Edosewele's script

“You do not own the person or thing that you love?”

How can I understand this, and what does it even mean? When you love someone, is it to say that, despite their flaws, you still do? Or that your love cannot change? Which ownership does it refer to—our souls, or the physicality of our being?

If love and affection can change, what is it that can keep one in a relationship longer, till the end? Is it that we marry undeveloped people? And if we do, how can we tell the difference between who is developed or not when our eyes are coated in the thick grease of love?

Although it plays a big part, love is not the actual presence of the other, but the awareness of each other’s minds within the other. I am here and you are here, yet we are not the same; but we are present to represent the other in each one’s mind. Do I find, for myself, in you, the belonging I search for? Does it reside in you?

Every year, and maybe some months here and there, we listen to people talk and educate us on meeting the soon-to-be love of our lives, yet we are still getting it wrong. Are the people who are getting it wrong just exhausted from all the energy it takes to get it right, or are they simply lost in what it is they want or are looking for? Even with that, we still do not know. But I must say, dear cheats and cheatresses, you are really making it hard for us to tell the difference. After all, some of them do believe themselves to be in love with those they cheat with. But is that love as well? When they come out in style to drink champagne and shake their bums after the vows are exchanged, do we celebrate and wish them happiness, or do we relish the momentary pleasure and await the gossip of their expected separation?

I am beginning to think, as I see people get divorced and live such loveless marriages, about what I can and should do to acquire a life full of love and goodness—about what is important, and, amidst the thousands of suggestions, who is simply spouting nonsense.

It is all exhausting, I tell you—hearing of such separations and divorce, and still having the audacity to wish for something soulful for yourself. It is as though you have been told to go to an island with the little information that it has a beach and that you will enjoy yourself, so you do not know of the limb-collecting creatures in the sea or the poisonous plants you must not touch. It is all an essence of bewilderment, this love we all seem to long for, we all seem to crave. But I do want to love and receive love, and although I desire such things for myself, there is no guarantee that it will end up that way. So I am thinking to work on myself first, to improve myself and my values to the utmost quality, so that I am ready to be a good person—a proper version of myself that I shall never be ashamed of—so that when I meet this magical someone, they shall meet me as I am.

I tell my friend that it is a matter of percentage between flaw and affection, and as I listen, I ask myself, “A matter of percentage? Girl, how do you know that? Have you been married?” I laugh; wistful imaginations cloud my mind, hungry for wild manifestations.