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Relationships

Notes from Afua: Who can bear this after 15 years?

George and I met at the university when we were both 20 years and it was love at first sight. The memory is still fresh in my mind.

He wore blue jeans with a polo shirt and a baseball cap with a pair of sandals. He was in a queue going to the registrar’s office to register for the second semester of our third year. I was just coming out of my father’s office; the registrar was my dad.

 “Excuse me”, “You are beautiful” he says

You can imagine my surprise as he was so blunt. “Do I know you?” he smiles and shakes his head. “My name is George, I have been seeing you around campus for quite some time now and I was wondering if you’ll have lunch with me right now”

“Ri...ri…right now, what about your registration….you are aware that today is the last day,” I ask.

“Give me ten minutes of your time and I won’t be a stranger to you any longer. I have been trying to get you alone for a year now, I feel lucky today to have you alone, so shall we?” he says.

I have always aspired to be a pharmacist and growing up I set my mind on nothing else but achieving that dream and making my family, especially my father proud. Nothing will distract me. All my focus and energy were on my studies but seeing George with that irresistible smile, something about him made it difficult for me to say no; after all I can just decide to avoid him if I am not interested at the end of the lunch but deep inside me I knew he was trouble.

“Okay, let’s go, I will tell you my name but I am pretty sure you already know it?” I ask.

“It’s a privilege to finally meet you Maabena Mensah,” he said, smiling.

Time went by and lunch became a weekend getaway with friends. Before I knew it, I was in a relationship with the most brilliant and remarkable man. I was deeply in love with George.

He knew how much I wanted to be a pharmacist and he never got in the way of that as he always gave me time and space to study so he could also do same. I am thankful to his best friend, Ben for always being there for George while I study; not to say George wasn’t an ambitious person, he was, and that was one of the reasons I was with him. But Ben and George are the perfect definition of friendship or should I say brothers.

After completing University, all three of us got the opportunity to pursue our Masters in one of the prestigious universities in the states. Life in the States was great, we all got the same place so we can stick together. It would have broken my heart to separate Ben and George so I didn’t.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

Fifteen years on, I am a pharmacist and I love everything about my job. George has been promoted to a Relationship Manager of one of the prominent banks in the States, while Ben opened a Ghanaian and Continental Restaurant just around where we lived. Ben was still single; the longest relationship he’s been in lasted for two months and he just wouldn’t shut up about the fact that ladies “dig” him; who can blame him - he is good looking.

To Ben, marriage was out of the question, “who wants to be tied down”, he usually says. I knew about the love he felt for someone during our stay in Ghana but he never opened up about it and neither did George.

One would have thought that after being together for fifteen years, George and I would have settled down by now and had a family of our own. We did start a family of our own alright; we had two wonderful girls, Lisa and Mona. They are a perfect example of daddy’s little girls.

George and I were not married, not because we didn’t love each other but there just wasn’t time and George, who is a victim of a broken home, never felt the need to walk down the aisle and declare his love to me in a church. He believes marriage is between two people and what’s important is love and we had that, or so I thought.

My family, especially my dad who is a disciplinarian and a staunch Christian, was constantly on my neck to get George to do the right thing by me because, according to them, society always looked down on a woman who isn’t married but lives with and has children with a man. To my father, George was taking advantage of his childhood experience and modernity. At a point in time, my family felt that he had another woman. But I had been with this man for almost half my life and never have I seen him nor even had reason to suspect him of any infidelity.

Although I love my father with all my heart, George was my family and I wasn’t going allow anything come between us just because society had their own beliefs and norms. We are in the 21st Century; nobody cares about anybody’s business anymore especially in the States.

George, on the other hand, had Ben as his confidant and Ben always assured me that, there was no other woman in George’s life and I believed him, not that I ever doubted any of them.

The sex was great, George was the perfect lover - he always left me yearning for more. It may sound cheesy, but I always could tell if there was another woman just by the way he and I were intimate.

One evening I came home and George was deep in his thoughts; “My love what is the problem?” I asked.

“Sit down, we need to talk” he replied.

“What is going on?” I asked

“I have been doing a lot of thinking for the past couple of months, it hasn’t been easy keeping this from you for the past fifteen years and I don’t think it’s fair to you or to the people involved including your family,” George said, leaving me wondering and panicking.

He continued: “I have been living a lie, pretending to be someone that I’m not just to feel accepted but I realized I cannot live this lie any longer - I cannot be this person any more - I want to be free, I don’t want to live in fear - I am human and I need to be allowed to love whoever I want - love shouldn’t be restricted because society has made it so - love shouldn’t care about the color of one’s skin or gender - love is being happy with whoever you are with.”

The look in George’s eyes and the sound of his shaky voice got me really worried as I have never seen him in that state before.

“God please do not let George be HIV positive or be having an affair as my parents have always been suspecting,” I prayed silently in my head.

“You remember the person I told you about the very first day we met and how I run away from that feeling because I was afraid of the way I felt and I didn’t want to be judged?” George asked.

“Yes I remember,” I said with a shaky voice as I dread my worst nightmare was about to come true.

I thought to myself, George was either breaking up with me or confirming my parent’s suspicions of his infidelity.

 At that moment, the idea of George leaving me for another woman terrified me, a reality that I couldn’t accept.

George continued: “I want you to know that I love you, you have been the best person for me since the day I met you but for more than fifteen years I have been in love with one person. I didn’t want to admit it to myself because I was afraid, but this person has always been in my life and I can’t hide the way I feel any longer, and I can’t continue hurting you as you have been nothing but good to me.”

“Oh God, this is it, he is breaking up with me,” I said in my head again.

“I left out a detail or two about the relationship I run from and who it was or is. I love you Maabena, and please don’t judge me but rather understand me when I tell you this,” George said.

“Spit it out already,” I screamed.

“Maabena, I am GAY and I am in love with Ben, I have been for more than twenty years,” he said.

At this moment, the idea of George having another woman in his life felt better for me. I began to tremble and as I was lost for words. I could see his lips moving but I couldn’t hear a thing he said from that point on.

Suddenly our apartment felt too small for me; I blacked out and when I woke up and I saw my parents at my bedside in the hospital.

Series of unanswered questions still linger through my mind. How can a man I have known for 15 years keep his sexual preferences from me? How do I face my parents? What will society say about me? But mostly where were George and Ben?

Suddenly, I became to reflect on how in the past, when George and I were living in Ghana and Ben was in the states, George will take a trip to the states and live with Ben for almost a month. I also recollected how sometime Ben will call George from the states and George will give me the phone to speak with Ben briefly, after which he will go and hide in his private study room and speak undertone with Ben for almost an hour. It is all making sense to me now.

It set me thinking, I may not be the only one in this kind of situation, because now it appears some of these secret long distant infidel relationships are actually gay relationships rather than straight ones. Ladies, wake up and start looking closely. Fifteen years is too long for me to figure this out. You don’t have to wait for that long.

By the way I survived it and I am doing well today.

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.