Dear Diary,

“Does he beat you?”

That is almost always the first question I get when I tell anyone that my marriage is over. There were no signs of trouble because I never liked letting people into my business. My ex-husband was the same.

What people knew of our marriage was our frequent outings to fun places. I never hesitated to post the pictures and videos on my WhatsApp status. However, we rarely posted on our main social media accounts. Even our families had little clue of what our married life was like. And we liked it that way, hiding the struggles beneath the surface.

We were the perfect couple on social media and in real life. Our love story was the type people wish to have, and we happily shared it. We went on dates, vacations, even went to the gym together (of course, I watched him exercise most times. And made videos for my status). 

Our friends always tapped into our grace and never spared a chance to tell us how they wanted a love like ours.

When I revisit memories of our married life, I question if it was all a lie. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact moment or period when he decided that I was no longer enough for him. We were blissfully happy. 

Fortunately or unfortunately for me, I don’t get to dwell long in this head space of wonderment because, like clockwork, he always spins me a surprise. There is always a new low I never thought he’d reach. It is either he is refusing to call his kids because I sent him a message at the wrong time, or he is refusing to help with their medical bills because I did not have time to bring them to some place he wanted. Like I have written countlessly, there is always something with Dozie. 

Sadly, in our society, the blame for a failed marriage often falls squarely on the woman, regardless of the circumstances. If she’s at fault, she’s a ‘bad woman’. If her husband is at fault, she didn’t try enough. The end of a marriage is always seen as her personal failure.

It’s been a year since he packed out, leaving my two 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 pack out?

Aside from him being almost two times my weight, he was visibly capable of flinging me to the side by the time our marriage ended. Nevertheless, he had never hit me.

We were married for seven years, but by year 3, the marriage was already over, we were just trying to see if we could patch it. The things that happened within these years seared it into my memory that this person had stopped loving me. He went ahead to make sure I suffered and never spared a moment to let me know what he thought of me – a liability that hindered him from living the irresponsible life he craved.  Somehow, being married was a type of chain for him.

It took me a long time to get to the point where I felt nothing but pity for him. I pitied him because the path he chose would definitely lead to something destructive. If it wasn’t incurable STDs, it would be something violent. Those were the only foreseeable outcomes for the life he led.

I had hoped that his hoe phase would last very long because he never missed a chance to sleep with anything in skirts. But one day, I got an IG notification from a random acquaintance that I had no business with. She had liked one of my old picture posts. That was strange because she was not following me on any of my socials, and it wasn’t a reel. The interesting thing about her was that she was my friend’s sister and a possible side chick to my ex-husband. She was one of the women I knew he had been sleeping with while he was married to me.

I followed that IG notification, but it had disappeared. Obviously a touch mistake. She had never intended to like my post, so the like had been quickly undone. But I had already seen her handle. So, I searched for her.

The first post on her page was a video—the type I would make. The difference is that this video was made in my old sitting room (he moved back into our old house), on a couch that took us 6 months of savings to afford.

Watching that video, I thought my heart would stop beating at some point. In fact, before encountering this lady, I thought that nothing my ex-husband does will 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 off something in me. There was probably something in the way she held my throw pillow that triggered me, and I visibly came undone in minutes.

My heart started beating out of sync, and my heart rate spiked again and again. For weeks after, this became a norm. I reprimanded myself for allowing these people to affect me so. But alas, I am only human.