his head, now merging into the sea of humanity crossing the road and heading uptown.

That’s it. That’s how it ends.

The brown envelope in your purse feels like an anvil from Looney Tunes. It’s money that once considered itself part of his. It can’t remain with you! You spend hours in retail therapy and finally settle on a tan brown jacket that is not your taste. You will never wear it. It feels fitting that the remnants of the relationship was something you didn’t like.

You go back home with one purchase and less a troubled relationship. You thought you would be happy. You are crossing over to a new year. And now, unlike the other two new year’s eves, you have a chance at a fresh start as happier, single you.

You are not happier. You were not happy in the relationship. You are not happy out of it. Maybe the problem wasn’t the relationship.

You spend months in a cloud of self-doubt. If the problem wasn’t the relationship, then surely it must be you with the problem? And so maybe he was The One, but you weren’t the heroine of the Telenovela. You toy with this idea incessantly. With yourself. To your girl friends. You alternate between deep dives into his social media pages and short-lived stints of blocking him in a fit of indignation.

Then, without even noticing, you begin to only indulge your madness once in a few days. Then just on the weekends when you’re bored and have little to do. And then eventually you go a month, cold-turkey! There should be celebratory pins for that. And just like that, life drags you by the feet back to the land of the living. Whether or not you wanted it to.

Insert a few years of dating and mishaps, then on one rainy St. Patrick’s Day you find yourself staring at love again. You hadn’t gone looking for it. Hadn’t plotted and planned on how it would happen.

You giggle to yourself later as you stand in the bathroom, getting ready to step into the shower and relive the conversation you had with the guy with the happy socks.

Your face is flushed, heart is glowing.  And then you laugh because you can hear your brain saying, “Remember when you were sure that the last was the one, and here you are. Redefining The One all over again” *

*My brain apparently speaks in Rupi Kaur’s poetry: ‘a fresh love is a gift’ in particular.