At first, I thought it was a thing for overly spiritual people, then afterwards, I imagined it could be a personality thing, but then I realised that the paranoia of going public about happy moments, especially relationships before marriage, is real. And it got me really wondering, who started this and why? We know that Adam and Eve should be blamed for most pains that come to us in life; cramps, job hurdles, name it. But who should be blamed for the normalisation of hiding beautiful things? Why can’t I casually post a happy picture of myself with le boyfriend without necessarily raising eyebrows? Recently, Juju la Belle tweeted: “Here is a theory that I don’t understand about keeping your partner off social media until you’re engaged/ready for marriage. ‘What if they break up with you after that?’ …Live every happiness as it was the last. What if you die today? Make yourself happy. Only You.” It’s not like we are planning on dying, really. We’re here for a long, good time but it is ridiculous to hold our breaths till the day we feel ‘safe’ about our little happy world. While I was celebrating my birthday two weeks ago at the coast (even the memory of it makes me smile so widely), I took a little video of my drink, the saxophone, and the blue waters bordered by beautiful white sand. Oh, the video had nice background music too (Sauti Sol). A few minutes later, my saxophone mouthpiece fell headfirst and got broken so I couldn’t continue with the ‘birthday concert’. About an hour later after I had even ‘moved on’, my friend saw my status and he jokingly said that someone saw the video and spat, sending the mouthpiece to an early grave. I laughed so hard at that. But apart from it being hilarious, he went ahead and explained that several people do not share their happy moments, not because they are introverted or private, but due to fear of enemies of progress. I found this fact so sad. That we have to hide our beautiful lives and success in a dark room and even put a padlock until they ‘mature’. Businesses aren’t hidden until they mature, though. The minute one starts rearing chicken, for instance, they immediately send the word out without necessarily thinking about the enemies of progress. Is the ‘spitting ideology’ only customised for relationships and pregnancies? I know this could also come from a place of trauma, and I truly wish you complete healing if you were ever in a relationship with someone and things didn’t work out. I was too, LOL. Back when I was young and fun. Heck, we even exchanged names on Facebook. It was an East African affair if you ask me. Looking back, though, it was a silly, childish move but I would not say that I regret it because it gave me so much joy back then. You don’t need much to make a 20-year-old happy, really and besides, it was the trend back then so we were cool and sure did enjoy it while it lasted. I came to understand that if one posts a picture of a young relationship that hasn’t reached the engagement or wedding level yet, the responses they receive from their contacts include things like, ‘why are you posting him if you don’t know if he is the one for sure’ and ‘did you get engaged and didn’t tell us?’ Like no, Susan. I don’t know if he is ‘the one’ because they don’t come with an ear tag, like cows. But I would sure love to enjoy every step of the relationship my way. Who introduced this ‘hide it till you tie it’ policy? It sure does need to be revised. The author is Rwanda’s first female saxophonist. (stellatush@gmail.com)
