If Love Was a Drug

If love was a drug Kwabena was an addict.

Her name was Sandra. When he first met her, she was in a yellow sun dress and had applied shear butter an extra layer too thick to keep her skin from cracking under the brutal harmattan wind. She had painted her toes a light cream color that contrasted perfectly with her caramel skin.

They were in High School at the time and so she had her hair in a short afro which displayed her long neck that was lined perfectly. Her lips were thick and the coat of Vaseline she had on brought them out more. When she smiled, she revealed a tiny gap in her teeth and two perfect dimples.

The moment he met her, the trajectory of his life changed. From now on, every waking moment would be spent idolizing her, worshipping the ground upon which she walked and asking her how high when she said jump. That’s why he didn’t think twice when he turned down a scholarship to Harvard and chose instead to attend the institution set upon the Okponglo hills. His parents had wanted to get him an apartment with his friends but he chose instead to stay at a run-down hostel on campus because that way he could be close to her.

It had been almost 7 years of friendship – exhausting friendship. He had watched her date about five different guys and had been there at every breakup hoping that maybe this time she would finally see him, but each time, he felt small and invisible. She never saw him. Even after talking every night, spending birthdays together and having family dinners together, she still didn’t see him. At one time she even saw his brother but still not him.

At a point he thought perhaps it was because he was too lean. After all, her first boyfriend had been a gym junkie and he had heard her pine over Chris Hemsworth’s muscles. So, he hit the gym with a wicked ferocity till he was built like a Ghanaian Dwayne Johnson, but she still didn’t see him.

Then at another point, he thought perhaps he was too fair. He had heard her say to her friends that light-skinned men are a red flag. So, he spent ungodly hours under the sun hoping that it would give him a tan and he’d finally be dark enough for her but she still didn’t see him.

Her last boyfriend had been a public speaker and so he figured that perhaps she loved men who were in leadership, so he pushed himself to get into all the right places and took on far more responsibility than he could. His grades suffered for it but still she didn’t see him.

He landed a well-paying job at a big Tech company but when she came for the company dinner, she ended up leaving with one of his subordinates. That obviously ended badly, but she still didn’t see him.

On his way back from a 12-hour shift at work, she called. In her sweet tiny voice, she asked him to come over and help her replace a lightbulb in the living room. Her home was way out of his way and he was exhausted from a hard day’s work but he lived for her, there’s no way he would say no. Turning his car around, he made the 44-kilometer journey to his love – his addiction.

She opened the door in her comfy crocs, her tiny shorts and see-through crop top. It was hard for him to breath. A rackety stool was brought out and he stood on it to fix the light. The wobbly stool plus his tired disposition resulted in a dislocated shoulder and a trip to the Emergency Unit. A bottle of aspirin was prescribed but what the doctor really should have given was some treatment to cure Kwabena’s addiction.

Sandra felt so guilty she refused to let him uber home so he spent the night on her bed while she slept on the sofa. Kwabena felt a tinge of hope. Sandra had never really done anything kind for him but here he was spending the night on her lavender sheets. Perhaps this accident was exactly what she needed to fix her vision - to fix it finally on him.

He tossed and turned all night. For seven years he had an itch he never scratched, a weight on his chest that he never lifted; a desire he never satisfied. He felt a sudden surge of impatience and he decided then and there as the hands of the clock rested on 12 and 3, he would tell her how he felt.

Though he barely slept the entire night, he was far too scared to come out of the room and felt a pang of relief when she came in with a bowl of rice crispies because she knew it was his favorite. He caught her hand before she could leave and his eyes glanced briefly at her ring finger where soon his ring would rest.

“I need to tell you something” he croaked. She took a seat at the edge of the bed and if only he had looked at her face, perhaps he would not have poured his heart out so freely. Like a waterfall, the words began to pour forth “I love you, Sandra. I’ve loved you since the first day we met and I have waited all these years for you to finally love me too. I want to marry you and make you happy…”

The silence that followed was maddening. When he looked into her eyes, he realized that she knew. All these seven years, she knew that he loved her. All this time, it wasn’t a painful secret he was keeping, it was an unspoken knowledge they both shared. That’s when he realized that all these seven years there was no hope. She didn’t love him.

“I’m sorry” she begun. The words cut into his heart and he wished he could go back and fetch his words, but just like the waterfall becomes one with the water below, his words had mixed with the reality of the world and he could not take them back. He had given his heart out and now he had to patiently wait for her to take it and cut it to pieces like she had done for the past seven years. He felt sorry for himself.

He stood up to leave and so she spoke rapidly. “I tried. Believe me I did. I tried to see you that way, I tried to fall in love with you. I tried to picture a future with you because I almost wanted it as badly as you did but no matter how I tried I couldn’t. There are days I hated myself. Why can’t I love this amazing man? If there was a drug that could make me love you believe me, I would have taken it a long time ago. But I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” she sobbed.

For the first time in seven years, he didn’t rush to her side to console her. Though he wanted to so badly, he couldn’t. He had to preserve whatever shame he had left.

The drive home was long and bumpy and as the uber bumped up and down on the awful Accra Road, he heard the 32 aspirin pills jiggle in his pocket.

He sat at the lonely dining table by himself, looking round at the things he owned. Everything he had; he had bought with her in mind. Unconsciously he had fashioned his tastes around her. What was he without her? Without her he was just a man. What did he want in life besides her? He had no interests, no dreams, no goals or ambitions. All that was, was her and the dream of being with her. She would find the man that she would be able to love. She would find a man that she didn’t need any drug to love and he would have to sit there and watch.

He could not sit and watch that. He couldn’t. It would kill him.

He felt sorry for himself even more now because even after all he heard, he wanted her still. He loved her and if she called, he would go running. He was a pathetic addict and he was not ready to recover.

The soft pitter-patter of the rain against his windowsill brought him to reality. On his phone, she had left about 15 messages for him; each one detailing how very sorry she was and how much she cared for him as a friend. Friend. That cursed word. That word would be the death of him.

The aspirin bottle slipped out of his pocket and fell to the ground. He picked it and inspected the bottle. On the front the pharmacist had scribbled in ineligible writing “2 tablets twice daily”. He opened the bottle and poured its content into his palm.

If love was a drug, Kwabena was an addict.