His wife says she will destroy me. Whether I like it or not. “I will ruin you, even if you go to God and tell him to tell me to forgive you, you shall not run away from my ruin.” I have the message right here on my phone. That and many more.

It feels like being trapped in the fist of something I cannot see. I cannot go out without my brothers beside me. I tiptoe everywhere, watching my back, terrified she will appear from nowhere the way she promised she would.

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How did I even get here? How did I walk myself into all this trouble?

It started with grief. I lost my mother in the most sorrowful way. She was my friend, my confidante, the person who knew everything about me and loved me anyway. The day I was told she died, something in me died too, only my body did not get the message and kept on breathing. I did not think I was going to survive it. Getting over it did not sound possible, not even a little, until I found comfort in the arms and shoulders of Kuji.

Kuji was my supervisor at work. When I could not concentrate on anything, he was there. When I randomly teared up in the middle of meetings, he would call for a break just so I could cry. He invited me out, we talked for hours, he bought me gifts, he checked on me. He was already a friend before all this, so none of it seemed strange. He was just a friend comforting a friend whose mother had died. That was all it was, or at least that was what I told myself, until one day his lips touched mine and we went all the way.

We got carried away. A whole year and some months of being carried away, and nobody at work knew, not even his famous wife. He was even supposed to leave her, that was what he said, that was the plan, until I fell out of love with him and fell in love with someone else. Someone who did not carry his kind of baggage.

He begged me like he did not have a home to go back to. “I will leave her, whatever you want I will give you, do not leave me, we can run away together.” I said no. I begged him to stop and reminded him of his home, told him I did not want to be the woman who destroyed it. It went back and forth like that for a while until we finally, successfully ended it. A few months of peace and then his wife found out the truth.

She came to my house. Stood in front of my father and shamed him. Called him the father of a husband snatcher, said he had not trained his daughter well. Nothing my father said that day could calm her down. I have blocked him like my father suggested. I do not have any means of connection to him anymore. He left the workplace some time ago, and I have no intentions to rekindle whatever there was between us.

She has since made up with her husband. Forgiven him, given him another chance, moved on with her marriage. Yet somehow I am the one left holding all the punishment. Every morning, sometimes multiple times in a day, the threatening messages come. From her. From different contacts when I block one. She calls, I block her. She texts, I block her. Then a new number appears and it starts again. Insults, threats, promises to ruin me.

I understand her pain. I genuinely do. I am not sitting here pretending that I did nothing wrong, because I did. I slept with a married man. I am guilty as charged and I carry that. But I need someone to explain to me how the man who was also in that bed gets to walk back into his marriage while I am out here looking over my shoulder every time I step outside. How does that math work?

Grief will not be my excuse. Grief can make you do things you never imagined, yes, but I will not hide behind it. What I will say is that I am terrified. Not of accountability, I have made peace with that. I am terrified of not knowing what she is planning. Of not knowing when she will show up next or what form it will take.

It’s Not God’s Law For A Man To Apologize To A Woman

I want to breathe again. I want to go to work, do my accounting, walk out of my own house without a bodyguard. I want this behind me. But I do not know how to make it stop, and I do not know how to compensate someone for a pain I helped cause when they have decided that nothing will ever be enough.

Before you judge me, remember: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

—Sekina

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