I’ve lost one eye. The left one. I lost it to marriage. When I got married, I believed I was beginning a new, exciting chapter. Instead, I walked right into a furnace meant to burn me until I turned brown. My husband was abusive. He abused me with words, his hands, and anything else he could lay his hands on. I was pregnant with my first child when it started. He found me despicable, I guess.
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The insults came first, then the beatings. I didn’t have to do anything big. I spat while he was eating. He shouted at me and asked if I didn’t have any decorum. If I didn’t know spitting around food made one lose his appetite. Maybe he expected an apology, but I walked away and left the scene. He attacked. He didn’t care where his hands landed.
I got scared, so I packed a few things, including my pain, and ran to my parents’ house, believing that home would always be my refuge.
I was the first child in my family to get married, and my parents believed that if my marriage failed, it would bring bad luck upon the rest of my siblings. So whenever I showed up with swollen eyes, bruises, or a broken spirit, they would comfort me just enough to stop me from falling apart. They prayed with me. They told me God hates divorce and loves forgiveness.
Then, as soon as my husband came looking for me, everything changed.
The same parents who had wiped my tears would open their Bibles and begin quoting Scripture. They reminded me that a wife must forgive. They told me to endure. They said God would change him. Before long, I would find myself walking back into the same house I had desperately escaped from, carrying nothing but hope that this time would somehow be different.
I went through the same pain so many times that I stopped running home after an attack because I knew I would be sent back. My third child was barely a year old when my husband threw me out of the house at dawn. What was my sin? I was sleeping too much while our baby disturbed him at night. He said I should have woken up to keep the baby quiet, so the baby and I should go outside and sleep there.
It was around 1 a.m. I was too tired to do anything, but I tried my best and managed to find my way back to my parents’ house. I handed my baby to my mom, fell into bed, and slept like I had just returned from war. I didn’t have to tell them what had happened. They already knew. I told my dad, “I’m done.”
He screamed, “You’re becoming an over-pampered, spoiled child. What is it with you that every time you say you’re done with your marriage?”
Again, I was sent back home even before my husband came looking for me.
Then came the day that changed my life forever.
We argued. Like every other argument, it quickly turned violent. Before I could protect myself, he grabbed my face and forced his thumb into my left eye. The pain was beyond anything I had ever imagined. It felt as though something sharp had pierced my eye and shattered it from the inside. As I screamed, he kept pressing harder. “Who will marry you if you don’t have an eye?” he said. Those words still echo in my mind. By the time he let go, my eye felt like jelly inside my skull.
I was rushed for surgery, but there was nothing the doctors could do to save it. I woke up to a world that would never look the same again. One side of my face felt empty, and one side of my life had gone dark forever. My husband was beside me, telling me what to say if anyone asked what had happened to my eye.
The police acted quickly. He was arrested almost immediately after I reported the assault.
I wasn’t consumed by anger after the surgery. I was simply exhausted. I blamed myself for returning every single time I had the chance to leave. I kept asking myself how many warnings I had ignored because I wanted to believe things would change. But even then, my nightmare wasn’t over.
Instead of allowing the law to take its course, both families decided this should remain a “family matter.” Suddenly, everyone became concerned, not about the eye I had lost, but about the man who had taken it.
They began using my three children against me. “If he goes to prison, who will take care of the children?” they asked over and over again. The pressure became unbearable. They even made the police officer handling the case talk to me. I thought someone in authority would finally stand up for me. Instead, I heard the same words everyone else was saying. “Let him go for the sake of the children.”
At that moment, I realized I was completely alone. The woman who had lost an eye was expected to sacrifice justice as well. Today, my husband is free while I walk with one side of my life in total darkness. I wear spectacles to hide it from the world, but deep inside, it is my pain and my shame.
I’ve lived in my parents’ house since the incident a year ago. My husband has been very active in the children’s lives. He comes around to take them out. He says hello to me. He pays their school fees, and when they need medical attention, he quickly takes care of it. If you see him standing there, you might imagine him with wings behind his back, saintly, like he wouldn’t hurt a fly, until I go into the same house with him.
And somehow, my mother still believes I should return to him. She tells me he has changed. She says he regrets what he did, and that’s why he doesn’t want to grant me a divorce. She promises this will be the last time he ever lays a hand on me.
I quietly looked for accommodation without telling them. A small place that would keep me away from everyone. I didn’t have much, so I didn’t have much to pack. Everything I own is still in my husband’s house. By the time my parents realized it, I had already left. They don’t know where I live now. Because of them, I have changed my number. Even my siblings can’t reach me.
My dad came to my office looking for me. He looked sorry. He looked like a man who finally understood. “Come back home. You’re the eldest. How can we lose you like that?”
I begged him not to come around again. My husband has also come around begging until he started threatening me to bring the children back, or he would take the matter further.
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I know how this ends because I’ve seen it over and over again. They pressure you until you give in. But this time, it won’t work. I’m working on a transfer. My boss knows my story, and she believes I need to leave. She’s working on getting me transferred out of town. Once I leave, it will be the end of every relationship I have with my family. I don’t hate them, but I don’t love hearing from them either. They remind me of pain, regret, and why one side of my life is now permanently dark.
—Doris
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