I spend a lot of time in the bathroom because it’s the only place I can stay calm, think and nobody would ask what is the matter with me. I turn on the knob of the shower for it to flow but I won’t step in. I would lean against the wall of the bath and think about all the avoidable troubles I’ve brought unto myself. I have a wife and two kids. I have three girlfriends—one of them is currently pregnant. She’s four months gone. I’m not singing this as a beautiful song to the man that I am. I’m writing about this because I feel heavy. I’m scared of my own shadow and the thought of tomorrow makes me want to disappear.

My job takes me to places. In a month, I can travel to at least four different places and spend not less than five days there. I see new people and new people see me. A lot of the people I give attention to are women, maybe it’s due to the nature of my work but all the people who come to me and show interest in me are women—beautiful women, fair, dark, chocolate and all colours of women.

When I travel like this, I spend the night alone, without my wife. Sleeping alone at night in a new place sometimes makes the night appear very long. A man in a large bed alone can only think of the possibility of women joining him so as time went on I took an interest in some of the women my job brought me way. It was easy. I only had to say, “I like you and want to be with you.” Usually, they’ll go like, “But you’re married. What if your wife finds out?”

Because I could assure them that she wouldn’t find out, they quickly said yes to me. I got Fonda this way and got Efia this way. Aisha came one night and didn’t want to leave again. She’s the one carrying my child as I write this. They all know I’m married but my wife doesn’t know I have them. I come home and pretend to be the best husband in the world. My kids see me and they ran to hug me, calling me daddy. In their minds, they are all I have but in my mind there are others.

Why can’t I let the women go?

It’s not as easy as it sounds. I live with Aisha in another town. Her parents are aware of me and they call me their in-law. When she got pregnant and I wanted her to abort it, she reported me to her parents. They called for a meeting and her father told me, “You’re a man and you’re allowed to do what you want to do. You can tell your wife. She would be angry but she’ll forgive you. We are not forcing you to marry our daughter but if you want to marry her, we’ll give you our blessings. She can’t abort because, in our family, we abhor such things.”

Aisha assured me we could keep the child a secret as long as I wanted it; “I won’t tell your wife about it and if you don’t tell her, how would she know? You only have to play your role with me and it ends there.”

She lives with me and behaves like my wife. One night she woke up and started picking up a fight with me; “When was the last time you touched me? Do I appear despicable to you because I’m pregnant?”

My wife had asked these same questions before. When I started seeing other women and didn’t touch her for weeks, she complained and even picked up a fight with me. It’s the same thing Aisha is doing to me now.

These days when I travel and I don’t see her in the following week, she threatens to tell my wife about the pregnancy. She has my wife’s number. When she calls and I don’t pick up, she threatens to call my wife. I’ve become a plaything for her—something she can manipulate because I’ve been living a lie.

I cry sometimes when the burden of my sins becomes so heavy on my shoulder. I can’t show signs of the emotional troubles am going through because my wife would ask what the problem is and I can’t say it. I laugh pretentiously when I’m home. When she cooks, I’m forced to eat even when I don’t have an appetite. In the night when she’s snoring, I can’t close my eyes because Aisha would be calling my line.

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Fonda is the youngest. She’s with me because of what she gets from me. She’s a teacher in the village and her dream is to move to the city one day. She sees me as her way out of the village and I know it. I tried to cut her off one day and this girl did all she could do to pull me back into her web again. I like her, I won’t deny that. When I’m with her there’s peace. She doesn’t fight me, she doesn’t push me to the edge, and she doesn’t ask unnecessary questions. She takes whatever I can give and that suits me very well.

Efia knows about Aisha but doesn’t know Aisha is pregnant for me. One day, Aisha called and she picked. It turned into a mini-war in my presence. They were both screaming at each other. Efia was cursing Aisha for trespassing into her territory. Aisha speaks Hausa whenever she’s angry so I didn’t understand much of what she said.

To keep Aisha calm after the fight, I had to compensate her with money. How can a man go forward in life when he keeps going sideways every day? I’m the one who has something to lose but I’m also the one who started all these.

If my wife gets to know any of them, my marriage won’t stand a chance. Right from the onset, cheating has been her dealbreaker. She talks about it as if it’s a warning she’s giving me, “The day I find out you’re cheating on me, that would be the end of us.” She even said it when we were just boyfriend and girlfriend. I can’t dare her on that because she’ll pull the plug.

She’s all I have now. All the others are just sinking sands that are making it difficult for me to walk faster. I need someone to talk to, especially about Aisha’s issues. If I could get her off my way, I swear I will dirt the rest off my shoulders easily.

I wish I didn’t get her pregnant and I wish I can get my wife to listen to me and forgive me. If she forgives me, I won’t go down that line again but she won’t so I have to walk around carrying the burden of my guilt while scared of the future of my marriage.

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I know what to do but I can’t do it. I know what to do to get out of Aisha’s hold but I dare not try so I’m here brooding, dying silently next to a loving wife who doesn’t know the cross I’m carrying. To be happy again, I must be ready to destroy everything and build it again from scratch but that will be very difficult, so I’m hanging in here, hoping for a miracle—a miracle that would make me confess my sins to my wife and still keep my marriage.

– Eddy

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