Sherry's story 2

The birth of our baby did not put an end to the abuse; Upjohn got worse with each passing day. He stopped anything that brought me little joy, like my mother visiting us. He made us move to new place just so my mother wouldn’t find us. It infuriated him that she visited occasionally.

Upjohn did not only abuse me physically, he also abused me verbally, and he called me fat, ugly, dumb and desperate. He told me that I would never find any man to love me, I was un-loveable, he said.  He acknowledged that I could cook and that it was the only thing I had going for me. (Thank God, he even saw one good thing in me)

He treated me like a slave, when I served him food, he would make me kneel and wait till he was done, then I’d thank him for eating my food. He beat me up like it was a way of communication. On a particular day, I called my son a name different from his regular name, (it was still his name), and Upjohn beat me for it.

He reminded me every day that I was gifted to him cheaply, he called me an illiterate and I always wondered how I went from being an intelligent girl to an illiterate in his eyes. For this reason, I saved up some money and secretly wrote JAMB. My result was very good and I gained admission to study law in the University. When it was time for me to get registered in school, I couldn’t hide my good news anymore and had to tell him. As I had expected, he almost killed me.  He accused me of prostitution and said that a decent woman would be more interested in looking after her husband and children, nothing else should matter to me.

Despite all his accusations, I was determined to further my studies and he was also determined to frustrate my efforts. He wouldn’t contribute towards my education, so I did menial jobs, approached a few people for assistance just to pay my first school fees. Then I started attending lectures. Luckily, an older friend of mine who I met in church accepted to look after my children when I attended lectures. (By this time, I already had a second surviving child, a baby boy).

Upjohn beat me without fail everyday once I got back from school. I went to school with black eyes and it was obvious that I was being abused, I could no longer hide and I learnt to live with it. No surprise that I did not go past the first semester.

He never got tired of raining abuses on me, he insisted that the only reason I was in school was to practice prostitution and threatened to treat me like a prostitute someday. Honestly, I could not understand why the only man I’d ever loved could be so bitter with me, why he hated me so much, I couldn’t understand it and there was no way of finding out if all men behaved this way.

One day, Upjohn came home and just started asking for s**x, I told him that I felt very poorly. All these while, he never let anyone live with us to help me, I did everything, washed all the clothes and ironed them, cleaned the house, cooked and looked after the children. I was dead tired and felt really sick. He flared up and jumped at me; he punched me freely and then forcefully had sex with me while my toddler boy watched. (Hiss… life has dealt with me). That was him carrying out his threat.

After this ordeal, I became like a ghost, I had no one, notice I haven’t really mentioned my father? He disowned me after I got pregnant and the few times I tried to reach out to him, he blanked me. Upjohn had made it difficult for my mother to visit and so I was alone in the world. He made fun of me, he said I had been abandoned by my parents because I was useless and a failure.

I found the strength I needed to leave this monster the day my daughter looked at me and said "mummy let us run away before daddy kills you" That was the deal breaker. A week later, I packed some of my children’s clothes, took just two clothes of mine and left for Lagos to live with a female friend that I met on social media.

I received a message from him the following day demanding to know where we were. I told him that we had left and he responded to say that he knew I would come back because I had nowhere to go to. He then added that I’d be dead if I ever returned.

A week later he sent another message which read “I’m certain that you will return to me when you get hungry, nothing must happen to my children”

To be continued.

The response has been amazing. Please contact me via amakanwosisi@yahoo.com if you wish to help Sherry. God bless