I am the youngest in my family. Pampered, naughty, I’ve always believed that what I did to be right. When it came to marriage, despite my heart saying no a million times, I ended up saying yes to a man who was 6 years older than me and had no mind of his own. He was the eldest in his family, but never had a say when it came to any decision in his house, or personal life.

I was always the outsider to him, when it came to his family, and his life: I had married and was living with a stranger.

For some reason, his younger brother was always looking for ways to separate us. I never paid much attention to this, although when they started spending days away from home, it left me wondering why.

Few months into our marriage, I was pregnant. He asked me to find out the sex of our child. I told him, this wasn’t possible at this stage, but he was adamant to find out.

Once my pregnancy was confirmed, he began sleeping in his brother’s room only. I walked in one day and caught them in a compromising position. Strangely, I had nothing to say to him and simply walked out.

He followed me out and told me that this is how it was going to be between them. Again, with nothing to say, I nodded and walked away.
After this incident, he always searched for ways to be away from me, to ignore me and this began affecting my mental health. In front of my family, he was a completely different person, and honestly, I didn’t know how to tell my parents about this situation.

The few times I tried, they brushed it off as me being suspicious and silly; they couldn’t believe that someone this kind to their daughter would have such a dark side to himself.

One day, he found out that I had told my parents about our situation, rather his lifestyle choices. He began abusing me and that’s when I lost all hope. My dreams, my life, everything shattered around me.

But it was at that time, that I felt a kick in my stomach. And it was that small kick that brought me back and I knew that I would live and fight for my child.

I spent 8 months in a lot of stress. My parents brought me back to our home and they saw that I was vanishing deeper and deeper into a life that wasn’t what any of us had chosen for me. Suddenly, one day, I realized that the baby hadn’t kicked for a while. We rushed to the hospital and the doctor said that the stress I was going through has affected the baby and we had to operate immediately.

My parents called my husband who took his own sweet time to come and then refused to sign the papers that would allow the doctor to operate on me.

My mom begged him, told him that we didn’t need his money, just his signature, for both me and my baby to live. He finally signed the papers, and left.

I gave birth to a premature, but beautiful baby girl and on that day, decided that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, live with this man anymore. It’s been 4 years, but the case is still on. He is adamant to divorce me and hasn’t even bothered to come visit our baby girl. But at this stage, I don’t care, because I have her and she is all the hope and love that I need to start believing in myself again.

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