Kay has been my friend for the past five years. He proposed love to me when we first met but I was in a relationship with Jojo at the time, so I turned him down. That didn’t push him away completely. He stayed in my life as a friend.

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Now, after all these years of waiting for me, we’re about to get married.

I should be pumped with excitement but I’m anxious. I’m scared that my past will haunt me and make me miserable in my marriage. This is what happened.

When I was with Jojo, his lifestyle was nothing good to write home about. He had piercings and tattoos, and although he told me he had stopped smoking, I found out he was a heavy smoker.

By then, I had already fallen deeply in love with him. So though I hated the smoking, I stayed. It got to a point when he didn’t even bother to hide it anymore. He started doing it right in front of me. I was okay with the tattoos and piercings. It was the smoking that bugged me.

He spoke about marriage but in the distant future. “Let’s have children now. Then we’ll get married five years after our last child,” he proposed. I told him I wasn’t comfortable with his plan. And he said I disappointed him.

That wasn’t the only thing I did to disappoint him. I am not proud to admit this but I cheated on him with a married man. When Jojo found out he was devastated. I thought that was the end for us but he forgave me.

We tried to continue the relationship as if nothing happened but things were never the same after that.

While we tried to fix the cracks my cheating caused us, my parents were fighting us on another front. They didn’t want me to marry Jojo. “How can we allow you to marry a man who looks like that? A man who has tattoos and piercings is not serious about his life,” they decided.

I tried to hold on to our love but the odds were against us. There was just too much going on with me and Jojo. I wanted stability and he couldn’t give it to me. So when Kay came back again, I kept an open mind.

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When he proposed marriage again, I said yes. Over time, I’ve come to love him deeply. We are almost done with our marriage preparations.

My problem is the way things ended with Jojo. It was a messy breakup. He swore on his mother’s grave that karma would deal with me. He said I would suffer for every pain I caused him when I cheated and then for leaving him for someone else.

I won’t lie, his words shook me.

I know dating a married man was wrong. I carry that guilt, and sometimes I wonder if I’ve cursed myself. This is why I am anxious about getting married. What if karma indeed gets me? What kind of punishment will karma give me? I wonder if there’s something I can do to appease the higher powers. So that I can be spared the punishment of my past sins.

—Eyram 

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