“Perfect, Perfect!” I rolled and turned around in my bed. Saying his name, thinking about him. I couldn’t sleep that night. The first day I saw him, my heart skipped a beat. Curious, I asked, “Who is that, what’s his name”? Gift says to me, “His name is Perfect, he is my new friend.”
As a young, naive child, I always dreamed of a fairytale life. Meet someone, fall in love, get married, then have sex. This order was important. It is how things ought to be done. It was the right way. The only way I wanted. It was my perfect plan.
It was in 2012, that I had gone for my Junior Secondary School (JSS) exams. I remember the day like it was yesterday. We had a maths class that day. I was sitting in the left-hand corner of the classroom. While writing the exam, I would occasionally look at my best friend Gift, who was sitting a few rows behind my back. Then I saw him, “The most beautiful human I had ever seen.” In that instant, I was in love. This was it, love at first sight. I was in love with a boy whose name I didn’t even know.
“Jennifer meet Perfect.” “Hey, I’m Perfect, he stretched his hand to give me a handshake. I froze for the first few seconds. “Hi, nice to meet you,” I said, giggling like a baby who was just handed its favorite candy. I felt the butterflies in my stomach instantly. That’s how I met him. My first love, my perfect.
There is something about the innocence of our love that I can’t describe. It felt right. We would talk over the day sometimes deep into the night. We checked on each other randomly throughout the day. We talked about each other when we were with other people. We had plans for the future together (even though we were so young). We prayed for each other together and apart. We laughed, we cried, we sang, we danced. Our love was naïve yet informed. Childish yet mature. We were madly in love with each other.
As we grew older, our innocence gradually washed away. We became more aware that society expects us to be intimate (not because it’s what we wanted but because it is the ADULT thing to do in a relationship). We became blinded by people’s opinions of our relationships. “What? You haven’t had sex? You are not in a relationship then.” We became blinded by sin and consumed by the desires of the flesh. And slowly, what was once a “perfect” relationship became not so perfect.
That was 10 years ago.
My love for Perfect was pure, innocent, untainted. I find it funny when I hear people say they need ‘sex’ to form a deeper connection with someone. We were never intimate but believe me when I say that was the most in love I had been in my entire life. So many years later and I still have never felt love like the one I had with him. I believe the reason is that I crave the innocence of that relationship. This is almost impossible to find today. But why? When did abstinence turn into a taboo? Something never to be discussed, something to be ashamed of. What happened to me? What happened to us? What happened to society?
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