TICKING

10

Are you motivated!? Motivated motivated motivated sir! 🏃🏾‍♀️🏃🏾‍♀️🏃🏾‍♀️🏃🏾‍♀️🏃🏾‍♀️

That's how I feel after the turn out of yesterday's chapter. 💃💃💃💃💃

Thanks to everyone who dropped a comment and voted on the previous chapter. ❤️

"Sometimes he hits me."

"Ehn!?" I was shocked. I stood up immediately from the sofa I was sitting on, I started to pace around the sitting room. An uncomfortable silence loomed between us. "Since when?" I managed to speak up.

"For a while now, since the early years of our marriage." She answered quietly. The authoritative voice she had when advising me had gone, now replaced by a timid voice.

"Why am I just hearing this for the first time sister. I'm not just your sister, I'm your friend. You could have confided in me." I was emotionally drained all of a sudden. I couldn't believe my sister's marriage that I had admired all this while had such a loop hole inside it. She was suffering and I didn't know and I was wishing to have something like theirs someday.

"I thought I could handle it on my own. Before we got married, we normally had issues like every other normal couple but he never for once hit me. I was always the calm one so whenever he was raging, I usually let him be so I don't add fuel to his anger. When he cools off, he always came to apologise. I didn't know he had this side to him, I was beyond shocked the first time it happened" She spoke.

Ezekiel looked so innocent whenever he comes to the family house and whenever I went to them. They looked so in love, he treasured her or so I thought. I never knew he had a beast inside of him.

Why on Earth would he hit her? Why would he beat my sister?

It's not like she stays at home and not do anything to support him as her husband, she works, she supports the house and she is very God fearing. I always looked up to her.

"Am I the only one in the house that is aware of this?" I sat back on the sofa and put my legs on the centre table. I was uneasy, I knew I would stand up again, soon.

She was quiet for a minute before she replied; "Mummy knows, right from the first time."

I stood up again.

"And what did she say?" I asked her. I was curious to know how my mom had handled the situation that made her decide to stay in an abusive marriage for ten years.

"She told me to manage and that he would change. She said if I leave him, what kind of example would I be to you and Ivie?"

"Ehn!?" I couldn't believe it.

"She made me promise not to let you and Ivie know about it. She didn't want the both of you to use my situation as an excuse to talk down on marriage. She said I was supposed to be a good example to the both of you, her excuse then was for me to be a good example but when I brought the issue up again recently, she said I had to stay for the sake of my three kids. If I had known, I wouldn't have listened to her, I would have left with my first baby. She kept on saying I was her first child so I wasn't permitted to divorce." I heard her sniffle. She was crying. She has held on for so long.

Leaving a marriage after three kids would be difficult. I thought to myself. This is a dilemma.

How could mom do this to her child? Because she wanted her be good a example to Ivie and I? Who cared about an example? What if she had died in the cause of being abused?

"Nosa." She called.

"Yes?" I answered her softly. It definitely would take me time to get used to this information. "Please don't let this thing discourage you, I just wanted you to know that there's more to marriage than you think. You have to be pray, study, prepare yourself, and be careful."

"Hmm..."

Shout out to all the women who are in and have survived abusive relationships. God is your strength. 🙏🏾

What is your advise for anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship?

What do you think about this chapter?

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