Assistant girlfriend episode 6

One time, I read Steve Harvey’s ‘Act like a lady, Think like a Man’ and determined I would ask Jack some of the pertinent questions raised but I never got around to doing it. Somewhere along the line, I’d become really terrified of losing him that I wallowed in silence instead of asking him questions like, ‘what he really felt for me as different from what he liked about me?’ The question seemed needy and I didn’t want to appear to be that. Only problem was, that was exactly what I was.
By the end of first semester, i was busy with getting my IT placement, and Richard was getting worse. Although his surgery had been successful, he hadn’t fully recovered. His parents spent a lot of money on his treatment, they went to churches and we held special prayers for him at the fellowship too. I always had to cheer him up because his illness was beginning to get the better of him. I couldn’t dare bring up my relationship to him because it reminded him of what he would never do. Get into a love relationship with a girl. He was just twenty-two but had barely lived.

Richard had been born with an inherited Glycogen storage disease which had been misdiagnosed for a long time until it led to Cirrhosis. He had grown up with so much pain and limitations, it was difficult to be a normal child. But despite it all, at twenty-two, he was undergoing pre-degree to study medicine and was determined to become a medical doctor.
Maybe it was his strong fighting spirit that influenced me but like him I was determined to never give up. People said love was painful and indeed I was becoming familiar with pain. The pain that came with sacrificing your everything for someone who didn’t seem to ever acknowledge or appreciate it in kind. Sure, he had the sweet words to make you feel loved but his actions seemed to be the opposite. Just like Lai Mohammed and telling the truth ran on parallel lines that was how different Jack’s words were from his deeds.
Like the time I splurged thousands on him to get him an expensive gift on his birthday but I hadn’t received even a call on mine because we were not on talking terms then. When we eventually made up, he blamed it on me for getting him riled up.
Maybe all our problems were only in my head, but i knew things were not right between us, yet I couldn’t let go because I was determined to have him love me back.
That determination became my prison.