Nne

Long time no post 😅

I last posted exactly three months ago, on May 4^th, when I put up my Mental Health Awareness Month introduction post. Chances are I will explain my reasons for going MIA on August 22^nd in my blogiversary post, but since today is the first and last time the 4^th falls on a Wednesday this year, I am continuing a tradition I started last year by writing about my relationship. Last year 4^th fell on a Wednesday twice, in March and November, and on both of those days I put up posts about my relationship: Fire Flames and FRIENDSHIP & CAMARADERIE. For this year, I have decided to let y’all in on why the number four is so special to my relationship.

The most obvious way in which the number four is special to my relationship is because my boyfriend asked me to be his girlfriend on January 4, 2020. He was initially planning to ask me out on 5^th, but after a disastrous call with his best friend on 4^th he ended up asking me out that evening and in retrospect it was nothing short of kismet that things worked out that way.

Other ways the number four is special to my relationship are:

• I am four years older than my boyfriend
• we live in house number four
• we plan to get matching anchor tattoos 44 months into our relationship which coincidentally will also be exactly four months away from our four-year anniversary
• his name is Dieudonné

That last point is the reason for the title of today’s post because not only is nne the Swahili word for four, it is also part of his God given name. Fun fact: Dieudonné means God given in French so allow me to toot my own horn here because that is some very clever word play if I do say so myself.

We may be getting matching anchor tattoos 44 months into our relationship, but our first set of matching tattoos will be of the word ‘kismet’. I did not know this at the time but choosing ‘K Is For Kismet’ as the title of the post I wrote about the win for my ‘Minutes to Midnight’ story would end up being so serendipitous because the word kismet is one I use to describe my boyfriend and I a lot.

The first time I saw my boyfriend in April 2019 it was kinda sorta love at first sight. He was wearing a Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight hoodie and until I knew his name I would refer to him as “Minutes to Midnight” when talking about him to my friends and family. Two months after I saw him, Yummy Magazine ran a flash fiction writing competition for their wine themed June edition and my piece titled ‘Minutes to Midnight’ ended up being one of the two winners.

Tall, dark and handsome in a Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight hoodie, dark jeans, Nikes and hair like Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther, he was irresponsibly my type.

The dark jeans and Nikes bit was borrowed from Delicate by Taylor Swift (which, fun fact, ended up becoming one of “our songs” six months after I wrote that sentence) but the hoodie and hair were all my boyfriend because when I first saw him he was wearing a Minutes to Midnight hoodie and his dreads were strikingly similar to Erik Killmonger’s.

In K Is For Kismet I shared this quote:

I guess it was what my friend Phoolendu at the yoga studio would call kismet. That’s like fate, but much more dramatic.
Robin Palmer

And that is exactly what me and my boyfriend are: like fate, but much more dramatic. Which is why we are getting matching ‘kismet’ tattoos in each other’s handwriting before the year is over. And after we get married we will get matching nne tattoos on our ring fingers because as JAY-Z said, “matching tatts, this ink don’t come off even if rings come off.”

But the biggest way in which the number four is special to my relationship is how deeply it factors into our wedding date. Yes I know I am not even engaged but on this exact day last year I figured out our wedding date. I say all the time that my relationship is written in the stars and once I let you in on our wedding date you will definitely agree with me that my boyfriend and I are meant to be.

Without further ado, my wedding date is…

Thursday January 4, 2024.

Besides the very obvious January 4 and 2024, there is also the super cool coincidence that Thursday is the fourth day of the week. That day will also be our four-year anniversary and I like the fact that we will have dated for exactly four years before getting married.  

Another thing I love about our wedding date is that 2024 is a leap year. I am high-key obsessed with dates and the calendar so it is just soooo thrilling to me that we started dating on a leap year and will get married on a leap year too.

In FRIENDSHIP & CAMARADERIE I wrote that one day I will let y’all in on the reason why I deliberately wore a blue dress on our first date and today is that day.

I am OBSSESED with all things Meghan Markle and in 2019 I watched a YouTube video where she was talking about her wedding dress. She said that her “something blue” was a piece of blue fabric stitched on the inside of her wedding dress. The fabric was from the dress she wore on her first date with Prince Harry and that blew me away as it is an incredibly creative and romantic idea. And since it was kinda sorta love at first sight when I first saw my boyfriend, I wore this blue dress on our first date and a piece of it will be stitched into my wedding dress for our wedding on January 4, 2024.

Before moving on from Meghan Markle, today is her 40^th birthday and as I said I am OBSSESED with all things Meghan Markle so HAPPY MOTHERPHUCKING BIRTHDAY QUEEN!!!! Yes I know she will never read this but I do not care and it is my blog so I can write what I want. Lol. I STAN THE FUCK OUT OF MEGHAN so I am wishing her nothing but happiness, peace of mind, love and health not just today but throughout the rest of her life because Lawd knows the colonizers did not make Royal life easy for her.

I may have figured out our wedding date on Meghan Markle’s birthday last year, but my boyfriend and I settled on the song for our first dance way before that and it may or may not come as a surprise that it is a Taylor Swift song. Yes I know I am OBSESSED with all things Taylor Swift but sweardown I did not force our wedding song on my man. On August 23, 2019 Tay released Lover, an album she described as “very much a celebration of love, in all its complexity, coziness, and chaos.” Less than two months after the album was released I slid into my boyfriend’s DM and before long songs from Lover served as the music background to the magic of us falling in love. Chances are one day I will put up a ‘Falling In Love To Lover’ post which details how we fell in love to songs from the album (as well as Delicate from reputation) but until then, any guesses what our wedding song is? I will not divulge it anytime soon, but feel free to share your guesses in the comment section as I conclude today’s post with the opening paragraph from FRIENDSHIP & CAMARADERIE because I cannot reiterate enough that our relationship was written in the stars.

My boyfriend and I have a very beautiful love story. Very. I know that declaration is quite biased coming from me but sweardown out of all the love stories in the world, mine and my boyfriend’s is my absolute favourite.