This may sound controversial to some, but most people believe that life is not obliged to work out the way you plan it. If your thinking on this aligns with the majority, then you might as well have realised that many so-called serious relationships that look like they were made in heaven do not often crystallise into marriage. For one reason or the other, some hit the rocks and shatter into pieces after long years of commitment, leaving one party or both parties emotionally fractured.
Unfortunately, not every of these emotional casualties summon the courage to walk out of a broken relationship and move on with life. Interestingly, many do, getting better in the end, while few resign to fate, wishing for an outcome they cannot determine. Some are even known to lose their sanity or even their life.
The story of Nosa and Ese is a good example of how to move on with life after the break-up of a very serious relationship. Lovebirds can best be used to describe them. The exciting aspect is that they are of the same age, though Nosa is older by a few months. They had hit it off as pre-teenagers from their first year at secondary school in Benin City, Edo State.
As close pals who found and shared similar taste and choice in friends, character and hobbies, their love and friendship lasted for the whole six years before they proceeded to the same university, Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State the same year to read the same course, mechanical engineering. They were always together, even sat together during classes and exams. They were the envy of every lover on campus because of their natural chemistry to understand and relate to each other very well.
Nosa was academically better, aiming for a perfect second class upper, while Ese was struggling to remain there. They had the prospect of ending up in the oil industry. Marriage was only a whisper away. Then something happened in the beginning of their final year.
It was the era when fraternity was very fashionable on Nigerian campuses. And Nosa’s cult was implicated in an attempt to kidnap a senior lecturer of another school, and he was arrested along with some of his fellow cult members. So, while Ese was writing her final exam, Nosa had been expelled from the school, charged to court and his case being heard.
Ese wrote her final exam, graduated and was waiting for her service when Nosa and his gang were being sentenced to prison terms with options of fine and an order for the convicts not to
be admitted into any Nigerian tertiary institution. Nosa’s parents, who were struggling to get by, rallied to raise the huge fine to avoid his going to prison.
The relationship continued with expected strains. It did not take a prophet for anybody to realise it was all over for them as future spouses. It could have still worked out if Nosa’s parents were to be rich. They could have provided him with huge capital to start a business to meet up with the kind of husband Ese required, because her future was too bright to gamble with a penniless university dropout. Worse, Nosa could not even go to another university. And schooling abroad was out of the question for his parents could not afford it.
Ese had taken the situation calmly and had cried and grieved for some time, but maintained the relationship before going for her NYSC service in Oyo State. It was not easy letting go a 13-year-old relationship that began when they were only 12-year-old boy and girl. She promised to consider Nosa’s decision to become a trade apprentice and to be given start-up capital a year later. But it turned out that Nosa did not have the right state of mind to learn a trade. He suffered emotional breakdown. He became a scatterbrain – he would greet ‘Good morning’ when it was evening and sometimes wore his clothes inside out.
Learning of his condition far away in Ibadan where she was serving, Ese felt sad. After her service, she deliberately relocated to Lagos to settle, where she got a very good job, met another guy and secretly got married a year after and started her life. But Nosa learnt of her marriage and grieved some more.
A few months later, a kind uncle recommended Nosa to a friend in Ghana who owned a hotel and who Nosa lived and worked with. Nosa later saved to start a part-time degree programme afresh. According to the story, Nosa gradually recovered from his emotional breakdown and faced his new work and studies with vigour. Over there, Nosa met a female Nigerian student whom he got engaged to and eventually got married to after graduation. Nosa would later return to Nigeria, where he got a good-paying job. While Ese is presently married with four kids, Nosa has two.
Of course, not every victim of love-relationship breakdown has the opportunity and willpower like Nosa had, especially if a female were to be in Nosa shoes. Some victims, both male and female, are broken forever, others in mental institutions and a few in their graves. But if the cause of a victim’s sadness and forlorn state is the long years of established love and affection, can the victim not start afresh with somebody else? It is not easy but trying to start another relationship helps a lot.
Like the old saying goes, ‘The most beautiful, wonderful and loveable person you know is only among those you have met, for the more people you get to know, the more chances of your meeting a more beautiful, wonderful and loveable person.’
Did you experience a major break-up recently, or do you know somebody who did? Do you feel like your world has suddenly come to an end? No, it has not. Make a new friend today. Start a new relationship now. It is not easy but it is doable. The Internet is full of people who want to make friends. Be careful though, for there are dubious characters out there. There are genuine link-up clubs all over the place. Join any as soon as possible. Let a colleague or a relative invite you to a party where you will get to meet new faces. Engage in blind dates. Meet people, please. And make a friend today.
Be you male or female, start a conversation with a stranger now. Be it in the supermarket, be it in a queue in the banking hall or the cinema. Do not appear desperate or anxious. Just be natural. Some may turn you down, but a few will accept your overtures. And a new friendship will be born.
Do not let a break-up break you down. Move on with your life.
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