I feel like I aged considerably the moment I got my first suitor.
I was still young, in eighth grade.
After I got married, I started bearing responsibilities, and I grew up.
My father had us thinking that marriage was the end-all-be-all
We weren’t supposed to fight with our husbands.
Divorce, of course, was out of the question too.

Even though I should have gotten a divorce after the first month.
After the beatings, the drugs, and all the things I still wasn’t used to.
But the problem was that I got pregnant on the wedding night.
Where was I going to go?

I discovered weird things from the very first day of marriage.
Drug use, cheating, beating, and abuse.
I would always fight with him to get up and go to work.
He didn’t bring home any money.
My mother-in-law would give us money, lording it over us.

I would get angry, and go back to my parents’, but I refused a divorce.
I didn’t get one for my son, whom I didn’t want to grow up away from his father.
Anyway, he decided to leave the company and get an early retirement.
My father spoke to him, but he didn’t listen
He got a bonus of 90,000 pounds; he took 35,000 of them to rent a coffee shop.
And with the rest of the money, we bought a piece of land.

We opened the coffee shop, and we did well for the first two years. I stood by him.
We added an extension to the apartment and furnished it.
I started a money pool, and I took jewelry from my sisters and sold it, using the money to help finish the apartment renovations.

After that, the situation with the coffee shop started deteriorating.
Sometimes it remained closed for days.
After five years, the lease for the coffee shop ended.
“Get a job and bring us money,” I told him.
“No, I don’t work for anyone,” he said.

Later, he sold the piece of land and bought a toktok.
And with the rest of the money he paid a down payment for an apartment for the kids.
After the first 10 days of buying it, he had an accident with the toktok.
He broke his leg, and the toktok was damaged.
He had rods and screws placed in his legs, and he stayed home for two months.
We spent the rest of the money we were going to spend on the apartment on his leg treatment.
The money was all spent, and I had nothing left.
I lost everything.

I bought a window display box and bought groceries and other things, and I took to the streets to sell them.
A year of indignity and rain pouring down on my head.
And my son’s private tutoring lessons, he was in middle school then, were the end of me
But he fixed the toktok, and now it’s back in business.

Now, I blame myself that I didn’t take a stand long ago and get a divorce.
But there is no point now. With kids involved, it is no longer possible.
I started bearing responsibilities straight after marriage.
It felt like I aged all of the sudden, and I took on more than I could handle.