Desire can be described as a strong longing, or even a strong sexual attraction.
Affection is a kindly feeling.
For many years I wondered whether these two words could ever relate to one another, desire and affection. I kept trying to find the connection between them. As I grew up, I came to understand that they're related in many ways. Desire, at its simplest, is a strong longing, and most people feel it sexually first: that inner pull that keeps prompting you toward someone, your heart pounding for the person you desire. At times it's hard to understand, especially when you can't approach that person. You develop a fear of them; saying the first word feels harder than climbing Everest. Your heartbeat rises, your chest tightens, you become speechless, you start shivering as though you've caught a fever. Whatever you do at that moment is out of your control, like a baby learning to speak its first word all over again. That's what many young people feel, especially at first sight, no matter their age.
As a young boy, I was told by my mother that I was handsome, and that girls were always after me because I was young, handsome, intelligent, and quiet. But however much they pursued me, I never felt desire for any of them. I had felt desire before, just not for girls. I kept company with boys much older than me who always talked about love, a feeling I never understood. They told me one day I'd be in the same boat. I remember a friend in secondary school, level two, whom I considered a brother, we were so close that people called us brothers. Girls fell for us, but we weren't interested; the only thing we did was tease the people who were in love. I remember one girl going crazy over my friend, and a fight breaking out in class between him and another boy who also wanted her. After that I told Aloysius that maybe we should stop attending classes for a while, just to have peace, because it felt like we were driving every girl in the school crazy.
Before that, in primary school, it was the same story. An extremely beautiful girl fell for me, and I was resented even by a teacher who admired her looks. But I only had eyes for my books. I'd never seen a girl as beautiful as her, yet I saw her only as a girl (nothing more, nothing less) even sharing a desk and walking together. My feelings stayed steady; the other pupils called us lovebirds, but I didn't mind, because I was still young and too innocent for any of it to matter. The same pattern followed me into secondary school. The climax came in level three, when I was written up in the school newsletter with a girl as "couple of the week." That went too far, and I confronted the boy responsible (the information prefect) and told him to leave me alone. It was a serious outburst, but I later understood he'd done it out of envy: before I joined the school, he'd tried and failed to court the same girl, so he wanted to shame me instead. It nearly cost me my friendship with her, but I came to realize that whatever had been said, it mattered not.
Eventually I left that school and joined another. In this new high school, I kept a low profile in my first year. Few students knew me. It was a two-year course, after which I was meant to join university. And as the pattern always went, so it went again: in my second year, I met another beautiful girl, and just as before I ended up in a dispute with a teacher over her. This time was different, though. I'd started to feel something new toward the opposite sex, but still had no intention of having a girl by my side. My classmates labeled us lovers, which was never true; she was beautiful, but I saw her only as a good friend, someone I exchanged reading material with. She'd been at the school five years to my two, and she helped me settle in. I was an often-absent student, and much of my success in getting into university I owe to her steady, practical advice.
But the real love story of my life was still ahead of me. I was one of the first students to clear my school fees that year, though I rarely wanted to attend classes. It was my final year when I first set eyes on this girl, three classes below me, but the same age. My heart rate spiked. She was young, and her eyes held nothing but beauty; more beautiful, somehow, than any girl I'd met before, though I couldn't say why. When I looked into her eyes I saw something I'd never seen in any girl's eyes. She looked so innocent as I stared, and she noticed, she turned to find me watching her with what people call "talking eyes." My heart felt like it changed position. I thought: what if I'm rejected? What will I do? Luckily, a friend of hers was already close with a friend of mine, which gave me an opening. That was the moment I finally understood what desire meant, the longing to have her was unlike anything I'd imagined. I found out through a friend that her name was Elizabeth, the same name as my aunt, whom I loved dearly. Desire is a strange thing: just wanting to see this girl every day was enough to get me attending school regularly again. My grades improved, because I never wanted her to find out I was a poor student, she was one of the brightest in her class, in love with science, especially biology.
I remembered what my mother had told me once, when I was around ten: that she had loved once, and that I should be careful, because I might inherit that same intensity. At ten I didn't understand what she meant. Now I did, it was no coincidence that I'd taken this after her. I had never been in love before, not once, despite the many beautiful girls around me, some more conventionally beautiful than Elizabeth. But she had something different from all the others. Whenever I looked at her, I saw beauty and "talking eyes." I remember the first time we passed each other closely. I felt a kind of wind of beauty that I couldn't explain to anyone. I went and sat in class, quietly happy, and told a friend I'd finally met her, without saying another word.
The second time, it was at the school canteen, every seat taken. I asked if I could share hers. She had a friend who already knew how I felt about her. I sat close, careful not to make a mistake, exchanging a few words. I didn't finish my bottle of soda before leaving for class, just to keep some pride, but inside I was trembling the whole time. I was young and afraid to say what I felt, and she didn't know it, how could she, without my ever telling her? My eyes may have spoken it, but friends had told me before that I often looked like I was in love; it was simply how my face rested.
The next time we were close was near the end of my final exams. The library was full, the A-level classes were full, and I ended up in the O-level classroom, where there was one open desk, the one Elizabeth was using. I nearly walked back out, afraid to sit with her alone, but with no other option I took the seat. It felt like a courageous step at the time, sharing a desk with the girl I loved most in the world. I took out my books and tried to read, while she sat with her head bent over the desk, a biology notebook open on her lap. I tried to concentrate on my geography notes but couldn't, the desire to talk to her outweighed everything. So instead I drew a few pictures, tried and failed to start a conversation, and eventually wrote my phone number on a scrap of paper and passed it to her before walking away. I think that's when she first understood I had something to say. Unfortunately, before she could call, I lost that phone and changed numbers, and around that same time I realized what a mistake I might have made in approaching her at all, even as some of the pressure lifted off my shoulders.
My final exams demanded all my attention after that, and for a long stretch I didn't see Elizabeth again. I came to believe I'd made a mistake I might regret for life. I'd had a real chance, since I later learned she, like me, had never been in a relationship before. But fear and time won out, and I made space for someone else to take my place in her life.
The following year I volunteered at my uncle's church, the Uganda Orthodox Church in Kampala, and time slipped away. By the time I was home again, I couldn't find a way to see her. More responsibility kept landing on me. A friend, Denis, was working at a computer institute in town, and my love for computers gave me another place to lose myself, but every single day, I still thought of Elizabeth. I might have let her go entirely, except that my aunt shared her name, so the memory of my first love lived quietly inside my own house. Every time I went to church, I prayed that we'd be together one day, though it felt hopeless. At an overnight prayer service at Miracle Centre Cathedral, Pastor Robert said something that stayed with me: if you want something badly enough, keep chasing it, however long it takes, and eventually you'll have it. But time was against me. I was working late, starting university, and part of my heart was still back at that high school.
As it's said, what goes around comes around: another chance arrived when my nephew joined that same school. The first thing I asked him to do was find her, which he did. Somehow we built a bridge of communication again, Elizabeth and I, though time still stood in the way. I'd grown, but romantically I was still a baby taking his first steps. I was at least content to have found my footing again.
I come from a family known for love, but I hadn't yet claimed my share of it. Around this time, a girl in my village fell for me, obsessively, by her own account; I remember her telling one of my nephews that she wouldn't eat if I didn't come see her. When I heard that, I laughed and thought: why can't I feel that way about Elizabeth? I had no feelings for this girl at all, though she kept chasing me. In time she realized I wasn't the right match and slowly let go, especially as I kept my distance. One of my relatives attended her school and kept asking about me on her behalf, and I knew that if I so much as spoke to her directly, it would only fuel things further. My eyes were set on one person only (Elizabeth) and if I lost her, I decided I'd rather put love on hold entirely than settle.
She was the only person I had ever truly desired. I wondered why this affection had come so early, my mother always said my love would arrive in 2015, and yet here I was, years before that, already caught in it. At times it brought me comfort just to think of her; at other times, it hurt. I think that's where the saying comes from: the more you love someone, the more you're capable of being hurt by them. The affection I felt for Elizabeth was incomparable. There were many times I wished we could share everything openly, but I'd been told it's unwise to live on wishes, so I tried to push them out of my mind, and the harder I tried, the deeper they settled in. I'm the kind of person who retreats into isolation when troubled, and at this time it became a real problem, because whenever I was alone, all I thought about was the little time I'd shared with her. Even certain songs started to torment me, pulling her memory back. My feelings for her were devoted, and I guarded myself against anything that might stir them further, but sometimes the inevitable happened anyway. I remember my first real disappointment: we were supposed to meet, and because of time, I couldn't make it. I felt like I'd betrayed my own soul. There was nothing I could do to bring that missed moment back. I think about it even now and say to myself: what a pure, innocent kind of love that was.
Affection, to me, is a royal feeling, one I've shown to many people, maybe to all my friends. If there's one thing I can't deny about myself, it's that I'm deeply affectionate, easily moved by other people's stories and states of mind, especially one-on-one. I learned this from my mother, who was an affectionate woman herself, and it's brought me into trouble more than once, trying to help people by stepping fully into their shoes. Many mistake it for weakness. It isn't. Affectionate people are simply kind, not weak. Several girls fell for me because of it, and when I tried to explain that my intentions were only friendly, it hurt them instead. Some called me impotent, others a coward, one even called me a priest. Whatever they thought of me, I only ever held warm, honest feelings for my friends, but despite the hearts I broke without meaning to, mine, too, was soon about to fall into the very same trap.