When I was eighteen and had just completed SHS, I experimented with sex for the first time in my life, and I got pregnant. The guy who got me pregnant, Kojo, was my mate. I didn’t even like him, but he was the one available when I finally decided I wanted to know what was so special about sex that everyone around me was talking about.

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My mom didn’t believe me when I said it was my first time. She said I’d been sleeping around and had finally gotten pregnant. My dad said the same thing: “Adwoa, you see what you get when you go around opening your skirt to anything in trousers? You won’t listen. You’ll give birth and see the results of your actions.”

So it became public knowledge, something everyone used to shame me, that I’d been sleeping around and had been rewarded with pregnancy. I cried many nights. I would stand in front of the mirror and ask myself what I had gotten myself into, especially when my dad told me he wasn’t going to waste his money on my education again.

After I gave birth, the story changed from me sleeping around to, “Who’s going to marry someone like her?” A girl who had supposedly experienced so many men and had a son as proof of her sexual exploits. I didn’t let that stop me. I knew I had to go back to school and do well so the rest would fall into place.

When I told my dad I wanted to go back to school, he asked, “With whose money? So you can come back with another pregnancy?”

“Dad, look at my results. I did so well. Please, it won’t happen again.”

It took my dad five good years to listen to my plea and decide to help me go back to school. By then, my son was already a little man, so my mom took over his care. I went to school and earned outstanding grades that I thought would make my dad happy. Instead, he looked at them and said, “I hope these grades are real and not the result of you sleeping with your lecturers for marks.”

Every embarrassment I’d faced in life had cut deep, but this one cut even deeper. I nearly dropped out of school and gave up on life. My elder sister was my motivation. Even my younger brother told me to ignore him and live my life. My son motivated me too. I’d been told I would never have a husband, so it meant I would be raising him alone. I had to pick myself up and keep going.

I graduated with a first-class degree. I found a job after my national service and left home. I cried the day I realized it was just me and my son.

Years later, my dad asked me why I wasn’t married. He asked, “Is it too hard to find a man to sleep with now that you’re of age?”

That question should have hurt me, but I think I’d come to expect that from my dad, so I wasn’t hurt at all. Previously, I wouldn’t have answered him, but this time I looked him in the face and said, “It’s easy, very easy to find a man to sleep with, but that’s not what I want. I want someone I can sleep with today and tomorrow because he’s my husband. I don’t want another mistake you’ll never forgive. That’s what’s difficult to find. That’s why I’m not married.”

He didn’t say another word. I left home and never returned until Kwesi asked to meet my parents just four months after we started dating. I called my mom. I didn’t call my dad. I told her I was coming home with a man.

She asked, “Are you sure he’s going to last?”

I answered, “I don’t know, but he feels like the right choice.”

We met my parents. My dad asked a million questions. When we were leaving, he said, “I hope you come back soon, Kwesi. We’ll be waiting for you.”

On my wedding day, after my mom and dad had prayed over me, my dad said, “You’ve always been my favorite child, and this is what I’d always prayed for you…”

Then he paused, choked back tears, and said, “I never hated you. I was only scared.”

I cried. Mom cried. He cried. We got up and hugged. He continued, “Forgive me if I was too hard on you.”

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To me, that was the real wedding—to see the man my dad used to be before I got pregnant. I walked down the aisle with my dad while crying. Once he gave me away, he quickly turned away, as though he didn’t want anyone to see his tears.

That was 2018, and I call it the year I found my father again. To have a wonderful marriage and a dad who is now busy being a grandfather is a life I never dreamed of. But that’s what the forgiveness of a father can bring. That’s what finding the right man to be your husband feels like.

In my next life, let me meet these two men again, wherever they may be.

—Adwoa

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