I Sent My Wife Away When I Have No one To Care for Me
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June 26, 2017
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The Stupidest Thingy I Ever Did in My Marriage
I am a man of few words but not anymore. Ever since my business crashed beyond measures, these past three years have been hellish for me. It would have been bearable for me but for the woman who calls herself my wife. Heaven knows no fury like a woman scorned but now with me, this age-long saying goes like this: heaven knows no fury like a man who lost his wealth and now has his wife feeding him!
Life has always been fair to me. After my secondary school education and at the point of going for university registration, I lost my father. There was no one to see me through university education as my father was an only child. My mother and I decided to go into my late father’s business at Onitsha Main Market. It was the most trying time of our life as a family. My mother who has never known anything about buying and selling at the international level had to pull off her garment of house-wifedom for trading. She encouraged me to maintain the contacts of my father’s retinue of international business partnerships.
That was how I started going into Hong Kong and denied myself the benefits of a university certificate in the banking and finance discipline I would have been its graduate by now if not for the life in life called fate. But believe you me; if not for the terrible blows from misfortune, nothing would ever make me regret not going to school. In Igboland, education is highly valued but money means more to the majority.
I said so because I know all that money made me accomplish before the age of twenty-five. I bought my first car at the age of twenty-three and branched out of Onitsha for Lagos where I established another branch to the one at Onitsha. My late father’s business I brought new approaches to and watched in disbelief as money won more and more money over and into the corporate bank account. What could be better than a young rich man! Nothing beats being rich at a young age. You get to intimidate your peers with the affluence you have acquired. You’ll be treated with fear and respect. Girls would be yours for picking. No girl would say no to you. Hahahahaha! Life was good.
Not until I married my wife at the age of twenty-six. My mother it was who came to Lagos on a visit and decided that at the rate I was going that I would not beat contracting AIDS and insisted I settle down with immediate effect. I acquiesced her on her demand. Within few months, one of my girlfriends alerted me that I have put her in the family way. My mother was happy for us and encouraged me to go the full log. In three months, my family and I had done the wine-carrying and paying of the dowry. We also had our traditional marriage ceremonies. By the fourth month when her body had started showing signs of pregnancy, we had the consecration of our marriage in the church. By the ninth month, I have become a brand new father of a bouncing baby boy.
Then my fortunes nose-dived. To start with, I lost all my goods I bought in Hong Kong on the high sea due to sea turbulence. I emptied my bank accounts and borrowed from my mother who has gone on her own to enable me be the man and paid for half of what I usually bought and that was when the Obasanjo administration chose to ban the goods I was trading on. My air-freighted goods were among the first to be ceased by airport customs. It was a tragedy.
My wife begged me to allow her borrow money from her older brother so she could set up a business when she saw that I had lost my fortune, I obliged her. All my efforts to bounce back fell flat underneath my heels. I stayed at home for months while my wife’s efforts paid for the bills. She was taking my misfortune well until I suggested we make another baby in the second year of my misfortune. She rejected the idea by summarily telling me that she is suffering and that she suffered so much raising our son all by herself without me contributing a farthing. I was peeved. To add salt to my injury, she suggested she would accept my suggestion only if I would carry the pregnancy while she goes out to provide for the family. That was asking me for my place as the head of the family. I swallowed my pride. I went to few of my friends who still tolerate my company and raised some money from them and paid the Area Boys at Iyanoba Market to enable me sell used clothes – okirika – as it is one of the most marketable goods that the majority poor people who live around this densely populated part of Lagos patronize a lot.
But this line of goods is already saturated that I hardly bring in what would feed my family twice on daily basis. It was a sorry state for me. I wouldn’t go to my mother as she it is who pays all the bills in the East alongside my siblings’ school fees. There is no one to my rescue.
Gradually, I started envying my wife and went mad the day she refused to borrow me transport fare to Iyanoba Market. For the first time in my marriage, I lifted my hands upon my wife. I didn’t beat her because she refused me but because she actually taunted me when she said that if I couldn’t afford ordinary transport fare, that I should stay at home as her housewife. That took the lid off my thinking faculties. I visited my years of acute sense of frustrations on her.
Because she has respect for the marriage institution, she refused to involve her people in the matter. We later resolved our differences between us. But in my heart, I have started nursing deep seethed anger and despise my wife a lot. Instead of winning her over with love, I became abusive. Instead of using soft words on her, I went ballistic with mean languages. Then she bought herself a blackberry handset and refused me from touching it. I told her that a wife should not use a handset that is bigger than her husband’s. Before I knew it, I went traditional and started making demands on my wife. I started making her to understand that no customs of our people would be flouted by her while still under my roof. My wife simply couldn’t take it. She started fighting back by preparing me different dishes and that made me sack her from my house.
Now this is a new year. My house rent is due and there is no source of income for me. I have managed to pay my son’s school fees only for my wife to go to our son’s school and take him away with her. I hardly eat well nowadays. I don’t sleep well either.
What have I brought on myself!
