By Debo Popoola

All my female friends are getting married, getting hooked up to some strange men like fishes in a river. Those that my childhood memory will be incomplete without them. Those that used to play my wives when we were still young, playing “daddy and mummy”, have all found their real husbands and they appear to be living happily in their real daddy and mummy.

And the moment they get married, a huge gulf is created between us. I cannot call them like I used to call them before, I cannot visit them like I used to. Our relationship takes another dimension and I see them far away from me.

The few female friends that I have now that are not married, I am even scared having any further emotional attachment with them. They will soon go, like the rest. They will leave me to cling to some strange men who were not there when it all started. They will flutter away like a bird that has found a new fruity tree.

But why am I so pained losing my friends, my very good female friends to the warm embrace of marriage? Do I expect them to end up in my house as wives, all of them? I battled to answer the question. I later realised that I have high tendency to be jealous of what I have.

The reason I always feel let down whenever my female friends get married is because I was very jealous of letting them go, I don’t know what might happen to them in hands of those strangers that are taking them away from me.

Then I was asked some big questions, by one of the few female friends of mine who are yet to be taken away from me, that if I get married before she does, will I still be coming to her house like I do now, will I still be calling her to cook for me, will I still be calling her late in the night just because I am bored and in need of someone to talk to?

These question hit me with a new realization, and with a new sadness. She is right. That means someday, she too will be leaving me to cling to another stranger.

No, was not going to let that happen, not again! Then I summoned courage, and I told her, “Let me be that stranger that will take you away from me.”

She smiled, a smile of hope, a smile that said more than a thousand good words. At last, marriage is not going to take this one away from me again.