“Why didn’t you call me when you got home?”
“Babe, I’m sorry; I was very tired when I got back from work. I was on the afternoon shift.”
“But this is not the first time. I’ve always told you to call me whenever you get home, but you don’t always do that. You just want me to keep talking. How can I be telling you the same thing over and over again? Are you a child?”
Her heart was hurting. She was tired. She didn’t like his tone. He seemed to be getting upset once again, and she was beginning to dread another one of those arguments over little things that they had now been having constantly.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes, I can’t help it, but…”
“Can you hear yourself? What do you mean by “you can’t help it”? This is what normal girlfriends do, but for you, no oooo, you prefer to make it an issue! See, I’m already tired of all this. You’re lucky I even dated you despite your condition. But you can’t continue to annoy me, so it’s over between us.”
“Kennard! Kennard! Please, I’m…”
And he was gone.
Pain slowly gripped her heart as she held onto her phone. She had just had her heart broken by her boyfriend of seven months.
She had been in this toxic relationship for months before the end-of-year get-together, but it felt like she had been in it for much longer.
She sat up on her bed and stared at her phone. It had just clocked ten.
“Did he just break up with me?” she thought. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. Why did she really think she could stay in this relationship?
Kennard had been so sweet to her when they met, and she really hoped they’d turn out to be a great couple. She had accidentally called his number while dialing a number she was asked to call for her cashier job, which she now did.
There was some confusion at the beginning of the call as she went on to introduce herself and why she was calling, but Kennard sweetly replied that she had called the wrong number.
She apologized through her embarrassment, but he made her feel welcome, and the next week they had a series of conversations over the phone, with Kennard being as nice as usual. She had told him about Chiamaka while they were getting to know each other, but he didn’t seem to mind.
He’d say she was too beautiful to be alone and that she was such a strong woman.
She fell in love with his smooth talk and charming gentleness. Coincidentally, he was also in Owerri, but he lived far away from her house. Soon, they started a relationship after three weeks of phone conversations, chats, and exchanging cute photos.
Chidera was in love. She didn’t seem to mind that he was already 28 while she was just 24. She’d spend her days off work visiting him, telling everyone that she was working.
But soon, the relationship took a downturn because she found out that amidst all the nice things Kennard portrayed himself to be, he didn’t have a job, and he was quite jealous and insecure. He had previously told her he was into real estate, but that was the last job he did a year ago before his business crashed and before he met her. He wasn’t sorry for not coming out with the whole truth, so there was indeed a problem.
She’d continue to spend some of the money she was making from the supermarket on her transportation to his house and on buying a few things like salt, noodles, and onions when she had to make a meal there.
He didn’t want to hang out in restaurants because he didn’t usually have enough money to cater for the expenses, and in his words, he didn’t want his woman to “spend too much money.” His ego would not allow it.
Every time he asked Chidera to sleep with him, she’d tell him she was not ready, and they’d have an argument. Soon, he began complaining a lot about almost everything, including her actions and silence. Chidera was calm by nature, but she didn’t fit Kennard’s spark of jealousy-driven actions.
Once, she became friends with Segun, her colleague, who helped ward off a strange guy bothering her on her way home one night, but Kennard would have none of that. She started avoiding Segun because of Kennard’s constant insecure comments, totally masked as disapproval.
Kennard would rave and rave and complain and complain. He would yell about how deceitful guys were and about how easily they went after women in other relationships. Sometimes, he would call her names for even daring to think of being friends with another guy while bringing up any mistake she might have made in the past. Soon, she also began talking back at him whenever he became harsh with his words.
He’d then remind her that no guy would put up with her crap after she presented her 7-year-old daughter to them. Their relationship kept deteriorating, and she felt suffocated by it all.
Later, Kennard got a job and then became distant, pretending to be busy with work and still refusing to hang out. So she stopped frequenting his house. But still, she tried to be the “ideal girlfriend” to her newfound love. Alas, there were too many things wrong with their relationship, and now she was down in tears. The worst thing was that she couldn’t share her issues with anyone for months. She bore her pain alone!
This was her third relationship since she gave birth to Chiamaka, and she had failed woefully at all of them. Why did she hope so much that Kennard would work?
“What do I do?” She cried.
There were no thoughts, no words, only tears.
