Unrequited What?

When I was 26, I fell in love for the first time in my life.

But that’s a story for another day.

You know what I don’t think we talk enough about?

Unrequited love.

Okay, fine. We talk and sing about it far too much.

Or maybe just enough.

But how often is it really unrequited love?

See, I think that love is knowledge.

It frustrates me when someone who’s known me for all of two days, two weeks, even two months, declares their undying love and inability to exist without me.

Meanwhile, you won’t let me have the last drumstick.

Calm your tits, son.

And then there’s Hollywood and its counterparts, seemingly convinced that knowledge is optional when it comes to love.

Reminds me – I watched The Gentleman, a Netflix show by Guy Ritchie (This is not a recommendation).

There’s a scene where Bella flies to England to see the Duke after he’s been beaten within an inch of his life. She delivers some hard news because the business relationship must continue. Then she kneels before him. I presume to get on his level, seeing as he is confined to his seat.

For context, these two have known each other for approximately three scenes. The third is a steamy one.

She tells him – and I paraphrase – that she lost her parents when she was younger, and her younger brother shortly after. But when she heard what happened to him, and thought she might lose him, she felt something she’d never felt before.

Dramatic pause.

“It was love.”

I almost regurgitated.

Ma’am.

This man you’ve met all of three times?

Spoiler alert! They proceed to get married, and she dies shortly after. See? Maybe if they’d gotten to know each other…

Anyway. By the time you call it love, surely you must know the person.

Not interview-question know.

Not “What’s your love language?” know.

I mean know know.

You’ve spent hours together. You’ve seen each other in different rooms, around different people, in different moods.

You’ve seen each other tired. Irritated. Generous. Petty. Funny. Boring.

You’ve seen them at work, kissing up to their boss.

You’ve seen them help you through a flat tyre.

You’ve seen them when they ran out of money.

They’ve seen you when your hormones are staging a coup.

And not when you successfully maintained composure like the princess you are.

I mean when you went completely feral.

You’ve seen them in Nairobi traffic.

For me, whom the gods granted precisely zero patience, no one should tell me they love me until they’ve seen me in Nairobi traffic.

I literally hollered the other day. At no one in particular. Just a gut-wrenching scream from the sheer and utter frustration of watching my life pass me by in traffic.

Basically you’ve lived enough life together to actually know each other.

And then, after all that, you realise that whatever is happening inside you, isn’t happening inside them.

That to me, is unrequited love.

Everything else?

Unrequited crush.

Unrequited desire.

Unrequited infatuation.

Unrequited foolishness, maybe.

But I fell in love for the first time at 26, so what do I know.

All of this to conclude that this thing inside of me may be many things.

What it surely is not, is love.

This story also lives on Substack. Read it there ↗

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