Before we were anything, he didn’t like me. According to him, my voice hurt his ears because I was too loud. All he wanted was to hide from me. As fate would have it, we hung around each other for so long, we became lovers. Two years after that, we were talking about marriage. We were both lying in bed facing the ceiling and watching the ceiling fan twirl.
“Do you know I didn’t like you that much?” He asked me. “I couldn’t stand your voice. You were too loud and the bad thing was, you always had something to say but today look at us in bed talking about forever together. Who would have thought?”
We laughed about it. It was innocuous, harmless and belonged to history. We thought it didn’t matter anymore until we got married. Whenever we had a disagreement, I told him, “You didn’t like me anyway. Maybe you married me just to punish me for all the things I unknowingly did wrong to you.”
“I should have listened to my instinct. I wouldn’t have been here getting aches in my ears because of the same thing I hated about you.”
The first year was rough. The second year was turbulent. The third year felt like we were in the middle of a whirlwind blinded by the dust it carries. By the fourth year, I was so sure we made a mistake by getting married. I wanted a divorce. He wanted a life without me in the frame. We were fighting about everything. A lot of third persons and advisors came in but nothing improved.
He Said The Pregnancy Was An Accident
I remember one night after we had fought for a week, he approached me in bed and kissed me. He said sorry and told me we could work things out if we were patient. I fell for the move, kissed him and had sex. After everything, he stepped on my panty on the floor and walked to the bathroom. It felt like a dagger through my heart.
“Why did you do that? Didn’t you see my panty on the floor?” I screamed. He looked back, did ‘mtcheew’ and walked away. Another fight, another emotional distance that confirmed that indeed we didn’t belong to each other. All that while, my inability to conceive was also a problem we didn’t talk about but was worrying us.
I’m ashamed to admit that it took a deathly experience for us to know how much we needed each other.
He was sitting in front so he saw death coming but couldn’t do much. While the driver was haphazardly turning left and right to swerve the oncoming vehicle, he said death held him by the shoulder, smiled and whispered, “It’s your day today.” Everyone was shouting Jesus’s name but he was frozen with fear because he could feel hell’s fire on his skin.
The car he was in collided with the oncoming vehicle. It hit his side of the car. Everything went silent. When he opened his eyes in the hospital, death was standing next to his bed giving him orientation on how to live in the land of death.
“People paint death as a man in a black coat with fiery eyes hoping around with a sword in his hand. Death looks gentle. It speaks sweetly. It takes you in his embrace and makes you feel comfortable,” he told me.
He spent one month in the hospital. When I found him lying helpless, my heart sank. When he opened his eyes the first time, they looked like pearls, a treasure I’d been looking for. I whispered, “Please don’t go. I need you now than before. Don’t close your eyes.”
He looked at me and didn’t blink. He heard me. Bones had to mend, skins had to heal, and love had to grow from the ashes. Every morning I was there. Every evening I sat next to his bed, caring for him and gisting him on what he’d lost. One day he smiled out of pain. Another day he walked out of the hospital pain-free.
We continued the healing in the house, and while at it we developed a bond better than we used to have.
We’ve done twelve years already. We no longer look like the couple who nearly let go when we were just a few years together. It turned out that all we needed was for one of us to be sober and listen.
What Will Happen If You Do It On The First Date?
We didn’t know who ought to be sober because we were young, fierce and confrontational. We didn’t yield because it was a sign of fear. That was what was killing our marriage. When my husband was down and couldn’t say much, he said yes a lot. He nodded to my advice. He listened than talked and because he didn’t say much, the little that he said, I listened. That was our saving grace.
I would do everything in my power to prevent that accident but I’m thankful for what it brought out of us. It’s like the flower that grew out of the concrete. If it can grow out of such a tough environment, what else can ever kill it?
— Miranda
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