There you were, on your way to the Chinhoyi University of Technology campus. You knew that your appearance at the campus wouldn't be easy for you.
You knew your fellow colleagues were ready to pounce on you like you were some kind of juicy meat, readily prepared for them to feast on. Since you were sure that the news of your heartbreak had already spread like a veld fire, with its smoke diffusing all over the place as it consumed everything in its way. In this case, you were sure the news had stripped all the sympathy from their hearts, engraving a dark blanket of insensitivity in them, grooming them for the time they would meet you, so they could flood you with insults.
You knew all that, yet you still made your way there. You knew you had to attend your lectures since you were on a scholarship, so you moved on, locking up any emotions and putting on a falsified strong face.
You were approximately five feet from the campus entrance when it all started.
The glares.
The low murmurs.
The pointing.
The loud laughing.
You had never been embarrassed like that in all your life. Quickly, you covered your face with a black veil and increased your pace. But the more you hid your face, the more the crowds intensified their mocking actions. Hands were clapped, high-fives shared, cameras clicked, but you continued to walk, though tears were threatening to leave your eyes and make your heartbreak known to the world.
You grabbed your veil tightly to prevent it from falling, but you couldn't hold your tears anymore, and so you broke down.
You were already imagining how the rest of the day was going to be. Already, you were frustrated.
You cursed Collins under your breath, fighting him in the battlefield of your mind, punching him anywhere possible until he fell to the earth like a heap of trash, ready to be picked up by the Municipality of Chinhoyi. By the time you reached the Lecture Theatre, you were close to being fine, but the crowds had not stopped. You blamed yourself for allowing your relationship with Collins to become a public affair, so much so that the entire school was notified about your breakup with him by certain sources unknown to you.
Just by the door, a girl yelped, "Mai Mutarisi!" (Mrs. Mutarisi).
Mutarisi was Collins' surname.
You ignored her and continued walking, but she didn't give up. She even ran up to you and yanked the veil off your head. Thank God the lecturer appeared from nowhere, eyeing both of you with a straight face, the kind that commanded respect. You quickly scurried inside, leaving the girl as she stammeringly greeted the lecturer, who was actually not concerned about the act she had done but about the way his students had drastically failed the in-class test you had written the day before.
He spent half of the lecture hours rampaging to and fro like a preacher, preaching on how he works day and night to prepare your lectures, how he dedicated most of his time to you, almost neglecting his family, his wife, and his newborn child. He told you how important it was to spend time with his baby, though he was choosing to spend that time on you.
He referred to you as inconsiderate, illiterate, blind fools with completely empty heads that he wanted to feed with information that would build your lives. You didn't get most of the stuff he said, since you were wallowing in your own pool of grief, hoping to be rescued soon.
After the long emphasis on how important it was for you to take your school work seriously, he called out the marks of everyone in the room and asked each one of you to step forward to collect their papers, despite the booing of the students. Despite the fact that you were almost a hundred in that room. He called out your name lastly. He commended you for your efforts and hard work, shaking your hand in the process, as he recommended everyone to be like you.
For once that day, you felt proud. You returned proudly to your seat, but the happiness wasn't for long, since the lecturer washed all your joy away by telling you that he was extending his lecture by two hours, since the other three had been wasted, and he blamed it all on you.
Finally, you were out of the lecture room. Everyone's focus had shifted off from you to the difficult assignment that you had been given. You knew this was your time to move, to run to your house before someone rekindled that shameless act of mocking you.
All was perfectly falling in place until you spotted Collins with his newly found love, sitting on some benches along the road you were using. Without thinking it through, you made your way towards him, fists clenched, lips trembling, as your mind was covered with a mist of anger and vengeance.
"Collins!" You called out for the first time.
He ignored you and focused on what he was saying to his girlfriend.
She was Amber, and her face was heavily made up, lips red like human blood, eyelids heavily shadowed with a blend of different colors, nose pierced, tongue pierced, and upper lip pierced, fingernails long like unused pencils.
"Collins!"
Still, there was silence.
"Collins, how do you even kiss this thing? Don't you sometimes feel like a fish that has been caught on a fishing line? Collins, I'm talking to you!"
And that was the last straw. You grabbed the bottle of Pfuko mahewu that was in front of him and emptied the contents on his dreadlocked head.
"Collins, I'm talking to you. You think I'm scared of you, like your mother, who doesn't bathe. How can you send an explicit audio of you having sex with your girlfriend? Is that a proper way of discarding me? If you didn't want me anymore, why didn't you just say it properly? You are a dog, Collins, a dog!"
At this point in time, you were just vomiting out anything that came to your mind, unconcerned that you were in public and that crowds of people were beginning to circle the three of you.
You poked him countless times, yet he chose to sit there as if he was not noticing you, until he stood up. This time, you were sure he wanted to fight you, since his fists were clenched, and you could see his jaws tightening, his veins visible as they protruded from his light skin like pressurized water pipes ready to burst.
"Just because I respect you doesn't mean I'm weak, neither does it give you the right to disrespect me. Excuse me!"
And just like that, he held his lover's hand and walked away, disappearing from the crowds, leaving you in shock, almost choking on your long-held breath. The thick crowds dispersed as they discussed what they had seen in small groups.
The embarrassment that you felt at that time was just too much. You regretted ever talking to Collins and every action that followed, although you had an inner feeling of pride that at least you had stood up for yourself for once in your life. You actually had mixed feelings about the matter.
Patience, what have you done to yourself now?