I am not a scientist but I know for a fact that the longer you've been single and the longer you stay on a particular job, the higher the likelihood that you fall in love with someone you see at work everyday, whether the person is a colleague, or a customer, or even be the delivery man.
In April 2013 I was involved in setting up a prosthetics and orthotics patient care centre in Lagos, Nigeria. I had a major task of building a rehabilitation team that will be responsible enough to carter for the needs of our patients. On the course of searching for my team members I met some awesome people.
Emeka (from eastern Nigeria), a young guru in Spinal and Lower limb Orthotics, Funmi (from western Nigeria) a beautifully skilled Upper Limb and Paediatric Prosthetist and specialist in Cosmetic Restoration on prostheses. Amanda was a specially trained Physiotherapist on pre and post prosthetic and orthotic care, I am from the south of Nigeria and these people made me a great team. Amanda was my favorite, her intelligence was my attraction and naturally allowed myself to pair with her while Emeka was with Funmi. We were always attending to patients in these pairs and we were always achieving positive patient outcomes.
It wouldn’t be less interesting if I should say that Amanda was not only my partner within the work environment, it extended to our personal lives. Amanda lived about 2km away from me, when I got my first car I made it a routine driving through Amanda’s house going and returning from work together. Within the first week of this routine our friendship had a new direction.
I can remember a Wednesday morning with heavy downpour, the roads of Lagos were flooded, there was heavy traffic congestion and I really needed to pick up Amanda to work. I stopped by her house and she was waiting for me on her veranda looking so beautiful with her newly braided hair. She didn’t have an umbrella and she didn’t want even a raindrop on her new hairdo; but I had an oversized raincoat, I stepped out of the car to her veranda, held her very close to my body while we both walked through the rain to the car. This few seconds “rain-walk” ignited a lot of emotions that left me speechless and unable to start any conversation.
We drove through the traffic to work for about an hour without saying anything to ourselves but only listening to the stereo. I was so bored and uneasy at work till about 5:30pm when Amanda knocked on my office to tell me “I am ready, are you?” I jumped off and was set to go with her. I couldn’t still say something while driving back home. This was strange to me. My emotions were tensed and I was confused and lost in words. Later that night she sent me a whatsapp message with a video link on “7 steps to start a conversation with anyone.”
I wish everyone reading this post spend some time on this video, I can’t quantify how useful this could be for you and creating new relationships, but I will say that this helped me create a great relationship with Amanda. She was open with everything I wanted to know, we fell in love, we were best partners at work but we couldn’t outrightly show that we were dating because we believed it wasn’t ideal for colleagues in the same workplace to date. We kept it coded.
As we grew older in the relationship Amanda started having some health crises. She was always having seizures and at this time I got so much involved in her life. The emotions kept burning day after day. I fell in love with her the more but she was showing me some Aries characteristics (I can take care of myself). She pretended like she was emotionally numb, she pretended like she wasn’t sure I was truly in love with her, but I pushed on with my acts of goodwill to convince her that I truly loved her. At this point she became emotionally sensitive and fell deeply in love with me. We were great mates for about a year and 6 months. At some points the seizures became very frequent, the company advised her to resign on health grounds and she did. About a month after her resignation she told me she wants to go see her mum in Abuja, I dropped her off at the airport and expected her to inform me that she landed safely but she didn’t. I called and called day after day but no response. I was scared until I got an email that read:
“Hello Dear, I hope this email meets you in good spirit. Please forgive me that I didn’t keep in touch. The truth is, I did not know what to tell you to let me go, you’ve been my best friend, my best colleague and you have shown me greater love than any other man will show me: you’ve always been there for me making me enjoy being a baby, Udeme. I am madly in love with you but I don’t deserve you, I have a congenital sickness called Hormone Imbalance, this has been the reason for my seizures. I had been this way since I was born and I don’t see me getting better anytime soon. Even if I make it, I cannot bear a child, no one will employ a woman in this state of health. Because I love you, I have to leave so you find a suitable and healthy person for yourself. I will be on my own and I will never forget you. Please forgive and let go of me but don’t forget me”.
I haven’t replied to this email since 14 June 2016, but I read it everyday. I hope to respond to it someday but I’m sure it’s not going to be anytime soon. I have moved on already, I have been in an interesting relationship with this military girl and we hope to take it to the altar anytime soon.
All names have been changed to conceal people’s identities.