Unforgiven Sin (Part 1)

A short story...

In this story, I urge you not to judge me. I also know it is a difficult ask, as I can already feel the weight of your judgements nailing me to the cross. Yes, I am a Christian, and I believe in the words of God written in the Bible, but aren’t we all humans at the end of the day?

Like Jesus, I am going to ask you to throw the first stone if you have never sinned. I dare you to do it. Go on, tell me that you have never fallen into temptation. Tell me your need to cheat or take on more than one wife is not so that you can feel the excitement of being desired. No gender is exempt from this urge; men and women both struggle with the need to be recognised, valued and wanted.

I am sorry for being aggressive. I am only trying to defend myself. I am sure you understand.

…

My name is Jadesola, and this is my story.

When I got married three years ago, I thought, “Oh, God has blessed me with the best man in the world. This is where I want to be and where I will keep choosing.” If only I knew that I was being delusional.

When I met my husband, Tony; he was kind, affectionate, generous and had this air of maturity around him. He was painstakingly fine. I say painstakingly because when he approached me at the restaurant during one of my scheduled monthly hangouts with my girlfriends, I had thought surely, this man couldn’t have meant to speak to me. He possibly wanted to become friends with the no-so-attractive friend to gain insider information about the one he wanted.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not ugly. We all had beautiful faces but different body shapes. Oma was the light-skinned woman with big bum among us. While Uju was inverted triange with prominently rounded boobs. I was hour glass and just normally propositioned.

I had seen him the moment we walked into the restaurant. It’s not rocket science that some people stand out no matter how hard they try to mask it. He wasn’t taller than most average men, nor was he big (the way I like my men) or light-skinned. He was slim, dark-skinned and had a faded skin-cut hairstyle. Ordinarily, nothing extravagant should catch your eyes, but he had this demeanour and beautiful face that gave his face a boyish charm that made you look again and again.

As I tried to mask my interest by sending coded glances his way here and there, I caught him staring at Oma, a few times. It hurt my feelings a little, but I couldn’t stop looking at him.

He walked to our table, and my heartbeat skedaddled. I thought for sure, he was coming to speak to Oma, but he came right up to me.

“Hi, ladies, my name is Tony. How are you beautiful ladies doing this evening?”

I saw both of my friends grin widely at him. They were bright-eyed like I probably had been since I saw him.

“Hi,” Uju answered softly. I rolled my eyes. Bitch please, that is not how you sound on a normal day.

Oma answered with the same piqued interest, and I reluctantly responded.

“Mind if I sit with you for a few minutes?” He asked, looking from one face to the other with a broad smile.

“Oh sure,” Uju quickly answered.

“Oh, not sure…?” Oma responded as she looked at Uju with annoyance written all over her face. “Sorry, but this is a girl’s night out. What can we help you with?”

I chuckled as the smile wiped out his face. “Well,” he harrumphed. “I wanted to speak with her,” he pointed at me as my eyes widened of their own will. “I didn’t want to be rude by asking to speak to her outside”.

I tutted silently, as I thought to myself, “Oh, he must be joking.” I arched an eyebrow as he turned fully to me. “Can I get any contact information you are willing to give me so I can reach out tomorrow?”

I made a face like he was disturbing us, making it a point of duty to portray my faux-disinterest.

“It could be social media or e-mail; it doesn’t have to be a phone number. We can never be too careful, I know that.” He added with a chagrin.

Needless to say, I did give him my e-mail address. I was sceptical at first because how could he have wanted me when his eyes were trained on Oma? I was already attracted to him, so that was no big deal. I had decided to go on with the play, or whatever. He cannot play for so long, or so I thought.

He sent me an e-mail the next day as promised, and we e-mailed back and forth for about three days. And in between we talked about work, and our likes and interests, and what he wanted from me. We went from emailing to social media, and eventually, we started doing phone calls which morphed into Facetimes. I still had my doubts about his intentions even after three months.

I finally agreed to meet with him at a restaurant, and I melted under his gaze. All my questions disappeared as I was sure there was no way a man would look at you like that and not truly be in love with you. Like a crazy person, I followed him home that same night, and we banged the shit out of each other. I lost my home training for him.

The moment I saw him in that restaurant, I knew in my body and soul that it would take a miracle not to engage.

I woke up the next morning and waited for the shame to flood me, but nothing happened. As a Christian girlie, I had stayed away from sex because I wanted to wait until I was ready. I never defined what ready would mean, but somewhere in my subconscious, I did say never again after the first time with my teenage boyfriend until marriage.

To make matters worse, we spent the rest of that Sunday (a holy day of obligation) doing all sorts of things with our bodies until late into that night when I had to call it quits to go home to prepare for work the next day. It wasn’t surprising that Tony evoked a kind of rabid sexual urge from me that I never thought was possible. To be fair, I wasn't vast in the area, but I read a lot of materials to keep myself abreast.

In our first year of dating, we had gotten to know more about our lives and our bodies than I had in the years presiding him. I started to pray to God to stop my body from falling apart whenever I saw him. God never answered me, and I think my prayer should have been to give me the grace to resist. I never prayed that one anyway, I only prayed for a bit of self-control. How shameless.

He proposed within our first year of dating, and everything was going fine until last year when I started to notice a withdrawal.

Tony started to stay out late at night and spent even less time at home on the weekends. He always had something to do. He stopped contributing to house bills and always had this air of, “Don’t bother me about anything and everything.” We had a percentage for household groceries since I also earned close to what he was getting. I did not see a big deal and thought maybe something was wrong at work. I tried to be understanding. I probed and probed and got nothing. Our sexual life became non-existent, almost like he was a completely different person from the man from four years ago.

I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t tell what the issue was. He wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t let me touch him, nor would he touch me. You see, we never fought about anything. We didn’t want children yet, so I couldn’t understand what I did wrong.

I spoke to my mum, and my friends; I called his sisters too, and everybody seemed to think he was under stress at work.

Give him some time, they said.

Last month made it exactly one year since my husband decided to become a distant roommate to me. We now sleep in different rooms in the house. He doesn’t eat my food nor does he greet or respond to my greetings.

I stopped trying.

I contemplated giving him a divorce, but I did not want to become one of those women who were alienated in church because they did not try harder. Afterall, he wasn’t hitting me or abusing me. What would I say is my problem? Sex? Well, I was sex-starved. But, how do I face people to say, “Oh there was no more companionship, and the sex his dick promised is no more”.

How do you take a person so high that you become the only religion they know after God, then wham bammed them with nothing?

Anyway, I decided to play detective. For the bible said to give divorce only on account of infidelity. I know I sound mad. But you will never understand the loss you feel from losing the person you thought was the absolute love of your life. The dreams and goals you started to work out together, your bestfriend, your confidant, your sexual needs, all comes crashing and to be left without an explanation? I bet that it would drive you mad too.

I did not find anything because I was too amateur (I know that now). I let it go and went back to work.

Three days ago, I was lying in bed alone as usual, when I got a text from a phone number I did not have saved.

“Hi…” That was all it read.

It was followed quickly with his picture. A face I could never forget in this lifetime stared back at me.

"It's me, Bolanle," the next text quickly followed.

My heart beat raced as I looked at the messages over and over, wondering what to reply or if I should reply at all. You see, Bolanle was my first boyfriend. We grew up together, went to church together and did chores together. We shared our first awkward kisses and he was my first in everything. We talked about our future and what we would name our kids. Unfortunately, he lost his father, who was the breadwinner of his family when we had just finished secondary school, and they had to relocate back to the village.

This was the man I thought I would marry.

To be continued...

With Love,

Mara.