Life Story: The Straight And Narrow Is Getting Tight

I married at age twenty six. When I met my husband, I was a new nurse recruit and he was a seasoned nurse. Our shifts would usually coincide, and so we became friends and then lovers. We used to talk about life and all the possibilities open to us. He wanted to be a surgeon’s assistant and I wanted to branch into health administration. A year after we met, we were married. Two years later we had three children, twin boys and their little sister, a girl.

To pursue his dream of becoming an assistant surgeon, Dan arranged a transfer from our home in the Western region to Korle-Bu. The plan was for him to use his income to put himself through higher education while I took care of myself and the children. Then when he was done with his training and had a better position, the children and I could join him, and I could pursue my administrator dream.

After Dan made the switch to Korle-Bu, for a period of over twelve months, he kept telling me they had messed up his payroll process and so his salary wasn’t being paid. As a dutiful wife, I shared the little income meant for me and our children with him. It turned out, he was getting paid alright. But he had found himself another woman he couldn’t afford and hence needed me to top up.

When I found out, I was livid! I raised hell and threatened to divorce him. But elders from both our families sat and decided on my behalf that I didn’t want a divorce. Not with three children. They made him buy a white sheep, three pieces of cloth and a necklace to make his irresponsibility and infidelity go away.

My mother said, “Show him the woman you’re made of. Love him harder. Respect him deeply. Listen to what he says and do as he says. Submit. Go low, don’t let your education mislead you. When he sees you’re putting him first, he will know he has a good woman. And he will always come home to you.”

Again I listened and walked the straight and narrow path, just as I had been taught to do. I stayed and diminished myself for a marriage that was bent on breaking me entirely. I allowed myself to be led by a boy in a man’s skin, who himself needed leadership and direction, and allowed myself to be led into the gutter.

And he did come home to me, again and again. He came back after leaving me for another woman for months. And so did he come back after he lied he was attending a colleague’s funeral at Hohoe, and ended up in a car accident on the Kwahu mountains with his concubine. He is still with me, after going through surgery after surgery; an invalid needing care. Since he cannot work, I am footing his hospital bills, buying blood thinners every month so the heart condition he got after the surgeries does not cause a blood clot to block his heart and kill him.

I walked the straight and narrow path set before me by society faithfully, and yet the promised land is nowhere in sight. I have carried Dan’s dead weight for twenty eight years, and for what? The title of a Mrs? Sometimes I wish I could exhume my mother’s bones, pick up her skull and scream in her face till I lost my voice. But who am I to judge her? I’m pretty sure I have damaged my own daughter with my bitterness and regret.

And then they say God…

“God hates divorce…”

I don’t think I’m where I am because God wanted me here.  What kind of loving Father sentences His daughter to a lifetime of suffering? This path was my choice, and society with its social conditioning cemented it for me.

I’m ready to give up on this road; I don’t think the road I chose was straight and narrow. It definitely is narrow but it isn’t straight. I chose a crooked and narrow path, and with every bend I round, the road gets narrower and thornier. And I am tired. I want out.

I guess all I’m trying to say is, somebody should have taught me to use the common sense and courage God freely gifted me. Society should have told me, “Shed the dead weight. It is not worth it.”

So that is my life story I wanted to tell, here I am, fifty four years old, wondering, “Where is my promised land?”