RENEWED HOPE

DAY 26

DALIA

I get to Doctor Hen's office and find him ready for me. He looks up from his laptop and his eyes meet mine, he holds them for a few minutes, scrutinizing me, before letting his eyes fall back to whatever he had been working on.

"Hello Kayla, how are you today?" he asks, finally giving me his full attention.

"Never better," I say, faking a smile.

He looks at me for some time, and I say a silent prayer that he does not ask about my paleness, so I shoot him a smile, brighter than the first one, and luckily, he buys it, sighs and opens up his note book.

"Okay then, tell me what happened after Christian and you got back together"

"I should have walked away right then. But I didn't, because I loved him and believed there was no one better. I believed it would all be the same. I was afraid of starting afresh. I wanted to stay with the devil I knew. Only until I didn't want to anymore. I should have walked away when I heard the rumor of him cohabiting with the mother of his daughter, I should have walked away when I was told the house he shared with his cousin was called the 'slaughter house', when they took all the ladies they were 'dating' I should have walked away the very first time I found his intimate video with another lady in his laptop, his ex(scoffs), I should have walked away when he posted a picture of him and a friend of ours, Mandy, with the caption, 'happy honeyversary to us' when he couldn't even remember our anniversary, then he had offered me a half-assed apology, that it didn't mean anything. But how could it not mean anything? She was the kind that are full of themselves, without apology, something I admired about her until I realized just how far she was willing to go to believe that herself, when she had asked me "Should we ask your man who is prettier?" just because a stranger we met on the road had told me I was pretty. I should have walked away when she told me just what kind of a drunkard he was, because how could she have known if they didn't go out to drink together?

I should have walked away when he made me hide in the bathroom for hours when someone he claimed to have been his cousin came to the house, and when I asked why, he said I had never met him. and when I wanted to know why he did not introduce us instead, he said he would, at the right time. I should have walked away when he had fooled me on April Fool's Day about him having an affair, just to get my reaction, I should have left when random strangers called him a player, talking about a lady he had been dating, and there I was, thinking I was his girlfriend." I laugh, sadly.

"When I came back to school for my final year. I was worried. Our relationship had been strained even with us being in the same place, what was it going to be when I had to finally go back home? Christian reassured me that everything was going to be okay. Our class got separated and he and Kelsey found themselves in a different class with me. But I trusted him when he said whatever they had was over. So, I didn't sweat it. One day, a friend I had known through Kelsey approached me on my way to class, and hell yeah, she was beautiful, her name was Dalia. The previous weekend, Christian had told me people were accusing him of dating Dalia and promised me all those stories were lies and that I shouldn't believe anyone who comes to me with them. He didn't tell me why people would make such an accusation, I didn't ask. I was tired. My heart was tired. I chose to believe him before I even heard what others had to say. Dalia asked for my phone to add her contacts and promised to communicate.

Christian made me swear that I wouldn't trust a thing Dalia would tell me when he called to let me know he knew I had exchanged contacts with her. He made me promise that I wasn't going to talk to her ever again. You know, when you are in love, it is like your brain stops functioning properly. I didn't even suspect that something was up until I went back to the hostels and told Kimberly what had happened, and she advised me to call Dalia and ask her what was going on. I know I said my heart was tired, but that was before Dalia told me she had been dating Christian for almost two years, they had broken up twice but still found their way back to each other, and now she was suspecting him to be having an affair with me, but he had told her that we had broken up and I was dating another friend of ours.

When I questioned Christian about it, he was so angry at me for going against him and talking to Dalia. He then apologized and said he was protecting me from the truth, that Dalia lied, that they had broken up and she wanted him back and threatened to tell me the truth if he didn't take her back. Lies. This wasn't even a big deal to him. He was having this conversation over chicken in the house of one of our classmates, who happened to have had a thing with him, except, according to him, it didn't work out

I was so mad, I was angry, I was tired, I needed a break from my normal life. I forgave him, but when my ex-boyfriend told me he was in town a week later, I went to see him. I needed to forget my real life for a few hours. He could make me forget. I met him at his hotel room, and Christian found out about it. He called me a prostitute, there's nothing he did not tell me. But he forgave me and made me promise I wouldn't do it again. I lied, and I kept in touch until he told me he was tracking my phone, listening to my phone calls, and reading my texts, that's when I stopped, I called things off and we decided to let go of everything and start afresh."