I wasn't made for casual ...

for my hopeless romantics

It was September 2023. I was a fresher at uni, freshly dropped off by my mum just hours ago, yet to unbox all my stuff, when my friends and I went clubbing for the first time.I was dancing when someone tapped on my shoulder, It was the first time a guy had asked me to dance. Strange, when i look back on it, perhaps, because the opportunity had never arisen before this. In movies, lovers dance in the rain almost daily, casually, and so I danced with him.

I hate to bring us back to when the moment turned sour, it was also the first time a guy tried to get me to sleep with him. A one-night stand. I was a mixture of shocked, confused, and a little disgusted.

At this point, you might think reality hit me —that perhaps I was disillusioned about love. But if anything, that moment convinced me I wasn't made for casual, in this instance, casual sex.

James Baldwin once said, "Love has never been a popular movement, and no one has ever wanted really to be free." I ought to disagree with him (just a little bit) from my perspective, love is freedom — perhaps that is why it’s so unpopular.

I've always been fascinated by love. I'll watch or read anything that conveys love, regardless of whether it's platonic or romantic. Perhaps this is why I write—to carry love in my words as tangible proof.

Recently, a friend asked how I can write such intricate words laced with love. I didn't know how to reply. I'm terrible with speaking clearly, without the slight utterances, and the clutter that comes with me speaking.

But if I'm honest, I have little to no experience with romance. Perhaps I can write so deeply about love, even romantic love that is so foreign to me—a language I am unfamiliar in , because of the people around me and their words that I carry.

In my first year of university, my mum gave me a box of Nigerian oranges (also known as blood oranges —you cut them open, they're blood red), which I hid in my room because my flatmates were sort of dickheads. I lived with five guys, give me a break. But I mention this because as a child, even now as an adult, my mother peels the oranges for me—it's the Ondo way of consuming oranges; the whole thing must be peeled.

I remember back when we lived in Lagos. On hot afternoons, which were frequent, we would be in the living room, and she would get out a small knife and start to peel the oranges, leaving their peels in a metal tray. She would offer me the first one. When I was 16, she still peeled oranges for me, and she would say, "The way I show you I love you is by the oranges I peel for you, okomi." (Okomi means "husband" in Yoruba, but mothers often use it for their beloved children.)

As I'm writing this in my studio apartment, I'm staring at a bowl of oranges my mum forced me to take when I visited her last week during Easter holidays, that is truly her way of love. I wonder what mine is? Will my children know my love so fondly?

When I walk the streets of London and see a couple awkwardly snogging, or scroll through TikTok and see a couple post, it becomes easy to be impatient. Like, am I actually bread?

But then my mind limbers and dreams elsewhere to a mysterious person whose face I haven't seen, who smells familiar, and their laugh is rich and deep like cocoa, whose hands hold mine with care.

I'm still young and have so many years to know and love, and my heart aches missing someone I haven't met yet.

When I think of what I mean by love that is —romantic love. I think of that scene from "Queen & Slim," where Queen asks Slim if she can be his legacy, and he replies, "You already are."

I think of a love where we are not ashamed by our nakedness, someone who is curious about my soul, not my body, and we are not afraid to declare our love. Where I can speak fluently without awkwardness or having to bend too much like a wisteria branch. To be loved so much that there is never any occasion for shame in our love.

And so it was no surprise to me when I finally understood: I want love that is like devotion. I want to be worshipped.

And it's strange, love that is.

I know no one is responsible for making us whole, and like Queen to Slim, I want to be someone’s legacy. I will not settle for anything less than this.

Thus, I wasn't made for casual. I was made for soul-crushing devotion.

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"Writing is a form of communication — a timeless love letter to the ages. When we choose to write, we’re declaring our love, for memory, for meaning, for those who might one day read us