I am seated alone at the far end of the dingy coffee shop lost in a sea of thoughts. I am actually glaring deeply at the mug in front of me yet I can’t make out the slightest details about it. Some indistinct music is playing in the background. My legs fidget involuntarily, as I draw imaginary shapes on the marble table top.

I look at the door every time someone walks in…I am desperate for someone specific to walk in. My trail of thoughts is interrupted by a tired looking waitress. With a plastic smile planted on her face, she asks, “another coffee?”

It hit’s me that I have already gulped down two mugs of wishy-washy milk and water sprinkled with some meager serving of sugar and coffee. Or probably, the problem might not be the coffee…I have been waiting for an hour or so.

I can’t help that feeling on the pit of my stomach; I have been stood-up!

So I respond to, the waitress, “no, I won’t have another, my bill please…” Aha! There he is…he pull’s himself a chair with a million apologies about something to do with traffic.

I don’t mind, I am just relieved he’s showed up…I have been worried about him since we last talked on the phone.  He hinted something that ran chills down my spine. It is the reason we had this meet up…

He tries to make it up to me by promising to take care of all the bills. To lighten up the air, he also jokes about how my wife must be doing a terrific job since I seem to have added a few pounds.

His humor is good as it ever was. His eyes though, seem to tell a different story. They are bloodshot, watery and sunken. I could paint a pretty picture about the guy, but this story has a twist. A razor is the paint brush and the canvas is his wrists.

The suicide letter

I don’t bother with pleasantries; I dive right into the details. “What drove you to such madness?” I ask. He paused for a moment, I guess he was trying to set his thoughts straight. “You see, Eric (he calls me by my name) when you see a story on the news that a man had killed his wife and kids and then commits suicide, what comes to your mind?”

I respond, “A relationship gone sour or he’s gone crazy or something.” He goes on, “I used to think in those lines too, but I guess it takes to have actual experience to understand some things”.

He went on, “I could have never have imagined that in one point in my life, I would contemplate suicide. Saying that I come from a humble background is an understatement; talk of abject poverty.

I was conceived when my mom was just 15 years old. But she was so naïve that she was clueless about her state until she was almost 7 months pregnant. ‘Just a little too late to have an abortion,’ she’s made that clear a couple of times in my life.

How good of a parent, do you presume a 16-year-old is? Your guess is good a mine. She was literally a child raising another child. I learned my lesson not to keep pressing her with questions about my dad.

To date, she’s got so much bile about him. She, once said to me, ‘Your father was hit and run over by an exhauster truck’, while in the real sense, he was actually alive.

My dad died several years later (not by being run over by an exhauster truck for your information). God rest his soul in peace.

From the word go, I was not oblivious of the bleak circumstances that surrounded me. So I matured fast. I never complained. I learned how to fend for myself as early as early as the age of 5”.

Mockingly, he asked me, ‘What were you doing with your life at that age.’ Ooh boy, he caught me off guard. Come to think of it, I was still peeing in bed, and throwing tantrums for not getting candy.

He went on, “I knew education was my only shot to escape poverty. So, though I was not the sharpest tool in the shed, I was not ready to become the hoe.

Somehow, I made it through to high school. By then I had 2 siblings. Since I was the oldest, I doubled as their parent.

We had a huge fight with my mom about going to college. It was about that time she was pregnant with the twins. The right words to use is that we had a fallout.

Words were exchanged which we both later came to regret. She accused me of being a thankless bastard who ruined her life. Out of rage, I told her it is not my freaking fault she decided to have 5 kids with three deadbeat men!

You should probably read this: 21 Signs You Are Still A Boy, Not A Man!

Luckily, I managed to get a scholarship to go to college. While in school, I was paying rent for my mother and siblings by doing odd jobs when not in class. I was heartbroken when one of my younger sisters got pregnant while still in high school. She was doing her mother’s mistakes all over again. This also meant more headaches for me.

I managed to secure a job when I cleared college. The pay wasn’t that good but I managed. Eventually, thanks to my ferocious determination, I raised ranks fast. But, so were my (our) needs. By then, it felt as if I was taking care of an entire clan.

My mother was literally my first born. I think she was in the wake of the midlife crisis. She was partying like a teenager and was demanding my older siblings to move out of the house since she had found a new man.

It was during this time I met the lovely Rosa. What struck me the most is her is her gorgeous sleepy but curious eyes, the dimples that punctuated her soft chubby cheeks and curves you could die for. And kill me she almost did?

She was out of my league; my looks were nothing close to Mr. Universe you see. I wooed her for close to two years before I got the first kiss. But you can’t blame her, I was a bit rough on the edges. I didn’t have time to sharpen my game chasing girls in college. But I always learn on my feet. So once I got her under my sheets, oops I mean under my spell…”

At this point, we were both laughed ourselves silly. Coffee was no longer cutting the chase for me. I really needed something stronger to stomach the rest of the story. So I suggested we try a different joint.

Cohabiting

Once we were settled at the new joint, he went on, “A month or so later, she had a baby bump. Since we were both madly in love, I took her in. It only later that I came to understand that she also comes from a complicated background.

She hails from a polygamous family. She’s the only child, of the third wife. After her father passed on, the division of property family wrangles drove them from their home. She was then 20 years old living with her mother who could not afford to take her to college.

So I decided to take her through college. Though we weren’t legally married, her mother didn’t mind especially given that I was taking care of her daughter. My responsibilities had now quadrupled. I was taking care of my mother and some of my siblings, and also my girlfriend and her mother occasionally.

The relationship was far from what you could call a bed of roses. She was a 20-year-old playing wife, while I was a broken man with daddy issues who had literally raised himself.

See: How Unhealthy Daddy Issues Ruin Your Sex Life

Small arguments, often exploded into violent physical and verbal confrontations. When you factor in the extended family drama, in one point or another, something was destined to give.

She didn’t get along well with my mother and siblings. They considered her a spoilt brat, with a mission to cut me off from them. On the other hand, she considered them entitled crybabies who were nothing but parasites.

I was the referee, often being the casualty of wrath from the two divides!

I also had a tough time curbing her spending habits. When we had fights, she would go on a revenge shopping spree buying the pricey international designer brands. Against my advice, she often took Ubers to and from school. Have I mentioned the number of times, she took her mother to high-end private hospitals without an insurance cover? Guess who paid those bills?

Her friends thought she was lucky. Some of them started hitting on me. I ignored and avoided them as much as I could; until I wound up screwing around one, two, three too many times.

Eventually, she got wind of my philandering ways. She left with our daughter, but they were back two weeks later after I promised to change my ways.

The Wedding!

We decided to formalize our union. As per the traditions, dowry negotiations are the first step. This is where the plot thickens. We were in for a rude awakening at the negotiation table. I was informed that I had to pay the bride price for her mother first since her late dad had not done so.

Here’s another problem, Rosa comes from a pastoralists community. They only take live cattle for dowry. The average man pays a bride price of about 30 cattle. Since everyone in the community owns huge herds, this was not a big deal.

Rosa’s family considered me a rich guy, so they were expecting, nothing short of 50 cattle for the mother and 50 for Rosa. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that 100 cattle is hell lots of money.

Though we negotiated down, the bride price left irreversible damage on my finances and also in my heart. It gave me the feeling that I owned her. Every time we had a fight, it reminded me of my money wasted.

Eventually, we settled into our marriage, with less drama. I guess we had learned our lessons or grown mature or we just didn’t have more energy to fight.

The Wrong Turn

During the eve of our daughter’s birthday (second born) I received the news that our company was winding up its operations in the country. Though my wife was already employed, this got me pretty shook.

I had worked for more than 15 years, and despite having a 6 figure salary, I had only meager savings. An entire clan depended on me you see.

Luckily, I got a handsome sendoff package. I invested a huge chunk of this cash into the electronics retail business. Within two years’ time, the business was thriving.

Life was good. I usually woke up to gorgeous ladies on their booty shorts going for a stroll with their pets, our kids were schooling in a prestigious group of schools, we attended wine tasting events every other week, fencing and golfing was my sport of choice…

I started thinking of expanding fast, by moving more products and getting higher profits margins. So I procured a loan to get larger shipments from ‘new markets’. Unfortunately, the first batch was impounded for customs evasion and importation of counterfeit goods.

My new supplier also disappeared with the rest of my cash after he got wind that he was being tracked by Interpol for illegal trade. To avoid incarceration, I paid huge fines and bribes. By the time the system was done with me, I was in a debt wormhole.

The Slippery Slope

Everything went down south pretty fast. They first came for our house. I remember waking up in the middle of the night with cold chills and sweat hoping all that was a nightmare.

What broke my heart most, was the look on my kid’s eyes, as they watched everything we owned being whisked away by strangers. I had a tougher time explaining to them why they could no longer go to that prestigious school they loved very much.

My wife blamed me for putting the family through such misery. Though I was guilty as sin, I believed that I had the capacity to spin around any situation. A year down the line, nothing was forthcoming.

My wife was the sole breadwinner. I could tell she detested that fact, but what was obvious was her growing disrespect. It started with frequent silence treatments. Soon, she didn’t want me touching her. Eventually, it got to a point where she said it point-blank, ‘I am tired of feeding a useless bastard!’

The visits from my siblings (now employed) who used to camp in our home were now few and far between.

So I come home on this Thursday evening after a futile long day, only to be greeted by an empty house. For a moment, I thought I had missed the door but actually, I hadn’t. She had left a note, ‘Please don’t look for us, we are better off!’

She didn’t even leave a toothbrush behind.

Her phone wasn’t going through. I spent the night at my sister’s place, who informed me that the next day that I had to leave because the husband was uncomfortable. All my mother did was to rub it on my face, ‘Didn’t I tell you she was with you just for the money?’

The Meltdown!

Suicide and depression are siblings. Saying I was depressed would be an under kill. I was suffering deep rejection, from the most important people in my life, when I needed them most. I was tired and scared, feeling everything and paralyzingly numb at the same time.

I tried salvation only to find out that spiritual growth is not an emergency exit. I was hitting the bottle hard, but that did not invite death fast enough.

I wanted to die peacefully and respectfully. I didn’t want them to find me hanging on the noose from the ceiling. Drowning seemed too painful and jumping off a ledge scared me than death itself. I tried to poison myself with carbon monoxide from burning charcoal, only to wake up the next day with a terrible headache.

Finally, I found the ultimate way. I wrote a simple suicide letter, ‘I am sorry I couldn’t help you all anymore.’

I took a kitchen knife, and slit open my two wrists. It’s funny how that didn’t hurt even a little.

I mesmerized at the sight of the red pulsating fountains, as they shot in multiple directions. You’ll be surprised much blood is in the human body. Before the lights started to fade little by little, I was literary soaking on a pool of my own blood.

Weirdly, that fact gave me some kind of satisfaction. I was finally finding peace. I was no longer feeling the weight of carrying the world on my shoulders. I was relaxed, more relaxed that I have ever been. I had let go of everything. A faint smile curved on my lips as the lights faded, and then the distant sounds followed suit.

I woke up in a hospital, after having undergone a blood transfusion. What alerted my neighbors was the blood flowing from my door into the main hallway. I think I knocked down a pail of water as I was losing consciousness enabling the blood to flow so far.

I was referred to a psychiatrist after I recovered; who took me through a suicide prevention training. I can’t say the counseling helped, but I didn’t try to commit suicide again. However, the close to death experience was like a reset button for me.

Now I live life without the overbearing responsibilities. I spent all my life helping everyone, yet no-one was helping me. Now it’s time to love and take care of myself.

Life may not be good as it used to be, but now I am a whole lot happier. I get to see my kids once in a while but I am not planning to get back together with their mother.

I know it’s not just me, a lot of men are taking care of an entire clan only to wind up dying on the streets like stray dogs. As you take care of everyone, remember to take care of yourself too, because nobody will. Welcome to a man’s world.