Our rent was due, and my husband told me, “Start packing your bags; we’ll have to stay at my parents’ house.” We lived miles away from his parents. I had a job which was easier to get to from where we were staying, and we also had a six-month-old baby. I couldn’t do all the hardest work and heavy lifting, and I made that known to him.

We were arguing about who was being more rational and sensible while the landlord was holding our necks tightly. Every morning and evening, he was knocking on our door. He kept mounting pressure on us: were we staying or were we leaving?

My husband and I couldn’t decide on that.Aside from that, he did not want to pay for daycare, and so he suggested that I carry my six-month-old baby to work.

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As if the universe was against me, my eldest son, whom I had before, was admitted to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. He was admitted for one week, and I lay there with him on the cold floor, my eyes red from sleepless nights and running around to cater for him. He was finally discharged, and it meant I was also coming back home to lie on a mattress, eat a good meal, and sleep well to my satisfaction.

That drive was the longest one yet.

Our home was lighter than I had left it. Something was missing that I couldn’t put my hands on, but when I went to our bedroom, it finally clicked.

There was no mattress in the room. I opened the wardrobe; my husband’s clothes were missing. I checked the bathroom; his sponge wasn’t there, neither was his toothbrush.

I walked over to the shoe rack. None of his shoes were there.

I was shaking with fear when I called him.

“I have taken what belongs to me. If you want to stay there, stay there and pay the rent. Bye-bye.”

I laughed and told him to stop playing. He insisted that he was going to his parents’ place.

“So, what about the children? What about me? Your responsibilities towards us? Are you going to leave us just like that?”

I was just returning from the hospital. I had a bountiful number of questions, and there was no one to answer them.

That was the last time we spoke over the phone.

Right now, we have been separated traditionally and are now going through a divorce in court. But I am struggling with something far heavier than I can carry.

He came to me with a proposition: that I forgive him again, take him back as a husband, and start off where we left off.

I responded, “Where we left off was two years ago, when you shed your responsibilities like a cobra shedding its skin. You took off and left us like we were second thoughts.”

Every now and then, he returns and asks me to think about us. “You should look at the kids and not deny them the possibility of having both parents.”

He keeps trying to emotionally blackmail me..

Some days, when he calls and starts talking about reconciliation, I thoroughly think about it. I think about the children, I think about what will be, and I want to forgive him. I want to forgive like Jesus forgives our trespasses. But then I remember again that he is a womaniser who is still doing what he knows best.

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And even though my decision is not solely based on that, it still weighs heavily on me.

My parents have warned me.

“If you go back, then we want nothing to do with you anymore. We will cut ties with you.”

My father says he has disrespected him and is no longer invited into our home.

I am thinking about it all: the red flags, my parents’ warnings, my children’s future.

Am I being unfair to them?

What do I do?

—Marie

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