How I became a single mother

Dear diary,

I can never forget how I could feel my heart sinking deep on to the deepest pits of darkness as I listened carefully to what my husband was trying to explain to me. He repeated each and every sentence over and over again hoping it would make me feel better. He kept saying it was not my fault, that it was not because of something I did or what I had become, he said he loved me and he would never stop loving me or our dear children, he will always be there for us but he was going to marry a second wife because he loved her too.

I remember every detail of that evening, he was wearing the shirt that I gave him on his birthday, the trouser that he bought for himself when we were on vacation a year before; his girlfriend (who was to be the second wife) was wearing a nicely fitting read dress that flattered her figure. Her braids falling perfectly around her shoulders, she was younger and more beautiful than I was. She seemed happy; they both did seem happy completely unaware of the immense pain they were instilling in me with every passing second.

For years I had suspected my husband was having an affair but chose to ignore my intuition even when there were so many red flags. I convinced my self that he was different. I wanted to respect his freedom, I learned to trust him as he had asked me to even when there was no reason to trust him. It has been just five years since we got married and he was already introducing me to a woman who would be his second wife. Our Children Ayana and Aria were still so young to go through what I had gone through when my father married the second, the third, the forth until the eleventh wife who were even jealous of me and my sibling spending time with our father.

It is difficult to understand how polygamy can affect a woman especially a woman who has been trying to run from the ghost of polygamy. My father married eleven wives in his life. My mother was his first wife and just like me she fought against polygamy even on her death bed. My mother was a hard working, beautiful and a strong woman but even her tears and her rage were not enough to make my father monogamous. He kept falling in love with a new woman every day forgetting the one he had met the day before. When my mother passed away we were still so young and had to spend the rest of our childhood lives in the hands of  step mothers who would abuse us with no one to fight for us. This went on until when I got my first job and took in all my siblings thinking I had put that horrible life style behind me for good.

The night James announced that he was going to marry a second wife I was no just hurt that this whole situation had brought the kind of life I was trying to forget but I was also annoyed for believing men could be different. It was as if he had hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending to be the opposite of my father, do what pleased me yet he was everything that I ever hated in my father.

I cried for days, I was confused, I didn't know what was worse, to know that you were never enough for your husband and stay married or to become what you have always wanted to be (independent) and feel alone? I kept visiting my mother’s grave everyday hoping she would somehow tell me how she managed to live in a polygamous marriage, hopping she would wake up and help me make a decision if I should continue with my marriage or if it was time for me to walk away but  she didn't.

Dear diary, the life of a plural wife was a life under constant comparison, comparison that hurts, it is a life spent wondering about the questions that where inescapable like was he going to add the third and the fourth wife? Between the two of us, who was the most happy? Which of us was his one true love, who does he desire most? Does he love my children like the way he will love hers.......? This went on until the day I got tired of all this, I told James I could not do it anymore and that I wanted a divorce.

Six months later we were divorced, I moved in with my two beautiful babies and life has been good since then. It is now seven years since all this happened, I am a single mother and I have never regretted my decision to divorce my husband. All I want to tell everyone who is going though difficult time is; don’t be afraid to take a chance, take a chance at every opportunity you get. You might feel secure in the pond that you are in but if you never get out of it you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean or a sea. Holding on to something that is good for you may be the very reason why you don’t have something better..... Take chance... live... be happy.