I have been with him since I started university in 2021. He was a young man who drank, and I chose to look past it. I told myself it was just a phase. I believed that marriage and time would change him. We lived together, and I would clean his mess, the scattered bottles, the vomit on the floor, all while believing this was temporary.

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When a scandal kept him from graduating, when he was told to redo an exam, I stood by him. I held his hand and swore, “By fire, by thunder, you and I will die together.”

In my final year, I became pregnant. We decided to keep our baby. School was almost done. By my last exam, I was eight months along. After graduation, he took me to live with his sister. He had no job, but she promised to support us until we found our footing. She kept her word.

All that time, the drinking never stopped. Then came the violence. He would hit me and hurt me. Afterwards, his family would step in to apologize for him. Slowly, I would let my guard down and forgive. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was the certainty they sold me that it would never happen again. It happened twice before he seemed to change. He started going to church. I thought his transformation had truly come.

Then our son arrived, handsome and perfect. For a while, things were solid. But he returned to the drinking spots, worse than before. The violence grew so bad I fled to my sister’s. I did not tell my parents. I only returned after his family helped us settle it.

His sister helped us open a small hotel. We were managing it well until one day, for a reason I still do not know, he came home and knocked me so hard on the eye I could not see. He beat me brutally, cutting me with iron sheets. I was rushed to the hospital. My eye was saved, but I lost blood and it needed time to heal.

This time, when my parents came, they were not there to talk. They came to take me home. They took my son, my things, and me. I heard later that when he woke up sober, he sold items from the hotel and even the blender I bought for our son. Then he disappeared.

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It has been three weeks. Now he calls to confess. He has asked everyone we know to plead for him. He says he will never do it again. He came to my home, knelt down, and begged me to come back.

But I have not healed. Inside, I am still broken. I know I should not go back. Yet his remorse makes me rethink everything. Please, I need help.

—Julie

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