It was August 2009. School was on vacation so I took a long trip to Brekum in the Brong Ahafo region to visit my senior sister. She had been married for three years but wasn’t living with her husband. The man travelled abroad right after their marriage so she was living alone. August 2009 wasn’t my first time spending vacations with her. Even before she got married I was always visiting her when the time was right. 

I remember the first time when she was teaching me how to operate the gas cooker. She always told me to be very careful; ”This thing is very dangerous. Always light the match before you turn on the gas. Don’t play with it because it can kill you.”

My sister had gone to work on August 11th 2009 and I was home alone. I remember I fried eggs in the morning and cooked oat. In the afternoon I was in the hall watching TV when I perceived a smell of gas. I didn’t think much of it because I hadn’t turned on the gas. I kept watching TV until I heard a neighbour asking if I had turned our gas on. I responded, “No, I haven’t. It might be coming from somewhere else.” She replied, “Or someone else’s gas is leaking.” The scent kept getting stronger but I thought it would soon fade away and it did. 

Around 3pm, I knew my sister would be coming home soon so I went to the kitchen to start cooking our evening meal. I lit a match and before I could reach the knob of the gas cooker I heard a blast followed by a ball of flame that threw me off the ground. I don’t remember screaming but I might have screamed when the fire threw me off. I didn’t see anything again until I woke up in the hospital buried under thick gauze. The pain I was experiencing was unbearable. My sister was there. Some of the neighbours were around me. I asked my sister, “Did I burn your house down?” She was crying. All she kept saying was, “How do I explain this to mom?”

My days at the hospital felt like an eternity. I thought I was going to die but some days I prayed I should die. The pain was unbearable. All that while I hadn’t seen myself in the mirror. I saw myself in the glass walls when I was being moved around. When I recovered to the level where most of the bandages had been removed, I told one nurse, “I want to see myself. Can you help me?” She said, “Be patient. You’ll start walking soon and you will see all the things you want to see by yourself.”

Finally, when I was discharged and had the opportunity to look inside the mirror, I avoided it. I knew where the burns were; the left side of my face was the most affected. My chest was burnt, and my thighs too. I lost a piece of skin on my butt and lost two terms at school. I didn’t look in the mirror until the day I had to travel back to my parents. I looked at myself in a giant mirror and started crying. My sister was standing next to me. She said, “You look Ok. You’re seventeen. As you grow up, the scares would fade and you may regain a lot of your looks back.” I trusted my sister but from what I saw in the mirror, I didn’t believe time could fade the scares away. The burns went too deep at the left side of my face and I almost looked like a stranger to myself.

I went back to school and repeated the class. Friends avoided me. Those who wanted to stay couldn’t look me in the eyes. At the dining hall, nobody wanted to sit next to me. They couldn’t eat when they looked at my face. I got the message so I stopped going to the dining hall and instead asked my friend to bring my food. I was lonely in a world full of people. I looked at their faces and no one looked like me. I saw my friends and I remembered how I used to be before the 11th of August 2009. I took solace in books. While the world avoided me, I went into books and met characters who embraced and made me part of their world. Nobody judged my looks and when I fantasized about running around with them, I felt whole again.

I never thought about love until I completed university. I’ve had no proposal from any man and the few men who came my way were only friends. When I started my national service in a village closer to Kumasi, I made it a point to stop feeling pity for myself and face the world on all fronts. I went to the village and made friends with George, a guy who was also doing his national service. The vibe between us was so good people think we were an item. They brought my mind to the possibility of dating him so I started dreaming of the day he would propose. I went to his place and cooked for him. When I had to wash, I washed for him too. He was the only guy who could maintain a gaze with me for several seconds without dropping his eyes. I thought it was love so I built all my hopes around him.

One day he told me, “Guess what…The girl I’ve been chasing since I came around here has finally accepted my proposal.” It was the way he said it and the way he smiled after saying it. My heart was breaking but this guy didn’t see it or cared. I kept nodding my head. He asked, “Ain’t you happy for me?” I boldly asked, “So what am I to you then?” He said gleefully, “I thought you were my friend? In fact, you’re more than a friend. You’re like a sister from another mother.” I left his presence before I could share a tear. He came home later to talk to me and I told him everything I felt for him. I was desperate for someone to love me and it showed in the way I handled the whole episode. He said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was what you wanted. You’re a sister to me and it will always remain like that. You’re good and kind and I like you.”

Our relationship turned sour because I didn’t want to see him again, especially when he had someone else. The only time he came around was when he wanted me to cook or wash for him. I told him to give that work to his new girlfriend and from there the aura between us changed. 

After service, I met a guy who told me point-blank that he wanted me. I asked, “Huh? What did you just say?” He answered, “I said I want you to be my girlfriend. Why are you surprised?” I answered, “I’m not surprised but I didn’t expect it to happen this soon.” I had known him for only a week. I met him in an office where he helped me to locate someone. He took my number and said he would like to see me often. I accepted his proposal and we started dating. This guy did everything that proved that he loved me but he did them only when we were alone. He didn’t want to show me to anyone. He was hiding the affair and also hiding me as a person. 

Anytime I complained he told me it was because the love was new. I gave it all to him because I loved him so much. He was surprised to know I was a virgin. He was happy to know he had broken a virgin. It became his pride and something he said often. He said, “I broke you. You are all mine and no one can take you away.” I didn’t want to be taken away by anyone because I’d found the love I wanted in a man. 

As our relationship progressed, something didn’t add up. Some days he won’t pick up my calls all day. Other times, he’ll disappear for so long and come up with plenty of excuses. One day I went to his house unannounced and got to know that he was married.

His wife and kids were inside when he was pleading with me on the outside. He sounded desperate. He begged and promised to compensate me with huge money if only I would walk away and not create a scene. I looked at him fighting for his marriage and yearned for a man who could also do that for me. I left. He called the next day and asked for forgiveness and I forgave him. He asked, “Does that mean you’re not breaking up with me?” I answered, “You’re all I have, remember? Where will I go if I leave you? But promise me that you won’t lie to me again.”

I was clinging to him because he was the first man to ever propose to me. In my mind, had it not been his wife, I would have been the perfect woman for him. So even when I knew he had a wife, I still stayed with him and played the role of a humble sidepiece who had nowhere to go. It was killing me that I wasn’t the only one in his life but the solace came from knowing that someone like him can love an ugly me. We dated for three to four years and no man ever came close to even proposing to me. Even the men I made obvious that I liked shunned my company. Eiii Bruwaa, m’abrɛ ooo.

I was sick in my tummy and felt nauseous for so many days. I thought I was pregnant so I went to the hospital. I was in a long queue and dozing off when this gentleman sitting next to me tapped me. When I opened my eyes he pointed at the door and said the man there was calling me. I looked at the man, he was wearing a white overcoat on a beautifully tucked-in shirt. He lifted his hand, opened his palm and closed it repeatedly to signal me to come. He took me to an office and asked what I was there for. I told him my problem. He went for my card and processed me to meet the doctor immediately. He said, “Come back here after seeing him.”

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I went back to him with my prescription and he gathered the drug for me. He didn’t take anything from me apart from my number. He asked me to call him if anything else comes up. Nothing came up so I called to say thank you. He was happy that I called so we talked more. We started sending each other messages. He wanted to see me so I went to his office, waited for him to close and went out with him. I told him the story of my burns and he said, “My sister caught up in a fire like this but she never survived it. You have the heart of a phoenix to be able to survive that burn looking at how you describe it.” I smiled girlishly and said thank you after I’d apologized for his loss.

The meeting became often. I was slowly letting go of the married man in hopes that this new one will propose to me. I stopped picking up his calls and stopped seeing him. He got desperate. The old me would have found it lovely, his desperation. But the courage I got from this new guy didn’t let me care about how he was feeling. One day, the new guy proposed and I said to myself, “The princes in all the stories I read when I was young came in shining armour but mine came in a white long overcoat. God, is that how you do your thing?”

I know by this time you are rooting for me. You’re reading this and saying in your head, “Finally, she had found love.” You’re asking God to make this one work for my good. Well, let me give you some spoilers. It worked. We’ve been married for two years and currently expecting a baby. But our story was not meant to end like this. We had to fight a lot of nos to get the only yes we spent all our days fighting for. 

What Do You Look For In A Partner You Want To Settle With?–Beads Media

His mother hated me. I believe she still does. She didn’t want to see my face and questioned why his only son would go out there and bring a “burnt pork” home. That’s what she called me, burnt pork because to her, that was how I looked like. She said, “Over my dead body will that happen.” His father also said no but when I got the chance to talk to him one-on-one he looked at me and he cried. I told him, “One of your daughters got burnt and died, right? Let’s just say I’m that daughter of yours but I survived it. I’m not all about my face. There’s more to me than what you see. I’m a heart, blood flowing through veins and a full human who is worthy of love just like anyone else.”

When his father came to my camp, things started changing slowly until his mother had little to say. To date, she talks to me with her head bowed down. It doesn’t hurt like it used to. I’m ok. I have my love life growing like an uncontrolled weed. The child coming is the showers of blessing on our love story so I don’t care where his mother looks when talking to me. I’ve settled. I have a resting place now so all I could do is give all the love I have in me and sprinkle each day with affection for a man who fought everyone and everything to be with me, regardless of my looks and how the world sees me.

— Bruwaa 

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