The case of the ex

                                                      

A familiar face looked across the room towards the direction we were sitting. I was seated at a table with my brother and 5 of my cousins. ‘Is that who I really think it is?’ I asked myself. I suddenly felt strangely weird. You know that type of weird feeling you get when you bump into an ex? Yeah, that one. At least I thought I was looking half decent so ‘check’, I can tick that one off my list. I felt oddly sweaty all of a sudden and the hall that was once freezing was now very warm so I had to take off my jacket. It was Sam, my ex from college. My very first ex, the one I would call my first ‘proper’ boyfriend and the ‘ex’ who I lost my virginity to. Strange isn’t it how memories can come flooding back in a matter of seconds. Given the fact that our 5 months no wait…6 months rendezvous was 12 years ago (God I feel old), isn’t it a little bit strange to get nostalgic and start taking a trip down memory lane after such a long time? Mmm, this is one for the psychologists to analyze but back to the story…I felt…em, happy to see him. I say this reluctantly because I ‘m not single and if my boyfriend was to read this he’ll probably get the wrong end of the stick. It was a really strange feeling which hijacked (for choice of a better word) me unexpectedly.


12 years ago…we met in college he was in the class one year below mine (a very serious no no for a Nigerian girl to date a guy 1 day younger than her let alone 1 whole year). What would my parents say? Well, I don’t know because we never got past the ‘one day I’ll invite you to my house’ stage. I was 17 and you’ve probably gathered that he was 16. I won’t exactly call it real love (like what I have for my boyfriend now) but it was definitely puppy love. The kind that made my heart flutter every time he entered the room and made me so nervous I used to literally mix up my sentences. I could have meant to say something like ‘see you later’ but instead I’ll say ‘so…em...ur…I guess…maybe…I’ll see you later…you know… a bit later’. It was a complete mess, but it was completely reciprocated which made it really special. He used to do little things that made me realize he liked me too. For starters, the way he used to look at me was enough to undress me. You know that type of intense stare that makes you start wondering if you have a bogey in your nose? He would stop what he was doing when I entered a room he was in and his eyes would be on me until I leave. Remember we were teenagers so these little gestures were enough to show me he felt puppy love. He used to feel really nervous too and I remember he practically head butted me by mistake when we had our first kiss (never mind how embarrassed he felt, what about my poor head?). I was completely caught off guard when it happened because there were no signs it was coming so I didn’t even respond to his kiss. We never really officially ended our relationship …I just disappeared (yes, disappeared). After we rumbled in the sack (had sex…you must excuse my silly connotations), I started feeling he was only after one thing. In my teenage mind I just wasn’t satisfied that he wasn’t spending every other day with me (talk about suffocation) even though he had bought me a massive card on Valentines Day and planned a romantic dinner in a Chinese restaurant which cost him 70 quid!! Now for a 16 year old boy who wasn’t working, that was some serious money to come up with…it was probably his lunch money for 2 weeks…bless him. I still wasn’t happy with all this (a bit mean but hey back then I thought I deserved the world to be given to me and everything in it). After our end of year summer holiday when I traveled to the states with my mum I never called him again when I returned. I eventually went on to uni and back in those days we didn’t have mobile phones so you could only get through to people on their house phones and he was under very strict instructions never to call my house phone just in case my mum picked up (though he had the number for emergencies). My mum was quite strict and very protective of me (still is) so she could not find out I was dating a guy at 17…no way. We would have probably had one of those talks where I would be threatened with ‘I will send you back to Nigeria’. So back to Sam…I simply disappeared out of his life. I called him about a year later when I had finished my first year in uni and he wanted to know what happened to me. He told me he still had feeling for me even though he was seeing someone else and he wanted to see me but I just dismissed him as a playa (‘what do you mean you want to see me? Don’t you have a girlfriend?’), I can remember firing these questions at him then. I didn’t call him again and we haven’t seen each other since then.

Oct 2009…seeing him again after such a long time naturally brought back buried memories that I didn’t even know I still had. Trust me the brain is a very powerful thing when it’s forced to kick into gear. We did get to speak eventually for all of 2 minute when I was helping to serve food. See the event we went to was my Aunt’s wake keeping so not exactly the best place to meet or bump into people. When i walked up to him with my food tray he jokingly said ‘I know you’…smiling a bit sheepishly. We went through the usual – how I came to be attending the same wake keeping as him, where I know the family from etc etc and I made a quick exit by saying ‘nice seeing you, have to finish this’ eyeing the tray I had in my hand. He nodded saying ‘like wise’ and that was it. We didn’t get the opportunity to speak again that evening.

There was one really important thing I realized from our very short encounter, the whole hot flush thing I initially felt when I saw him was the memory transported from 12 years ago. As I’ve gotten older and matured in to a respectable young lady (em, those who know me can feel free to vouch for this), I have come to the realization that puppy love does not exist for adults. The heart fluttering, speech impaired, tongue tired feeling I used to get back in those days are strictly confined to then because of my naïve and somewhat immature state of mind. As I’ve gone through various experiences in life, those feelings have been gradually replaced by security, awareness and maturity which are of equal standing and by no means inferior to the former. Right, so what am I trying to say? Basically, the things I felt when I saw my ex were memories flooding back from my teenage years but I know for a fact they don’t exist anymore for me. So I can confidently say that it was good to see Sam but I am happy with my current boo.

C’mon you didn’t expect a sneaky rump in a dark alley did you (lol)? Have you had a funny, awkward or just weird encounter with an ex? I would love to hear it. Until next time…be good…xoxo