I had given up on marriage for over 20 years when God sent genuine love my way. My story started on a very sad note but I am happy that, today, I’m alive to share it with fellow ladies and seek advice, going forward.
I was a very serious student in the university and did not have much time for the opposite sex but for my studies.
You won’t believe that that was the last time I saw this man, who professed “for better for worse” at the altar. He never came back to the hospital and I spent three months there. It was as if the world had come to an end, but my mother kept assuring me that all would be well
In my university, you had to be very brilliant to make a second class upper, especially in my field of study but I was able to make a very strong one. Towards the end of my fouryear course, I met a man, a cousin to one of my roommates. It was like a matchmaking game, but as God would have it, we hit it off very well and I started feeling real love for him.
I found out, in the months that followed, that he was a kindhearted man, who genuinely cared about me. All through the time we were dating, I did not even give my background a thought.
I was carried away with the fact that, after so long, I had also started to play the game of every lady, and in a way that seemed right to me as well. So, when it was time to go for my compulsory National Youth Service, his elder sister suggested that the two families should meet formally.
That was when it dawned on me that I had a lot of work to do. Knowing my parents very well, and coming from a very strong Christian background, I knew it would be difficult to convince them to allow me marry a Muslim.
I knew that if there was no special intervention, the request would be dead on arrival. I, therefore, called my siblings, who had met my man a couple of times, for a meeting. I broke down in tears, telling them that this man was all I had, and was my dream of a good husband.
I also told them that we had discussed the issue of religion very well, and he had agreed to allow me practise my religion, even when he had made me understand clearly that he would not be converted.
Together, we confronted my parents after hesitating for a while, and the assignment was even harder than we had envisaged. My father would hear nothing of my plans and even went to the extent of telling extended family members, who were later approached, that he would disown me forever if I tried to go ahead without his consent.
It was a very bitter pill for me to swallow. My fiance’s parents also waded in. His father paid a surprise visit to my father at the university, where he lectured, but my father told him calmly and nicely, that he should forget about such happening between their children.
He advised him to tell his son that the day was still very young, so he could still find for himself, a very good Muslim wife. To cut the very long story short, we were not allowed to get married and I left, sadly, for camp, while he relocated to Germany through his United Nations job.
Immediately after my youth service, I came back home, but did not want to stay with my parents because of what had happened. I mourned the death of my first relationship for long but my father did not even behave as if something was amiss. I relocated to Lagos and had to stay with my uncle.
I also got a job in one of the top three food and beverage companies in Nigeria. I later found out that my parents had deliberately planted a good looking Christian man, from a royal background, around that place to win my heart.
Somehow, we got along very well, and before we knew it, wedding plans began. My mother was very excited. We dated for one year, three months. It was a very big wedding. My parents and his combined their clouts to pull a wonderful crowd that I will forever remember.
It was not long after our marriage that I began to notice his nonchalance to a lot of issues that should concern him. But I didn’t take this too seriously because he was an average husband, although not in anyway near the man I would have married.
I got pregnant the same month we wedded, but something terrible happened when I was about eight months gone. I was travelling with my official car to attend a friend’s wedding ceremony in the East, when we had a fatal accident.
The driver died on the spot, but good people managed to rush me to the hospital before it was too late. As a result of the impact of the accident, I fell into labour immediately and gave birth to a baby girl. But I was in a very bad shape; the baby had to be delivered through a Cesarean Section.
The good people who brought me to the hospital had called my people, including my husband, to tell them about the unfortunate incident. Before they could close their eyes, everyone was there with me. My mother was carrying my fragile baby when my husband walked in.
As soon as he saw that one of my legs was dangling and my face badly battered, he started shedding tears, while he watched the nurses take the baby away from my mother in order to give her adequate attention.
He slept in the hospital; my parents did too. But in the morning, when I came round, and asked everyone where he was, my mother told me that he said he had an important meeting that he needed to attend in Lagos, that he would be back in no time.
You won’t believe that that was the last time I saw this man, who professed “for better for worse” at the altar. He never came back to the hospital and I spent three months there. It was as if the world had come to an end, but my mother kept assuring me that all would be well.
She even said he was in touch with her, that he had been negatively affected by the shock of what happened and was also recuperating fast. I later found out that she only lied because she wanted me to recover fast.
That was how I was left to cater for my child alone, with one leg, and in so much pains, for so many years. Thank God that I continued work, but on crutches. After 10 years, he showed up…
