Before I moved to the UK, a relative of mine, someone I share blood with, promised I could stay with them when I arrived. They promised to help me find my feet in this new country, and I believed them completely. I had even written in my diary about how heavenly it was going to be. Finally, I was going to make it. I wrote about how I would start saving as soon as I began working, how I would work so hard, send money back home, and return for visits without ever worrying about the price of a ticket. In my head, it was all perfectly planned. From my lips to God’s ears, I was certain everything would work out just as we’d said.

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But the moment I landed at the airport, their phone was switched off. I couldn’t reach them. I stood there stranded, biting my nails, wondering where I would possibly go. If not for a friend, I would have ended up homeless, all while my parents back home believed I was safe with family.

My friend, Mira, lives with her boyfriend and a friend who is staying in their other room. Their place is peaceful, but it is very small. The hallway is so narrow two people can barely pass each other. It was clearly not going to be comfortable, but I had no real choice. It was either this or return home. They say stepping out of your comfort zone is the push you need. That thought was ringing in my head as I accepted the invitation to stay in that crowded space.

Within a year, things happened. I fell in love with Mira’s boyfriend’s friend, Darryl, and I got pregnant. He told me he didn’t want the child. He said our lives would become more miserable than they already were. While I was still trying to talk to him about it, the woman he had come to the UK with as a dependent told him she’d found someone else who wanted to marry her, and she was serving him divorce papers. As devastating as that was for him, I couldn’t focus on his pain. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, but the child inside me was growing, and I needed to decide what to do. I was so worried. Would I keep it or not?

His situation meant he was going to become an illegal immigrant, which made everything feel worse. He refused to listen when I said I wanted to keep the baby. I tried to convince him, telling him the child could be our way to stay here legally. But he insisted he didn’t want to see the child. Even later, when I looked into ending the pregnancy, I was told I had fibroids, which made the procedure very risky for me. He accused me of trying to rope him into marriage. He said if that was my plan, I had failed completely. He told me he wasn’t going to have any more children, especially outside of marriage, because he’d done it twice before and it was one of the worst decisions he’d ever made.

Darryl, who could be so sweet at times, turned into a monster during that period. He made sure to knock it into my head that I would be doing it all on my own. That I should get ready to be a single mother, and that I should look at how the lives of single mothers usually turned out if I wanted to become one. As much as I longed to hold a baby, I know life abroad is hard. Having a child here is expensive. The cost of baby food, clothes, and the sheer strength required to raise a child alone felt overwhelming. So, I went to the hospital. When I came out, I was free of the baby. It felt refreshing, and not hard, in a strange and painful way. To be free of a burden, and yet to miss the weight of it, all at the same time. I returned home to him. Apparently, my dream of moving out within a year didn’t exactly work out.

Now, months later, Darryl is telling me something completely different. He is promising me marriage. He is promising me the earth and the heavens. He says he will give me as many children as I want, as long as I don’t leave him alone in the house. It’s so strange. He didn’t want me to keep the child. He didn’t even want to see my face afterward. So I am left wondering, what has changed between us now? He even said that if I don’t see any change in his behavior, then I can leave him. But for now, he says he needs me.

Yet, since that “honest” conversation he claimed to have with me, I have overheard him speaking to another woman on the phone. He told her they could at least be friends, that they should take time to study each other. He said if she wanted to ask anyone about him, he knew where she could go. The thing is, I don’t know any of his family members or friends. There’s just one person, a friend of his that I talk to on the phone, someone I’ve never even met who is also here. I’m confused about how to trust someone like this.

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Something in me tells me to leave. And yet, another part of me wants to call this friend of his to ask about him. I want to know, what kind of human is he, really?

I went searching for a house today, all the same. I don’t know what will happen in the time to come, but I know I want to be safe. I want to be free.

—Diana

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