When Thomas left me, I swore on the grave of my mother never to fall in love again. All the pain I’d been through in life came from the death of love and not even from the death of my mom. The day my mom died, I was already mourning the death of love. The pain was too much for me to bear. I cried more than I should have because I was crying for two reasons. It got to a time the tears no longer came but I continued crying anyway. That guy hurt me so bad because he took my youth away. I was nineteen when I met him, a teacher who already had his life figured out. I had then completed SHS and was helping my mom in her store. He came around often to buy and we became friends. 

He didn’t have much and looking at the things he bought from the store gave me the indication that he was eating the same food every day. He was good-looking and soft-spoken. He was so calm you would even mistake him for a pastor. So when we became friends, I started throwing favours his way. He would buy gari GHC1 and I would give him GHC2 worth of gari. Everything he bought, I multiplied for him. Then it got to a point he started appealing to buy on credit. I gave it to him without ever asking him to pay it back. When he came to the store and my mom was there, I will give him whatever he bought and give him the change he didn’t deserve. He would give me GH10 and buy GHc10 worth of items but I will go ahead and give him GHC40 change so he could run with it.

He proposed to me and I said yes. I was then attending remedial classes so I had the time to be with him. I would tell my mom I was going to classes but I will end up spending the whole class hours in his house cooking for him and doing menial jobs for him because I was in love. My results came and I’d failed every subject I sat for because I never really attended the classes. I was with him all the time. He had become my classes, my lessons in love. We dated for two years at the blind side of my mom. 

Just when I started nursing school, he also started doing a degree course, the weekend classes one. He didn’t have the money to pay fees. I was there for him, helping him to pay fees and also stocking his home with provisions while I was away in school. 

I completed nursing school and came back home. Just around that corner, he got transferred out of town. My mom’s health was failing each day but I would leave my mom in the house and go and stay with this guy for a whole week. My mother’s sickness got so severe that she couldn’t even walk. She was bedridden actually so I had to spend more time with her and visit the hospitals with her. For two weeks I couldn’t visit my boyfriend. I was calling him every day telling him how severe my mom’s sickness was. “So you won’t come and visit me again as long as your mother’s sickness persists?” He asked me. I told him, “Don’t say that dear. Instead, pray that she gets better so I can leave her and come and see you.” 

My mom never got better so I couldn’t visit him for a month. One early morning, I was at my mom’s bedside when Thomas sent me the breakup message.

“I can see you no longer care about me as you used to and when a woman suddenly changes like that then it means there’s another man she’s loving. I don’t want to make things difficult for us and in the end break my own heart. Let’s break up so you can get the time to fully concentrate on your main guy now. Bye-bye, don’t even bother to call back because I’ve moved on.” 

I read the whole message within a second. I glanced through it actually. I was like, what is this guy telling me? Does he know what I’m going through here?” I didn’t respond to the message because I had no free hand to do that. My mom hadn’t spoken for days and it was getting critical. I had to even force her to eat and it was exactly what I was doing before the message came. 

I got up and left the ward to go and pick something from the house. I was on my way going when I had a call saying, “You didn’t realize your mom was gone while you were feeding her? She’s gone. You need to come back.” I rushed back to see her lying the same way I left her. I couldn’t be controlled. I cried and kicked everything out of my way. Anything at all to ease the pain. I called relatives and my senior brother abroad and told them and then later called Thomas to give him the news. I called a thousand times and this guy did not pick up the call. I sent him a message, “My mom died and I’m dying too. Please pick up and talk to me.” I called again after the message. He didn’t pick up the call. 

After my mom’s one-week rite. I travelled to where he was to speak sense into his head. I got there and he was with a woman. It looked like the lady already knew about me so immediately after she saw me, she got defensive. I said, “Thomas, is that how you decide to pay me back after everything that we’ve been through together? What did I do wrong? You wanted me to leave my mom’s sick bed and visit you every day while my mom lays dying? The woman whose money I stole to take care of you in school died and you couldn’t even call to tell me anything? What kind of human are you? What are you made of? I burst out crying. That was when the girl left us alone.

From what I saw, there was no need for me to fight. There was nothing there for me to fight. All he said was, “Sorry about the death of your mom but after I sent you the breakup message there was no need to get back to you. It was over before your mom died.” 

Herrr!

I went home, cried the death of my mom and also cried the death of love. When mom was buried, I was at the edge of her grave when I made the promise never to fall in love again. “Mom, is hard to love again looking at what Thomas took me through. Instead of giving my heart to another guy, I will dedicate it to loving your memories and the true love you showed me while alive. Love is not worth the suffering. I’m out of it for good.”

Three years later, Alfred came along and he was good to be around. He told me his dream was to marry a nurse and since he had found me he would never look elsewhere. I told him, “Well, you came at the wrong time because this heart here is closed. And it’s closed for good. The last time I opened the whole gate to another man, he exited without leaving anything in it for the next person to take. I’m sorry but I can’t do this.”

This guy decided to torment the rest of my life until I said yes to him. He knew my shift and knew when it ended so he would come around and wait for me. He’ll take me home, come inside of my room and worry the hell out of me. Sometimes he would sleep in my bed and tell me, “Good night, I’m not leaving today until you tell me something. He did it so often that one evening I left him in my bed. I didn’t try to sack him or plead with him to leave. He spent the night in my room, sleeping comfortably as if he owned the room. I looked at him and something shifted in me. I felt love’s hand slowly moving up to my heart. I told myself, “Odeeshie! I’m never going to fall for this. They are all the same. They put in the effort from the start but will run out of steam immediately you say yes to them.”

He never stopped coming around. I never stopped pushing him away. He told me, “If you were God then everyone will go to hell because of what Lucifer did to you. You’ll judge humankind as all the same and won’t give second chances.” That day I told him, “It looks like you don’t understand what is at stake. Love nearly killed me at some point so I swore never to do it again. If I have to give it another try, it will be the last try. And this won’t hurt the way the last hurt me. It should lead to marriage and nowhere else. That’s why I’m reserving this last chance I have in love for something greater than just physical.” He told me, “I’m not here to joke with you. Then I wouldn’t have gone through all these just for a joke. Have you forgotten what I told you from the beginning? That I want to marry a nurse?”

I said yes. He asked if I was serious and I answered, “Yes, I’m serious. If marriage is what we are working toward then yes.”

Six months later, this guy started slowing down. His calls didn’t come like they used to. I was doing the calls anyway. His visits didn’t come the way I’m used to but I didn’t complain. I went to visit him whenever I had off days. He stopped texting totally but I was down with it because love has phases. The phase where everything looks rosy and the phase where the rose bows down in a last attempt to fall off and die but then you water it and it stands firm again. I felt that was our situation, the second phase so I did all I could to water what we had. But the more I tried, the more this guy decided to pull away from me. We had a sit-down talk. He said everything was alright and it was just a phase. I believed him. We soldiered through hoping to see the end of the phase soon until he texted me, “It’s not working. This that we have isn’t working so why don’t we accept the truth and let things go?”

The next minute I was in his house; “Alfred, you can’t tell me what you’re telling me. If something is not working then it’s definitely coming from you. I’ve been working from day one. If you do your bit, everything would be just fine so stop talking about something not working and let’s work. You’ll work and I’ll work and this would be fine.” 

Another time he called, “I’m not feeling the vibe in this relationship because of this no shuperu until marriage thing. It’s the main thing I’m having problems with. If you truly love me and trust me, we’ll do it and you’ll still believe that we’ll marry.” 

I told him that wouldn’t work because I told him right from the start and he signed up for it. “You can’t change a rule we both agreed on. If anything, you just have to play your part and see if that would make me change my mind. But you’re there complaining instead of loving me.” 

READ ALSO: It Felt Like Love Until I Realized My Life Was In Danger

Currently, he’s doing everything within his power to leave me but I won’t allow him to leave me. He doesn’t call again and doesn’t pick up my calls often but whenever I storm his house, I make him understand that he’s not going to push me away with those antics. I’m not going anywhere until he does his part to make the relationship work.

I know it sounds crazy. Sometimes he thinks I’m getting crazy and I love him too much. That’s not the case at all, I’m trying to do to him exactly what he did to me when I hadn’t accepted his proposal. The chase he gave me. The push he gave me even when I had told him clearly that I didn’t want him. I’m paying him back and he’s the one feeling the heat. He calls to beg me to see a reason and quit. “Let’s stop this and be friends.” I respond, “We were friends until you push me to this so we are not going back to be friends again.” 

I have a key to his room and he has a key to my room too. Sometimes he’ll go out at night and come and meet me waiting for him. He’ll turn on the light and will see me sleeping in there. He calls it creepy, I call it love. “That’s exactly what you did to me when you wanted me.” He gets angry and insults me. I tell him, “I forgive you every day, that’s the reason I’m still here with you.” 

I won’t let him off the hook easily as he anticipated. I have nothing to lose, maybe he may get violent and I will withdraw for a while but he’s not that kind of person. So we are still together, forcing him to respect his own promise. I don’t know how things will turn out in the near future, but whatever comes along, I will update you. But for now, he has nowhere to go. We are stuck in this by-force love because I won’t allow him to leave me.         

—P.O

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