You were right about Mr right.

The funny thing is that I had always been the wild one. The one that older people blamed for every night that you never came back home; or the days you’d come back home drenched in vomit and cursing. I vividly remember the day you picked a fight with a girl at Jam, the club on twelfth street. Her sin was showing up in exactly the dress you were wearing, and to top it off, the exact same ankle boots. You got annoyed by the fact that it looked even more bomb on her and even though everyone was practically minding their businesses, you still rambled on about how every whisper was a criticism of your not-so-bomb look. “Like I wasn’t the first one to come in the outfit, and her a copycat!” That’s what you kept saying, and I should have known better than to let you remain at the club when I finally left.

I had an early shift that morning, and despite our unwritten rule that none leaves the other in a club unless they are sure there’s someone safe to ensure they get home intact, you told me to go and that Joe, the cashier, would walk you home because you stayed in the same flat. Girl I’d known you ten years and you hated Joe! But I left you, because really I was tired, and sleepy. To get a comical narration of your fight with a girl that’s at least five years younger than you was both hilarious and maddening. We were banned from the club for a whole three months Angela, a whole three months restricted from the only cool spot in our neighbourhood that actually played music from home. Girl you got me mad for days. While I’d purposed to stay angry at you for long, you knew I’d fall for your blackmail and by the third day you’d won me over and we’d improvised. How you got Trey from the other club to think you’d really loved him ever since we moved in to Amsterdam remains a mystery to me..

I knew when you couldn’t pull through the hideous illustration of how his eyes popped out in pure bliss at the thought of a gorgeous Zimbabwean girl being in love with a guy like him that you’d convinced him to let you select his Friday playlist for the club. Our club till we were allowed back into Club Jam.

Even though you always said he was…lol how did you phrase it by the way? You said a guy with ‘nothing more than the keys to a club that a desperate but beautiful girl would need to survive the three months ban imposed on her by a club she loved.” Your savagery and manipulation was at the time genuinely hilarious. I’d have wanted to never get on the wrong side of you but that wasn’t up to me really. Your explosive temper almost always got touchier with me. You’d get mad at me for not laughing at your endless tales or insults directed at people that I honestly thought were nice people but pretended to agree with you that they were ugly with no sense of self-dignity just so you wouldn’t feel too lowly for being less a good person than they were. Being your best friend and a regular recipient of your outbursts was a lot of things overwhelming sweetheart. Yet I loved you, and somehow that love made me believe that God had deliberately placed me in your life to help you heal, from whatever trauma of your childhood you were experiencing. I would have known except you never wanted to talk about your adoptive father, the abuse, and I thought you deserved to be respected for your choice to handpick what you wanted or preferred not to discuss.

I probably should have been as arrogant as you were in forcing you to tell me your thoughts, things could have gone differently for both of us if we’d loved each other equally. As it turned out you never had known what to love was, even ten years into our friendship you still treated me as if you wouldn’t be bothered if I left.

You met Sheldon right at the end of our three months ban from Club Jam. Funny thing is you met him right at trey’s club. Girl, you are badass! trey’s been fuming ever since. For a girl that changed guys almost as often as you blinked, I was honestly shocked to hear you say you had found the one, MR RIGHT! Curious to know what about this Sheldon guy made you think him the man that you’d tame your wild ass for, I asked you a lot of questions, and for the first time in ‘it never happens’, you din’t get annoyed at me for flooding you with questions. You just went on and on about how smart, handsome, funny and grounded he was. How he calmed your emotional storms (I don’t know which storms he’d calmed in the three days you’d known him but well), and how he made you want to be a different person- less selfish, more honest and intentional in your relationships. I can’t say that I wasn’t awe-struck. I was. I’d known you so long and never would have thought a man would change you, for better. You always said that men had made you the bag of trash you felt like you were sometimes. That you hated men and saw them as instruments that a pretty girl like you could easily access whenever you needed gratification. Now to hear you say that you’d found in a man a sense of purpose and direction, that was honestly a first and I was waiting to see how long it’ll last. Well, it’s three years today.

Three years since you ran into my arms in tears and told that you were wrong. Wrong in thinking that a guy you’d met in a club and allowed to take you to his home was the one. Wrong in giving men the power to shape your view of your childhood, you present and your future. You had lived your whole life trying hard to prove yourself worthless that’s you were made to think you were. Sheldon was great you said, except for those moments, which were pretty frequent, when he seemed to trivialise your trauma. You told me that you were wrong about a lot of things, but not what the thing with Trey made you realise about me as your friend. That I had known for as long as you’d known your adult life. That even you treated me like I was disposable, you actually were just running away from everything you felt about me. Didn’t trust yourself to not mess up what we had because that’s what you’d always been good at- breaking things. When you said all this with tears in your eyes I knew that you were finally letting me in to that part of you that you were also too scared to visit.

I knew at that moment that I wanted to spend everyday of my life with you, and your yes when in that moment I went down on my knees and asked you if you would be mine forever brought me so much more joy than I had ever experienced in my life.

I’d never have thought that there exists a greater joy than that, but as was beginning to be your habit, you surprised me again. You chose to marry me on your birthday even though you’d always hated it. You said that your birthday was a reminder of the identity you’d never have of who you are and where you come from. The very thought that it’s just a day that was given to you by health personnel so you could be documented, because your mother didn’t think you good enough to live and dumped you in a rubbish pile a few days after birth. You surviving the cold and hunger for God knows how many days before you were discovered remains a miracle for many people at the clinic you were taken to, but you’ve always thought it a curse. You’d rather have died than grown to experience every abuse you dealt with in the hands of men that were given the responsibility to raise you.

Seeing you love with no doubt or reservation, and being able to give that love back to you made me realise the two years into our dating had done to you what I never would have done for you in the ten years of our mere friendship. Allowing me in as a lover also allowed me into a place where I could walk the journey to healing with you. When I asked you which day you wanted for your wedding you didn’t hesitate to pick your birthday. You said “you had broken free and wanted to honour the gift of your birth, because it had given you the gift of resilience.” I knew on that day that you had found your healing, by let go of those walls that kept me out of your heart’s darkest and most scared of places. I know that this is a little too long, and a little bit too off the conventional grooms speeches, but there is nothing I celebrate more today than to see my girlfriend becoming my wife. I celebrate the very experience of your healing, and your rebirth on the day that you’ve accepted as the day of your birth, and now the birth of a beautiful marriage.

I love you, and I must confess, You were right about MR RIGHT!!! Mr Right is the one person that knows you, inside out.