I changed for her. I had too many friends. Friends I went to the club with. Friends I went to the bar with. Friends I went around to womanize with. She told me, “I would have said yes to you yesterday but I’m scared. You have too many friends and these guys are always around you. When I say yes to you, where would you place me? How would you get time to build a relationship with me when your time is already filled with friends who keep you on your feet each day?” I loved her. I didn’t want to lose her so I started losing friends so I could keep her instead.
I would be at her house on weekends. Martin would call my number and I will tell him, “Gladys wants me around this evening. There’s a place I need to go with her so let’s make it next weekend.” Martin would call the following weekend asking the same question; “Are we chilling tonight?” I would give him the same answer. It got to a point where he got my message. I’d rather chill with Gladys than chill with him. He stopped calling. The same thing happened to my other friends until they all stopped calling me. When Gladys realized I was spending the days of my life with her, she decided to give me a chance. This is how she put it, “As far as I’m at the center of your attention, I’ll remain your girlfriend. Don’t get me today and return to your friends tomorrow. I know how to un-love what I’d professed love for.”
For three good years, it was always me and Gladys. She complained about my drinking habit. I said I would stop. I tried putting a stop to it but once in a while, I sneaked into the bar and got some shot. I would chew a box of gum afterward but immediately she talks to me she would say, “You’ve been drinking.” I wondered how she did it. It wasn’t trial and error. She never accused me of drinking when in fact I hadn’t drunk. I strengthened my resolve not to drink again. She took me to church on a 31st night and whispered into my ears, “Pray to God to strengthen you so that you wouldn’t drink again this coming year.” She held my hand and we prayed together. At the end of the prayers I made a promise to God, “Never in my life would I touch alcohol again. I surrender it all on the cross for it to die with you.”
I didn’t want to disappoint God so I stopped drinking totally. I went to church with her every Sunday. I sat next to her in the front role. The pastor preached and locked eyes with me. He spoke to me as if the preaching was tailored for me. One day after preaching, he asked those who want to give their lives to Christ to step forward. I went forward. I was the first to go to the front of the pulpit. He hugged me, prayed over my head, and poured anointing oil on me. He said, “You’re a new creation. A brand new man. The old things have passed away now that you’re born again. Don’t go out there and disgrace the anointing on you. God be with you.”
The church clapped and he set me free. I remember how proud Gladys was the day that happened. She said, “Wow, I can’t believe we’ve come this far. You? Walking under the anointing? Wow. God is good.” I answered, “Thank you for leading me away from destruction. I owe it all unto you.”
A year later, we stood in the same church under the officiation of the same pastor who anointed me and got married. I have four memorable days in my life. The day I decided to let my wayward friends go. The day I declared my stand against alcohol. The day I stood before God and said I do to my wife. I will tell you about the fourth memorable day later. All these memorable days happened before I got twenty-nine. Gladys was twenty-five and still a virgin when we got married. I changed for her because she was all I wanted in a woman.
A year after marriage things started going wrong in my life. Largely due to some bad management decisions the company I was working with took. Some benefits I had were withdrawn. Some bonuses got withdrawn too. All I had left was my basic salary. It wasn’t bad. We could manage. Just around that time, my wife also got promoted. She was moved to another branch of the company as a branch manager. I congratulated her. We called it the timely intervention of God because of how it happened and the time it happened. Months later, I lost my job. The company was trying to stay afloat so they decided to offload some of the employees. I was one of the employees they offloaded.
I remember my wife being sad about it and telling me not to lose hope. “God is on our side. He won’t let us down.” All the responsibilities fell on my wife. She was taking care of everything I used to take care of while I stayed home and made plans to get back to full employment. Then I started seeing frustration in her posture. When she had to pay for light she complained. When she had to pay for food she frown. When she had to buy anything for the house she cried. It was normal. It isn’t easy carrying all the load on your shoulders. I expected it. I asked what I could do to help. I took up all the household chores so she could be free to concentrate on providing for us.
She didn’t stop complaining. My cooking skill wasn’t topnotch so she didn’t eat what I cooked. She’ll either eat in town before coming home or she’ll come home with her own food. She said, “I’m working my ass off to provide for us and all you do here is waste the foodstuff I bring home. What’s the use if I can’t eat what you cook?” I didn’t talk back. It was bound to happen.
Saturday was a busy day for me. I won’t touch my phone until evening. I will wash, clean, cook, and scrub and all the while praying for a miracle to open up for me. It never did. Rather, things got worse. She will come home very late at night. Her phone would call in the middle of the night. She’ll pick her phone, go outside and talk to the person. Sometimes it lasted for minutes. Other times it went on for hours. She’ll come and I will ask calmly. “Who called?” She would tell me, “The branch officer. He wanted to know the details of the assignment I gave him?” “Branch officer calling at this hour?” I will ask. Of course, I didn’t ask out loud. I only asked inside my head as if she’ll hear my thought and give me answers.
One night her phone rang. We were both in bed. I was on my phone going through job portals. She picked the phone but didn’t go out. She spoke right there in front of me. I heard the voice of the person on the other side. He was a man. His voice sounded like someone who eats good meals in a hotel and tells the waitress to keep the change because he has so much. My wife said, “Do you mind if I call you tomorrow morning?” She smiled and hung up.” Something about the way she smiled got the better of me. I screamed, “Who the hell is that calling you at this ungodly hour? Don’t they respect the fact that you’re married? Don’t you also respect your marriage enough to tell them when they can call and when they can’t call?”
She responded calmly, “If you had a job that brought something home, I wouldn’t be talking to people about work at this hour of the night. I can’t stop working. I can’t take a break because if I do we’ll starve. Stop asking silly questions and get some job to do.”
She made me feel so small. Like a fly lingering on a leftover food on a table. Just a flip of the finger and it’s dead. We fought that night. For the first time in our marriage. I told her to remember her vows. I told her to remember what was said to us during counseling. I told her to stop cheating and support the marriage with prayers. She had stopped praying. She had even stopped going to church. She was always busy making moves under the pretext of work. One late night, around 11pm, I heard the roaring sound of a car’s engine just behind our wall. I stood in the window to see if she was the one coming. A black Mercedes was parked outside. For a couple of minutes, no one came out. Later my wife stepped out of the Mercedes with her lips wet with smiles.
“Who was that?”
“It’s a colleague who did me a favor. We closed late and he thought it best to drop me at home.”
“A colleague. That’s good.”
I reported her to her parents. In her defense, she said, “He doesn’t work. I’m the one doing everything. If I don’t do more, we’ll starve. So I take on plenty of overtime. I do trips I don’t like to do so we could stay afloat.” Her parents believed her. They knew the old her so they couldn’t appreciate who she had become. One night, she went out and never came back. She didn’t pick her phone and didn’t call back. When she returned and I questioned her she told me, “You have no right to question my movement when you’re not the one who feeds me.”
I cried that day and asked God what was happening. Obviously, I got no answers.
I started calling my old friends one after the other. Friends I cut off when I met God. Friends I cut off when I met Gladys. Friends I cut off because my new life didn’t align with the way they lived. None of them referred me to the past. None of them accused me of cutting them off. They all smiled and asked when we should meet again. I met quite a few of them. They knew me so when they saw me and saw the way I looked, they asked what the problem was. All of them got angry on my behalf. They said, “What the hell are you doing with a woman who treats you like that? Leave her?” I said, “When I leave, I will have to go back to my parents. That means failure. They’ll forgive me for failing at marriage but I won’t forgive myself for failing at life.”
They started putting in words for me. Martin said, “Promise me you’ll leave her when you get back on your feet again.” I said, “Everything is in God’s hands.”
One night we had a terrible fight. It was about her attitude of not coming home early after work. She said, “I’m tired of bearing it all and you still sit here, do nothing and still accuse me. I’m tired. I can’t continue like this anymore. This marriage is over.” Our marriage was only three years old. I didn’t fight it. I told her she should do her worse and she did. She initiated the divorce and before I could say jack, the marriage was over.
Two months later, she started dating again. I don’t know the man. It could be the man whose voice sounds like he eats good meals in a hotel and tells the waitress to keep the change. It broke me into pieces. I hadn’t had the chance to pick myself up from the floor but she was already out there dating. I didn’t eat for days and didn’t answer my phone for days. I stayed in bed for several days without stepping out. I didn’t want the sun to see my face. I was too shy to let it shine on my misery.
One day I heard a knock on my door. I opened the door and it was Martin. He said, “Charley why? What’s going on? I’ve been calling your phone since Thursday?” I asked him, “What day is today?” He said, “Seriously? What’s wrong with you?” It was a Tuesday. He said, “I gave your number to HR to call you when there’s an opening. He said he had been calling you for days and you were not picking.”
I wasn’t even interested in the job again but Martin won’t leave me. He virtually dragged me to the place to see the HR. I had the job. Time to rebuild. Slowly, I picked myself up from the ground and built again from scratch. Martin one day told me, “I gave your number to a friend of mine. She’s Pearl. She will call you.” Later in the day, a lady called. We met two days later in a restaurant around town. It was our first time seeing each other but we vibed right from the scratch. Just a week later we were dating. Before we could mount the flag of our relationship for all to see, her time was due to travel back to the UK.
When we were on the phone, we didn’t know how to hang up. When we had a video call, we didn’t know how to turn it off and leave. One day she asked me, “Where should we live when we get married. I said, “Wherever you are, I would love to be there.”
The fourth memorable day was the day I lifted Pearl’s veil in front of the church, looked into her eyes, and kissed her. I got choked with tears but I held it back.
A second chance at love. Second chance to build again what I couldn’t build at first. Second chances mostly last forever because we learn our lessons from the first chance we were given. Four years and two babies later, I’m still holding on tight to my second chance because it’s all I have.
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