I DIDN'T DO IT

She was crazy. She was different from every girl that I had ever been with. She was annoyingly honest which made her seem rude or disrespectful a lot of the time. I think that was what made me fall in love with her. She was a hot head. She was a feminist. She never failed to drive her point home whenever she felt backed up in a corner about anything that involved women’s rights. She unconsciously turned me into one. She loved life; she enjoyed drinking which made me fall in love with her more since it was my favorite pass time. She was everything I taught myself to run away from - only ironically, I was in love.

Now here lay the problem, we had barely been friends for two months and I can easily say that fifty-six days out of sixty, all she did was talk about how much she hated men and how she would never want to be involved with anyone again after her experience with her ex boyfriend – but here I was, in love. I’m the type to never show restraint when it comes to showing emotions and putting my feelings out there, damn the consequences. But in this situation, I had to play things cool like the game of chess. I knew point blank that going on the offense with my feelings would out rightly push her away so I decided to come up with a plan. We were already friends so all I needed to do was maintain the friendship, keep my ear in the ground while I looked for a soft spot to penetrate. Boy, I felt like an FBI agent going on a covert mission. She was beautiful – which meant I had to literally keep my eyes in my pocket to avoid explaining why I’m staring at her and if I had to throw compliments, I needed to say it in the most profane manner. I didn’t want to give anything away. From my earlier description of her, it’s easy to tell she was very smart but you know how love works – I wanted to stop or at best reduce the usual arguments we used to always have to the barest minimum by raising the white flag each time something came up but I also didn’t want to seem weak. It was a long shot.

This went on for another two months until one day `boom`, I had found the opening I needed. We were both big fans of Naruto and other Animes and I had a lot of data on my WiFi so one weekend she asked to my house to download stuff. Midway in a mutual friend called to invite us to a barbecue party. She left her laptop at mine with the intention of coming back to get it after the party but we left there rather late so she asked me to help download whatever was left and shed pick the laptop the next day. I obliged. While downloading I decided to snoop through her files until I came across a folder that contained documents that could pass off as a diary. I thought about closing the tab but I was there already – snoop away. I opened a bottle of wine and drank it while I read through it. Most of the stuff she wrote dated back to when she was with her ex boyfriend and the events that transpired after they broke up. A lot of emotional talk that got me laughing hard until I found two recent ones. Both of them unfinished. First was over three months old – just around the same time we started talking and somehow I remember everything she said word for word;

So I just met this dude

He looks rather unkempt, beard all over the place

Oozed alcohol most of the time.

I don’t know how I feel about him

but he’s smart so we can be friends

I was shocked. I could feel my heart racing fast. Felt like I was going to have a heart attack. That was definitely me the first time we met. I mean I know my hairline is terrible and sometimes I leave my beard to grow out and it makes me look homeless – I know. But on this day I smelled nice and I was wearing this shirt I fancied a lot. I was broken for a minute. I poured a glass full of wine and drank it in a gulp. I also paused the downloads. I wasn’t having any of it. I braced myself up for the worst before I opened the second file. It wasn’t anything I could have ever imagined;

He was supposed to be just my friend

Now I find myself daydreaming about him

I see how he looks at me. I think he likes me

Maybe just as a friend

I wish it would be more than that

Oh fuck it

I shouldn’t be doing this. No no no

This isn’t the plan

Oh gosh

I think I’m in love with him but it’s pointless

He doesn’t see me that way

It’s going to get harder everyday

Seeing him and not being able to grab and kiss him hurts

At this point, I had spilled some of the wine on my bed, cleaned it up, started her download again and was jumping up and down the bed. I felt like a seventeen year old in love. I was super fucking happy. Every time I have to talk about this story or think about it, I give away a smile because it was the day that changed everything. Next day, I insisted on taking the laptop to her house as opposed to her coming over to mine. I was excited, I was nervous but I was happy. I got myself a clean cut, took out the beard, got in clean clothes and had the driver take me to hers. Did I mention she was the only child? Well she was and luckily for me she was home alone that day. Not because I planned to be naughty or do anything silly, I just wanted alone time with her to say everything Id been wanting to say for months.

I went there with a plan in my head - obviously but when she opened the door for me to come in, she didn’t seem too pleased to see me. She kept ranting about how guys were not allowed to come to hers and how mad her parents would be mad at her if they saw me there. Only reason why she allowed me come was because I was with her laptop and because she believed the lie I had earlier told her about spending the day out with the family after church when all I really wanted to do was be with her. I now had to switch from plan A to B. Problem is I was too certain about plan A, I didn’t have a plan B. My plan B now was to dance around the situation and come out on top irrespective. We sat on the L-shaped sofa in her living room and she reluctantly had conversations with me for a little over thirty minutes before asking that I leave because her parents would get back soon. I don’t know what it was that came over me, but I found myself lip locking with her. She kissed me back and thirty seconds in she backed out.

Then the room was quiet for a few seconds before she landed a deafening slap on my face. I was livid, but more determined. Felt like she slapped some Shia Labeouf into me because next thing I remember was me kissing her pressed up against the wall and it felt like heaven. Of course I had been with other people before her but it just felt good getting with someone I shared the same emotional connection with. We went on making out and messing with each other for another thirty minutes before I wrestled myself out of her strong embrace.

We sat down again and I told her everything I felt. She had this smirk on her face the whole time. She was listening and not listening because she kept leaning in for a kiss which I rebuffed and followed up with a tickle because I needed to speak these feelings into her head. She didn’t explicitly tell me she was into me and I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to tell her that I snooped through her laptop and found all the secret mushy stuff she was writing. For all I know she can deny it and say it wasn’t about me and that would send me into depression immediately - but the conversation ended in the best possible way with both us agreeing to allow things take its course and whatever happens afterwards we would accept as our fate.

We eventually started dating soon after. It wasn’t conventional, it wasn’t easy. Felt like a new learning process but we managed to grind things out. It was now time for her to go for NYSC. Her dad wanted her to serve in Lagos so that after the three week camp exercise, he would fix her in one of his companies. Of course for selfish reasons I was totally in support of her father’s decision but my girlfriend by all means wanted Abuja. She claimed to have gotten tired of Lagos and wanted a new experience outside her comfort zone. I tried to talk her out of it because I wasn’t ready to have to deal with distance. I felt it was too early and we weren’t ready to deal with the pressures that distance would throw at us but my girlfriend always gets what she wants. I eventually got tired of going back and forth on it and accepted what she wanted. Because of misunderstandings arising from this issue we didn’t talk for a week until the day she was to fly to Abuja. I decided to drive down to her house to spend some time with her before her flight. When it was time to go to the airport, she told her dad not to worry that she would rather I dropped her off.

I should mention that after we started dating she later confessed that the only reason she said her parents would be mad if they saw me at her house was because she was shy and didn’t want to have to be alone with me. So I had met the parents a few times and had even dinner a couple of times with them.

November 5th 2013 was the day she supposedly flew to Abuja. Over two years after, I still haven’t spoken to my girlfriend. Her parents claim that I kidnapped her because her name did not appear on the flight manifest. Staff at the airport confirmed seeing her walk into the departure lounge at the airport but nobody could confirm seeing her walk out. Her parents even had me locked up in the police station for many months until one day I was released and allowed to go.

Today everybody says I’m mad and that’s why they have me tied up in a psychiatric ward with mad people like you. Everybody says my story is false. They say nobody goes by the name Ooskilo Kadika – That’s my girlfriends’ name. They say we are poor in my house and we have never had a car talk less of a driver.

Do you think I’m mad? How would I know this story if I never experienced it? And nobody in my family would tell me why they brought me here. I think they are the mad ones.