OF FIRST LOVE AND BROKEN HEARTS

I was ready for earthly love. At least that's what  i thought. It came to me in the person of Mitch who I met as he ate his lunch, at Almond Resort in Garissa. I had known Mitch virtually through a late best friend and had a crash on him since girlhood. I thought him breathtakingly cute, but to him I was only a girl hanging on the fringes and nothing passed between us except "just checking on you" emails.

But when we met that day, at lunch, he was going through a proposal for a project he was working on then, and the chemistry was instantaneous. This was the first time he had ever noticed me and to me it was like being in love with Mike Macharia and suddenly one day he turns around and goes, "Well, hi". I could not believe that he was asking me out. I could not believe it when he said he loved me. I could not believe that he said to my brother, "Your sister's my girl." It was very, very heady.


Grown up, Mitch was light with deep brown eyes(like mine), symmetrical, flexible features and muscular. He was very kind to the eye. He was strikingly masculine and bright and wild and exciting. Exuding self-confidence, certain that the world would be his. He had the air of a Kenyan Luo man which was so irresistible to me because it was so exotic to me, so forbidden. His sense of fashion was heavy and spitting in the eyes of society.

Everything we did together was an adventure, things that appeared glamorous to me because I had never been allowed to do them-like kissing, going out clubbing on a crazy night. But we spent most of our time together operating from my house, along Ngong Road, walking the streets, going to Choices(Baricho Road) on Thursdays to join the zoo of humanity that gathered to hear the quality live band music. We sat for hours holding hands in beatnik coffee houses and strolled the line of paintings during Art fairs. We both appreciated history, culture and art, making The Kenya Archives and the Nairobi gallery favorite hang-outs.

But mostly we talked. Mitch was a mechanical engineer and a would-be writer and pursuing a degree in history-and the first boy who ever assumed I had read books and understood them and could talk about them knowledgeably. We discussed how profoundly misunderstood we were and talked with fervor about our futures, about the possibility of getting married, about my legal and IT careers and his own life. Being a writer, he was burning with intensity, suffering deeply from his sensitivity to every nuance of life. Such free-floating angst was quite appealing to me because I could be the comforter-consoling a major Kenyan engineer-writer.

With him came unshakable security, warmth, comfort, culture and complete understanding of living with the arts-everything i ached to be part of and what he seemed very much part of.

. He saw me through my bed rests, supported through my chemo sessions. With him came a ‘forever’.

It was after the doctor’s prognosis that all started going wrong. Yes, apparently I didn’t have long to live, which has turned out wrong. We fought constantly, which for a while added to the excitement of the romance. He was volatile; I was volatile. He was dramatic; I was way dramatic. He didn’t know when to shut up; neither did I. There were incredible highs, and incredible lows. After our second huge fight, he came to me and said, "i wrote an elegy" and I was way impressed. He wrote another after our third big fight and then our fourth. Eventually, he had a two volume set. He made Lord Byron look like a slacker.

He was my first sexual experience and I was not ready for it emotionally, could not handle the excruciating intensity laced with guilt. I needed a confidante I could ask, 'Am I doing wrong?Am I doing too much?' I needed a mother, but it was unthinkable to my mother that a good girl would sleep with a boy before marriage, or even speak of sex. In my mother's lexicon bed meant a place to sleep and throw books on after a long study. I turned totally to Mitch-and there was nobody there, either. He was full of his own insecurities, consumed by his own problems, so i was left to fend for myself, lonely, confused and racked by feelings I could not control or understand-crazed with emotion.

"Honey, I need to move on," he said on the evening after my third chemo session. In his eyes i read pity and resolve.
"Oh yes you got to. But why baby, why?" I was crazy, shaking with rage, fear and rejection because he was the love of my life and I wanted him to stick it out for me even to death. He had promised! But anyway, how could I have been the love of anybody's life at that point! My life was in pieces. I had given myself to him totally and now I had to take back myself totally. This was the end forever and ever. I would never see him again. I had to build a new life and only some day-perhaps-would another man be possible.

But ultimately, I was smart enough to tell myself, "I've got to get out of this too". I had learnt how all-encompassing, how exciting the first love is-and there is nothing else like it. But I had also learned the flip-side-how painful it is, how devastating, how exhausting emotionally. If you love the wrong person, there is a point where you must walk away, no matter what it does to you.

I knew that I had to be strong and stable to survive both the cancer and the break-up, knew that we could not continue on that emotional binge, and if we were to get off it, I would have to capitulate and give up everything. I knew that eventually there would be other women and I would end up frustrated and used and discarded. But I also knew that the physical attraction between us was so intense, so overwhelming, I could not resist him.

"Take it easy," he said, his voice maddeningly calm. "You don't understand Lizzy. You will heal with time." If there was something my mother taught me so well, it was learning to let go.

So I sit down next to him. It was a pinnacle of romance, knowing that was the last of him I was seeing. I took his hand in both of mine and said, "You're not leaving me. We are locked together."
"I loved you Lizzy," he said, not withdrawing his hand. All the while am thinking, this is Roheo and Juliet. And he is probably writing a love article to me in his head. This is big time.......

LIFE AFTER CANCER

Doesn't the world owe me some kind of parade or fireworks show? that in itself would be enough first down payment towards compensating for my troubles. That was my last day of breast cancer treatment. It left me feeling disoriented like someone who had just fallen off a flight of stairs. I seriously did not know which way was up or what road i was to take next. Instead of my healing gratitude leaving me happy and content, I was miserable and depressed. So I walk out of the radio room past the hallway into the oncology waiting room and out into the parking lot, all the while wondering how i was to deal with life after cancer.

I had never worked for something so hard, let alone something so anti-climactic! World, I would appreciate unicorns or some talking horses..just something!
"hey lovely.." came a tentative voice behind. I turned around to a beautiful young woman with flawless skin.quite some sight to behold. Yes dear, I am quite straight-at least to the best of my emotional knowledge. All the while am thinking ..you better be selling unicorns! "....you look like you just had a chemo.."

All i did was nod affirmatively, checking whether with her were some bottles of ionized water or mineral juice for sale. I am slowly starting to believe in miracles you know.

"Should it feel this bad...I mean, should chemotherapy hurt this bad?" She continued, looking at me like she needed some reassurance. My eyes were a reflection of her own- they read depression and desperation.

"Sweetheart, it feels like I have been beat everywhere. Yeah, I have just been run over by a truck.it's difficult to breath. But that is pretty much all there is to the feeling." In her eyes I saw a desperation that mirrored my own -- not for relief from pain, but for the comfort of reassurance. She could deal with the pain if only she knew it was the right kind of pain. So I told her. Her face immediately relaxed. As she turned to go back into the oncology waiting room, she thanked me for confirming the one thing she needed to know at that moment-that she was normal!I climbed into the car, smiled at Mitch, and waited for the joy that was certain to follow -- after so many disappointments, the day had finally arrived. I'd be able to walk unaided; I'd be able to breathe. Strangers would stop addressing me as "madam".

Instead of joy, I spent the next 47 minutes crying effortlessly on Mitch's shoulder.That was when I knew: I'd lost it. What person with even a shred of understanding would act this way? Who responds to the conclusion of an active fight against death with increasing levels of depression, anxiety and grief? Well... I did.

Looking back now, I wish someone had been there to answer that question for me in the coming days and months. Is this normal? Am I losing my mind? How can I be grateful and yet still be so miserable? I didn't know what a panic attack was, how to deal with my own angry outbursts or the inability to remember my boyfriend's name. I didn't know how hard it would be to get out of bed every day, or that I'd count the minutes until my next fake bathroom trip so my classmates and coworkers wouldn't see me cry. The resentment I felt every time someone introduced me as "a miracle." How to wade through the guilt of my own survival as friend after friend passed away. Above all, the sheer exhaustion of alienation, of no longer belonging in my own skin, of building a new self while mourning the loss of the life I had loved and wanted.

A friend came over to my room yesterday. Yes i live in some hostel. No one at her new job knows about the three surgeries and chemo that concluded two weeks ago. Her coworkers complain about the lackadaisical attitude of the IT staff; she weeps in her car during lunch break. They don't know she's bald; she doesn't know how she's going to make it through the next hour. She feels like a horrible person for thinking people don't know how easy they have it.

"My family and friends talk about what an inspiration I am. They claim some kind of responsibility for getting me through this because they said a prayer and sent a mass email. But I cry myself to sleep every night. I can't stop crying. It's over, but it isn't over."

So before she could ask, I told her. I don't know if it's supposed to hurt this bad, but sometimes it does. If anyone tells you otherwise, just go ahead and assume the universe has bribed them with unicorns, fireworks, and a brand new brain.

Breast cancer somehow prepared me for ovarian cancer. Am glad. Yes, you heard me, I am.