We were together for only three months. Just a three-month relationship has left me with a burden I’ve carried for eight years. We were intimate only once. A few weeks later, she called and told me she was pregnant.
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At that point in my life, I wasn’t even standing on my own feet. I had no proper job, no savings, and I had no plans for fatherhood. I was struggling to survive, so the thought of bringing a child into the world terrified me. I begged her to abort. I loved her and wanted a future with her, but this wasn’t what I had planned. What I was begging for was another chance for us to follow the right process to the altar.
Every conversation we had ended with me pleading with her to reconsider, but she refused, telling me she could do it all by herself even if I didn’t want to be involved. She had a stable job and was confident she could raise the baby, even if I never showed up. Aside from that, she was five years older than me and thought she had nothing to lose. I pleaded from morning till evening, but she stood her ground as if I didn’t have a say in the matter.
Before her pregnancy became obvious, she relocated. We continued talking for a while, and I kept trying to convince her to let go of the pregnancy. One day, she told me, “It’s fine. Just take it like this never happened. If one day you’re ready and you want to be part of the child’s life, you can look for me.”
And then she sank into oblivion. She changed her phone number. Whether she did it because I kept disturbing her or because she wanted a fresh start, I don’t know. Every attempt I made afterward failed. She disappeared completely, taking my unanswered questions with her. I didn’t give up. I wanted to know how many people knew about her pregnancy. I spoke to her friends and spoke to a few family members I knew. They all spoke about her normally, indicating they knew nothing about her pregnancy.
Eight years later, I still haven’t heard from her. The world moved on on the outside, but inside me, I still kept the memories and the questions alive. I wonder if she had a boy or a girl. Sometimes I wonder if they have my smile or my stubbornness. Other times, I wonder whether they hate a man they’ve never met. Those thoughts never really leave me.
Sometimes I call the old number to see if she would pick up. The last time I did, a young man answered. I asked who he was. I asked how he came to own my girlfriend’s old number. He laughed. He said he had bought the SIM card not long ago, so he was the new owner. I stopped trying. Yes, I could have gone out there to find her, but I was scared of what I might find.
Eight years later, life directed me to another amazing woman. We have dated for three years now. She came into my life when things were getting better. At least I had a job that gave me something to rely on, and for the past three years, she has proved to be the kind of helper a man would need to cross the desert side of life.
We talked about marriage because she wanted that to be the next step. I am ready too, but the “what ifs” about my past wouldn’t allow me to embrace the idea of marriage the way I wished I could. Whenever I thought about marriage, I asked myself, “Will I do it while carrying my past as a secret or what?” But I’m so sure about this lady I’m dating that I don’t want to let any doubt creep into our process.
A few days ago, I tried to test the waters. I casually asked my fiancée, “Would you marry a man who already has a child?”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“Do you have a child?” she asked.
The question caught me off guard. I shook my head so quickly that I didn’t even realize I was doing it. She laughed innocently. She said, “I would have left you right now.”
Now I don’t know what to do. It’s not the confusion that worries me. It’s the fear that I might lose this one that keeps me awake at night. If I tell her the truth, I may lose the woman I love before I can even say Jack. She may never believe that I genuinely don’t know where the child or the mother is. She may only see a man who hid something this important from her.
If I keep quiet and one day my past finds me, if the child’s mother suddenly appears or if my child comes looking for me years from now, I may lose my marriage anyway. Worse still, my wife would have every reason to feel betrayed because the truth came from someone else instead of me.
I ask myself the same question every night before I go to sleep and every morning I wake up without an answer. Should I tell my fiancée everything and risk losing the future we’re planning together? Or should I continue carrying this secret, hoping the past never finds its way into my present?
I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone
Sometimes the answer to both questions is yes and no at the same time. I want to tell her, but I also don’t want the repercussions. No one knows this secret, not even my parents or my siblings, because I don’t want to risk it. I’m throwing it out here into the wild, hoping it will fall on fertile ground so that one solution may germinate. I have two difficult choices, and I’m running away from both of them. But which one is the less problematic?
—Opoku
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