Dear Ojiugo,

“Did he beat you?”

That is almost always the first question I get when I tell anyone that my marriage is over. You see, there were no signs of trouble because I wasn’t one to let people into my marriage. No! I never liked that, and I still don’t think it’s okay. My ex-husband was the same. What people knew of us was the fun we had based off our curated pictures and videos. I didn’t hesitate to post the interesting places we’d been to on my WhatsApp status. However, we drew the line at posting on our main social media accounts. My family life is not meant for the entertainment of strangers. There are vultures everywhere. Best not to smell rotten. 

Beyond what we allowed, even our families had little clue of what our married life was actually like. We liked it that way. Not everything is meant for show. I believe there’s a purpose behind the veil of privacy in hiding matrimonial wins and struggles. Nevertheless, if you ask me, I’d say we were our own version of happy. 

Our family and friends thought we were the perfect couple. Our love story was the type people wish for — love-at-first-sight type of shit. We were happy to share that story. We went on dates, took mini vacations, and even went to the gym together (of course, most of the time I watched him exercise while I made videos). 

Friends and acquaintances never spared a chance to tell us how they wanted a love like ours.

When I revisit memories of our life together, I question if it was all a lie. I remember that when it was good, it was really good. Even when things were bad, it wasn’t all bad. Glimpses of goodness permeated whatever was wrong at any given time. 

I’ve struggled to pinpoint the exact moment or period when he decided that I was no longer enough for him. We were blissfully happy! There is no way I was the only one who felt like that, in all that time.

Fortunately for me, I don’t get to dwell long in this head space of wonderment. Because, like clockwork, he always spins me a surprise. Why his actions still surprise me is something I’ll probably never figure out. There’s always a new low I never think he’d reach. He reaches it, and then goes beyond. It is either he is refusing to call his children because I sent him a message at the wrong time, or he refuses to pay their medical bills because I did not bring them to someplace he wanted. With him, there is always something. 

Sadly, where I come from, the blame for a failed marriage often falls squarely on the woman, regardless of the truth of the matter. If she’s at fault, she’s a ‘bad woman’. If her husband is at fault, she didn’t try enough. I know that sometimes, the failure of a marriage cannot be faulted on one party. Regardless, here, it is always a woman’s personal failure. And she stands to lose much.

It’s been a year since he left my children and I. A lot has happened in that time.  

Initially, everyone told me I should have begged him to stay. Why did I allow him to go?

Allow him?! What a preposterous supposition!

Aside from him being almost two times my weight, even though he never physically assaulted me, by the time our marriage ended, he was capable of flinging me to a wall out of pure spite. So I laugh when people think that all abuses have to be physical before they count.

Our marriage lasted for five years. Looking back now, it was already over by year 3; the rest of the time was spent trying to see if we could make it work. The things that happened within those last two years seared it into my memory that no matter how a person professes their love or believes they’d never hurt you, when the feelings are gone, your life can read like a sad movie. Your being special has an expiry date. The promises they make to you might only be true for a time. Even if they mean every word they say, forever could be for a time. You have to know that.

During one heated conversation, I told him I couldn’t wait to no longer be married to someone like him. He retorted with, “I will make sure you suffer”. Just like he promised, he went ahead to make sure I suffered. He never spared a moment to let me know how living with me made him miserable.  Somehow, being married to me was a type of chain. I was the liability that hindered him from living the fantastical life he craved.

In the months before everything wrapped up, my thoughts would wander from anything to everything. I put myself in his shoes. I imagined what his life must feel like, being married to someone you now loathe, yet you have to keep up appearances because of whatever. 

It took me a long time to begin to pity him. Imagine pitying your oppressor. I pitied him because he could have spared us both the trauma. He could have told me he wanted to walk away. I probably would never have understood. I probably would have still fought to stay, and things would have still ended up messy. But I never got that chance. 

I am no longer the upbeat life-will-repay-you thinking young woman I used to be.  I had hoped that without me in the picture, his hoe phase would last very long. I thought that with his renewed bachelorhood, he would have his fill of his speed racing and philandering vices. I thought that for all the pains he intentionally caused me, horrible karma-induced consequences lurked in his future. But karma is not for hire. My belief in karma has since dulled.

One day, a few months after he left, I got an IG notification from a random acquaintance. She had liked one of my old pictures. The strange thing was that she was not my follower, and the post she’d liked wasn’t a reel. The interesting thing about her was that she was my friend’s sister. I had suspected her as one of his girls, but I had no proof.

So, I followed that IG notification, but it had disappeared. Obviously a touch mistake. She had never intended to like my post. Too bad for her, I had already seen her username. I searched for it.

When I opened her page, the first post was a video—the type I would make. The difference is that this video was made in my old sitting room (he had moved back into our other house). She was sitting on my couch. Our first couch as a couple. The couch that took us 6 months of savings to afford. I’d wanted it because it fit my Pinterest idea of my perfect matrimonial living room.

As I watched her in her adire boubou, gesticulating with her talon-like acrylic nails while flicking her false lashes, desperately trying to be me, I heard every beat of my heart. The world around me had suddenly gone quiet. Even the blood rushing in my veins had an urgency to its sound. At some point, I thought my heart would burst. Why was it beating that loud and fast?

Before encountering the wanna-be, I thought that nothing my ex does would affect me deeply anymore. I actually believed that lie. But sitting at the edge of my bed, watching this human being try to be me in my old house, set something off inside me. There was probably something in the way she held my throw pillow that triggered me. 

I visibly came undone in minutes.

This is how people go mad. This was definitely a movie. There’s no way it was real. I went to school with her brother. We were the best of friends. Out of all our mutual friends, he was the only one who had an inkling early on when the cracks in our marriage refused to be patched. 

That’s a story for another time. Why was my heart rate spiking over a man who spurned my children and I? 

For weeks, the palpitations got worse. I prayed fervently not to have a heart attack. For one, I couldn’t afford the hospital bills, but most importantly, my children still need me. I kept reprimanding myself for allowing these people to affect me so. 

Alas, I am only human.

To further spite me, they got married on the eve of what was supposed to be our sixth anniversary. I heard that the theme for their ceremony was tagged: A Love Redeemed. I have very little belief in karma, but I know that their newfound redemption also has an expiry date. 

What a movie!

Dear Ojiugo is a series of pieces of writings and voice recordings I have received from previously married women.

Names have been changed for privacy, and permission was granted to publish/share the stories here. Any resemblance to an individual, living or dead, is pure coincidental.

Bits or large portions of the stories have been  edited for brevity and clarity.

If you have a similar story to share, reach me via mail: [email protected]