One early morning, while still in bed with my husband, I had a message from someone on Facebook. The person wasn’t a friend. The message read, “Tell your husband to stop taking advantage of innocent women who come to him looking for a job.”...CONTINUE READING
I tapped on the person’s profile. There was not so much to it. The account didn’t even have a profile picture. My husband was next to me so I showed him the message. After reading the message, he asked if I knew the person. I shook my head. He deleted the message before I could get a chance to read it again. He said, “Don’t mind all these internet trolls. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
When he handed my phone back to me, I asked why he deleted the message. He got up from the bed and entered the bathroom without giving me any tangible reason. I searched for the name of the sender on Facebook. I had a lot of lists of the same names but didn’t see the account that sent the message. My intention was to respond to the message and see where it leads.
I wanted to brush it aside as a troll but my instinct was at work nonstop, producing theories upon theories as to why it could be possible that my husband was guilty. The only counterargument I had for myself was, “But he’s not in HR so how’s that possible?”
I waited for another message from the sender. I checked my inbox often to see if there was another message. Two months later, I moved on. I didn’t hear from the account again one dawn another message dropped from the same account. It said, “I know you don’t believe me but I have evidence.”
I responded quickly, “If what you’re saying is true, you wouldn’t wait for me to ask for evidence.”
A few minutes later, I received a dozen of screenshots. They were chats she’d had with my husband. The messages started like this;
My husband; “I can help you get the job because I want you here. A beautiful lady like you deserves to be here to be the light in our darkness.”
The Lady: “Please help me get it. I’m very desperate because I’ve been home for so long.”
My husband: “Let’s meet in town. I’ll tell you what to do and who to meet.”
After that message, the next screenshot was about them being flirtatious. My husband was in love. He was promising a lot. The lady was playing along, and then asked, “I don’t want your wife to beat me ooo.” My husband responded, “I don’t live with my wife. She’s abroad so feel free.”
The next screenshot talked about their next outing and how they enjoyed it. Another screenshot discussed their first sex and the praises and adulation my husband was pouring on the lady, referring to her private part as the most beautiful and tightest.
After serving my husband hot and steamy sex, she didn’t get the job. That’s when everything faded into chaos. My husband promised her another job that was bigger than the one she lost. That job never came. It turned into an argument. Argument became a fight, and then curses. Curses matured into threats.
“I know your wife. She’ll hear this so she knows the kind of husband you are.” That was the lady’s final word in the message.
I read the messages again and again looking for an opportunity to call them lies but there was none. It was my husband’s number. No one uses his number so the messages couldn’t have come from another person.
We had been married for six years with two children. I wouldn’t say I was the perfect wife but I was trying. I put food on the table, brought stability into his life and helped him become a better captain of the ship we were in.
All that didn’t matter when he saw another lady he thought he could have. He called her light, so what was I? His darkness?
I showed him the screenshots and watched his face change from unconcerned to concerned and then to worried. He asked me, “Where did you get this?” I answered, “That’s not the question. The question is, why did you allow yourself to go through this?” His voice went down low as if he didn’t want the kids to hear about his infidelity, “So you believe it? You’ve already pronounced me guilty even before I got the chance to explain myself?”
“Explain yourself dear, I believe you. Husband of my youth and the father of my children. You didn’t do it but tell me how your number appeared in these screenshots.”
He stammered throughout his explanation but didn’t say anything concrete. He knew he had messed up and nothing he would say would clean the dirt on his person so he started apologizing. Again, telling me not to allow trolls to come into our marriage.
I asked the lady to send me her picture. I wanted to see the light that she was. She didn’t. She blocked my account and left me to deal with my husband.
A year after marriage, my husband lost his job. He was home for over a year. I shouldered all the responsibility of the house and carried him on my shoulder. When he got a job and was about to become his own man, he lost the job again through bizarre means. He had then bought a form to do his masters. When he got the admission, I told him to wait until he got a job. He didn’t listen, he enrolled, thinking a new job would come soon. He didn’t get another job until he completed his master’s. I had to take a loan to pay his last fees.
Our second child was on his way coming. I was so much in debt that when I got a call I shivered. I took a loan from everyone including my siblings and my retired parents just so we could stay afloat. When my husband got this job he’s doing and was paid the first time, I thought he would ask how much I was owing. I had high hopes he was going to help me pay the debt. When I asked him about it he said, “I had to send money to my parents. My junior brother’s school fees have to be paid. There’s a lot on me so I’ve used the money to pay off.”
He didn’t give me a kobo but a year later, he had the liberty to have a girlfriend he could call light. I was angry. I moved out of the house so he could bring his light in. He didn’t see it coming until he came to see an empty house one evening. He came to my parents’ house looking for me. When my dad asked him what the problem was, he couldn’t go straight to the point until I played back the story, showing my dad all the evidence. My dad left us to handle it.
At this moment, it’s not even about the cheating. It’s about everything I suffered to hold this man afloat, only to get to a dry land to call another woman his light. That’s my pain. The reason I decided the marriage had run its course.
As I write this, we live together while going through a divorce. It’s funny because no one believes we are going through a divorce. My parents didn’t want me in their house so I had to come back with the kids. The kids had to go to school and I had to go to work. I paid the rent for this house we live in. If someone has to leave, it’s him and not me.
He has pleaded for a month after the month he pleaded for expired. I sleep in the kids’ room. I’ve warned him not to touch my food if he wants to live long. When I’m in the hall, he doesn’t come around. When he’s there, I don’t go there. The only reason we talk is when the kids are involved. He has only one month to live here. Once it’s done, I’ll force him out and that would be the end of us. The wheel of divorce grinds slowly, I learned but I have the patience to wait, to be free.
