It’s been a tough life. You plan your life a certain way but in the end, life shows you that he’s the boss. You plan for A, life takes you to B. So many broken dreams but what comes back at me consistently every day is my love life. I planned to get married at twenty-seven, and have my first kid at twenty-nine. It was going to be a free fall from there. I don’t know who said no to me. Is it life? Or the kind of women I met along the way?”

I was good to a lot of them but in the end, they turned their back on me. They found someone better. They found someone who mentioned their name right. Even when they found men I was better than, they still chose them. I’m a man growing up so I took all in as experiences I needed to build a better life in future.

When Abi came into my life at twenty-six, I felt ready. I told myself, “This is the one I marry. I will do everything within my power not to let her get away.” I wasn’t going to marry her at twenty-seven. There were still some edges to smoothen but I was sure I was going to marry her at twenty-eight or twenty-nine. By all means, I was going to marry her before I turned thirty.

I had a job that paid very well. I had a side job too. I won’t call it a side job. I was a handyman so a lot of people called and gave me some work to do. They paid me. I saved this money for the future. I was getting ready to marry Abi. I told her about my plans. She was very happy she told me one day, “You’re the closest I’ve come to marriage. The way you talk about it every day makes me feel like it’s close. Thank you. You make me feel worthy.”

The relationship was a year old when it started suffering. Someone came between us. Someone better than me. Maybe, If I were Abi, I would choose him over me but I was counting on the power of love to do the magic. You know, love conquers everything, not always for those who deserve the victory but for those whom love finds worthy. So a poor man gets the nod to marry a rich man’s daughter. It happened to Cinderella. I felt it would happen to me too. Abi would choose me and leave the worthy.

She chose the worthy. He had money. He had cars. He had businesses. He had a life. He was the one her parents favoured. When the time came for her to make the choice, she couldn’t look at my face and say, “I’ve chosen him.” She said it was too hard for her so she chose the easy way out. She stopped talking to me. She stopped responding to my text. When I went home to see her, her father warned me not to interfere in the love story of his daughter, as if I wasn’t part of the love story.

She got married six months after our breakup. She didn’t give me any closure. I had to figure out a befitting closure for myself so I could move on. A year and a half later, she knocked at the door of my life. She came to wish me a happy birthday. We talked for a while. Two months later, she came to wish me a merry Christmas. We talked for a while. She asked how I was going to celebrate the Xmas. I told her, “Just as I always do.”

She got it. I had always celebrated Xmas alone. She said, “I’m alone too. I can keep you company.”

We talked throughout the Xmas. She sent me gifts through a man who was coming from her end. It was a watch. It looked expensive. She said, “You deserve it. Merry Xmas.”

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The conversation always travels back when you have backstories so we talked about what happened. “Why didn’t you choose me? Why did you switch off on me.” She had no answers but she had a way. She sent a photo of a scar on the upper part of her boob. She said, “The scar is still there. I missed the times when you asked about it. This one I’m with doesn’t care about how I got it.”

I got carried away. I said, “Why don’t you go down a little. Show me everything. I miss them.” Two minutes later, the photos dropped—about five of them. I looked at them with envy. They looked better. They looked unexplored, like they hadn’t been touched for years. “Does he play with them the way I did?” I asked her. She answered, “Play with what? Even in our intimate moments, these two are not invited. He’s not a boob person. He ignores them as if they don’t exist. You are the last person who saw them for who they are.”

It became a thing. I will wake up to see photos of such nature on my phone with words such as, “Good morning.” Or “Arise and shine because I’m already up.” In the night, we would do a video call. She would tell me about her day and I would tell her mine. I would ask about her husband and she would tell me, “As usual, he’s not around. He’s always absent from my life just as he’s absent from this thing we call marriage.”

For months, it was like that. We had crazy dreams we thought it wouldn’t happen but slowly, we were making it look like it was possible—as if we could make it possible. She wants to leave the marriage. She has been lonely for so long that if care is not taken, she will die alone though married. Her husband goes out of town and comes back in town and she would see him like twice. Sometimes he would come and go without her knowing. He would only send her a text; “I’m in town but have to go here and there.”

She is looking for an escape plan. I came along and she made me her escape plan but at a point, I had to snap out of the fantasy world and face reality. “Am I ready to marry her if she leaves the marriage?” I asked myself. The answer wasn’t clear and concise and the fact that it wasn’t clear was the problem. If I said yes without thinking twice, it would have meant something but I wasn’t sure. Not being sure is a bad thing so I decided to withdraw and see the picture clearly from the outside.

I stopped picking up her calls. I stopped texting. I used the same method she used when she had to make a choice. In the end, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t going back to her again. “No matter what, she is someone’s wife. I have to respect that.”

I cut the cord that bound us together. But she didn’t give up. She kept sending me photos and even videos of everything private on her body. She said, “It’s all yours. Please come for them. Everything on me misses you.”

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I missed her too but I had to decide for myself. I blocked her. I blocked her shadow and blocked everything that had links to us. We no longer talk but I miss her. I miss her as I write this. It’s like I need her more than I did when we were together but how can I need someone’s wife? How can I need what’s not mine? I think about her a lot. Sometimes I unblock her to watch her status and then I will block her again. She sees it and tries to contact me through other means.

I want to move on. What makes it easy? What can I do to not think about her the way I do or not try to contact her the way I do? She’s married. I won’t have her, I like to think, but how do I move on?”

—Eben

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