The thing about crushes is that they sneak up on you. One minute you are minding your own business, lighting the charcoal jiko after your mother came back home from work only to find dinner preparations not yet started and gave you an earful, when someone’s son passes in front of you. You behold them with your eyes. Your heart begins to beat a little faster. You forget to inhale for a second and your throat dries a little. The tip of your nose gets warm. You forget what to do with your hands; instead of fanning the embers of the fire to light the stove, you fan yourself. You are a goner. You stare at this person for what seems like minutes but really is seconds before your sensible side chimes into the charade reminding you not to stare too long and to look away. You choke a little, mostly from charcoal smoke, and catch the attention of the someone’s son passing by. He looks in your direction and smiles. There. Cupid’s arrow lands. You smile back, a pathetic and surprised ear to ear grin with your eyes popped out enough to scare anyone, including him. Then you quickly look away. It’s bad enough that your body is betraying you in this moment, forgetting how to smile. But the situation is made worse by the smoke that is now slowly chocking you since you have inhaled a little bit too much of it. And now, you are in tears, choking and coughing loudly, like an old tractor being brought to life, struggling to free your chest from torment. Many people have beautiful stories about how they encountered their first crush. I don’t. Mine is this one, where I encountered a boy I liked while choking on and smelling like charcoal smoke.
I had heard stories of my peers liking boys and doing all things that little girls do when they like little boys. It just never crossed my mind that I was also a girl, who could like a boy. Let me explain. My parents were, still are, the bible thumping Christians who swear that looking at someone of the opposite sex for longer than a minute is lust. I was warned about boys from the day I could pronounce my name and told to focus on school. Boys are bad, they said. If you like boys, you will get pregnant. I did not know what pregnancy was then, but the hushed tones with which it was spoken and the dread on people’s faces when the word ‘pregnant’ was floated in conversation, convinced me that being pregnant was not something I wanted. I had purged boys from my mind. Until this boy walked in front of my mother’s compound while I was lighting a charcoal stove and smiled at me.
That evening, I was asking my brother how well he knew our neighbours in an attempt to fish for any clues about my new found interest. You see, this was new territory for me. My mother had recently got employment in a new town and moved us out to said town to live with her. My brother was first, then I followed immediately after finishing my KCPE examinations. It was also new territory in that this was the first boy I ever liked. You can imagine the sheer excitement I felt when I learnt that this boy was good friends with my brother. I knew his name before I knew it was his name. My brother dropped several names in conversation and I picked one, telling myself that it had to be his, the boy I liked. I was right. His name was Kiki. And he was the subject of every journal entry I wrote then, for close to two years. This is the moment you all laugh a little, because two years is a long time for one to have a crush. But if you are a naïve, dreamy-eyed fourteen-year-old girl, from a remote county in Kenya with little to nothing other than academics going for you, and who had never liked a boy, Kiki was my world. My lonely fantasy world where I dotted the i’s on his name with love hearts.
My days were made or broken by the mere appearance of this boy. He would show up and greet me and my day was made. Nothing could stop me from smiling and humming to myself after Kiki’s greetings. I spent many afternoons and evenings on my mother’s porch watching and waiting for the boy I liked to appear and greet me. These greetings were manna from heaven, lifegiving waters, my daily bread and my hallelujah. I could not be contained on days when my brother invited Kiki over to our house for whatever boy things they wanted to do. I would hide in my bedroom, out of shyness, but leave my door open to listen to what the boys were up to in the living room. Just knowing that Kiki was present and there in my mother’s house was enough to make my heart swell with joy. I felt warm; that fuzzy warm feeling that envelopes you when the one you like is near. This crush made me suffer from temporary amnesia which caused me to barge into the living room every five minutes asking for something, anything really, including asking my brother where the TV remote control was, only for me to carry it to my bedroom while the TV remained in the living room. I got to see my crush every five minutes y’all. Haha. What more could a teenager ask for?
When Kiki visited, I cooked for my brothers willingly and without the usual fuss and fight. I made my best meals on those days. I had heard, one too many times, that they way to a man’s heart is through the stomach. I wanted to carve a path to Kiki’s heart through toasted bread and leftover tea from breakfast. The E in my name (Teresa) stands for effort. Lol. I also wore my best outfits, often hand-me-downs from my brothers – seeing as my caregivers were keen on making sure that I looked like one of the extras from Machachari TV show—and some dresses which my father, in his saintly wisdom, thought would look good on me, making me look like a poorly-clad golliwog. Despite the dearth of fashion choices, I looked my best and wore my brightest smile for this boy I liked. E is for effort, dear readers.
Kiki and I barely exchanged any more words beyond the greetings “Hi.” Yet, he ruled my world. I had so little but I built a whole present and future from it. Until the day, it all came crashing down. That is the problem with puppy love; so sweet yet so fleeting.
The day my heart and world crashed is the day I learnt that the boy I liked had a girlfriend. In my wisdom, it had not crossed my mind that this awesome handsome cool boy whom I liked could have other girls interested in him too. I was browsing my brother’s Facebook page when I chanced upon a conversation he was having with the boy I liked about a girl called Christine. In this conversation, my brother was advising Kiki to talk things out with Christine, if he liked her. The boy I liked admitted that he really liked Christine and that it would be great to talk things out. My head and heart could not compute what I was reading so I asked my brother who Christine was. This child of my mother, without hesitation, revealed to me that the boy I liked had a girlfriend, whose name was Christine. And just like that, darkness descended into my little world. Christine! Christine had ended my world. I was crashed and saddened. There was a heavy feeling, like a lump, in my chest. I could not breathe properly and my eyes were teary. I immediately retreated to my room and wept my heart out. That night, I jotted down the last ever journal entry about Kiki in my journal. It was a three-page long tirade of tears, heartbreak, insults (haha), and promises to myself to abstain from boys. From my bedroom window, I could often see clearly Kiki’s parents’ house. In fact, his bedroom was in my line of sight. The lights in his room were on. The lump in my chest was still there. How could he have his lights on when there was a lump in my chest? It doesn’t make sense, right? Yeah, that’s how I was feeling. I stared at the window of his room for close to an hour, taking momentary breaks to scribble in my journal about my breaking heart. When the lights in Kiki’s room went out, I also closed that chapter in my heart. Just like it had begun, my crush ended with me teary eyed, choking and struggling to free my chest from torment.