The Dreaded Thirty
Weitten by Sonia Okehie
Episode 4
It gets to a point in a person’s life where they take the bull by the horn and pursue what they want out of life. In Sandra’s case, she wasn’t about to let an amazing human as ‘Dominic’ slip through her fingers. For all she knew, he was the man of her dreams and possibly her husband-to-be.
After Sandra professed her love intentions for Dominic, he was a bit shocked because it felt weird for a lady to make the first move by revealing her feelings for him. The shocked gentleman was used to the old traditional way of a man making the first move. It took a while for him to wrap his head around what Sandra said few seconds ago.
Dominic was humbled and dumbfounded but managed to say something. “You don’t mean what you just said, right?” He asked but Sandra was mute. She wasn’t able to reveal any other details concerning her feelings due to shyness. At that moment, she wished the ground could just open and swallow her up so as not to face Dominic by answering his questions. She was slightly embarrassed in herself but the deed had already been done.
There was an awkward silence in the atmosphere but Dominic had to man-up to the situation. He looked into Sandra’s shiny eyes and smiled faintly; “You are a very beautiful and attractive young lady and to be honest, I admire you alot but… I really don’t think we can be anything other than friends because I already have someone else in my life. I had a situation with a lady but we are currently working on our relationship. I don’t want to take advantage of your innocent love for me, that’s why I feel it’s right I put you straight. You will always mean a lot to me as a friend and not a lover. You are beautiful and would definitely meet the right person for you soon. Don’t feel sad and down because if I wasn’t already taken, I would have asked you out long before now. Hope this doesn’t interfere with our friendship because I’m still opened to being your friend” he calmly said.
When Dominic was done talking, Sandra felt totally empty and heartbroken but managed to act mature and comported. She smiled faintly and assured Dominic that she understood perfectly fine but deep down, she was dying within.
For some strange reason, the energy in the atmosphere suddenly become off and tensed. Dominic figured Sandra wasn’t comfortable being there anymore so he asked if she wanted to leave; of which she said “Yes”. In no time, he paid for the bills and drove her home.
When Sandra arrived at her apartment, she burst into tears. At that moment, there’s no suitable word to describe how devastated and humiliated she was feeling. The fact that she was turned down on her very first attempt of confessing her love for a man, made her more sad. It was going to take a while before Sandra completely heals from the trauma she was feeling at that moment.
As Sandra laid on the cold floor in her apartment that fateful evening, the scary thoughts of not getting married even at age 25, sent chills all over her body. The reality of being single and crossing over to age 26, slowly began to dawn on her. It wasn’t a good day for the emotionally tortured lady. Too sad!
After that day, Sandra and Dominic’s friendship began to drift apart. She began to behave weirdly around him and it affected their relationship greatly. Dominic tried his possible best to keep their friendship afloat, but it just wasn’t working out anymore. In less than two months later, they became strangers and barely kept in touch with each other.
Shortly after, life moved on and Sandra shifted her focus back to searching for a husband, but she also carried her business and job along. Amazingly, she launched other branches of her business and began to make more money than before. Gradually, her focus shifted from searching for a husband to growing her business.
It wasn’t easy for Sandra to take in the reality that she wasn’t living up to her dreams as she had originally planned all her life. It was sad and made her cry almost every night but there was nothing she could do to change her fate. Slowly and surely, life moved on.
A year passed, two, three and four years passed but Sandra’s dream had still not been fulfilled. At this time, she was now 29 years old and still unmarried. Depression has become the norm of the day for Sandra as she was mostly moody and depressed.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t any family member or friends close by to help Sandra during those tough times. She had moved out from her family house and most of her friends/cousins were already married so they were more focused on their new families. This brought tears to her tears whenever she remembered that most of her friends were Taken or Happily Married, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t happy for them.
As the golden age thirty (30) slowly approached, Sandra’s depression worsen. She suddenly stopped eating and looking out for herself. Slowly, she became a shadow of who she used to be. However, things went to the extremely one fateful day.
It happened that Sandra fell into depression as always but this time around, she wanted to hurt herself because life made no sense to her anymore. After work activities that day, she took a walk towards the main road and knowingly positioned herself to be hit by any moving vehicle. Before she knew what was happening, a jeep that was on high speed knocked her off the road. Blood spilled and she unconsciously fell down on the ground in a flash of light.
Instantly, a handsome gentleman alighted from the vehicle and ran towards her screaming “Help!”.
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