A Nonsense Valentine

"I am learning that love does not respond to pressure. It either arrives or it does not. No amount of patience can force its timing, and realizing that has been strangely freeing." — Miriam Attih.

Miriam Attih:

If you think this change of mind is because I now have a man in my life, good for you. And if you think otherwise, good for you too.

---

I have been thinking, and I realized that love is beautiful. Extremely beautiful, especially when it is real. I love love. I always have, and that is a hill I will willingly die on. I love watching love happen to people. I love seeing how it softens them, how it steadies them, how it makes ordinary moments feel intentional.

Most days, in between lectures, I scroll through couples online and smile without even noticing. Other days, I scroll past with irritation, but it is usually not because love annoys me. It is because the longing does.

Waiting has a way of making you restless. It makes your eyebrows rise when you see a beautiful couple in class. It makes you hiss quietly when a boy gently fixes a flower behind his girlfriend’s ear. It makes you want to pour hot water on all the many Valentine’s Day vendors on your feed who will not let you scroll in peace.

For a long time, I thought wanting love deeply meant I somehow owed it. That if I believed enough, hoped enough, stayed soft enough, it would eventually find me. I am learning that love does not respond to pressure. It either arrives or it does not. No amount of patience can force its timing, and realizing that has been strangely freeing.

I have made peace with the idea that love might not look the way I imagined it would by now. It may not arrive when I expect it to, because nobody set a deadline for falling in love or being loved.

It might happen today, tomorrow, or much later.

Who really knows.

Maybe love is something I will experience fully someday. Maybe it is something I will always admire from a distance. Either way, I no longer feel the need to wrestle it into my life because that has only led to bad decisions I would rather not talk about.

Still, I do crave a Valentine’s Day gift, and I deserve it, do I not?

No, not the regular gift box or money bouquet. If you have that one, I will still collect it, but that is not what I really want.

I want answers.

How do people know?
How do you know that out of eight billion people, one person is the one?
How do butterflies in your stomach actually feel? Do they really feel like something flying inside you?
What does it mean to choose someone and be chosen back without fear or hesitation?

Could you include answers to these questions in all the beautiful newsletters you will be making?

What will I be doing today?

I’ll probably be here, cheering quietly and sincerely, with my head half-buried in law books and meeting tight deadlines. Because as una dey see love for air, nah so I dey see exams. And no be butterflies e dey give me, nah ants.

- Interlude: A Nonsense Valentine -

The day is cold, not really but you didn’t rub any lotion today, so it feels sort of dry. Your lips are chapped and you feel haphazard all through, wondering when nepa would bring the light. It’s been two days and your phone is about to die soon.

You decide to open Instagram to view your friend’s statuses and the first two scrolls are about Valentine Day packages and couples being in love, vendors shamelessly showing themselves and claiming rights to the package that someone bought from them.

You sigh, check about two statuses and it’s of your friends who you could swear didn’t have jobs or anything doing, now turned into vendors, advertising their brands.

“Hia, oh chim." You let out.

Everything becomes overwhelming in ten minutes, so you suck your teeth and exit Instagram, only to witness same pressure on WhatsApp.

You post “what’s it with all these Valentine packages and vendors sef?”

And your friend, after three minutes, say you’re a hater and that you will never find love with you Grinch attitude towards it.

Of all her insults and humorless jokes, it was a first you’ve been called a Grinch of love, so you smile and respond with a sticker telling her waka.

Suddenly, you receive a text from one of your foolish exes, wanting to know if you’d be free for an outing, and you decline. It killed you the minute you didn’t think about it twice but responded so quickly like you had anything doing for the day.

You liked this particular guy, but he’s always subbing you, and only texts when he wants to. You’re not the type to tolerate absent people, so you let them go, delete their contacts and are still surprised when they come back.

If only this energy was shown then. Anyway, he calls you unfortunate and an uncultured pig, so you laughed. If was the first you laughed all day, and you needed it.

You tell him, I know you love me, idiot. C’mon get out. You too, cow.

Your food you left on fire was burning, and it was the only rice you had in your container because the sales girl you normally go to buy food from was with her foolish boyfriend and you hated waiting, so you left out of anger while she was discussing with him.

“Who be this one? No be me do you o." She says, mocking your annoyance.

You finally dished out a portion of the burnt-to-a-crisp rice to eat, as you swallow, the rice almost hooking you in your throat.

You sigh and reflected on how lonely you are for a minute and began laughing so hard, you chocked on your rice.

“What a day!” you say as you laid on your bed to sleep, after reporting many couples to Mark Zuckerberg to block their accounts, because they’re all idiots.

You knew deep down, it pained you because you're alone and no one has yet again approached you to tell you they admire you, let alone love you. Because if someone did, you too will pepper everybody with your love.

Help Kingstack reach 240,000 libraries and 400 bookstores worldwide with a $16.99 donation.

---

Kingsley Uzuh:

I sometimes think about love and what it means to be truly found in it. To be fully aware of the love you receive because you give it so effortlessly. To meet someone who loves you not because you tolerate them, but because they genuinely see you.

‘For a long time, I have craved that connection people seem to have so easily. The kind where someone remembers you in subtle ways without being asked.’

Some nights, I catch myself holding my phone close to my chest, scrolling through old conversations that never really meant anything, but once felt like they could. I have always wanted to be loved fully. Not just the easy parts of me, but the messy ones too. The parts people usually leave when they finally see them.

There is a quiet kind of pain that comes from carrying so much love inside you and not knowing where it will ever land. Not heartbreak, just the ache of waiting and wondering if the person meant for it will ever appear.

Waiting can make you resent love. Not because love itself is bad, but because you keep watching it happen for everyone else while it keeps passing you by. Every day you see people find their person, celebrate them loudly, and you are still quietly hoping yours will arrive.

I want to know what it feels like to be loved so intentionally that it almost feels unreal. The kind of love that makes you pause and ask yourself if someone can truly care about you this much.

There is something deeply beautiful about being considered in subtle ways. About knowing someone remembers you, chooses you, and carries you in their thoughts the same way you carry them.

I want to be loved. To be chosen and chosen right. And yes, sometimes I still feel jealous when I see people celebrating years of love or just beginning theirs, because the longing I have carried has lasted years too, and I am still waiting.

I used to shrug at special days and holidays, but none reminded me of my singleness the way Valentine’s Day did. It always felt like a loud announcement that everyone else had someone, and I did not.

I used to dislike Valentine’s Day, not because it was meaningless, but because I had no one to share it with. So I stayed away from it, focusing on other things and pretending it did not matter.

But my view changed when I learned the deeper story behind it. A day meant to celebrate genuine love, not the polished, performative version we see today. The love Saint Valentine showed even while imprisoned. A man who believed love should never be forbidden.

That story still sits heavy in my chest.

It makes me wonder how far we have come from that kind of love. How often we make people feel seen without expecting anything back. How often we show care in quiet, ordinary ways.

There's someone out there who still remembers you for the good you've brought into their lives.

Now it feels like love is measured by expensive gifts and public displays. Like people are performing happiness instead of living it. Like many are chasing the appearance of love rather than its reality.

That is not love. It is something else entirely.

A nonsense kind of it.

A Nonsense Valentine.