At this point, everything is about to end—or has already ended. My life, as I knew it, is unraveling, thread by thread, leaving me bare and exposed to the harsh realities I never imagined I’d face. I met my husband, Emeka, when I was 22, fresh out of university, my heart untainted by the world. I was a blank canvas, untouched, unbroken, and full of dreams. My body had known no man, my heart no betrayal. I came from a strict home, where love was shown through discipline and protection, not through words or embraces. Emeka was my first love, my first everything.
Our love was sweet, like the ripest mango plucked from the tree in my father’s compound. He was charming, ambitious, and full of promises. He promised me a life of joy, of children, of laughter echoing through our home. I believed him. I gave him everything—my heart, my body, my future. We married quickly, and for a while, life was as sweet as he promised. But as the years passed, the sweetness began to sour.
Ten years. Ten long years of marriage, and still, no child. The absence of a baby’s cry in our home became a deafening silence, a void that grew heavier with each passing day. We tried everything. Doctors, tests, treatments—nothing worked. We were told to pray, to believe, to have faith. And we did. We attended every spiritual workshop, bathed in rivers and oceans, and followed every instruction from pastors, imams, and traditional healers. Emeka’s mother insisted we return to Nigeria from America, convinced that the spirits of our ancestors would bless us if we were home. We obeyed, leaving behind the life we had built, hoping for a miracle.
But the miracle never came. Instead, the weight of our unmet expectations began to crush us. Emeka grew distant, his once-loving eyes now cold and impatient. He blamed me, though he never said it outright. I could see it in the way he avoided my gaze, in the way he stopped holding my hand during prayers. The man who once promised me the world now barely spoke to me. And then, he left. He moved back to the U.S., leaving me behind in Nigeria, in the house that felt more like a prison than a home.
I was alone, abandoned, and broken. The days blurred into nights, and I wandered through life like a ghost, haunted by the dreams that had died within me. It was during this time that his younger brother, Chike, came into my life. Chike was everything Emeka wasn’t—kind, attentive, and patient. He saw my pain and didn’t look away. He stayed. He listened. He held me when I cried, and in my weakest moment, I let him…
