Soon there was a knock on the door, it was the universe intervening. I slowly pulled away staring into his red eyes. His forehead was visibly sweating and his body calling for more.
“We can’t do this” he whispered again and again as he reluctantly made his way back to his seat. He took a glass of water, and kept whispering the same words. I could feel the mental fight, the voices inside his head pulling him in different directions. “I love my wife, I love my kids, this is not me” he added. My heart was breaking but even more for him.
In a way it felt like a point of no return. We had done this evil thing again and it was apparent we would do it again and who was to tell how far we would go if we saw each other again.
I asked to be excused and I left. That was the FIRST time I felt my heart break. It felt like an open wound. I could hardly breathe. I was overwhelmed by different emotions of anger, betrayal, disappointment but not like you think.
I was not mad at him, I was mad at myself. The first person to show me love was suffering because of me, conflicted because of me, I worried! Voices in my head asking, “What if he could not repent and felt his sin was unforgivable, what if he left his perfect marriage, was he going to stay a pastor?” All because we kissed again.
Something felt different, I wondered why he didn’t ask for us to repent together or say to me it could have happened to anyone.
For days, I could not sleep. I had nightmares about his family breaking up, him being stripped of his pastoral title and him never speaking to me again. But that was not the worst part, I soon started feeling like there was something wrong with me, like I was infected and had demons like my mum had constantly said to me.
Soon, I stopped taking care of my physical appearance and decided to become a tomboy. If it made me look feminine, it went into the charity bag. I hated how I looked and the body I lived in. I also lost my love for food, eating was for survival. Everything tasted bad apart from peanut sauce and steamed rice.
I hardly left my room and cried most of the days.
I was sad, thin and depressed. This season went on for a while but soon he caught word of what was going on. He tried to reach out but I couldn’t let myself experience the pain all over again.
It was clear he was my Kryptonite!
The more I resisted his attempts to see me however, the more I needed to see him. It felt like my very ability to breathe depended on it. A pattern so evident and yet I felt even more helpless. Soulmates! That’s what I called us. We somehow would eventually find ourselves together, I truly believed. But at what cost?, I often wondered.
Rumors soon began, to this date I can’t quite figure out who began them. Whispers around the church! He was asking to stop serving in any capacity and an investigation into the allegations began. It was days before I was scheduled to return to school. My worst nightmare was unfolding before my eyes. Should I reach out? Wouldn’t that make things worse? Should I stay away? Wouldn’t that break his heart even more? I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Why was this happening to me? Did God hate me that bad?! So many questions and no answers.
I felt alone and scared!
Just weeks after reporting to school, rumors reached the campus. I was the witch that had destroyed another man of God many said. The once good girl, mama of the scripture union and worship leader was now the evil that loomed the school corridors.
An outcast at home, church and now my refugee too!
Many times I wished I was dead. If only I died in my sleep or fell down and died on the spot going to class. Suicidal thoughts came to me often. The only person that cared to help was the one person I couldn’t reach out to. “What kind of person would that make me?”, I feared.
I decided to run away from school/home get a new school and completely disappear. Start over in a place and with people who know nothing about me or my past. It felt like the only choice at that point. But… I was a child and clearly had underestimated what it would be like out there on my own.
I NEEDED HIM!
To be continued …