I feel like I have never been happy in my life. I come from a very poor background. I lost my dad early on. I was just eight years when he passed. My mother did the best she could, but she never got any assistance and she couldn’t do much. Thankfully, my big sis was able to enroll me in a dressmaking institution and that is where I learnt fashion design and dressmaking. When I completed the institution, she was the same person who set me up in a modest container to sew clothes. I met my husband when he came to escort his younger sister to my shop. He was very friendly and we started a normal friendship which later blossomed into a relationship.
We’ve been married for five years now and we have a child together. Both of us are active people and we are not even obese or anything. I was at work one day when I had a call that my husband had been rushed to the hospital. I left the shop for my apprentices and went to the hospital. My husband had been admitted and the doctors told me that if his colleagues hadn’t rushed him in on time, he would have died. My husband had suffered a severe stoke at the age of 35 years. This news came as a shock to me and I had no idea my life was going to change for the worse. I had to wake up very early in the morning, get our son ready for school, drop him off at school, quickly go to the hospital before coming back to open my shop. When my husband was discharged, he had to be moved in a wheelchair into the uber I had ordered.
Since we got home, it has been one issue after the other. We have been going for physiotherapy. My husband cries like a baby and feels like he is a burden and that he is useless. But I told him that I made a vow to him at the alter when we were getting married. We both proclaimed “for better for worse” in the hearing of all those who were present. I do not intend to bail out on this marriage because of his health challenges. After weeks of physiotherapy, we haven’t seen much of an improvement yet. He still sits in a wheelchair. His speech has been affected because his left side is not functioning. In the midst of all these, his best friend who was the best man at our wedding has been trying to make advances towards me. I have threatened to report him to my husband. He laughed hard at this.
I am 30 years. My Uncles are telling me to leave him and that I am still young and beautiful. Men approach me, wanting to get to know me more. But I proudly wave my wedding ring to them. If my husband’s friend keeps making advances, I will take all the measures I need to take to get him off me. I chose this marriage knowing well that things could get very bad or very good. That is what marriage is. It is a journey to the unknown. I believe God that my husband will gradually get better and I am willing to stay at his side every step of the way. Not all married women jump on the opportunity to cheat on their spouses. Some of us are mature enough to stay committed to the very end.
