He was everything I was not. He was tall and fair with broad shoulders, the kind of man you could mistake for a storybook hero. And I, with my chocolate skin and average height, always felt small beside him. I was cute, maybe, and smart, definitely. I was smart enough to know better, but the heart wants what it wants. I had a crush on him for the longest time, and I just knew, somehow, that we would end up together.

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We met properly in our third year. His programme was five years long, so he would still be on campus after I graduated. We started talking, and he told me he had just left a relationship that ended in chaos. So, his girlfriend had caught him cheating with the same girl he introduced as his school daughter. He said he had gotten them both pregnant at the same time. When both women were in the process of aborting, the main girlfriend found out. She stormed his hostel and fought the other girl. He watched quietly, then slipped out and called me to narrate the drama like a movie scene.

That was the man I fell for. I was not much better. I had just crawled out of my own heartbreak after catching my best friend and my boyfriend in my bed while I pretended to be asleep. Maybe that is why what we started was so easy. It had no labels, just fun, comfort, and sex. We drifted through the days like that until he left for a programme in Abuja during my final year.

Around that same time, I found that I was pregnant. We agreed to end it because we were not ready to be parents yet. Unlike how he treated the other girls, he was gentle with me through it. I held onto that softness like proof that I was different and he was in love with me.

But he had barely spent a week in Abuja when I discovered his messages to another girl. She was beautiful and simple, a member of his church. He told her he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. I was so hurt that I almost missed my final exams. When I confronted him, he blamed a cousin who supposedly used his phone. The lie was obvious, but my love for him was stubborn, so I forgave him. But, as time went on, we drifted apart. I didn’t care if he called me or not, or whether he replied to my text or not. I was done. I graduated, moved back home, and met new people.

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Then I returned to campus to collect my results, and we found our way back to each other. I was sick at the time, and he cared for me with a familiar tenderness that made me feel like I was on cloud nine. I confronted him about her behavior, telling him it didn’t seem like she was just a school daughter to him, but as usual, he brushed it off, and I let it go.

We officially got back together during his final year. He graduated and moved in with his sister and began his life, while I settled into my own small apartment. That was when reality began to hit me. I noticed how he flirted with every girl he met. Every time I got pregnant, he said he wasn’t ready, so I always sent them back to God. I should have known better and left, but I stayed with him until abortions became part of our lifestyle. The cycle turned into a sad routine, and it continued until I left for my national youth service. We would break up, make up, cry, and forgive, only to repeat it all over again.

Toward the end of my service, we reconnected, and I found out I was pregnant once more. This time, I was done with the pain and the procedures. I wanted to keep this child. He pressured me heavily, saying all sorts of things to convince me to end it, even telling me that if I damaged my womb, we could just adopt. That was the moment something in me died. I refused.

My pregnancy was incredibly lonely. I cried more nights than I slept, and everything fell on me. He was busy entertaining female colleagues at his sister’s place. His job at a hotel only made him worse. I shrank into myself until I barely recognized the woman I used to be.

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I gave birth to my daughter alone in that hospital room while he was absent. He would occasionally appear, playing the part of a devoted father for brief moments before disappearing again. When my daughter was just months old, I was struggling through postpartum depression when I discovered he was in a serious relationship with a coworker. Their bond was so strong that their colleagues believed they were married. Meanwhile, I remained at home, pleading with him to help care for our child

Today, my daughter is two. I am pregnant again. I am unmarried and exhausted, just trying to keep myself together for the children who did not ask to be here. A colleague of his recently told me he is chasing another girl at work. It is the same pattern and the same story.

Nothing has changed. Currently, I am carrying this second child, I feel like a ghost. My feelings for him are gone, and his looks no longer move me. I do not react anymore. I simply breathe through the pain so I can stay sane for my daughter and the baby I will soon meet.

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever find my way back to myself, or if this is who I have become—a woman who survived too much, too quietly.

—Light

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