22 February 2014.

Drew was in my house again, I keep telling him to go away. He’s determined to help. He can’t help me; I’m fading away, losing pieces of myself every passing day.

“How do you feel, what do you feel?” he wants to understand.

I feel love. Her love. I still feel it. It’s why I hurt so much.

It makes me remember.

How I found love.

I fell in love with her husky voice over the phone.

I fell in love with her mind. How she could dream, how she was so excited about the world. I loved to hear her talk of all the things she wanted to do, all what she wanted to be, all the things she wanted to see, all the places she wanted to go.

“The world is so beautiful”, she would always say.

The world was beautiful to me through her eyes. She was the beauty in which I saw the world. She was where my world existed. The kind of life I wanted to live.

I loved to hear her talk excessively, about the most random things. I loved her small talk, how she would babble and laugh at her own silliness. She was simple, she was refreshing, and she was a free spirit.

I hated the days she was sad, how she hated seeing the children on the streets begging, I would see the pictures through her words. Children, naked with protruding bellies, rough hair, dirty skinned with hungry yellow pleading eyes. She wanted to do so much to help them.

“You can’t just save everyone”, I used to tell her.

But she was stubborn. I loved that. We argued a lot, and then laughed. It felt so good to know I couldn’t control her, that she was not like the other girls who never had their own minds and agreed to anything.

I fell in love with her distress when she confessed finally about having feelings for me. I found her confusion adorable, she was never confused. This was her first relationship.

I felt accomplished. She was mine and I didn’t deserve her. I mean she was endlessly fascinating and I was hopelessly boring.

I remember how I used to rant about how I hated love, how it was not for me, how I understood how the world worked and how having those feelings for another person was unnecessary and stressful.

I’m smiling now. I don’t think the same way anymore.

She was my nothing and my everything.

I still listen to her voice notes just to drown in her voice.

“So you’re in love?” Drew says answering his own question with another question.

He tries you know. I pity him sometimes. How he has to deal with my silence. He comes over to make conversations with himself and leaves. He gets me food that I don’t eat. I’m here waiting for him to give up on me like she did.

I just wanted her to try, fight, to show me that our love was worth something. She says I don’t understand. Maybe I don’t. What did I know, I am a French man living in Barbados and she is an Ibo girl living in Nigeria.

And her wedding was yesterday.