Let a bird fly away, if it really belongs to you, it will come back.
Thats an african proverb. It doesn't sound as impressive as it would if said in its vernacular language. The straight translation is that when you keep birds, dont chain them, let them fly free. Sooner or later they will find their way back home. If they don't come back, then it simply means that they do not really belong to you and there is no need to be sad about that. That is the literal meaning.
Applied to life, it means that if your partner wants to leave for whatever reason, then let them go. If it was trully meant to be, they will find their way back to you. If they dont, then they do not belong to you.
Funny, how when something does not apply to you, you dont really think about it. I have never thought in this manner before although if a girlfriend came to me and cried about a broken heart, I think I have used the saying and I cant count the number of times that I have heard it said to me. But it was just that, some African saying which had some kind of sense and could be used to comfort yourself and/or others when the going got tough.
Where am I going with this?
Well, I had a little birdy once. Long before I started going through the struggles that have been recorded on this blog. I was 21, he was 25. My first 'real' boyfriend. I put real in inverted comas coz I had a boyfriend before that. One I had had since I was sixteen and we had been planning to marry in future. We did everything together except have sex, times were much simpler then. But somehow as we grew up and I went on to university and he didn't, we grew apart until finally we went our separate ways. But not this new guy, he was older, working, more worldly than I ever dreamed of being and I was smitten. We were together until I was 24 and fresh out of college. I was already thinking marriage but it seems he had other things on his mind.
The 'other things' turned out to be a baby, no, not a baby but a little girl. One day, I called him and a woman answered and said she was his baby mama and they were about to get married! My heart was shuttered. I cried so much I thought that I would shrivel up and die. Turned out that they were not getting married as the woman made me believe. But he confirmed that he did indeed have a child. He swore that he had not cheated on me but the baby had been born during the course of our relationship. I didnt care that it was conceived and the relationship ended before he met me, she had been born whilst he was with me and for three long years, he had kept this secret from me. Why?
With all the righteousness of the wronged, I broke up with him and for the next five years did my best to avoid any contact with him whatsoever. I had gotten a job out of town and it was a relief that I was away as this meant that I didnt run into him as I did not want to see him. I got myself a hot new boyfriend who did not last nine months and we were through. And I realise that that has been some sort of a trend, I have had a few boyfriends since then, all of them short relationships. Somehow, a part of me had withdrawn, keeping these new men at bay lest they too hurt me. Could that be the reason, that the longest relationship that I have had since then was the one for nine months? Maybe, I am searching too deep for answers where there are none.
And then what should happen? My 'bird' comes chirping back. After five years, he comes back saying he loves and wants us to get married! Just like that. And what does he expect me to do, jump for joy and say yay, am here, take me!? My first instinct was to throw him out the door and forget about him. But instead what do I do? I listen when he talks, I just smile when he says he loves and misses me. I haven't taken him back but I haven't thrown him out either. And worse, I am thinking about his proposal as evidenced by this lenghthy blog!
And truth be told, I miss him. I dont know if its because I feel that there are no decent man any more as I have been involved with strange men since we split up or because I really do love him and believe in the bird theory. I ask myself, why has he come back to me after so long? Did he roam the world and realised that I was the One? Or does he think that I am stupid and will take him back no matter what he does to me? Granted, he did try to be friends through it all. But I constantly pushed away the hand of friendship that he offered me through the years. And now here he is! Has my bird come back to me? What do I stand to gain or lose should I take him back?
On the good part, this is someone that I desperately loved and to be honest, he still has a soft spot in my heart and probably always will. It will be so much easier to pick up where we left off. As long as we talk it out and set up some kind of ground rules to never have such big secrets again. I have no problem with him having a child. What i do have a problem with is him not having told me about it. And I definitly have a problem with his baby mama who is still bitter that she got a raw deal when she fell pregnant and the man was not willing to marry her. And can I really blame her for feeling the way she does? And frankly, like it or not, man woman relations are always a struggle for power, he came back to me and that gives me the upper hand in all this.... the inner devil in me likes that.
On the other hand, there is a part of me that will always wonder if he did not cheat on me. He swears that he did not. That he wanted to tell me but was scared of losing me and with time, it became more and more difficult to tell me until finally the decision was taken out of his hands when he had had to take the baby to the hospital and the woman seized his phone and answered when I called. Oh, this is so difficult for me. I love him but there is a part of me that feels that I am a fool for believing him.
We have grown up, the both of us. He is now 33 while i am a woman of 29 who has seen her fair share of the world. Three years ago, I didn't even want to be his friend on facebook. When he forwarded me a funny email, I told him to stop. Thats how mad I was. Has age mellowed me? Has age shown him that if you love someone then you should try to work it out?
What to do?
Did my bird come back to me?
Or am i just a sucker for love?
Or maybe it has nothing to do with love at all. Maybe after what I have seen and been through in the past 5 years since I left school, could it be that I would rather be with the devil that I know than one i dont know....?
