Dear diary

Like most hopeless romantics, I kept a diary till I was about twenty-one. I guess I stopped writing in it because I got stuck in the reality that I was no longer a child and my life had truly begun. In a desperate bid to remind Tunji of all the reasons we had to get back together, I dug out my diary and went straight to the part where I met him.

It was the summer I turned seventeen. Our fathers had both invested in a business transaction and soon their boardroom meetings turned into drinks at their mutual members’ only club and that quickly evolved into dinners with the family. Tunji was way at college and so I met his parents and brother before I met him.

When he came home that summer, my mother was throwing herself a lavish party for no reason and so Tunji had come with his family.

My first impression of him had been that he was a complete and utter snob and also that he was HOT! He was dressed like the typical American college boy with his baggy jeans, lumberjack shirt and Timberland boots. I had tried so hard to get his attention but he had totally ignored me and seemed completely smitten by my slightly older cousin, Jumoke.

After the party, I had gone up to my room and written about him in my diary. As I read that particular entry, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I had insulted him so much in my entry; from the shape of his head, to his outfit, to the way he had eaten his chicken and to how his American accent was obviously exaggerated.

Back then I had thought I didn’t like him but as I read the entry I realised that I was confused about the fact that I was attracted to him. We had a moment though, I was to take a picture with him and my cousin and as my cousin rushed to her purse to add on an extra coat of her garish black lipstick (which had seemed hot back then) the photographer had taken some shots of just the two of us. We both looked awkward in the picture but when we started dating about a year later, I removed one of the pictures from the party photo album and taped it to the diary page of the day I first met him.

I got emotional looking at the picture and I knew that if I wanted him to melt, I had to remind him of how far we had come and how much we would be throwing away if we decided to indeed go our separate ways.

I carefully removed the picture from my diary because I had a bright idea!