Reborn

Chapter 18

After 5 years of living together, for some warped reason I thought maybe marriage will change him. So on Christmas day 2010, I made the announcement to his family after Christmas lunch. Sean was turning 40 in 2011 so why not get married. Darius was over the moon cause I guess he felt that if we got married, I wouldn't leave and that gave him a sense of security. Something I didn't think about clearly was the money issue though but I threw myself in to planning this wedding. We were to get married in January of 2012. I had just over a year to plan. At least it took my mind of my pain and heartache. It was probably the biggest mistake I would ever make, but I wasn't thinking clearly at that time. As a woman, you think you can change a man. Not to suit you but just to make him a better man and a better human being.

You do everything right, you love him so you change to suit him. And you are left wondering if he even loves you. If he did love you, wouldn't he want to change his ways and be a better man? I started thinking that I wasn't asking for much but as time went by, I realised that I was asking for too much. His time and attention was too much to ask for. Wanting the beatings to stop was too much to ask for. I was in a very dark place. Lucky I had Darius and the wedding to take my mind out of that black hole.

During the year leading up the wedding, I gotten beaten up, again and again. Two weeks before the wedding, I realised that I fucked up. Everything was done and it was going to be such a beautiful wedding. I paid for most of it like always. Sean didn't even have money to buy his clothes for the wedding. All he did was pay for his half of the hall. I even bought my own wedding ring.

His mother came to stay a whole month before the wedding, oh the horror. I was fucking livid. There goes our December holidays. She always came to stay before I closed for the holidays and only left after I went back to work. My argument was, what if we wanted to spend time together as a family. What if we wanted to make plans with just the 3 of us. What if we wanted alone time.

I can't remember what the fight was about or how it started, but I do know that two weeks before our wedding, my future husband kicked me out of the house after giving me the hiding of my life. I phoned a friend of mine to fetch me. I spent a few days at her house and then went home. I hardly spoke to him but as the wedding drew closer, we had no choice but to speak. Everything went off perfectly. It was such a beautiful wedding.

We had a small temple wedding in the morning and a major reception that afternoon. We ended up partying up a storm till 2 the next morning. We then moved the party to Seans cousins flat and stayed till 4. We went home, had a small sleep and left at 10 for our honeymoon.

Our honey moon was at a hotel overlooking the beach. It was a gift from one of Sean's friends. It was really beautiful. I carried a bag full of lingerie but didn't wear a single thing. All the drinking that Sean did during the week leading up to the wedding and all the energy drinks he consumed made him ill. So we had a honeymoon with no sex. Oh the joy. How exciting.

I thought that things will change... how naïve was I? I wouldn't say it got worse, I was used to so much worse but it just didn't seem to get better.

March 2012, I started getting the flu. My chest became really heavy and I just had to visit the doctor. Turns out I had Bronchitis, but there was something my doctor wasn't happy about. Now, every year the flu led to bronchitis and every year my throat was really inflamed. But this year it was different. My throat was so inflamed that it looked like I had an adams apple. My doctor's face suddenly dropped. And I was on edge. He told me that He wasn't happy with what he saw. He then made an appointment for me to go to the hospital and have an ultra sound.

After the ultrasound we went home wondering what it could be. I soon forgot about it cause I had so much going on as usual. The next day I got a call from my doctor telling me that they found a cyst around my thyroid and they will have to schedule me for an op to remove the cyst. I agreed and they said that I will be notified when a bed was available. I had a meeting with the Surgeon who explained that he didn't like what he saw and there is a possibility that it could be cancer. But just a small possibility. I got admitted on Sunday 6 March 2012 and my op was scheduled for Wednesday the 9th.