The Price of Attention

When you're in love, it doesn't matter who says what about your relationship. You'll defend it with every fiber of your being. You don't want to hear a word against anything happening in your life. Nada. You'd see people whispering behind your back, jealousy dripping from their mouths, and you wouldn't care. That's how I felt about my boyfriend. Nothing else mattered. I was in love.

Even my cousin, the one who emotionally harassed me, never said a word against him. She always played along, praised me, even when I could see through her sarcasm. But I didn't care. She was just a part of the game, pretending to be my cheerleader. Deep down, I knew she wasn't really on my side. But love? Love made me blind to everything else.

There were rumors at school—always rumors—that he beat his girlfriends when they left him. But I didn't care. I never thought it would happen to me. After all, I loved him. He loved me. He wouldn't hurt me, right? Little did I know, if I pushed the wrong button, he could. He would.

And still, I couldn't see it. I just wanted to be loved, wanted to be noticed.

I kept faking sickness, faking pain. I needed attention. My mind raced with wild thoughts, and the easiest way to draw concern was to pretend I was bewitched. My mom, frantic as ever, took me to witch doctors. She believed it, too. They did their rituals—removing dirt, bones, coins. All these "cures" for the evil within me. I never felt any different. I wasn't sick, but I couldn't stop pretending. It was the only way to feel seen, to feel like someone cared.

In 2016, I did it again. I snuck out. This time, I had a phone—one that only my cousin knew about. She was my accomplice in all of this. I spent the night at my boyfriend's place, and of course, she texted me: "hey, everyone is looking for you. I told them you went into the field to help yourself."

I didn't panic. Instead, I thought to myself: Time to manipulate. Again.

So, we hatched a plan. My boyfriend decided he'd walk me to the farm field. I climbed the field, carefully stripping off my clothes, stuffing them into an incomplete building nearby. I returned to the field wearing nothing but a short legging and my bra. I pretended to sleep in the field, the crops thick around me, the early morning breeze cool against my skin.

My cousin kept up the lie, telling everyone I had gone missing. They all began searching for me. And there I was, lying in the field like an actress in a bad drama. When they found me there, shock rippled through them. My mom cried. My uncle asked me, "Where were you? What happened?"

I just laid there, pretending to be disoriented, tired. "heyyy" I said, "in my bed, did something happen?". They were all sympatric. 

It was all a lie. Another manipulation. But it worked.