A STRANGER IN MY HOUSE

 A STRANGER IN MY HOUSE

I often think back to the times when he truly wanted to be with me. When he was still excited just to say he was dating me. He would offer to walk beside me, carry my bag, and we found comfort in the simple pleasure of holding hands. We walked slowly on purpose—just so we wouldn’t have to say goodbye too soon. Those were the golden days of our lives.

A person once said, “Se sa feleng sa thlola”—nothing lasts forever. But when you’re in love, you don’t believe that. You hear those words, and you think, That won’t happen to us. But life always has a way of humbling us. As the saying goes, “If it doesn’t break you, it makes you.” And love—love will do one of the two. Most times, it breaks us, even when we thought that person was the one we’d grow with, the one we’d learn from.

At first, he won my heart. But slowly, things started to change. Left became right, and right became something unrecognizable. The calls that once lasted for hours started getting shorter. The long conversations turned into silence. I still don’t know—did the love fade, or did we just lose our way?

Sometimes, I think love is like a new pair of shoes. When they’re fresh, we admire them, we’re excited to wear them. But once they’ve been worn in, once they’ve lost their shine, we begin to notice the discomfort. We start craving a newer pair, something that feels exciting again. Something that doesn’t squeeze the life out of our steps.

And now, here we are—still in the same house, but not really together. It feels like we’re slowly drifting apart. Two people who once couldn’t wait to be around each other, now strangers under the same roof.