I had completed SHS and was going home with all the properties I ever owned in school. I got to the station and was waiting for a taxi to take me home when this gentleman approached me. He asked where I was going and I told him. I thought he was a taxi driver. He asked me to wait for him as he brings his car closer to where I was. I asked him, “How much are you going to charge? Please let me know so you don’t waste your time and get here and realize I won’t be able to pay.” He smiled at me and walked away. A few minutes later, this red salon car came to park next to me, he got down and started carrying my things into the booth. I was concerned. “Who’s this guy? Is he trying to kidnap me? No, I’m not going inside this car.”
After parking my things inside, he asked me to get in. I hesitated. He said, “I’m not a bad person. I just want to help.” He pointed at a shop nearby and said, “That’s my mother’s shop, you can go there and ask about me. I just want to make your work easier.” I reluctantly went in. He pointed to the front seat but I went to sit right behind the driver’s seat, just in case. As he drove away, he started looking at me through the rearview mirror. When our eyes met, he asked about my school and some things about my life. We talked until I got home. Again, he got down and started unloading my stuff. My mom came around and asked who he was. I answered, “A friend. His mother’s shop is at the station. He saw me and decided to bring me home.”
He came home often to visit me after that. He struck an acquaintance with my mom and later got love struck. He proposed. I told him, “I’m just a girl. You’re clearly older than I am. What can a girl like me do for you?” He answered, “I’m just a boy too. Only twenty-five years. Soon, you’ll go to university and I’ll be your mentor through it all until you complete university. See it that way and give me a chance.” I did the maths. The age difference was wide but not too wide to scare me. My dad was ten years older than my mom. They could make it work. Ours was less than that so I figured we could make it work too. I said yes to him. His name is Jerry. I won’t even try to hide his name and I hope he reads this.
Jerry was an amazing boyfriend but no matter how hard he tried to show me that he loved me, my naivety somehow came to the fore and destroyed a lot for us. I was scared at first. He wanted to be out with me until very late in the night. He wanted me to spend the night at his place sometimes. He wanted to take me to places where adults go. I couldn’t do all that because I was just a girl. My mom liked him but she wasn’t going to sit unconcerned while Jerry takes me to places and do adult stuff with me. Whenever he came around, my mom advised him to take it slow with me; “It’s a small town. Whatever you do, you’ll get someone who knows you to talk about it so you have to be careful.” She approved our relationship but she didn’t give us the ticket to misbehave.
One day, Jerry brought me a gift. I opened it and it was a wig. He forgot the receipt in the bag so I saw the price. It was around Ghc300. He said, “Cover your natural hair when we go out so people won’t know you’re a young girl.” “Are you ashamed of dating someone like me?” I asked. He answered, “Not really, but you have to woman up sometimes. Look the part so people won’t judge us.” I got angry. I threw the wig at him and walked away. I needed that Ghc300 more than the wig. I felt he wasted money just to hide who I am from people. That was our first fight that slowly grew into a breakup. He called to insult me for rejecting a wig “most women will jump and grab in the air.” He called me kurasini and a child who doesn’t want to grow up. I was really hurt. I decided I won’t give him another chance in my life again.
I later did when he came home to apologize to me. When it was time for me to go to university, he was there for me financially. He was even the one who drove me from our town to the Legon campus. When he met my roommate, he told her, “Keep an eye on this girl for me. If a guy comes closer to her, tell me.”
Because of him, I could sneak out of school and come back to town without going home to see my mom. I’ll spend a weekend at his house and on Sunday, he’ll drive me back to school. Along the line, things started changing. He got a job in Accra and that brought all the change. He was closer but he started acting distant. He missed my calls often and gave me excuses whenever I needed an explanation. It took me a lot of effort for me to know where he lived in Accra. Once I got to know where he lived, I went there often, mostly unannounced. Our relationship got better until one day, he read my messages on my phone and found my closeness to another guy troubling. He screamed angrily at me and accused me of cheating on him. “There’s nothing in our messages that shows I’m dating him. Show it to me if you see it,” I said.
“You think I’m a child? You think I don’t know you’ve deleted some of the chats? You’ve deleted the part where you do crazy things, you think I don’t know?” He screamed back at me. Lovers settle their issues amicably but when Jerry was angry, he was never amicable. He pushed me out of his house and threw my bag at me to leave his house. I walked away peaceful without saying a word. When I got back to campus, I tried calling him. He had blocked my number. He blocked me on Whatsapp too. He even blocked me on social media. For a whole week, he didn’t talk to me. I was frustrated. I called him with my roommate’s number and he blocked that one too.
I was in my third year and was about to write exams. Because of what he was doing to me, I couldn’t concentrate on my studies. I could sit to learn and minutes later, the thoughts of him will take over. One evening, I was in class learning but I couldn’t handle the pain again so I walked to a lady seated behind me in the class and pleaded with her to use her phone. I knew her on campus but we’d never talked. We’d attended some lectures together at some point but we didn’t find any reason to be friends. That evening, I needed her help so I went to her. She gave me her phone without asking questions. I called Jerry’s number severally and he didn’t pick up. In my last desperate attempt to get to talk to him, I used the lady’s phone to send him a text, “It’s urgent, please call back immediately after you read this.”
Every now and then I’ll check on the lady and ask if he had called. She’ll shake her head in the negative. I left the class around 12am, but he still hadn’t called. The following day I went to his house and he drove me away. I cried but something in me shifted. I felt disrespected and demeaned. I told myself, “It ends here. Never will I stoop this low again for him to continue disrespecting me. It’s love I came here for. If love is no longer on the table, I won’t remain here to be treated like a doormat.”
I finished my exams, went on vacation and came back to campus. I didn’t hear from him. By the first semester of the fourth year, I’d completely moved on with my life and had even started entertaining some men in my life. One evening, I thought I’d seen Jerry’s car on campus. It drove by so quickly before I could even form an opinion as to whether it was him or not. Not too long afterwards, I thought I’d seen his car again. This time, I was in a taxi and it drove by a car that looked like his. I thought about him fondly. I felt it was my mind playing tricks on me. “Maybe my heart misses him that’s why I’m seeing him in things that are not him.”
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The next time I saw him was at Christmas. He had come home to spend the Xmas with his family. I’d completed school and was doing my national service. It was awkward but we talked for a while and we went our separate ways. The next time I heard of him, he was getting married. Guess who he was marrying. Just take a wild guess…he was marrying the lady I used her phone to call him in that desperate hours. The lady who was sitting behind me in that class. The lady I said I’d seen around campus but had never spoken to. I screamed, “Wow! So my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me after all. All the times I thought I’d seen him, it was in fact him. He was chasing that girl?”
As my mom puts it, “You don’t have to be surprised at all. We don’t necessarily end life with those we started with. We are meant to play a role in their lives. Once the role is done, it ends. You played your role. Even if it’s about linking him to his future wife, you delivered. To me, that’s not failure. Be happy that you delivered.”
She was trying to make me feel better and not bitter but everything she said sounded true to me and it has been a driving force in my life to date. I expect less in my relationships so I hurt less when it ends. I wished Jerry and his wife well, honestly. I prayed that it ends well for them so that whenever they share their story somewhere and my name pops up, they’ll smile.
—Adzo
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