Insight of a Kenyan Girl

All my life, I have been crashing into love like a storm — wild, desperate, and always doomed to fall.

Stupidly, foolishly, I have spent my days searching for love. Clinging to whatever resembles a wall — anything that looks sturdy enough to lean on, even if it’s crumbling under the surface. I hold on tightly, desperate, blind to the cracks, blind to the warnings. And every time, without fail, the wall is too weak to bear my weight. And I fall.

But somehow, I never die. I crash — oh, I crash hard — but there’s always this slow, painful struggle as I lift myself up again. Bruised, bleeding, but breathing. I patch myself back together, piece by fragile piece, only to stumble forward… and meet the next weak wall.

It has become a habit now. A ritual I didn’t mean to adopt. This endless cycle of crashing and rising, hurting and hoping. My heart — poor, reckless thing — craves to attach somewhere, anywhere. It begs for a home. And even when my mind, the only part of me that still tries to reason, sends out its weak little warnings, I ignore them. I throw myself headfirst, foolishly, shamelessly, toward what feels like love — even when it smells faintly of death.

And every time, I get so close. So close to breaking for good. This foolish love, this desperate, ragged love that is never enough. Never enough to hold me, never enough to sustain my boldness, never enough to be a pillar strong enough to keep me standing.

I have become my own destroyer. These are self-inflicted damages — I know this. It’s like I’m trapped in a dance between self-deprecation and brief, fragile moments of self-love. I tell myself, next time will be different. Next time, I’ll be wiser. Next time, I’ll find someone stronger.

I dream of that one person — that one bold soul with a wall stronger than any other. One who sees me in all my reckless yearning and doesn’t flinch. One whose eyes never stray, whose hands never tremble when they reach for me. One who knows, without a doubt, that foolishly, recklessly, I will love them back with every piece of my battered heart.

Maybe then, this cycle will end.
Or maybe, that will be my final fall — the end of my becoming.

And when they find me, lying there beneath the rubble of all my failed loves, they will speak in hushed voices.
They will say, “She died searching for love.”

My sister, always blunt, always half-right, will say, “She never really loved anyone. It was all obsession. She searched for what she couldn’t give herself. And in the end, she paid for it, in pain and heartbreak and empty nights.”

And my best friend — the one who tried to love me in ways I couldn’t even recognize — will whisper, “I loved her. God knows I did. But I could never give her what she was looking for. And maybe now, finally, she rests. Maybe now, this foolish love has let her go.”

But I wonder… is there rest for a heart like mine? A heart that never learned how to stop searching, how to stop craving, how to stop crashing?

And maybe, in another world, I would have learned. I would have built my own walls strong enough to hold me, without needing someone else to be my shelter.

But here, in this life, I keep searching. I keep falling.
And if I die this way — heart cracked open one last time, hands still reaching for a love that was never mine — then let them say it plainly:

She died the way she lived — foolishly, shamelessly, and always, always searching.

And maybe that is not a tragedy.
Maybe that is just the story of a girl who loved too hard, in a world that never knew how to catch her.