To most people, sight is simply the act of seeing, a physics teacher told me as much back in high school, and it's hard to argue with. Insight is harder to pin down; different people describe it differently. To me, it's the ability to apprehend the true nature of something through intuitive understanding, something beyond the five senses, a kind of acute observation paired with quiet deduction.
My mother always told me that people with true sight also carry true insight. My physics classes only confirmed what she'd already taught me. Sight and insight aren't the same thing, but one leads to the other: sight is your focal point landing on something; insight is when that focal point goes further, when you look at something closely enough to see what others can't. It often feels like a revelation that only arrives through close, deliberate observation, and that's what I found, again and again, in Elizabeth.
The first time I set my sight on her was a moment I still cherish. But as our relationship deepened and our understanding of each other grew, I began to see things about her that no physical glance could have shown me. I remember the first time I sat close to her, around break time, holding a bottle of soda. I couldn't risk looking directly at her without raising suspicion, so instead I angled the bottle just right and studied her reflection in it. What I saw in that reflection stayed with me, though I couldn't tell anyone what I'd been doing. Using reflective surfaces to study people without them noticing became something of a habit of mine. Not long after, another chance arrived: she found me arguing with the school gatekeeper and told me, from behind, to respect myself, that arguing with a gatekeeper didn't suit me. That was the first time I looked at her directly, up close, with nothing between us. I turned to see who'd said it, surprised to find it was her, the same girl, three classes below me. "Who are you," I asked, more startled than rude, and she told me again to respect myself. I don't know where she found the confidence to speak to me like that, given the age gap, but I couldn't answer her sharply. I tried to behave like a gentleman instead, and walked away, as she did the same. I sat in class afterward, unable to concentrate. She'd left a mark on me. She had.
We barely knew each other at that point, but we started saying hello whenever we crossed paths. The next time we sat close (genuinely close, not inches apart) was on her eighteenth birthday. I'd brought her ice cream from one of the better restaurants in Kampala, along with a card, and we sat on a bench outside her hostel kitchen. We exchanged a few words, but all my attention stayed on her eyes. Every word she said seemed to go straight into my mind. I couldn't stop looking at them, the kind of eyes that tell you everything about a person, things they've said and things they haven't. Her face didn't look entirely innocent, but her eyes told a different story: an untapped kind of love, still new. I saw that she feared certain people, but around me she seemed sure of herself. I saw trust.
People sometimes wonder how I could read that much from a look. I'm a boy who spent most of his time around girls, and my mother taught me a great deal, socially, about reading people through their eyes. She used to ask me, after every conversation, what I'd seen in someone's eyes, a habit that's stayed with me ever since. When I was younger, I feared looking directly into people's eyes, because sometimes what I saw there frightened me. I told my mother this once, and she said it happens: when you really look, you can tell who's good and who isn't. I've seen that in a lot of people over the years, though I've rarely told anyone what I actually saw. Many assumed I admired them, especially the girls, when really I was just searching their eyes for answers they couldn't give me any other way. In Elizabeth's eyes, I found both the questions and the answers I needed.
I loved looking into my mother's eyes too, she was a genuinely beautiful woman, with extraordinary eyes that drew men's attention wherever she went. Elizabeth had that same kind of extraordinary beauty, and in some ways resembled my mother's side of the family, known for producing beautiful women with what people back home call "princess eyes", eyes usually only found among people connected to royalty, though Elizabeth wasn't, as far as I know. That contradiction always stayed with me. I called her "queen" sometimes, and she never quite understood why, but it was those royal-looking eyes that earned it, the same look my mother and sister carried. People say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is; my mother had a way of looking at you that made you feel liked, no matter the truth of it, and just meeting her eyes brought comfort. Elizabeth was no different, the kind of girl whose eyes make you feel loved, whether or not that's quite what's happening, the kind of eyes that pull confessions out of you.
Some things are hard to put into words, even when you sit down and try to write them, and Elizabeth's eyes are one of them. I remember being about two years old, at the zoo with my mother, seeing animals I'd never imagined, a lion as large as the one I saw that day, animals I assumed only existed in some distant, older era, like dinosaurs, since I'd grown up entirely in the city. What caught my attention most was an antelope. I got close, looked into its eyes, and it started crying. People around us asked my mother why the animal was so distressed; she assumed it was simply frightened. Later, she asked me what I'd seen that made it cry. I told her I'd seen smaller animals inside its stomach. She didn't believe me at first, until the zoo attendant confirmed the antelope was pregnant. From that day, she wondered whether I really only had five senses like everyone else. I don't think I do. Since then I've often tried to avoid direct eye contact with people, because of how much it tells me without them saying a word, and that's what I mean by insight: going beyond sight to draw out the story underneath. Anyone can learn to do this, though most people never try, assuming it only happens naturally when you're in love, since that's the one state where everyone's eyes seem to speak on their own.
Once, I was somewhere with someone who spoke no English, no French, and only a little German and Spanish, languages I barely spoke myself. We managed anyway, through broken German and facial expression. It sounds strange, but it worked, and it's the kind of thing that's hard to explain after the fact. My mother always told me love is the greatest feeling a person can experience, and at times an indescribable one, you can stand in front of someone with a hundred things to say, and the moment real understanding passes between you, all the words disappear, and all that's left is the urge to close the distance entirely. That's what insight brings you to, in love especially: a hug that says more than speech could.
My mother used to say love is the greatest weapon there is, which is why God uses it so often, the way a goat can survive among a thousand hungry wolves, unharmed, simply because love is present. It's the same principle, she said, behind Daniel surviving the den of lions. Love can change anything, in the shortest possible time, and she always warned me never to underestimate what it's capable of. Much of my life has revolved around it, the people who've shown me love without asking anything back are the reason I've kept going. I'm not an easy person to love or be accepted by quickly; I take my time studying people, though there are exceptions, people I've accepted into my life the moment I met them. Elizabeth was one of those exceptions. I loved her from the very first day.
Many people tell their partners they love them while meaning something entirely different underneath it, and that's its own kind of insight, the gap between what's said and what's meant. Someone once told me that for him, in love, a single hug was enough to make his whole day. To some cultures, hugging is just tradition, something done automatically, especially among students, but hugging with insight, with real intention behind it, is something else entirely, and being held that way can make you feel like you're standing at the top of the world. I've been loved well, by the best people, my mother, my extended family, my friends, and by Elizabeth. I never fully understood the word "tenderness" until I fell in love and felt it for the first time in a relationship. We'd talk, and the way we looked at each other said most of it without needing language. I'd ask her to say something, and I'd end up saying the same words back. I'd look into her eyes; she'd look away, at first, unable to hold my gaze, though she got used to it eventually. When our eyes did meet, I could see that tenderness in her plainly. Her voice would shift too, over the course of a conversation, starting in her ordinary tone, then softening, gradually, until I had to lean in just to catch what she was saying. I asked her once if she spoke to everyone that way. She said no. I never fully understood why she softened like that with me specifically, though I had a guess: she wanted my attention, the same way I wanted hers. Sometimes we'd simply go quiet together, mid-conversation, as though we'd both slipped into the same private thought at once.
My mother told me many things about love, almost like a fortune teller at times, as though she already knew what was coming for me. She used to say the only real difference between her life and mine was gender, everything else, she believed, would repeat itself in me. Many of the things she predicted have happened, or are happening now, even things I once swore never would. Years ago she told me a story about falling in love with my father, and how he'd once left for a trip that lasted almost three years, during which she never once considered anyone else. "I hope this doesn't happen to you too, Andrew," she said. I told her that was her story, not mine, and none of that would happen to me.
A few years later, I received an acceptance letter from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Around 4:30 one morning, I called Elizabeth and asked her a hypothetical: if she loved someone who had to leave for four years, with no communication and no way of knowing what was happening in his life, would she wait for him? She gave me an answer I didn't expect: "Andrew, love conquers all. If I really love someone, I'll wait as long as it takes." I was stunned. I told her the story my mother had told me, about her and my father. I knew, by then, that I'd be leaving the country myself for at least four years of school, though I didn't tell her that night. Two days later, I asked her to find a branch of my church near her and start attending services there. Then I asked if she could get a candle. She said yes, but asked why. I told her: before bed, light it, set it in front of you, and say a prayer for both of us. I told her that the following week I'd be applying for my student visa, which meant an exam I needed to pass. I don't think I'd ever had someone believe in me quite that fully before. "Andrew, I know you can do it, you have everything it takes," she told me. I said I knew I could too, but that no one's prayer would carry more weight for me than hers. She laughed, and we said goodbye for the day, though her voice carried something heavier underneath, the knowledge that within a few months, I'd be gone for four long years. In the time that followed, our conversations started to sound like the conversations of a married couple.
I remember one Tuesday morning, on the phone, asking her plainly if she believed in me, if she had confidence in me. She said, without hesitation, yes. It was no secret by then that she loved me, and as time passed, that love only grew stronger. She's special to me in a way that's hard to overstate. One morning, a conversation between us ended badly (I'd been pressing her with too many questions) and the call cut off. I assumed it was my fault, that she'd ended it deliberately, until she messaged a few hours later explaining her phone battery had simply died. I forgave her, of course, and told her about a guy who'd called me recently trying to ask questions about her, which she didn't take well. She asked for his number, and I knew exactly why, she wasn't someone who tolerated anyone interfering in her relationships, and I'd seen that side of her before. I chose not to give it to her, no matter how much she pushed.
People at home tended to respect me to the point of fear, and nothing I said was ever questioned. When I asked Elizabeth once if she feared me the same way, she told me plainly: no, not at all. That struck me as strange, coming from someone I'd known barely five and a half years by then. I asked, once, if she'd ever consider spending a night at my family's home. Without hesitation, she said why not, as though she was ready to meet that challenge head-on. Every moment after that felt significant to both of us. I still carried some of my old restlessness, and one day I brought that up with her directly, asked what she thought of it. "That's just you," she said. "Nothing's going to change that." I asked if it bothered her. "You already know the answer, everything about you is fine with me." That was another surprising thing to hear from her, given how direct and demanding she could otherwise be with me. I knew, on some level, she might have been saying it out of love, or fear of losing me, but she meant it, consistently, whenever the subject came up.
I once asked if she'd be open to traveling somewhere with me, the way I liked to do on my own, boarding a bus, going somewhere new just for the sake of it. "But Andrew, you're always busy," she said, the same line that had caused friction between us before. I asked her not to bring it up again, and she told me it was genuinely fine with her, that she understood how I was. I kept wondering whether she really meant that or was simply comforting me, so I asked her directly. That came not long after she told me her love for me felt automatic, that she loved me without having to try. I asked if she trusted me. "Of course. I've told you before, I don't just trust you, I'm proud of you." I asked why she'd bring that up unprompted. "Because every word I say to you, I mean it," she said. "If you really trust me the way you claim to, you already know that."
My mother used to say that once everything's been said and the truth is finally out in the open, that's the real test of who you can trust unconditionally. I thought about that often with Elizabeth, how her eyes always seemed to say there was someone out there who understood every thought, every feeling, the pleasure and the pain, the deepest things a heart holds. I believed, and still believe, that sweetness only comes after some suffering, the way beauty in a flame requires something to be burned. A lot happened before we found our way back to each other, and I had my own things to burn to ash before that understanding between us could exist. My mother always said life is a series of choices, and that those choices shape everything that follows, for better or worse. I knew, choosing Elizabeth, that I'd have to live with whatever came of it. A friend of mine, Simon Peterson, once wrote me something that's stayed with me:
"The feelings and emotions you experience are a direct result of the choices you make, the thoughts you choose to think, the times you choose to be unselfish, the times you put yourself in another person's place and let your heart be moved with compassion and love. Feelings of love, unity, and happiness are given to you according to your choices, your decisions, how you've determined, by your own free will, to act, to give, to respond, to sacrifice, and to understand."
That period mattered to me for another reason too: within a few months, I'd be leaving my country to continue my education abroad, something I'd wanted for a long time, even as the idea of becoming a professor had started to take over my thinking. My cousin often talked about wanting to travel, and I'd ask him the same thing back, why not me? I'd always said I'd never leave my country except for education, and now that reason had finally arrived. Every decision from that point forward needed real thought behind it. I believed then, and still believe, that love can't be measured, bought, or sold, for it to mean anything, it has to be given freely. Happiness, in the end, is simply a state of mind. I was about to leave something significant behind. Both my mother and my pastor had always told me never to settle for less, and that belief carried me forward, ready to face whatever leaving Elizabeth behind might mean, comforted, at least, by the happiest memories we'd already built together, which I knew would travel with me wherever I went.