In bed, tucked under the duvet, you can feel the onset of the flu. Splitting headaches, sore throat, incoherent thoughts... signs that in no time, if you don't pay attention and do the needful, you'd fall sick.
The room is pitch black, except for the illumination of your phone's screen. But for once the darkness doesn't bother you. You're more concerned about the deep dark void threatening to overwhelm you, to numb your senses. You're a slave to these moods and you'd wonder if you'd ever completely overcome them. You're happy one minute and ridiculously down the next. Your life is a fucking circus, a crazy rollercoaster ride. But it's okay, you've come this far, you'd survive.
You're six months into this year long volunteer program. Soon the monthly payment allowances would stop, and you'd have to find a more permanent job. For the most part, this doesn't bother you, It'd all work out, you say. It has to come together. But on other days, you're highly doubtful, how would it work out? When exactly would it work out? And most importantly, what if it doesn't work out?
You no longer think of him, at least not as often as you used to. He used to help with the moods, helped alleviate them. Used to make you laugh. Used to make your days brighter simply by appearing in them. One time, when the both of you hadn't spoken for a few days, you'd buzzed him and joked about how he'd left you at the mercy of your demons when he knew they ever only listened to him. And he'd laughed. You had both laughed.
Two days was too long to go without speaking then, but it's been months now since you last spoke. In the first months, you had been plagued by disbelief, refused to get out of bed, refused to let anyone in because you were certain he'd come back. He always did. And when he didn't, anger slowly set in. How dare he leave you when he knew you already had abandonment issues? He knew you were terrified of losing people, of people walking out of your life just like the one who birthed you did a long time ago, yet he left.
With time, the anger left too, and reality slowly set in. He was no longer there, no longer on the other end of the phone by 2am in the morning. No longer present when you woke up. He was gone, just like that, no farewell note, no nothing. And the pain would set in, ravaging at first, threatening to tear you apart, and then reducing to a dull ache after a while. The pain was still there, an ever present ache, you're almost certain the shock of it would never leave. You'd be buddies with it forever.
But you no longer miss him in that insane way. You've learnt to stop making excuses for him. You've learnt that it wasn't circumstances, or the new job which made him busy all the time, or anything else for that matter. He left becuase he wanted to, he chose to. And some days you tell yourself that you loved him as hard as you could, so it couldn't have been you. And even if it was, he still didn't stay and tell you about it and try to work it out, so it really doesn't even matter anymore. You stop thinking that it's because you're broken. You stop seeing only the broken version of yourself in people's eyes. You are whole. It wasn't you. It wasn't you.
But this cold, this cold won't go away. Even burrowed under the covers as you are, it still somehow finds you. You'd need to get medicine. So you buzz Ahmed, tell him to get drugs for you on his way back from work. "I'm coming down with the flu," you say.
He shows up at your door with a small nylon bag full of drugs.
"Don't worry, I told the consultant all about you, how you are really just a smallie," he says as he takes the pack of Farm Fresh yogurt he's bought and pours some of it into a glass. "A smallie with no stamina, falling sick up and down," he continues, smiling, his eyes teasing as he settles at the edge of your bed.
"I. Am. Not. A. Smallie," you say grinning, taking the glass.
"Oya na, show me. Show me how badass you are and get well before I return tomorrow," he says. And this time he brushes your hair away from your face.
You are grateful for it, grateful for him, for his easy friendship. How it gives everything, demanding nothing. And if one day he left too, you'd be fine. You'd be fine, because you're whole, alone, and you've finally come to realise it.
Oluwatoyin