I and Gina met at a workshop and became friends. We had so many things in common it would have been a sin if we didn’t become friends. We attended the same church. We attended the same university, just that we never met on campus. We loved the same music and we were both unemployed people looking for a job. She was twenty-four and I was twenty-six. When our friendship started, we talked about a lot of things concerning our lives and how we wanted to live them. They say when someone talks to you and laughs with you often then they like you. I liked her so much but it took some courage for me to be able to tell her. I didn’t want to destroy the friendship that existed between us and I didn’t want a situation where she would say no to me and then things would turn awkward.

I thought about it every day until one day courage descended on my tongue. I told her, “I love you.” She asked jovially, “You love me sɛ sɛn?” I said, “I want us to be more than friends.” She said, “You’ve said two different things that mean the same thing. You love me, I know that’s why we are friends. You want us to be more than friends but we are already more than friends. So what do you want? Be clear.”

I said, “Ok, I want you to be my girlfriend.” She said, “Am I not your girlfriend already?” I said, “Not that way. I want us to be more than that. I love you. I want you to be the girl I think of when it comes to the future and the woman I want to marry. I know you understand it so please stop doing that.” She said, “So you don’t want it the way we are. You want more. You want to be kissing me and do other stuff, me boa? I’m your friend but that isn’t enough. You want more so you can do things to me. Since when have you entertained such thoughts? Since when have you been looking at me and saying, “This girl paa when I get her, I won’t spare her at all, since when?”

She turned the whole thing upside down. I knew she could joke about serious things but I didn’t expect her to be turning my proposal into one of her jokes. But that same day she told me yes. She said, “We were friends and everything was fine between us. When we break up and become enemies, I would blame it on you. It’s you who changed everything.”

We were lovers who didn’t have jobs. We were broke but very content in our brokenness. She didn’t demand anything from me and I didn’t feel any pressure to do what I wasn’t capable of doing. A few months later, I had a job. I remember how happy that made us. When my first salary came, we went out and blew everything. The next day, I was poor again. Nothing was left except what I would use for fare to and back home from work. The fun was worth it. A few months later she also had a job and we had a repeat of what happened with my first salary, this time, with her first salary.

Being young is being free to do things the old cannot think of doing so we really enjoyed our youth until a year after she had gotten a job we started talking about marriage. The two of us are very outspoken so there was nothing we didn’t talk about; where we were going to live after marriage, how our wedding was going to be like, how much to spend on our wedding and the number of kids were going to have and the interval. She said three kids and I said eleven. She said, “Then we’ll need four extra wombs to be able to get to eleven.” We both laughed and settled on three.

We got married in 2014 and started living our plans.

We started working towards having our first child. We didn’t want to delay with that. In her own words, she said, “I want to birth them quickly so I can have time to live my own life.” One year later, no kid. Two years later, no kids. She got pregnant in 2017 and we had our first kid in the same year. I don’t know what to say and how to say it for you to know the kind of happiness our first child brought us. The first week we didn’t sleep. Not that the child was crying to disturb our night or anything. We both stayed awake and watched him as he slept. It was as if someone would come and steal him from us if we slept. I took some days off from work to stay home so both of us would learn how to handle the baby. Everything was fun until we started working towards the second child.

I said to myself, “This one kept long in coming so we better start working towards the second one as soon as possible.” I was so hopeful that by 2019 something would happen for us but nothing happened. My wife said, “Maybe we should give up trying. Who knows, it might be that we were meant to have only one kid.” I said, “No way! There are so many seeds left in my waist. We can have as many as we want.” I started taking a lot of herbal drugs to increase our chances.

And then there was a lockdown. I said, “This is the day that the Lord has made. We should make every second count.” We did it in the morning, afternoon, and evening. After the lockdown, we still had nothing to show for our work. I said, “Maybe it’s true. We were meant to have only one and he’s already here with us.”

Last three months, I was looking for my ATM card. I turned our bedroom inside out and didn’t see where I placed it. My wife has a box she keeps her jewels in. I turned the jewels over, hoping my card had dropped there somewhere. I found a brown envelope with my wife’s name boldly written on it. I opened it and they were drugs. I put it back in and went on with my search. But something pricked me. I’d walked into her one evening taking that drug and she told me it was for a back pain she sustained during pregnancy. So seeing it again after years of delivery pricked my conscience.

The next day when she wasn’t around, I went back to check the medicine. You could see clearly the drug wasn’t in its original box because the information on its cover was different from the information on the paper container it was in. I googled the one word that was clearly visible on the blister pack. It turned out to be a contraceptive. I was like “How is that even possible? Since when? and she didn’t tell me about it?” I was very angry. I waited around until she came back home. She saw the anger on my face and started asking what the issue was. I asked calmly, “Why did you lie to me?” She asked, “Me? Lying to you?” I said, “That medicine you said was for your back pain, say the truth. What is it for?”

“It’s for my back pain and nothing else. What are you talking about?”

I showed her everything I’d found and then she changed her story. “You’re getting it all wrong. I didn’t take this for my back pain. This was given to me at a program we attended even before I conceived. I never took it. The one I said was for my back pain is already finished and I’d stopped taking it long ago.” Nothing she said made sense. I’ve known her for far too long to know when she was telling a lie. For a whole week, we kept fighting about this issue. She kept to the lie and started playing the victim; “So you don’t trust me? How could you do that? Have I ever lied to you? Why don’t you trust me on this? Why would I do that and still try getting pregnant?”

I left home and came back late. I went to work and sometimes never came back. She called and I didn’t pick. We stayed in the same house but we never talked. She cooked and I left it untouched. She slept in the bedroom and I slept in the hall. We were living a parallel life for weeks until she realized only the truth could set us free.

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She said, “You’re right and I’m sorry for everything. The pain was too much and I didn’t want to go through it again.” “That’s a lie,” I screamed, “some women have it worse and they still go again. This is selfishness. And you watch me go through the hustle of taking herbs and trying hard each day when you knew what you were doing. That’s very wicked and I wonder what other things you’ve kept from me.” She said, “That’s the truth. There’s no other reason again.”

I don’t believe her reasons. It’s too peripheral to be true. I feel there’s something deeper than what she’s telling me. Before this, we had a very wonderful marriage but now it breaks my heart to know the trajectory our marriage is spinning toward. We were friends in marriage and nothing stopped her from discussing this with me. That’s why I find it difficult to forgive her and let things go.  Our conversations have become shallow, like we are both being technical with what we say. We don’t laugh and we don’t share the gossips we usually share. We’ve become like strangers to each other. It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon. The only thing that connects us together now is our child. When we talk, it’s because of him and when we pretend to be happy, it’s because of him.

The way we are now, every little thing can push us to the limit and it wouldn’t be my fault but hers.

–Abeka 

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