Her Secret Sorrow: A Tale of Regret and Anguish
By Balogun Kamilu Lekan
“I married him not because I loved him but because my parents wanted me to, and I’m dying right now.”
Those gut-wrenching words escaped Husna’s lips as I dialed her number, hearing her stifled sobs on the other end.
Confusion washed over me like a tidal wave. She told me about her impending wedding three weeks earlier, shocking me.
We had been dating, and I loved her deeply, but the cruel hand of fate had played its part. My unstable employment status became an insurmountable barrier, and she felt time slipping away.
She cited age as the reason, lamenting how society deemed women’s worth diminishing faster than men’s. “Women wilt faster than men,” she’d reasoned.
I was furious, and in a fit of anger, I vowed not to attend her wedding. She sent me the ornate aso ebi fabric as an olive branch, but I spitefully rejected it even though she claimed it was a gift. I was drowning in pain and sorrow — a tempest of emotions I could barely contain.
For almost two years, I stubbornly refused to speak to her, but eventually, my conscience caught up with me, forcing me to swallow my pride. With a new phone number, I called to apologize, my voice heavy with remorse.
“Hello, Husna. Guess who?” I said, hoping to ease the tension.
“Ayo, I know it’s you. Please forgive me,” she replied, her voice cracking with anguish, and I felt every bit of her pain through the phone.
Her wedding day had been a grand affair, a spectacle that captivated the whole town. But little did anyone know the secret torment she endured behind the scenes.
She confessed how her marriage was coerced, pressured by her mother to marry a man who seemed financially stable. Little did they know he had already planned to “Japa” (leaving for a better life abroad).
The truth unraveled just a month after their marriage when he vanished, never answering her or his family’s calls.
Husna was left to bear the burden of his abandonment and betrayal, which had taken an immeasurable toll on her spirit.
Regret gnawed at her heart for not following her true feelings, for not choosing the man she loved — me.
The life she had bargained for was shattered, and her reality became a nightmare she couldn’t escape.
How could she explain her groom slipping through her fingers like sand in an hourglass? Disappearing right before your eyes?
Hearing Husna’s anguished tale, I longed to comfort her. But my hands were tied, the damage already done. Some sorrows run too deep for soothing.
