My Nysc Entanglement Taught Me A Hard Lesson

I met Kola a few months after graduating from school. He worked in the Agric company firm close to my Nysc Local government at Ikeja, Lagos State.

In every way, he was my exact type on paper. 

To say I was attracted to him at first meeting would be an understatement. 

We went out as friends a couple of times and then it turned out he was also attracted to me physically.

We decided to pursue our interests without putting a label on it.

We had established a great routine. We would meet up every Friday and I would spend the weekend with him at home.

We would spend the weekend cooking, making love and talking about our dreams.

We never put a name on what we had, we both just knew that we loved to spend time with each other. Or at least I did.

The first time I knew that my feelings were more than just physical attraction was when he traveled to his village for his Grandma’s burial.

He spent about 2 weeks in his village. Prior to him leaving, we had not spent more than 3 days away from each other. 

All the white I had been convinced my attraction to him was mainly physical, however, after his 2 week trip, I realized I was falling in love with him.

I remember holding my breath for him to come back. When he eventually did, I couldn’t help but ask him the cliche  popular question which I had sworn never to ask a guy.

“Kola, what are we?”

His response to me at the time was that we were just having fun and enjoying each other’s company. He told me we did not have to put a name or label on it as long as we were both spending time with each other and enjoying the company..

At the time, I did not know that there was a name for our situation.

 An entanglement.

I had gotten entangled with Kola and as much as I tried I couldn’t untangle myself.

Because I was scared to lose what we had, I agreed to just “go with the flow” even though I wanted more.

I pretended and tried to drown out my feelings for him and it worked for a while until one evening when I couldn’t stomach them anymore.

Kola had picked me up that Friday evening and during the ride he told me he had met someone. He said it was serious. Way more serious than what we both shared.

He asked me if it was okay if we curtailed the time we spent together so that he could focus more on his new love interest. I swallowed my hurt and nodded yes to him.

Because our relationship was complicated and never defined, I had no other option than to oblige him.

I eventually couldn’t deal with having him around me knowing that he wasn’t truly mine, so I deliberately drifted away from him.

It took me more than 12 months to get over this entanglement, it hurt way more than any real relationship that I had ever been in.

It’s been 3 years since we drifted apart and getting entangled with Kola is still one of the top  decisions I regret making.

It took a toll on my mental and self confidence.

My advice to young people out there would be to always withdraw yourselves from complicated situations that are not defined except you have the emotional capability to handle them.