The one that got away

One thing was clear when Louisa accepted my proposal: She was a girl who didn’t have time to waste. She said, “At this point in my life, I don’t have time for ‘I love you, I love.’ I’ve been there. And I don’t have time for ‘Darling, have you eaten?’ I’ve crossed that line long ago. If I say yes to you, I’m saying yes to a marriage proposal. We’ll have to marry soon.”

I should have asked her how soon. I only assumed that soon is soon. It only has to be reasonable.

The first question she asked was, “When are you going to see my parents?” We fixed a date. When the date was due, I couldn’t make it because of office duties but I made sure that I went with her the following week. The mom was pleased to meet me. She was a kind woman. She took my hand, went from house to house in the neighborhood to introduce me to other neighbors; “Meet Abeiku, my daughter’s husband to be.”

Some shook hands with me. Others hugged me and the men among them gave me advice or two.

Life was beautiful

One afternoon, she called. “Abey, I’m in the market. I saw these two pieces of cloth. They were too fine I couldn’t walk past them. They are in my bag now. We can use them for traditional marriage.” She was in a very high spirit. I said, “That’s very thoughtful of you. You’ve started shopping very early.”

The problem with Louisa wasn’t only that she wanted to marry as soon as possible. From the conversations we had, she felt she was getting old and ought to get married before the dreaded age; 30. Again, two of her close friends had gotten married not too long ago and felt it was her turn to marry. Among her friends, she was the one who didn’t struggle to get into a relationship. There were guys for her at every point in time but the trouble was, they all didn’t have marriage in their plans and soon they moved.

I loved her. She was very considerate and had a lot of care for me but at some point I was confused. I didn’t know whether her care and love for me were genuine or she was just putting up a performance to get me to marry her. I didn’t have a timeline for marriage. It was a necessity and I knew at some point I would get married but I wasn’t in a hurry. All I wanted was to have a girlfriend so I don’t end up lonely. But there I was, with a woman I loved with everything in me but struggling to catch up with her timelines.

I couldn’t have a meaningful conversation with her without ending up in marriage discussions. Our life became a marriage planning board. We were having a conversation one day and she asked me, “When do you intend buying our wedding rings? I can’t wait to try them on. Also, the way things are getting expensive at each passing day, it’s better we buy it early.”

We’d been dating for only five months. Within these months I’d met her parents, she had shopped for clothes for our wedding, we had discussed where we would live, and now rings?

So I asked her, “You seem to have things figured out already but fill me in. When do you intend to get married?” “If we put things together very well, we should be able to get married before the year ends.” She answered.

“Before the year ends” meant we had only five months to do it. That wasn’t my plan. I couldn’t do it before the year ends and I had to be clear about it. I told her I couldn’t. I told her to give us a year or two.

She got angry. She wasn’t going to have it any other way. “If money is the problem, I’ll support you,” She said. “I’ve saved enough money for that and I’m ready to do it.”

“Darling, it’s not all about money. It’s about other things too. It’s about putting your life in place to be able to handle marriage. Let’s give it some time. We are not going anywhere.”

I tried my best to make her understand but all she heard was, “If we are not getting married by the end of the year, then we better not do this.”

From that day on, things started going sour between us. She felt our plans were not aligned and started withdrawing. I saw the change in her, I tried drawing her attention to it so we could get back to where we used to be. She was in the relationship physically but her spirit had left.

One day, she called it quit. I tried to make her see reasons but she wouldn’t listen. She said, “I’m a woman and I love to be married to because I know I’m a good woman. I can’t wait to have a home that I can build with my own hands. You’re not ready and I can’t waste the little time I have with you.”

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

Remove the “Humpty Dumpty” from the rhyme and put our relationship there and the rhyme will still make sense. Nobody could put us together again. Her mother tried. Her friends tried. I tried. She said I wasn’t serious.

Seven months later, she was married. I thought the guy dropped from the sky to marry her because it was too sudden. But when ready meets ready, there’s nothing like too early. The man came from abroad to marry her after six months of online dating. She looked happy and I could only wish her well.

Several months later I met her. She was looking more beautiful than she was when she left me. We spoke for a while and remembered the good times we had together. She said sorry and I said I could understand her.

She was married and yet felt lonely. Her husband went back after they got married. She said, “This is not how I wanted it to be, you know. I needed where I could make a home. I guess I was impatient.” We started building some chemistry. You know what they say about old flames? Yeah, the spark was rekindled.

We became secret lovers. Everything about her was right. We had deeper conversations and at some point, I felt our souls’ connection. We kissed a lot. We made love. It was so wrong yet felt so right. When she wasn’t under the pressure of making plans to get married, she was the sweetest girl ever. I wasn’t married and I wasn’t even in a serious relationship. I started thinking of marriage.

So I told her, “Would it be so difficult to leave him?” She said, “I can leave him today and it wouldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t feel like I’d missed anything. He hadn’t been here.”

So we started making plans for a comeback. In our plans, she was going to tell him she wasn’t comfortable with the distance relationship so she was going to quit. She was going to give the man some period and finally walk out.

It wasn’t a perfect plan but we tried working towards it. She told the man she was quitting the marriage. The man gave a lot of promises but she was still going to leave him anyway. We were so sure of our plans that we started buying what we needed for marriage. I’ve lost her once and I wasn’t going to lose her again.

Out of frustration, the man came back to Ghana without informing her. He wanted to surprise her but she wasn’t bothered. She told me, “Now that he’s here, divorce would be easier.”

I wasn’t seeing her a lot but she gave me a progress report on the divorce agenda each day. Some days she was silent on me. Some days we spoke. And then one morning, I called her phone and it was off. All day her phone was off. The next day I asked someone close to her and she told me, “Louisa left with her husband yesterday.”

“Left? As in traveled with the husband?”

“Yeahhhh, she didn’t say it to anyone but that was the plan.”

I felt played and I felt stupid. I felt very angry and betrayed. It took a long while for me to accept that my heart was broken. At least, she should have given me an opportunity for closure.

When she spoke to me after a long while. I asked her why. She said, “He gave me what I was looking for and there was no other excuse for a divorce. Our plan backfired and there was nothing I could do.” I told her, “We should have kept the pregnancy. That way, he wouldn’t have had any option.”

She sighed; “Hmmmm.”

—Abeiku, Ghana