This year has brought with it a string of firsts for me. I got my very own first car, thank you mum and dad, and I'm in my first pandemic( well at least the first one I'm old enough to understand). I also experienced my first heartbreak. I know what you're thinking; “She's only 20, what does she know about love?” But please hear me out. I had it all planned out. My college sweetheart,Tanaka, and I were going to graduate, get married and move back to Zimbabwe to start our family. Did I mention we were going to have two beautiful girls, Mayamiko and Tariro? In retrospect, I may have gotten ahead of myself but hey a girl can dream! We dated for about a year and some months. I think it's safe to say he was my first love. I won't bore you with the details of how we met and magically fell in love, we were at the same college and eventually became friends turned lovers. Like most relationships, we had our ups and downs but we were happy for the most part . Our university is small so basically everyone knows everyone's business. Most knew of our relationship but many did not approve. Of course this was discouraging but it brought us closer together. I mean it was us against the world right? Now to introduce you to every girlfriend's nightmare, his female best friend. I may not speak for all girlfriends out there but I definitely speak for many. He had a female best friend who I will call Jessica. Jessica and Tanaka were in the same class. They had been best friends even before I knew Tanaka. Like any good friend she was always there when he needed her support, a little too much actually if you ask me. She was friendly and polite to me and I to her but if I'm to be honest I never really liked her. I couldn't help but feel she was a little too close for comfort, but she was just being the doting best friend right? Now back to my love story for lack of a better name really. About 10 months into the relationship I went to Russia for a three month student exchange programme. It was one of the most exciting and challenging experiences of my life yet! Between me trying to settle into a new environment and the different time zones communication between Tanaka and I dwindled. Daily phone calls turned into daily text messages that turned into weekly text messages at most. We grew apart in the three months I was away. When I came back we tried to pick up from where we had left off. Of course with us now together in the same place our relationship improved but things did not go back to the way they were before. Shortly after I came back from Russia schools were closed and we all went home because of the coronavirus. I have to admit I was a little relieved to be getting some time off school. I thought it would be our chance to patch things up without the pressures of school. Boy was I wrong! For one we started online school which is busier and a lot less fun than it sounds. We did try to text and call as much as possible but the conversations were often brief and perfunctory. His birthday was coming up in the next three weeks and this time I was going to go all out. I figured maybe a grand gesture would help reassure him that I still cared about him and I wanted us to work things out. Being in quarantine meant there wasn't much I could do so I decided to draw him a large portrait of his favourite picture of us. After all my drawing skills are quite good, if I do say so myself. The portrait was coming along great until one afternoon while I was working on it I received a call from Tanaka. “Hey there!” I answered excitedly. “ Hi,I have something I'd like to tell you.”Tanaka said. “ Jessica and I are now dating. I didn't want you to find out from someone else.” I immediately hung up and switched off my phone. I just sat and stared at the unfinished portrait for what felt like an eternity. So many thoughts raced through my mind. When did they start dating? Were they secretly in love the whole time? I felt so betrayed. It was in this moment I realised my heart was broken. I wish I could say I am completely over how things turned out but I'd be lying. Of course some days are better than others but I'll just have to take it one day at a time. More often than not I find myself daydreaming about what used to be. I still have many unanswered questions that sometimes keep me up late at night. I must say I have a new found understanding of Alicia Keys' ‘Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart'. I always thought it was a beautiful song but now it goes deeper, it echoes the sentiments of my heart. I never finished the portrait, I don't think I ever will. I have decided to look at Tanaka and I's story the way I look at the portrait. Though unfinished it still is beautiful.

I thought he was the first person who could see me, but he was just the first person to speak about me with any authority. Told me he knew what I wanted more than I knew myself. He made me feel like a girl in a rock song, sugar turning to something poison. He loved to be the thing that poisoned me. He always said that. I told myself I wanted to be a good friend, but really I would have done anything for a boy to like me. When I looked outside of myself I knew that I was valid and worthy and good. I got straight A's and I was the newspaper editor and I was a cheerleader and I had enough friends that I wasn't totally alone. But I craved. Everything was happening to anybody but me and I was born with this big dumb body five sizes too big and if I could have skinned myself like a carrot I would have. There was not an inch of myself that I did not hate, did not want to hack off piece by piece until I was a bloody mess with a heartbeat humming a Taylor Swift song. By the 8th or 9th grade I realized everyone was sick of hearing me call myself fat and so I stopped. I did not give the feeling a language and kept it deep in a hollow inside myself. Would walk past a mirror and pinch my skin—arm, face, elbow, hand, it didn't matter—and wish it would be gone. Fall asleep at night trying to put my face on a skinny girl's body. Night after night I could never make the image make sense. I would have to start over, shave off piece by piece until I got a version of myself I could live with. Wonder how many pounds it would take to do that, and always assume it must be a thousand. Feel trapped in this stupid flesh that I never even signed up to inhabit. Never ask to borrow my friends' clothes, because it will not fit, and then I will die. So when a boy with black hair and brown eyes and a smile like it knew my secrets wanted to touch my heaving earthquake body how could I ever say no to that? It did not matter if he would leave me waiting for hours or if he would pick fights or sometimes call me things like a dumb slut stupid whore just it admit you know you are one. Because sometimes he would press his forehead against mine and trace his fingers against every inch of me. I want you so bad he would whisper with his hands full of my skin and for a moment, gasping, I would believe him.

“Why didn't you run away?” the interviewer sat with her hands placed together in front of her as she waited for the response. “I wanted to, so badly. I honestly never left because financially I was to scared to be on my own. For me, if I had ran away I would have cut all ties to them. So financially it was my only choice. Then I turned 18 and started to work. At that time I was told to help with paying bills and slowly they were placed on me entirely. I was pretty much coaxed into staying for as long as I did.” she nodded and continued her question “When did you decide to leave?” “Actually, all the way up to now they've stayed with me. 4 years ago I bought my house and they moved in behind me. Since our childhood we've made peace with how we were raised and the things we've been through. I don't hold any resentment and we live peacefully now. I'm mostly on the road so I rarely see them but when I do we have quality family time.” the blonde smiled “That's very sweet of you, I'm happy you were able to find your peace. Romantically, is that something that has happened in your life?” Melanie laughed “I was wondering when that question was going to come up. My love life has actually been getting better. There's some ups and downs but over all quite interesting.” a shocked look graced the interviewers face “Please do tell. We're all quite interested in hearing about your adventures.” Melanie gave a small smile and nodded. “It's not much, I've only had two past relationships they ended pretty quickly because we could never see emotionally eye to eye. There was one that wanted to much from me, and there was one that wanted very little. In the end, I ended with neither. Then when I had made peace with living alone and just focusing on my career, he showed up.” “I see, so are we allowed to meet the one who has melted the Ice Princess' heart?” “I've never understood how that nickname came to be. I would love to out my relationship, but that needs to be discussed by us. For right now there's no hurry.” “Aww, well I wish you two all the best and we're actually coming to a close but one last question tell us how was it that you two met? We understand not being able to tell us who he is but how about a how?” Melanie let out another laugh and conceded “Okay, okay, I'll give a short detail how we met.” She adjusted herself more comfortably. Smiling back at her interviewer she thought back to the moment that she met him. “A year ago today actually. I was out of the country doing a series of projects. At that time I was working on a series and a movie. I had a meeting with the producers, I believe it was during the day. that I had to visit before going back to the hotel. I walked in and there's people running around and just busy with their work. So as I was walking in he was walking out and we bumped into each other. Of course I recognized him but he obviously didn't know me. At least that's what I thought. We excuse ourselves and went our way. Well the Producer that wanted to work with me had introduced me to the ‘actors'.” She paused and looked behind the interviewer. He was standing there, with a smile on his face as he reminisced the day they met, the day that had ignited the love that he feels towards Melanie. She smiled and looked back at the person in front of her. “They walk in and there walks in the one person I would never have thought to work with ever, at least in this lifetime.” Melanie looks back towards him standing on the sidelines with a smile still adorning his face “That day I met the man who would show me how to love.”

The Princess & The Guy She Thought Was A Prince When I was a little girl I thought the world of my dad. I thought he was the best. He told me I was a princess, and that one day I'd meet a prince. And I believed him. Then I was in middle school and going through puberty I fell in love with a boy named Robbie. I thought he was my prince, and we were going to be married and high school sweethearts. Then I found out what a cheater is. I didn't date him. I don't even think he knew I existed, but when I told my best friend Taylor that I had a crush on him she filled me on his character. She said he was her boyfriend once upon a time, and that he cheated on her by kissing another girl! I wanted to stop liking him right then and there. I wanted to be that strong female character that didn't need to be in love, or have a boyfriend to feel important. Later after much heartbreak, I'd become her, but at the time I still wanted to be Robbie's girlfriend. So the next year when we had classes together, and the year after when we were still in some of the same classes I swooned over him day and night. Eventually, by what seemed like a miracle we got each other's numbers. I stayed up late into the night texting him and proclaiming my love for him. He had a girlfriend though. He told me he wasn't going to break up with her. When I found out I stopped texting him for a while, but then we just started our romantic texting affair up again. To be so young and in love, it's hard to say no to desire and what could be. From the age 12-16, I spent endless nights describing to Robbi how our lives would be if we 're together. But he never told me he loved me, and he told me his mother would never let him be with someone like me. Then as fate would have it I was getting ready for a school dance at my hairdressers. She asked me what lucky guy was taking me and I said, nobody. She asked me if there was anyone on my mind that I might hope would ask me to dance. In the back of my head, the only name I could think of was, “Robbi.” I said his name out loud. His full name. It felt so good to be able to say his name since for so long I felt I had to keep my feelings secret. Taylor had already stopped talking to me by now because of my persistent pursuit to be with him. Everyone who knew about our seemingly secret of texting each other over the years told me not to pursue him. Even guys I thought were Robbie's friends told he wasn't worth it… Anyways, I told my hairdresser and she enlightened me on basically why he was never going to be the man I wanted. Why he was never going to proclaim his love for me. She told me the story of his mother and father. You see Robbie's parents were divorced. I knew this already, but I never knew why. Once upon a time Robbie's mother and father were school sweethearts. His mother wasn't the overweight women who said didn't want us together. Once she was skinny and one of the most sought after girls in the school. His father married her, and they had twins. Robbie and his sister Elena. Then they had his other sister. But then something awful happened. Robbie's father cheated on his mother! He then left her and never spent another moment with his children. At this moment something just clicked inside me. All the years of trying to get Robbie to love me, but him telling me his mother would never allow it. All the times he told me had a girlfriend. The times he sent me just looks, but never actually spoke to me in public. It all made sense. He was broken inside. His mother was broken inside too and projecting her fear onto him. And in return, he refused to believe in us. It all made sense. It wasn't the fateful answer sent from the universe and told through the voice of my hairdresser that I wanted to hear, but it was the one I needed to hear. I didn't try to pursue Robbie after that. Many years later we reconnected on Facebook and I still haven't told him why I think he never asked me to be his girlfriend. Instead, we just chatted about how far our lives have come. I have a daughter named Love and he's off being a drummer in bands and traveling the world. He's had a lot of chances to declare his love for me, but I don't think he ever was in love with me, to be honest, and I don't think he ever will be. I have someone in my life now he didn't waste one second and still doesn't telling me how much he loves me every single day. He loves my daughter, and he can't wait to be married to me. I know I was young then and so was Robbie, but if he hasn't figured out how great I am by now he never will. And for that reason alone I'm glad we never dated and were not fated for each other forever. I'm at peace knowing that I'm loved and respected every single day. I wish him the best and anyone who finds themselves temporarily attached to him. This story is for all women and young women out there who have loved and lost. For it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. The End