It's the little things!

Saturday is Valentine's Day. I am the most complicated of romantics. I am the kind that continually denies that he is one. I hate Valentine's Day. I hate the commercialism which has infested love. I love love though. I had a girlfriend who told me once that I didn't love her and was in fact in love with the idea of being in love.


Anyway that's not what this is about - my distaste for Valentine's Day is well documented. Once I was walking through the mall when I heard a sound. It was the sound of highheel shoes tapping on concrete. But not just any tapping. It was purposeful. This girl knew where she was going. I was in love with her before I even saw her.

It's the little things.

In high school I dated a girl who wore only wore Charlie Red. She wore clothes obviously, but the only perfume she wore was Charlie Red. To this day that smell makes me weak at the knees. She was the first girl who ever broke my heart.

It's the little things.


In high school I knew this girl she had long curly brown hair. I used to give her letters to give to girls I thought I loved. Now I know and I write love letters to her everyday - in my heart.

It's the little things.


I was eight when I first went away on tour without my parents. There was this girl - I was in love with her. She was white, it was apartheid South Africa and everyone told me there was no way I could hold her hand. To this day holding a girl's hand when people think I shouldn't remains a type of defiance. I still romanticise mixed relationships in my head. I still think when people can overcome that sort of prejudice and can still be in love it is the greatest kind of love. A love for the ages - a Romeo and Juliet kind of love.

It's the little things.


I dated an English girl for a year and we travelled all over South Africa together. Just us and a tent in a clapped up old Mazda she had bought for R10 000 (it was 1110 pounds back then). We stayed in Coffee Bay together. Made love in the moonlight and read Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom" as the tide rolled in. I held her hand to when no-one thought I should.

It's the little things.


In varsity a girl with curly blonde hair smiled at me. She had red rosy cheeks and danced on the steps outside the library. She smiled at me for a year - maybe three. She wore a black headwrap the night I fell in love with her. We talk all the time. She was wrong. I was in love with her, not with being in love.

It's the little thngs.

I broke my best friend's heart once. She was my girlfriend for a year. I loved her. But we grew apart. It was the distance. It was our jobs. It was our lives. She cried as I stood there. I just stood there.

It's the little things.

I met this girl once. She is at home now. We clicked in that "I don't know you but I feel like I should" kind of way. We spent three days together - she was distant - I reached out. And on the day she left I was driving and she leaned over and played with the nape of my neck.

It's the little things.

I've lost my Bean. We were supposed to beat all the odds. We were supposed to prove everyone wrong. We were supposed to love eachother through all the pain, all the anger and all the hate and come out the other side. But I could not love the pain and anger away.

Sometimes it's not the little things. Sometimes it's the biggest of things.