Essence Of Falling In Love

By Obakeng I Masetlha

The Essence of Falling in Love is a story about a young lady who, at the age of 16, had a passion for love and was certain that one’s first love would be the most exciting and long lasting. Kutloisiso Mahlangu and Mphoentle Mahola are the main characters whose story is being told about their experience of first love and how they managed to get back to the understanding of Love.

The aim behind the story is to help young people understand that being in a relationship has nothing to do with acceptance. Too many youngsters nowadays fall in love with each other so that they can be accepted by the group they hang out with. In such cases love is more about personal gain seeing us partnering or ‘falling in love’ or become attached to a certain person so that people can see who we are and what we are capable of.

This story also hopes to educated people, that being attached to your partner doesn’t necessarily mean that the person will love you forever and also that no one should ever allow themselves to be abused in the name of love.

By Obakeng I Masetlha

About the Author

Obakeng Innocent Masetlha was born in a small township named Unit D Extension 1 in Hammanskraal, just north of the city of Pretoria. He studied at Diè Hoërskool Wonderboom in Pretoria where he started writing his first novel, which you have in your hands... Now he’s in his priestly formation year in the seminary and writes at every spare moment he gets, if he gets one. He is known to his fellow Seminarians as, Br Obadiah ...inside joke...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Obakeng I Masetlha
• Release date: Sep 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370319497

Book preview

ESSENCE

of FALLING in

LOVE

ESSENCE

of FALLING in

LOVE

Obakeng I Masetlha

Copyright © 2017 Obakeng I Masetlha

Published by Obakeng I Masetlha Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Author using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Printed and bound by Novus Print Solutions

Edited by Susan van Tonder for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

To the late Tebogo Masetlha…

Content

Acknowledgments

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Brief biography of the author

Acknowledgments

A debt of gratitude to James Qeqe, Bonginkosi Elvis Sithole, Mathapelo Sello and Emmanuel Mabelane for their undying support and belief in this project.

To my Friend Kagišo Semenya for his enthusiasm and unflagging efforts to the success of this project.

To the legendary Fr. Karabo Baloyi, for convincing me to follow my dream of writing a novel.

To my fellow brother seminarians and clergy of Pretoria who believed in me, not forgetting Nelson Teffo, Monwabisi Mazibuko, Themba Khoza and the 2017 class at St Francis Xavier Seminary.

And to the best parents a child could ask for, Martha Masetlha, Lesego Masetlha and Boineelo Matshane and Lebo Tefo, not forgetting my younger brother Tidimatso Masetlha…for everything.

One

Her first impression was of a red light, the essence of love and the certainty of falling in love, the hope that her first love would be her forever and that love was void of any imperfection and that if there were any, it can simply be overlooked because love always surpassed the problem to be faced. From the essence of love, she moved to the presence of a violent rendezvous with one she hoped would be the last to hurt her. It all started like a dream. She was always a charming young lady who always had big dreams about her life. Being born in a rural area can pose quite a challenge and mostly when you start dreaming, people in the area take you for a fairy-tale teller.

* * *

Kutloisiso grew up in a family of five. His parents were a very strict set; if they had suspected that Kutloisiso was starting to fall in love they would have disciplined him without hesitation.

Mphoentle was something Kutloisiso had never seen before. She was different from all the other women

Kutloisiso had met throughout his life. He wouldn’t say in his entire life because it was at a very young age that he met her. The first time Kutloisiso met her? No! The first time he saw her, Mphoentle was more than a diamond: her walk, her face, her physique, her voice, her appearance, just everything about her was so divine, comparable only to an exotic goddess. He must’ve been a few strands short of the genetic makeup required to build a shrine to someone who without a doubt was the main cause of the kind of dreams that made the average teenage boy hide his underwear and linen from his mom on laundry day, only to discreetly wash them himself in her absence to avoid having to have the uncomfortable sit down with the birds and the bees as priority number one on the agenda. Though, despite how he felt about her, Kutloisiso was too afraid to approach her, let alone greet her.

Kutloisiso was so shaky and his mind went on a trip; everything happened in such a short time. Kutloisiso had always been searching for love and, as we all know, everyone likes talking about love as though they have a doctorate in the complexities of that not-so-simple auxiliary noun we so casually throw around, be it in religion or relationships, but few truly understand the essence of love, what it truly means to love another human being so much so, that you trust them with your life, sacrifice, compromise and sometimes end up having yourself reduced to tacky Valentine’s gifts, because nothing says I love you! like a mass produced affirmation about one’s affection for another written by a complete stranger at an all-time low of just R79,99 apiece. Anyway…ultimately, we are never completely satisfied by the expressions of love that our partners tend to give us. Kutloisiso grew up believing that one day he would have the ideal form of love and yet in human terms love seemed not to exist. But the moment Kutloisiso saw Mphoentle, he was suddenly sure that the true essence of love really did exist.

Kutloisiso never knew that falling in love would make such a great change to human life, especially not this drastic a change. He could not understand; he had mixed emotions about it all. His understanding of love wasn’t that good because everything he had learnt about love was from what he had seen happening around him. In that very instant, overwhelmed with fear, he decided to turn back and go home, trying to figure out what kind of feeling this was. Was he starting to change or was this all part of growing up? But he knew that people don’t change but do grow up and for some people this seems as if it’s a change in their lifestyle. He was so certain that this was a just another one of those phases. He had so many questions without answers. It all felt like the end of his childhood and the beginning of step one to maturity. He even started thinking that he was becoming obsessed because everything seemed so new to him. Is this how someone feels when they start falling in love? He asked himself. Is the person I‘m falling in love with feeling the very same way as I do? What exactly is love? How do I assess whether it’s genuine or not?

Kutloisiso couldn’t ask his parents or his brothers for he knew that if he asked them about it they would start giving him a lecture, telling him about their experiences and how first love treated them. He definitely didn’t want to listen to their boring old stories, how they got hurt and who knew what else they would have to tell.

But now he noticed that for his generation love had become conditional. If you didn’t fulfil the conditions of your relationship, then the person you loved wouldn’t love you anymore – nowadays relationships had also become symbiotic. Love had been turned into a prize and for Kutloisiso love was not a prize to be idly thrown away, but rather involved devotion, serious devotion. Love was nothing without sacrifice. The sacrifice was the kept the fire going in the harsh winters. There were a few questions that young people did not bother asking themselves like: What is love?

Who do we love? And where does love come from?

Kutloisiso realised that people had lost sight of what love really is. He began to understand that if we truly understood love, we would stop playing games with each other’s emotions and lives, and we would not use love to manipulate each other’s emotions for personal gain.

* * *

For Mphoentle, it didn’t seem all too different. It’s true what they say about first love: for Mphoentle first love was everything. She was so committed to her first love, she didn’t believe that someone who loved her would cheat on her at all – it didn’t matter how many times the guy hurt her.

She believed that her first lover would be someone who taught her how it felt to be loved. It would also be the person she would have her first intimate kiss with and someone with whom she would create many memories. That person would teach her what it’s like to be in a relationship.

However, her first love was confusing, very confusing. She didn’t know if the path she was to follow was really the path to take and if it would take her forward or not. Her mother would always say to her, ‘My child, never trust boys. Boys are evil and give babies.’ Whenever she thought about getting into a relationship she would just dismiss the idea and think back to what her mother had told her, until the day she decided to be someone’s princess and that then seemed to be the meaning of life for her.

She never expected the unexpected, then again, we never do, but it all felt like she was in a whole new world – everything started to have meaning in her life. She went into that relationship just to see if what her mother had been nagging her about was true or not, but clearly this guy gave her a whole new meaning. She started to question herself, asking herself about the things her mother had been on about because they didn’t seem to be true. When things began to get difficult and go wrong, she started having regrets, asking herself why she hadn’t kept her mother’s words in mind but then she came to her senses and realised that everything in life has its own beginning and end.

She was positive about her situation, knowing that there will always be something rather than nothing and that convinced her to really long to see what the next king had for his queen, which was her.

She had always believed in having a deep and more meaningful relationship with her partner. She spoke about love and she truly loved. She gave her all for love. Loyalty was her priority, love was her breath and love was her key to peace. Her love was never limited. There were no limitations in her love for her partner and she knew that love was a spirit without which her heart would be empty. She shone in a way that made her adorable. Men could smell her essence of love from a distance. All the men in her neighbourhood wanted her. Everywhere you went you would find men speaking about her and you would wonder what was so special about her. Men all over the neighbourhood praised her beauty.

She believed that real love was unconditional love. For her, unconditional love meant loving someone exactly as they were, not trying to change the person into adopting ways she was comfortable with. For her, love was accepting the person fully the way he was.

The essence of her love was loving a person no matter his background. Love motivated her. She knew that whenever a person enters into a relationship, they should love the other person in the relationship as they love themselves. By doing this she believed that her love would never be conditional. The essence of love for her was understanding the person she was in an intimate relationship with, being there for him, knowing when he was down and knowing when he needed her the most.

She always believed in love at first sight. She started falling in love the moment she laid her eyes on him. For many people, love means acceptance but for her love was a remarkable spiritual being. She never believed that to be loved is to be accepted and to be unloved is to be an outcast. She believed that love is a natural being. She never abused the word love by considering it as a reward for good behaviour. She never believed that if she behaved in a certain way, she would be loved more and therefore accepted.

But then all that started to change. She started to please her partner hoping that would make her feel loved just a little bit extra. Then insecurities started to creep in and eventually became omnipresent. She was led to poor self-confidence and insecure feelings arose and got to her. Everything in her life started to change and she started falling in love for the wrong reasons and it all led her to low self-esteem.

She started remembering her mother’s words to her when she was a youngster. Crying was now all she could do. She looked in the mirror and started smiling, remembering the reason she’d first started falling in love; she thought about what love really is. From time to time she worked on regaining her confidence. Love without confidence for her was like going to school without getting educated or driving a car without petrol and water.

Her relationship motivated her. She saw good things in her sufferings: she always went to bed crying. It seemed to her like it was the end of the world. She couldn’t believe that the guy who had treated her like a queen was the one treating her like trash. She gave him her all, she gave him herself, she gave him love, she gave him her pride, her precious gift of pride and she was abused in the name of love.

She had never expected to face this stage in a relationship because she had fallen in love the moment she’d laid eyes on him. His appearance to her was like an angel sent from above. She thought that she’d been sent an angel from above, that he was really meant for her and she had never believed in judging a person by his first appearance.

She was a lady of style and this is what drew her to him. Age didn’t matter to her; what mattered to her was the essence of falling in love, that strong feeling of love, that acceptance. He first gave her everything she needed; she was treated like a queen and she thought she was loved. But this guy did everything he did for her just so that he could get something in return. He used her and he manipulated her.

All she wanted was attention, to feel loved, to have someone she could call a soul mate, someone with whom she could share her good and bad moments, someone who could show her the true meaning of love. She was given all that at first, at the beginning of the relationship, but as time went by it all started to fade away. That love was just a feeling that he had for her. He wasn’t brave enough to tell her that he didn’t want her anymore but continued to fool her and treated her as a stranger, his sex object for when he was bored.

Everything happened so fast that she never thought about it. She’d always thought that sex was the relationship stronghold. She felt so empty. She wanted to feel loved and ended up making the wrong decisions in life. She never allowed friends to give her advice as she felt that making her boyfriend happy was all that mattered. She never thought of life without him; she never looked at the reality of life, which was that life didn’t revolve around her relationship. She always had a positive mind-set about her relationship and the fading away of love was the last thing on her mind.

She went through an emotional breakdown. Her world started to change. The ideas she had about the essence of love made her to start questioning everything that