Janelle JANELLE and AND Jerome’s JEROME’S LOVE Love STORY Story
“Imiss being in love,” I wrote in one of the journal entries I sporadically type, rambling and unedited, when I’m momentarily overwhelmed by fury, frustration, worry or the swell of any other unhappy emotion. “I feel like I wasted my opportunities at love and now, here I am, loveless for the long haul. It’s scary to think it may never happen again.”
It was March 19, 2017, and the woman who wrote this needed a miracle and she didn’t even know it. The year before, I had staggered through the fog of another devastating broken heart, and I had counseled and cried with friends when they were trying to survive their own relationship train wrecks. Folks on social media were getting engaged, jumping brooms, and enjoying the joyful experience of love, but in real life, I was surrounded by evidence of how dangerous that emotion could be.
It didn’t help that the timing of my frail faith in men, fidelity, and my own judgment had been juxtaposed with an explosive availability of data predicting the continued singleness of the single black woman.
Our love lives were the subject of constant research and examination, and I was so over- immersed in dismal numbers. Sometimes too much information is the death of hope and faith, so I settled on believing it probably wasn’t going to happen for me because I was scared that God would not do mighty works in that one part of my life. It just didn’t seem plausible. So I got comfortable with my disbelief because it protected me from disappointment.
Somehow, my therapist got me to say “maybe.” Maybe I would go on a date again. Not anytime soon, I warned her. But possibly, perchance, maybe I could meet someone one day. And that flicker of faith on my end was all the invitation God needed to be God, y’all. Less than two weeks later, a guy named Jerome that I had met at a club in D.C. during Howard University’s homecoming messaged me on Facebook. I vaguely remembered him — I still have the picture we took together that night — but I hadn’t seen him in 17 years. Seventeen years.
He asked if I was busy that weekend because he’d like to catch up. I wasn’t doing anything at all, but I told him I was unavailable. Those Law & Order marathons weren’t going to watch themselves. Maybe next Saturday, I suggested. I didn’t know what his angle was because I was actively healing, but not completely healed from heartbreak.
I was wary of his motives — sometimes black men, aware of their superior prospects of not dying alone, prey on single black women because they assume their offered-up least is still better than the nothing at all we’ve been told to expect. It insulted me tremendously, and I had that heat for Jerome if that’s how he chose to approach me. But he didn’t. Instead, Jerome was funny, sweet and thoughtful, and we sat in the booth of a downtown D.C. restaurant talking for hours until our meters were super-expired while the ancestors — who probably sensed what was happening between us — protected us from parking enforcement’s wrath.
Jerome proposed a year later, and I couldn’t say yes fast enough. I said yes because he’s a man of integrity. I said yes because I see God’s light in his spirit. I said yes because he’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I said yes because my daughter is a young adult, but Jerome wanted to know her. I watched him closely when he came into my life and, every time, he’s proven himself to be who he says he is.