Like some girls do, I used to dream of my marriage. On this day, I imagined myself in a white dress, surrounded by the people I love. I would fix my gaze on that of my dear and tender. This man — tall, slender, and a young, beautiful complexion of black ebony. Our first acquaintance would have taken place at the university, in which we would be there to study medicine, and all our days together would lead to this scene. We would then be a family, a structure. We would have children and raise them with love. We would eat at fixed times, I would prepare the meal, and help with homework. In the evening, the whole family would gather together and we would just enjoy being with each other.
Life would be a dream.
I was born in Cameroon’s second largest city, Douala, in March of 1987. As a child, I did not miss anything, financially. For the rest, I had to learn to live with the absence of my father, who died when I was two years old, and my mother, who was often working. Given her occupation, my mother made sure that her vacancy did not deprive us of a good education and a certain structure. She hired domestic workers and servants to respect this set framework. Still, I missed her.
Many times in my childhood, I would wake up middle of the night, knock on her door, just so I could spend a few furtive hours with her before the daily business snatched her once again. I had brothers and sisters, but that did not replace my parents, and anyway, I felt that everyone lived in their own little corner; strangers, each in their own world.
And so, it must be understood that coming from a single-parent family, which was slightly dysfunctional, I have always dreamed of having a perfect family of my own.
It is often said that love has reasons that reason does not know. In my case, this expression proved to be more than just. I met the love of my life when I was 18 years old. However, we did not meet as I had pictured. We were not at the university, he did not really have the physique that I had imagined, and on top of that, he came with an unexpected gift, a teenage girl. This already tell you that he was older than me, by about ten years. In fact, I did not really notice him until he made me his big declaration of love, on a famous day in October of 2005. When he spoke, I was moved by his words. He was a…
