Neighbour Diaries: Losing Focus

Being single is a hard life. I wonder how the monks and the nuns manage to lead that kind of life for an eternity. People say that with time, you get used, but, I don’t think this is for me. I can’t imagine getting used to this kind of life. It is like fighting a war that I am sure I am going to lose. I am already losing it. Yesterday evening, after my tennis game with Neighbour Girl, in which we barely exchanged a word, I headed home with plans of getting a great movie to watch for the rest of the evening. But, my mind was not settled. I needed to do something that I was familiar with. So, I headed out to the local shop to buy some drinks. There, I met the neighbour girl again. I invited her to share my drinks, not expecting her to accept, but, she surprised me when she accepted. She told me she would drop some things back home, and then come over immediately after that. Back home, it was like am seeing my house for the first time. I noticed that there was a serious scarcity of things to use. The things in my house are for only one person, a visitor would totally feel out of place. It’s not that I was trying to impress the girl, I was just being factual with the situation. There was only one chair, nothing else. So, when I heard her coming, I got that one chair and placed it outside the house. I brought the drinks outside, and suggested we sit outside. She was ok with the idea. Conversation was hard; I didn’t know what to talk about, so we just kept quiet and had our drinks. Then, at some point, she asked me; are you usually this quiet, or is there something that you aren’t comfortable about? I replied that I was ok, there was nothing I was uncomfortable about. Then she brought up the topic I wanted to discuss. She told me that she had separated with her boyfriend. Meaning, she had lied to me the previous day when she said she was dating. Hmmm, I wonder why I was even surprised. Girls are all liars! But, this was suddenly a different topic. I didn’t want to know why they had broken up, that would be too much useless information. In my head, already forgetting about my serious vow to be single for a while, I was rapidly thinking of avenues of attack. Just when I settled on a line of attack, she said she had to leave. I pushed her to her place, then came back. But that night, my mind was full of plans about Neighbour Girl. As I entered my house, I received a call from the person I least expected to call me; Samantha. I debated whether to answer the call or not, and in the end, I decided to answer it. “Hello Samantha”. “Hello Shem”. And then it all came out. I suddenly realized how much I missed her, something I had been denying to myself. I told her everything, like how miserable my life was without her. Then, I realized she wasn’t saying anything. So, I shut up. Then it was her turn. She told me she was sorry for being so hard on me. I asked her if we could meet the next day, and she said it was ok. Well, not a bad evening at all. That night, I also received a text from a girl I had last talked to two years ago! Suddenly, I was full swing back into the dating game.