I Am Finally Free From The Man Who Stole My Hope

I married Fred in 2022. We had known each other for six years before the marriage. Six years. You would think it was enough time for me to know the man. It turned out it wasn’t. I suppose I should have known that a man who could keep his daughter hidden from me was capable of hiding many other things from me.

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When I found out that he had a child, he explained that he didn’t tell me about it because of the way things ended between him and his baby mama. He said they had issues right from the time she got pregnant.

“I stayed with her because of our unborn child. I wanted to make it work for our child’s sake but she didn’t want the same thing. One day she lost it and drove me out of her house. That was the end of the relationship.”

Although they were not married, he moved in with her because her place was in the heart of town. When she sacked him, he had no choice but to go back to his house.

At one point, I considered meeting the lady to hear her side of the story, but later, I decided not to. I believe people experience people differently. And I didn’t want her experience with him to cloud my relationship with him.

At the time he proposed marriage, I told him I wasn’t ready. I wanted to go to school, finish, and get a job first. He said there was no rush. He waited for me.

My uncle singlehandedly funded my education. After national service, we began marriage preparations. I would have preferred to be employed before getting married, but I also felt the need to sacrifice that one thing. After all, I had kept him waiting.

I went along with the preparations and started actively job hunting after the ceremony.

We had all kinds of conversations before marriage. Trust me, for someone like me who likes clarity, we discussed everything. We talked about the hard subjects like childbirth and finances. We talked about the soft subjects too.

During that period, he came across as a peaceful person. I tried to understand what I was getting myself into. So I visited him randomly. We also stayed together for weeks. I visited his mother with him and she welcomed me wholeheartedly.

The only thing I didn’t want to do was sex. He always fought with me about it, but I was green and anxious. Eventually, I gave in to him. We did it a few times in the last year or two before marriage.

By the end of the first month in the marriage, I was crying every day. I discovered he was sleeping around, chasing women as if he wasn’t married. He would boast about how he could get anything from anywhere.

“The only reason I restrain myself is because I don’t want any woman from outside getting pregnant for me.”

He would insult me, ignore me, and prioritise anything or anyone over me. It became clear through his actions that I meant absolutely nothing to him.

Three months into the marriage, I got pregnant but it came with complications. I was bleeding. I had to make frequent hospital visits. The entire time I was suffering, he would leave me and go sleep elsewhere. If I didn’t call, he wouldn’t even check on me. One time, he said he was sleeping somewhere else just to watch over his car.

I love writing, so I started journaling everything. I wrote about the human being I had married. How he wouldn’t talk to me but would seize every opportunity to demand intimacy. I always had cuts after, so I began lubricating just to avoid injuries. That’s how transactional and painful things got.

Job opportunities started coming, but I had to turn them down because I was pregnant, bleeding, and on bed rest. As a health worker, I knew the dangers to both my baby and myself. Although he knew this, he was upset that I didn’t contribute anything financially to the house.

One day, his mother called me after he had gone to report me to her. She told me to sit up and stop wasting her son’s money on hospital visits. I didn’t say anything. Only I knew what my body was going through.

Fred never missed any opportunity to tell me that he made a mistake when he married me. He would tell me that he should have listened to his family, friends, and pastors when they advised him not to marry me. This hurt deeply, especially because these same people had treated me well before the marriage. In moments of anger, I’d respond that I wished I hadn’t married a Nabal.

I realised he didn’t care about me, so I stopped caring too. I detached emotionally.

It didn’t help. Nothing I did to hold on helped. Hopelessness set in. I started planning how to end my life.

Exactly six months after marriage, I had reached my limit. I was going to drink a concoction to end it all. He found out, assaulted me, locked me in a room, and left the house. I had to jump the wall to escape to my mother’s house. Later, he lied and said I only wanted to unalive myself because I asked him for money and he didn’t give me.

When my mother reported the incident to his mother, she told her I was a liar and added, “I trained my son well. You should go and train your daughter well.”

In the first week of November 2022, I lost my baby after bleeding continuously. I became depressed. I declined all of Fred’s attempts to contact me.

In the end, he called a family meeting. At the meeting, he claimed he only hit me once and that it didn’t amount to assault. Everyone advised me not to report him to the police. I didn’t. It wasn’t because of them.

I want a higher form of justice. What the police can do is limited. I want him alive to suffer and pay for everything he did to me. I’ve committed it all to a Supreme authority, and I know it’s just a matter of time. He and anyone who supported his evil will pay.

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Instead of ending it all, I went to therapy. Suicide is not an option. I want to live. Abuse in marriage can rob you of hope. I chose to leave Fred so I can stay alive.

People mocked me when they heard I was getting a divorce. But I’ve held up. I’m divorced now.

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People still say all manner of things. I meet them with silence. Some of the worst comments come from family members who never objected to the marriage in the beginning but now suddenly have opinions about how I should have handled things.

I don’t pay any attention to them. I count it all joy. When I find love again, I’ll embrace it. Until then, I’m simply enjoying the peace I have now.

— Serena
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Source: SilentBeads | Continue to Full Story…