I was a young graduate who was lucky to get employed right after national service. Apart from the suit and tire I wore to the interview, the only valuable thing I had in my name was Cecilia. When I dreamt of the future, it was her face I saw. I told her, “Now that I have a job, I will work my heart out and make as much as I can in a year so the two of us can marry right after you complete school.” She nodded her head with pride and smiled that her infectious smile. The two of us were in tuned and I was determined to make that dream work. 

In a year, I rented a new apartment and started filling it up. I would buy a sofa today and buy a carpet tomorrow. When I saw beautiful curtains in a store, I took a photo of them and sent it to her; ”Is it nice? Do you think it will make any difference in our room?” She responded, “Buy them. They are beautiful.” On the weekend, she came home and helped me put the room in order. I remember that day clearly as if it was just yesterday. She stood at the corner of the room and counted everything in the room and mentioned what was left to be purchased. 

“You’ll one day buy a large screen TV and when the tides are good, you’ll buy a washing machine and install it at the corner there. I don’t want to come here and be washing,” she told me. 

I looked at the room with the same eyes as hers and told myself, “I will get these things before the sun set on us.” By the time she completed school, I had finished putting my room in order. Everything she said, I bought them. A month after writing her final paper, she got pregnant. 

She came to me wearing a sad face. She said, “I’m pregnant and I don’t know what we are going to do with it. I have my national service in front of me and my whole life ahead of me. How do I start with a pregnancy?” I was lost too. I was thinking. I didn’t want us to start life with a pregnancy but it had happened. What were we supposed to do?

I asked her that question and she said, “We can’t have it.” The way she said it made it sound like she had already thought through everything and that was her final answer. I told her, “We can work around it if we put our heads together. It looks difficult but we are not kids. We only have to take it a day at a time and we’ll get there.” She asked me, “From what month would you carry the pregnancy so I can rest? If I get a job interview somewhere in the middle, can I give the pregnancy to you and go for the interview? You’re making it look easy because you’re a man. You’re not the one to carry the pregnancy. No matter how you look at it, it’s not going to be easy for me. Let’s get rid of it.”

She came to my place one Saturday and told me, “I’m coming from the hospital. It’s done.” I looked at her with tears welling up in my eyes. “Tell me you’re joking. We didn’t conclude the discussion so why go ahead and do it without my consent?” She told me, “The final conclusion is what I’ve done. There’s no better conclusion than this.” I was angry. Disappointed. I was having a cocktail of emotions. I wanted to scream. I wanted to kick something but deep down, there was this calm voice that said, “Calm down. It’s already done. Your anger won’t solve anything.” 

I told her, “That’s fine. It’s alright. No problem.” I was incoherent as if I’d lost my bearings but she got the point that I wasn’t happy about what she did. From there, things slowed down between us. It became difficult for me to see her without remembering what she did. We could be in a room and say nothing to each other. We could spend a weekend together and exchange not more than five words. It looked like there was this invisible thick wall between us. She was not happy and I was not happy too. I felt it was a phase and it will soon go away. 

She came over to spend a weekend with me and I told her I was visiting my parents that weekend. She got angry. She screamed at me, “This is my last weekend before I go to the village to start my national service. Why would you not spend it with me? When did you decide you’ll go to your parents that you didn’t tell me?” I was angry so I responded angrily and it turned into a huge fight. We brought issues from the past to justify our current anger. I told her, “If you didn’t kill our child, we wouldn’t be where we are now where we are almost always angry. Murderer.” Of course, she responded in an equal manner before I finally stormed out of the room and left her there.

I got to my parents’ house and didn’t call to check up on her. I came back on Sunday afternoon only to meet my door open wide with nothing inside my room. 

I was like, “What happened? Have I been robbed? I went to the bedroom and there was only a bed without a mattress. My bags were intact but nothing else was the same. My TV was gone. Everything in the kitchen was gone too. The curtains were gone. The carpet was nowhere to be found. As I was walking around looking for answers, I dialled her number to call and ask what happened. Her phone could not be reached. I saw a white paper in the kitchen and picked it up. It was a note from her. She said, “I left with what I could manage to carry. I’m paying myself for the years spent with you and the troubles you’ve put me in. Obviously, things won’t ever be the same again. Don’t bother because I’m not coming back.”

That was the most difficult moment in my life. I tried her phone severally and It didn’t go through. I went to work the next day and I couldn’t concentrate. I was crying most often and was trying to hide. My colleagues looked at me and knew there was something wrong with me but I was not ready to open up to any of them. On the third day, my boss called me to his office and asked what the issue was. I broke down and cried while explaining everything to him. He tried his best to get me to relax but it wasn’t working. He said, “I’m bringing Offeibea to your office. You can use today and tomorrow to hand over to her so you can take a week off.” I nodded and left his office.

Minutes later, Offeibea was sitting next to me listening to instructions. I would go off for a while and start to cry. I didn’t even know why I was crying. Whether it was for the loss of my things or for the end of the love between me and Cecelia. Offeibea kept asking me what the issue was but I didn’t talk. I kept trying to give her the best information I could gather but it wasn’t coming. On the second day too the same. I told her, “Don’t worry. While I’m away, you can call and ask questions if you encounter any issues.”

I went to Cecelia’s house to look for her. I was told she had left for her national service station. No one could tell me exactly where. They only mentioned the name of the village she was posted to. I spoke to a few friends of hers and they gave me a few pieces of information I could use. I set off to the village and to the national service office in the district. It was a mountain but I didn’t give up until I was finally directed to the school she was teaching. Immediately she saw me she started walking away. I called out to her. I told her, “If you don’t want any drama, stand there and let’s talk about things.”

“I’ve sold them,” she said. 

“Why would you do such a thing? Do you know I can cause your arrest for stealing my things?”

“I’m here. Call the police to come and arrest me. What are you waiting for? I thought you will even come with them.”

We went quiet, contemplating what next to say. “I want you back,” I said. She responded, “There’s no way back. It’s over between us. You called me a murderer. That would never change even if we get married. Go on. Find an angel and marry her because nothing can bring me back to someone who sees me as a murderer.”

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And true to her words, she never came back. I was left to begin my life again and didn’t know where to start. Offeibea called every day asking what she should do. I tried to help her the best way I could. One day she called and said, “I’m not calling you because of work. I know what to do now but I don’t know what to do to make you better since I don’t know what your problem is. You can trust me that no one will hear if I get to hear about it.”

I was given only one week’s break but I ended up taking all my leave days. I opened up to Offeibea and that became the turning point in my life. I didn’t know I needed someone to hear my story to be able to begin my healing process. Offeibea gave me that opportunity for healing and I never stopped talking to her. She would call every morning asking me how I was feeling. I would be truthful to her, “It’s still the same; the pain, the loss, the fear, the uncertainties. Everything is still the same.” She would tell me, “Take it slow on yourself. It gets to fade at some point. It’s like our favourite dress. The more we wear it and expose it to the sun, the faster it fades. Wear your pain as if it’s all you have. It will soon fade away and life would be normal again.”

One day I invited her over to my house. It was still empty. I took her around the room pointing at the empty spaces and telling her what used to be there; “That empty wall, my TV used to hang there. She took it away. That corner there, that was where my microwave was. She carried that one too away.” I stomped my feet on the ground and said, “The ground used to be covered with a woollen carpet. That too is gone.” She laughed at me and said, “Then she really came prepared. She might have come with a big truck.” I retorted, “A tractor rather.” 

We both laughed out loud. It was the first time I’d laughed in over four months. I felt the wrinkles at the end of my lips when I laughed. She told me, “These are things. Things can be bought only when you have life. You have a life so it’s easy.” 

One day she brought me curtains. “I don’t know if it’s beautiful enough to replace what you’ve lost,” she told me. I replied, “It’s beautiful enough as far as it’s coming from you.” Something was growing between us and it was obvious to both of us and the people in our office. We kept denying it. We told them we were just friends until we couldn’t lie to ourselves any longer. I proposed. She told me I wasn’t fully healed. I told her, “I shouldn’t be healed by this time I know but you made it easier and faster.” She responded, “Let’s see how it goes.” 

Men propose and get yes or no as a response. I got, “Let’s see how it goes” as a response but it was all I needed to start something with her. One day she came to my place and suggested that we should cook something. I asked, “Who cooks in an empty kitchen?” She retorted, “Watch me.” 

She borrowed a coal pot from the next house and bought charcoal from the street. She borrowed a silver bowl from the next house and hours later, we had food on the table. She was so happy she could do it. She said, “I couldn’t have done that in my own neighbourhood because I’m a shy person but I could do it here. Wow.” I said in my heart, “If I don’t marry this girl, I would be a fool chasing a fool’s gold for life.” And I knew I wasn’t a fool and there was no way I was going to act a fool at any point in my life.

30 People Advice Their Ex and Talk About Why It Didn’t Work–Beads Media

It’s the reason we’ve been married for three years now with a child between us. The watch phrase was, “Let’s see how it goes” so each day we woke up and push ourselves further a little bit so we could stay back and see how far we had come. I’m not trying to paint a rosy story here. It was hard. It even got harder at some point but the thing is, when you fight hard battles with the one you love and the one who loves you truly by your side, no matter how hard the battle gets, you’re comforted knowing that you’re doing it with the one you love. Even if you die on the battlefield, you get to die next to the one who loves you truly and that is enough motivation for you to carry on. 

Today, I look at Offeibea and count myself lucky. I even Thank God for the pain I went through when it ended with Cecelia. It’s like birth. You have to go through pain to have one adorable baby on your lap. In the end, the pain doesn’t matter but the joy that came out of the pain. She’s the Joy and the reason I can have a story that has a happy ending. 

–Offeibea’s Husband

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