Relationships : When infatuation turns into death row

I grew up in a patriarchal society where members of opposite sex were not supposed to be close at any time until marriage. So, all the time, we played the hide and seek game, writing sweet loving letters at school to those we thought we loved. Laura was one of those girls whom you could not see and just ignore; if you were scared of talking to her you would write all you could and send a letter to her. You can imagine how I felt when she said yes to my request. I was so exhilarated, little did I know that love and infatuation are two different ideologies. The first time I met Laura was at our Church after a Sunday service. She was beautiful and she seemed a stranger in our village. Curious, I had to talk to her, she was rude to me and left me hanging and embarrassed: “Hi Laura,” I said.“I’m fine,” she replied. “Where are you headed, can we go together?,” I said.“Hey! Mind your own p’s and q’s,” she retorted. After this incident, I almost gave up, but to my surprise ,on Monday, at school, I received a letter and it was Laura apologizing for being rude; she promised to meet me later. I discovered that the influence to apologize came from her friends. We met after a week and our relationship soon blossomed. Life was not as sweet as I thought, she got pretty nasty every time I talked to any other girl besides her; I had become a slave in her hands. She began asking for money from me, yet I could not afford the humongous amounts she demanded. Life became hard and harder to live. I thought of a breakup but she was not willing to take that direction. Horror was when one day, after a serious argument, I wrote to her indicating that I was tired of the kind of a relationship we had and I made it clear that I was no longer interested in her. She wrote back apologizing for what had happened and at the end of the letter she wrote, “I love you but…” I could not at that time figure out the meaning of that last phrase. I kept on dodging her to avoid any encounter and conversation with her. She seemed unhappy about this. During the December holidays, I received a letter from her apologizing for everything she had done to me and that she was willing to transform into a good girl, confessing that she had learnt a big lesson from the separation. She invited me to her home to join in their family celebration of her brother’s success at school. That evening I had no option but to go, she welcomed me warmly and we had a nice time. At around 2:00 a.m she asked me if we could take a walk outside the gate and I agreed. After we had walked for about twenty minutes, nine well armed men attacked me.These violent men stabbed me in my lower abdomen, and then they carried me to a room in their house and locked me up. I was in great pain and bleeding; some people at the party heard that I was dead and informed my father about the incident but he refused to come. I escaped narrowly close to dawn and staggered home. Later on my clan members gathered for revenge, in my mind I was convinced that Laura will help me win the case but on reaching their home where the incident occurred, Laura furiously denied having known me and said she had never seen me before in her life. I later discovered that they were her close relatives. It was such a painful moment; heart wrecked, I’m still nursing the wounds from that torture and wondering why Laura had to conspire with her relatives to kill me. I will always learn to love and avoid hopeless infatuation. iruikmo@yahoo.com