POISONOUS LOVE

 ‘Words hardly of romantic chats come out of my past and are replayed on the tape of my mind constantly. Caged by love, I hear whispers of pain vibrate through my soul and ashes of my heart drop in the feet of my earth’, Cara narrates.

Cara Maina, has been married to John Maina for the last two years, and she says it’s been the worst moments of her life. She says she met John at an M-pesa she was working at in Mathare near where they stay now, then fresh from high school, John was sweet and extraordinary. He was different from the rest of the men she knew. He represented a husband material, a man with a golden heart, these qualities drove her heart fast and slow at the same time whenever she spotted him.

‘His tantalized smile teased my soul, his wise eyes beyond any decency, I kept yearning to be his wife wherever he stirred my ego. He was a great man’ she continuous. But now her heart roars like a sick engine, he keeps ripping her apart in ways she’s grown to know. All the traits that pushed her to him are nowhere to be seen since that day she became pregnant. ‘Since that day, everything changed’ a thin tear falls to her right cheek and she quickly rubs it away. She’s a sad woman, having been raised by a single mother, who struggled so much to bring food home, she’d sworn that her children will never go through what she went through, that her children will have a father figure to provide for them and look up to. So when she found John, every little piece of her dream fell into place, or so she thought.

But her pregnancy disputed her short found joy. John became aggressive in everything. He mishandled her. Treating her like she was the last thing he wanted to see every time he came from work. Unlike when he first married her, she was his queen. He was happy to come home to her, brought her expensive gifts. But she got pregnant and he changed. His actions always baffled her. She couldn’t grasp why the change of behavior. When they met he’d mention of having children with her. It was so weird, so confusing to her, but she always comforted herself that he was also scared of the pregnancy like she was,  she had not planned for it, it never gave him time to prepare for parenthood. As days went by, Cara was waiting for changes, changes that never came to date.

She has a very disturbing life, ‘Talking to John is like beating a hollow drum, he’s empty inside, he never listens, he never cares about anything, not me not his son’, she says. But she can’t go back to her mother now, her mother can’t afford to feed her, her son and her other four siblings considering Cara was the oldest and so far, her life is far fetch from a promising future.

She says she hates the mirror, there used to be smiles foiling her cheeks before John bumped into her life, and smashed all her lights down. He took her dreams and diluted with his dreams, it was ok then, it was their dream. Then there were rays of hope in their relationship, she was sure her future was secured. But the child she loves with everything in her is the one who brought trouble in her love life, her expectations. She knows very well the kid is way innocent, but does John know that? While, probably not or he’s just mad to forgive himself or Cara for upsetting their youths and placing such a heavy burden on their young lives.

‘You can see how my face is scarred. For me that’s nothing. I don’t care about my outer beauty, what I can’t stand is the scars in my heart. He dug deep in my heart. I gave him every bit of me, it was wrong to let loose of all the wings of my heart like that. I learnt it too late. There’s nothing I can do now’ massive tears are now rolling fast in the walls of her cheeks. She pants. Looks at the sky, then pulls back some of the tears and mucous inside. I hold her hand, it’s so sad to hear how a man can turn into a beast just because the woman became pregnant so soon after marriage, she also claims, that he’d been cheating on her with other women since she told him she was pregnant. There was a time she wanted to run away and raise her kid alone, but with this kind of broken economy, that would never work out.

She blames love. She says women love with the heart while men love with the brain. They don’t put their emotions on the table, and act how it should be. If John was not prepared, maybe he’d have told her and she’d have aborted cause she was crazily in love with him. She’d have done anything for him. He never raised his issues. But now it’s little too late. She’ll have to stay with him as he continues wrecking her into pieces, treating her like trash and with no trace of happiness anywhere near her home or heart. It’s against human rights but this is her husband, she can’t take him to court, they’ll starve to death as she’s jobless now, it’s hard to secure any job and furthermore, she still loves him so much.

Cara is among many women in our today’s world who are battered by their husband each single day but due to their poor background or too much love, they can’t afford to desert their husbands but continue to live in a slim string of hope, a hope that someday, their husbands will change to who they were when they first met them, while I hope so too as I’m very familiar with facts about love and too much of it. I’m very aware too, that poverty is the force that won’t let many women ever find happiness after been married. Love is sweet yes, but too much of it is considered very poisonous by experts.