If I can’t have you, no one will

It sounded good from the beginning and I think it was the way he said it. He said, “You were made for me and I was made for you. You and I are made for each other.” I stood there smitten and didn’t know what to say. I only gave him a smile. He said, “Say something.” I said, “You’ve said all the right things. Now whatever I say would be a repetition of what you just said.”

Our love was new and we couldn’t get enough of each other. Those were the days when we could stay on the phone forever and didn’t know how to say goodbye or who should be the one to say goodbye. That’s the flowery part of every relationship. You wish it would remain so forever but one day you wake up and all that’s left was, “Why didn’t you call me yesterday?” And the other partner will respond, “Why didn’t you also call?”

Usually, newness stays a little bit longer but that wasn’t our case. We started fighting just after two months in love. He became overbearing. He would like to know who I had spoken to during the day and what we spoke about. If a guy smiles my way, he would like to know why the guy smiled and why I’m the one he smiled to. It took just a simple greeting from just a random guy for me to get into trouble with him.

And when he’s angry, he likes to kick things around or pick anything in his way and throw it around. One evening, he was so angry and shaking. He read my messages and saw a guy calling me dear. He asked, “Why did he call you dear? Are you his girlfriend?” I thought it was funny so I laughed. This guy started throwing tantrums and assumed all the things that guy could have been doing with me behind his back.

I told him, “You’re overreacting!”

He started looking for things to hit or throw away. He didn’t get any. I was the only thing in front of him that he could hit or throw so he hit me. Before I could say a word, he hit me again. I sat down with my cheek in the palm and started crying. He went on and on with anything he could assume from a simple “Dear.”

I wasn’t talking because I was scared. I was waiting for him to leave so I send him a text to tell him it was over between us. He calmed down a little, got closer to me and said, “You’re mine and I have to do everything to protect you from other people.” Again, I didn’t say a word. I kept sobbing.

He knelt in front of me and started apologizing; “You know how much I love you and how much I hate to see someone trying to get closer to you. Sorry for hitting you. It won’t happen again.” I said nothing. I was only waiting for him to leave so I could close my door and text him goodbye.

He left. Eventually. I looked into the mirror and my left eye was swollen. I cried and said to myself, “This is it.”

I sent him a text, “I don’t think I can continue doing this with you. This is where it ends and I’m serious. Find yourself a girlfriend who enjoys being slapped or insulted whenever you’re angry.” My message was blue ticked but I didn’t get any response. An hour later, I heard a knock on my door. It was calm at first but when I didn’t respond, the knock got aggressive. It was him, I knew it.

I didn’t open the door.

He knocked and knocked until my neighbors got up to tell him to stop disturbing. It turned into a scuffle with them. Soon the men in the house got out of their rooms and drove him away. The time was 12:36am. I hadn’t been embarrassed in my life. The next morning when I got out, everybody was looking at me and asking if I was ok.

I walked gingerly out of the house to work.

The security came to inform me at the lunch break that I had a visitor. It was him. He gave the security a wrong name, I wouldn’t have gone to see him. There he was, face to face with me. He saw my swollen eye and apologized for it again. He said, “Sorry for everything that happened last night. Lovers have bad times and that was our bad time. It shouldn’t cause you to send the kind of message you sent to me.”

I told him, “What I sent you wasn’t because of what happened last night. You’re the wrong guy for me and I can’t put up with the way you behave when you’re angry. It’s over and I mean it. You can get yourself a new girlfriend because I’m out. He stayed quiet. You could see his fist shaking. If it were in any place, he would have been angry and throw things around. He couldn’t do it at my office. He was trying to control it but it was hard for him.

He looked at me and said, “You think you can get rid of me easily because of that guy who called you dear? Then think again! If I can’t have you, no one will.”

I got up and left him there.

Deep inside I was scared of what he would do to me so I packed a few things from my room and left to go live with a friend. Over the next couple of days, he kept calling my phone every second. I got traumatized. He came to my office twice with fake identity but the security kept telling him I was not at work. He kept sending me threats and then he would apologize and send some sweet messages. I never responded to him. I changed my number. The messages stopped coming.

One evening at my friend’s place, we heard a knock on the door. My friend went to see who it was. It was him.

He pushed my friend aside and entered the room. I was lying on the couch watching TV when he walked in. “You think I can’t find you? Do you think you can run away from me? Immediately I got up from the couch he held my shoulder and said, “Please, I came to apologize for everything. Please listen to me.” My friend screamed at him, “Leave my room or I’ll report you to the police. She kept screaming at him and even pulled his shirt to leave the room. That was when he threw his hand and it landed on my friend’s lips.

My friend started screaming and the neighbors came around. At first, I thought my friend was being dramatic just to get him out. It was when I saw her lips that I realized how seriously she was hurt. There was blood all over her mouth. She kept murmuring, “My tooth, my teeth is falling.”

He left the room and ran off. We took my friend to the hospital. Luckily her tooth was fine but her upper lip was stitched.

It was no more about me and him. My friend felt abused so she reported the issue to the police. The next morning, he was arrested. I was sad for him but there was very little I could do. He spent some hours in there before he was bailed after noon. I never thought that guy could be that remorseful. When he came out of the cells, you could see he had been crying. This was a guy who stood as tall as a mountain in my eyes when we were dating but that day when he came out of the cell, he looked like an inch tall. No dignity.

My friend was talked out of pursuing the case further but they ensured he paid for all medical bills and was warned to stay far away from any of us.

A month or so later, he sent me a message, “Dear, I’m sorry for everything that ever happened between us. I’ve learned my lessons and I’m now a changed person. Just one more chance and I’ll prove how good I’ve become to you.”

I responded, “Do you want to go back to the cells again?”

— Rita, Ghana