This isn’t the life I wanted, this was not the plan, Zari thought to herself. Zari could not remember consenting to the life she was immediately surrounded with.
She began to feel confused, Was I hypnotized? How did I get here? She tried to remember exactly where it all went wrong, how did she become totally stripped of all her dreams and ambitions; she could not recognize herself and she instantly became irritated. The glass of wine she had in hand suddenly became tasteless, she thought she was projecting her bland and tasteless life on the poor wine, she gulped the rest of it and turned on the tv at which she stared mindlessly.
It was 9pm and her husband was on his way back from his firm’s end of the year party. for some reason she refused to join him to the party, she knew he would take Mariam - his latest girlfriend, if she didn’t go with him but she didn’t care; she and Dandy have never been monogamous. she couldn’t care less if he had a thousand of them as long as they stayed off her lawn. He’s been doing a lousy job at that since the past year as she’s had two of his girlfriends confront her to ‘leave their man’. She nearly lost her mind at how someone could approach her to disrespect her in that manner, no one would dare that with 24 year old Zari. Age has really done a number on her, but she let it all go when he apologized.
When she decided to get married, she knew she would eventually grow to resent him if he didn’t keep to his promises to help her achieve her dreams. She loved him enough but she knew there was more for her in this world, she didn’t marry him out of pressure, she did so out of love and foresight.
Dandy wanted to marry her the week they met, she was everything he wanted in a partner. She was not the typical kind of girl, she had been polyamorous and wasn’t of the opinion that one one should stop exploring their sexual desires because they found someone to commit and devote to. She was a kind soul, the type you want to have around forever.
She and Dandy had agreed to be each other’s life partners with the acceptance of extra marital affairs as long as mutual respect existed. They agreed that they would have a better partnership and growth in other areas of her life if they didn’t expend their energies dragging about loyalty and who was cheating on who. She knew it would be inevitable for her to see other people and same went for him.
Everything was great with their style expect for Dandy’s failure to keep his affairs in order.
He was leaving the country with another woman.
It dawned on her that she has been playing house with a man who claimed to still love her but was only still married to her out of convenience. She was over it. She found out from her friend - Eve who worked at the embassy. Eve had seen her friend’s husband come to their office a couple of times with a different woman to process some sort of documents and proceeded to find out what exactly for.
‘These things happen every day to women, I’m not special, men hurt women everyday in this world, this isn’t about me’. She thought to herself out loud. Nothing is ever enough even if you bend over backwards. She’s lost everything; she used to be a trailblazing tech woman with dreams to take over the world. She was too good, she still gets messages on her Instagram from people asking her when she’ll be back to running and managing start ups.
She married Dandy because he was a big shot in the tech industry and promised to help her push her career above and beyond.
Five years later, he’s only managed to push her deep beneath heavy sheets of nothingness; no growth, no impact, no dreams had come true. Anytime she tried to bring up the conversation, they would end up not having any viable outcome. He would always say: ‘We have all the time in the world baby, let’s enjoy our marriage first before you take on the world’ followed with a condescending laughter. She truly must have been hypnotized because what enjoyment had she been enjoying for five whole years enough to make her relax on something that mattered so much to her?
She wants her life back. She wants her house, her career, her sanity, her solitude and well put together life back. It wasn’t his decision to leave the country with another woman that’s her issue but the fact that he literally robbed her of her dreams and ambitions. They had an agreement and he has failed to hold up his end.
She has to leave him, (technically he’s leaving first) but, first she has to show Dandy a little bit of madness.