Letters of Love #1 —ToMi
This article is best enjoyed whilst listening to the song “Better Than Love" by Griffin House - https://youtu.be/_Vl2ZXTLJUs
Hey Tomi,
It’s me. Your favorite person in the world. Your accidental husband —the one who, like the rapper Drake, you are hiding the world from and not hiding from the world. The cutest Adejumo family member you like —although you’d probably lie and say you’d pick my younger brother and sister over me. Pfft. But you and I know the truth. You and I know you could never live without me. I’m the yin to your yang. I’m the Thelma to your Louise. The “Kimon” to your “Ko gerrout.”
You and I are inseparable. You love me more than words can say —although you hardly say it. Do you remember that one time you said it on a voice note and then tried to delete the voice note and I saved it before you did? Yup. I lied. I didn’t save it. I tried to but your fingers were too fast and I was so caught up in the moment of hearing you declare your undying love for me, I think I may have felt time stop.
Thanks to those three words, it felt like the universe was synchronized in such a way that I was at its center. I felt the earth’s spin come to a halt as those words hit my ears. It was surreal. It was amazing. It was a feeling that you have continually made me experience and one I never want to see end. Or so I thought until I tried to replay the voice note and found you had deleted it.
But as quick as you are with deleting voice notes where you declare your undying affection for me, I’m even quicker in writing epistles declaring my undying affection for you. And the funny thing is, while your voice notes seem lost in the echoes of our millionth WhatsApp conversations, my writings will forever be etched in the infinite walls of the internet.
And I mean forever.
Picture this: a few years from now you might meet someone else who becomes your new lover. One day, randomly, they’d search the internet with your name, and guess what would pop up after your LinkedIn profile? This!
My Letters of Love. Me telling the world not just how amazing you are but also how amazingly awesome you are to me.
They (whoever your new lover is) would read these and find out the truth. That on your really bad days, when the weight of the world feels unbearable and makes you cry, your crying sounds like you’re trying to eat hot yam.
I figured they’d be surprised to know that whenever you say “I’m fine” in a conversation, then you’re not fine. And if you say “I’m Gucci” then it means you’re still not fine but would rather not talk about it. And the only way to make you feel better is to unequivocally call you a baddie.
I bet they’d read this and discover that violent WhatsApp stickers are your way of being romantic. And that every day or two, you find peace in threatening to fake-divorce me and take my laptop with all my short stories in the fake-divorce.
There’s so much more that I hope your new lover discovers when he reads these letters in the future. But more than anything, I hope in reading this they are reminded of just how lucky they are to have you in their lives. I hope, like me, they choose to cherish you each day.
I know when you read this you’d swear fire and brimstone, but maybe don’t. Maybe instead you could tell me how much you love me again and hopefully this time around, I’ll be fast enough to capture the moment for posterity's sake before it is deleted.
Happy birthday countdown, Tomi. I love you, to the end of the universe and back —way more than any future or past lover who may or may not be reading this ever would.
Until the next letter,
Cheers!