I'm Just a Real Lover Girl

I saw a tweet oomf made about being a real lover girl and I promised myself that that’s what I’ll write about in this newsletter. So hello, get comfortable and let me break down to you what it is like being a real lover girl who is a hopeless romantic.

I love love. I breathe it, embody it, live it. Not just the romantic one, but the familial, the platonic, the one that Jesus asked that we show to our neighbours. All of it. Love drives me, builds me, heals me, breaks me, tortures me, drives me fucking insane. It is the most beautiful thing in the world and it will probably be what kills me. I realised this about myself a long time ago and it has led to a very turbulent dating life or as Ibukun calls it “Grey’s Anatomy”.

When I meet people with romantic intent, I always let them know I am a hopeless romantic. The majority of them lie and say they can handle it, but I am always grateful to the honest ones who say they can’t. First hurdle to cross as a real lover girl is hearing someone describe you as “too much”. Now, the ones who can’t handle it hurt for a bit, but the ones who say they can? It hurts for a lifetime. Why? Because when people say they can handle it, they usually mean they say they do not mind the affection you show to them. They adore the gifts, the notes, the letters, the grand gestures, and the fact that you move the moon to their doorstep if they should require extra light at night. However, they do mind the hints. They mind the fact that being with you forces them to look into themselves. They hate the conversations you have to have and the fact that romance is a two-way street. Do you know what that means for you? It means you suffer. It means you spend so much time never actually getting what you want. You love with intensity and you have high hopes for the people who claim to love you too but you suffer because your expectations are never met and they “do not have the capacity to love you like that”.

Now here’s the thing. You never leave. You know that it is not what you want completely but for you love means you have hope. It means meeting them where they are and hoping they meet you in return, but the problem is they never meet you there. It’s like when your Uber driver takes the wrong turn and suddenly your 30-minute drive becomes 3 hours and then they drop you on the side of the road so you can book another ride because it is getting late. That is what it is. It leaves you paranoid, uncomfortable, exposed and lost. So your heart is broken and you do suffer part two.

Being heartbroken as a real lover girl is like losing yourself. Someone had returned all the love you had given to them and you have no idea where to keep it. You spend the majority of your time looking for what to do with it. You throw yourself into something to forget it or to at least make your days easier. Everyone asks you to move on and heal and get over it, but walahi they must be big fools because they must think you enjoy the pain you are going through. It is like someone is punching the air out of you. With time it gets easier but when you lose your love you become shortsighted. You can only see that which is in front of you. It’s not like you’re even seeing it well o, but it’s the only way. It is dishonest to say heartbreaks cannot kill because I have died with every breakup, but I am Lazarus and my friends are Jesus and I come back. Every fucking time I come back.

Then you fall in love with someone again and you pray to all the gods on Earth and the God in heaven. You pray for something different, a miracle of some sort. You pray that this is the one that saves you and allows for you to rest because your heart is fragile and she cannot go through that which she has done before. Will you be cautious about it though? Hell no. You only know how to love in a way that is all. You do not do halves, you do not reduce or shrink your love to fit a box. It is a wide expanse of land and it stretches past continents. So you give your all again and hope because love is hopeful.

It is a vicious and terrible cycle. I remember when T said to me “I cannot have my heart outside of my chest” when they told me why they did not want children and I am applying it here. Your heart is so important and easily damaged and being a lover girl means you are constantly walking around with it outside of your chest. There are no barriers or guards for it. It is free. Love is free.

Do you know what makes all of this funnier? Whenever I meet people, they go on to find the love of their lives after. I see them apply the communication techniques I taught them and treat that person how I begged for. You then realise that you taught them how to have standards and to desire good things. You showed them that love exists in the world and they had gone on to find it with someone else. Love teaches and you have taught, but fuck does it hurt. Then you wonder if there is something wrong with you and you hurt a little extra. There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfectly and wonderfully made by God. In Greek mythology, there is a ferryman that takes all souls to the afterlife. You give him a coin and he drops your ass there and goes on to the next person. He takes people to a treasure he himself does not partake of and that is sometimes how it feels to be a real lover girl. You help people find themselves so they can be with other people. AH. Yet people wonder why I am insane?

A long time ago, I concluded that the kind of love I desire does not exist in this world, but I cannot exist without love so I take what I can get. I do not have expectations and I do not ask for anything other than for you to just let me love you, because if I do not love someone I can die. I try to tell myself that the reason I hurt before was because I expected so much and was given so little and now I just manage my expectations and rest. It is much easier for me that way. My new favourite motto is “I will not ask for more than what you can give” because I am truly not in the mood to go down those crazy ridiculous paths again. When they leave and want to start something. I was on the phone with T when we both concluded “there are no more real lovers out there”, and that is how I have decided to live my life. It is unfortunate that lover girls don’t find other lover girls and live a happy lover life, but we move. Their dads.

I am sure the way I have chosen to cope is not healthy. Heck, my best friend, Chids is constantly asking me to have some self-worth and pick myself from the floor and I am trying. I am doing it in small doses. I am sure I have not yet met all the people that will love me and it sounds like I am giving up on love at the age of 22. I am not. I will and can never give up on love. Love is evermore. However, I am refusing to date anybody who is not a real lover like me. I will love you, enjoy you, share you, write you into corners of my life but I will not put myself through all of those things again. It is the hope that kills and so I have killed mine first. I have no hope, but I have love in abundance.

Well, that’s all the time we have now folks. I am signing off from my dining table in Arigbajo, Ogun state. My kid has an assignment waiting for me, but I needed to write this newsletter first.

Past Lives (Movie)

I love movies that make me forget they are movies. This one is one of them. It reached into my soul and twisted my chest and I cried for help from God and man. See, I watched it a long time ago but I think now is the time to share it with you because it fits the context. As a real lover, I wan murd. Finding a love that is comfortable and simple, that fits the life that you have now and then the Universe throws to you the love that taught your heart how to beat? YE.

This is why I am a polyamory advocate o. If all of them were non-monogamous she would have just been with both instead of the emotional rollercoaster my heart was put through. I love the framing of the movie. How almost every shot felt like you were an observer. It was intense and my chest was doing gbim gbim. Watch it, love it, feel it.