The call came very late in the night when I was sleeping. When I picked up she asked what I was doing. She made it sound like I was in the room with someone. As if I was sharing my bed with another woman. After back and forth for a while, she told me she was pregnant. I took it as a joke because we’ve always used protection. The days we didn’t use it, she took pills to prevent unwanted situations.

She sounded serious. Her voice was stern.

Out of shock I asked how could that happen. She told me not to ask silly questions and what was I expecting when I was being intimate with her. We talked extensively. She wanted to know what I was going to do. I didn’t know what to say or think so I asked her to come home the following day.

I loved her and had marriage in my plans. The only thing that came in the way was my finances. I was saving money to rent a new place so I could leave my parents’ house. My job wasn’t that good but it was enough to keep me afloat. I was breaking even at that moment in my life so having a baby wasn’t part of the plan.

When I thought of what to do, the only answer that came was to get rid of it and prepare the grounds for a better future where we could have as many kids as we wanted.

When she came home in the morning, she was wearing a very big frown as if the two of us were fighting. “Now, say what you want to say quickly and let me go. We are having a baby, right?”

I shook my head and told her we couldn’t have it. She started clapping her hands while calling me names; “I knew I was wasting my time with you. You don’t love me. If I follow you, you won’t take me anywhere. At this age and time you want your girlfriend to abort? Ain’t you a man? Who’ll beat you for impregnating a woman?”

I tried to explain things to her. That it was raining but the ground was hard. That if we took our time, we could make things work in the future.

She didn’t listen. She stormed out of my room while telling me to consider the relationship as over. I called her severally that day, she didn’t answer my calls. I went to her place in the evening to meet her with her friend sitting next to her. They laughed when they saw me coming. Her friend murmured, “The guy who can’t take care of a child is coming to take care of you.”

They burst out laughing before I asked her to excuse me. Right in the presence of her friend she told me, “If you’re here because of the pregnancy, forget it. I was joking. It was just a test but you failed miserably. It only means one thing and that is, I shouldn’t waste my time with you. So it’s over.”

Her friend added her voice as if all along she had something against me. We were both cool until that day. My girlfriend wouldn’t let us talk things over between us so I left them.

I still didn’t believe the pregnancy was a joke until she did a test and showed me the results. Nothing would make her come back to me. According to her, if I could ask her to get rid of something as precious as a baby then I wasn’t worth it.

A week later, she was posting another guy on her status as her new boyfriend. When we were dating, she never posted me once on her status. Every caption told a story about our relationship and how she saw it. “You have to let the bad ones go as quickly as you can so the good ones can have a space in your life.” She wrote.

When I called her and she didn’t pick, she updated her status minutes later; “The bad ones will continue knocking on your door but don’t forget the reason you locked them out in the first place.”

I learned to let her be. When a woman wants to leave, you let her go. She may never come back to you but the good you did for her will forever prick her conscience. I gave up and concentrated on my wretched life that needed fixing.

A few months later, I rented a new place and moved out of my parents’ house. There was more to be done but the good thing was, I’d moved on from my ex-girlfriend and her issues. At some point, I deleted her number so I didn’t have to watch her status. It was part of the healing process. I healed faster than I ought to because I built fences around me.

A year or so after we broke up, I met my ex in the market. Immediately she saw my face, she changed direction and pretended she hadn’t seen me. I didn’t bother but from the look of things she wasn’t looking OK. I closed my mind on the encounter and continued buying my stuff.

A mutual friend called asking if I knew my ex was pregnant. “Pregnant? When did she get married?” I asked him. He answered, “Must you be married before you get pregnant? She has a boyfriend so it’s not far from reality that she can get pregnant.”

Honestly, I felt a little bit smaller. That the guy who came after me had been a man enough to keep a pregnancy. If only I didn’t fail the test, maybe she still would have been mine.

I judged myself too quickly before knowing the details. The guy didn’t accept the pregnancy. He told her to get rid of it because he wasn’t ready. She kept the pregnancy thinking it would push the guy to do the right thing. While she was three months pregnant, the guy got married to his longtime girlfriend. She didn’t see it coming just like I didn’t see the test that led to our breakup coming.

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I didn’t judge her but I made sure I was at the naming ceremony. I went with a friend and sat next to my ex’s best friend, the one who was there when they served me breakfast. She pretended she didn’t know me but I talked to her anyway.

After the ceremony, I went to her and congratulated her. She didn’t lift her eyes to look at my face. We took a picture together. She was carrying the baby while I stood next to her. When we talked days after the ceremony, I told her how I was hurt and was still hurt about the way things turned out.

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She told me, “It’s in the past now. I made a mistake with my choice but I didn’t make a mistake when I left you. It’s all about the lessons we learn.”

It was all the closure I needed. That I wasn’t the bad person after all. She has a baby to feed. She has a story of single motherhood to tell. I’m still here, trying to build my life, a thread at a time.

— Aidoo

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