I was eighteen. David was twenty-three. I liked him so much I always walked in front of his house, hoping he would see me. Sometimes he would, but he wouldn’t call me. I would wave, and he would wave back. It might have been infatuation because it started to hurt when he ignored me. I had to find a reason to let the feeling go, and I did.
His fourth finger, the one we put the ring on, was missing. I didn’t know the story, but it was the touch point around which I wanted to build my emotional story of leaving him. I referred to him as a half man. I convinced myself my friends would laugh at me if they saw me dating a guy who didn’t have a full set of fingers.
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I think it worked because, from that point on, I thought of him less and less until I left for school, where I promised myself that I was going to meet better men.
At the university, I fell in love with Morgan in my first year. Young and in love should be an abomination because when you’re young, you do silly things in the name of love. What didn’t I do for Morgan? But he kept cheating on me right from day one. He even proposed to one of my roommates, and the lady told me.
I loved him too much I didn’t know how to leave him. My friends advised me against him, but I ended up telling him what my friends said when things were good between us. When we got to third year, I was so convinced he wasn’t good for me, and I was looking for a reason to leave.
I started an internship with an organization, and guess who I met? David. He was working in the same organization. You could imagine my joy. I hugged him like a dad I hadn’t seen since my birth. He asked what I was doing there. I told him I had come to work. He took me for lunch, and when I wasn’t able to go with him, he bought the food and brought it to me.
I fell in love with him all over again and decided I would use him to banish the thought of Morgan from my mind. I even told Morgan about him, and he got jealous. From that day, life was all about David. I visited his house a few days before I completed my internship. He proposed to me, and I looked at his missing finger.
I asked him the story behind it, and he told me he was only nine when it happened. He stole from his mother, and his mother’s husband cut off that finger so he wouldn’t steal again. Immediately, I was angry. “You were just a child!” I screamed. He answered, “Yeah, but I never stole again, so maybe it worked.”
A year after my national service, we were talking about marriage when I asked him, “Where are you going to wear your ring?” He smiled, but it didn’t go deep. He said he hadn’t thought of it until I asked. I said, “Is there a way to meet that man who did that to you?” “Unless my mom,” he answered.
On our wedding day, I put the ring on what was supposed to be his middle finger. He smiled, and we hugged, but I had an agenda.
One day, I asked his mom where that man was. She didn’t think twice when she told me where he was. I probed. I asked what he was doing and if he was in good health. It took me several months, but I finally found him. My husband didn’t know about it. Not even my mother-in-law.
When I saw him, he didn’t look like a man who could inflict such pain on a minor. I thought he might have forgotten, but immediately I mentioned my mother-in-law’s name, he remembered. “You remember what you did to her son for stealing from his own mom?”
He asked me who I was. I told him my intention of making him face the law for what he did to a minor. He went quiet. He said, “His mother never forgave me. She said on several occasions that she would report me to the police. It was the reason we didn’t survive together.”
He said at some point, it haunted him too, but it was too late. So I called my husband right there and asked him to talk to a man. A few minutes later, this man broke down while saying he was sorry. My husband was shocked and was on the phone asking how I found him. “You travelled all the way there to see him?” I answered, “You forgave him, but I didn’t.”
When I got back home and we talked about it, he said, “You know what? I never forgave him, but I was only being a man about it. Now I can let go.”
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I think on my husband’s dying bed, if you asked him one thing I did for him that he would carry to the grave, he would mention this story. He still talks about it with shock and amazement. Sometimes he tells me he’s afraid of hurting me because I never forgive.
I’m very forgiving. It’s the reason our marriage is entering its second decade. Even when that man died, I went to the funeral with my husband to ensure total forgiveness. I don’t believe people should go scot-free for inflicting such depth of pain on others. He’s been my sweetheart since I was eighteen. What else can’t I do for him?
—Perpetual
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