Saved by my nightmare (A Nigerian Story)

CHAPTER 44

Kano, Nigeria
2020.

Rumaysa was convinced her life had finally taken the worst possible turn.

Her red, blotchy eyes stared at her phone with the sadistic intent of drilling holes in it.

She needed something.....anything that would break her from her trance.

The light that radiated off her phone screen was the only source of illumination in her dark room.

Why she'd turned off the light, choosing to disappear into her blanket, she had no idea.

It could be the fact that her eyes couldn't handle the brightness of the fluorescent bulb after being cooped up for the most part of the week. It could also be because of the gaping hole in her heart that yearned for comfort so desperately that it wanted the room—if not anyone else— to feel a fragment of it's darkness.

Her attempts to make everything around her as pathetic as she was was thwarted so joyously by her mother, who hadn't gone a single day without having her shrilly friends over.

They called it 'having tea' but Rumaysa knew very well that that was simply the code name for 'give Hajia Kamardeen the latest gossip in this boring town so she can spend her husband's money on us'.

Apart from the fact that their high pitched voices disturbed her favourite pastime activity; wallowing in pain and anger, they always insisted for some reason to see her everytime they paid her mother a visit, which was basically everyday!.

The reason for Rumaysa's lovely mood was as it'd been for the past few years of her life— marriage.

It wasn't the institution of marriage itself that caused her borderline insane tendencies.

No!.

It wasn't even—like it had been in the past few years— the person who she was meant to get married to.

The reverse was the case in the present case, and that was what drove her mad.

For the first time in her life, she tried to picture a life with someone other than Zahar.

Every attempt killed her inside, broke another part of her soul that wouldn't ever be retrieved.

But as parts of her broke away, shards of her sanity sucked into the greedy abyss that was depression, one fact rang clearly in her head.

It took hours upon hours of silent tears, tears that burned, tears that lay waste to years of piled denial but she'd been able to free herself from her mental prison.

The portion of her that held onto the hope of Zahar returning to her, the one that held onto the fantasies that he would come back to her.....the most foolish part of her had disappeared.

It didn't lessen the pain, in fact she was sure the pain that came from acceptance, ironically, was enough to destroy her.

Whoever said accepting one's problems helped them move on had clearly never had the closest person leave them with words that were left unsaid, secrets untold, actions undone.

Because with each laboured breath she took to sustain what was left of her life, with every tear that continued on it's path down her face without caring that she had no path left to tread, with every memory that threatened to rip apart the numbness she had fought her mind to concede to and most of all, with every time the image of Zahar flashed across her mind, she could feel every single drop of progress she'd made go down the drain.

She was exhausted.

It didn't help that she'd been thrown into a situation she couldn't get rid of.