What separated them from meeting each other were five desks and a water dispenser. They worked on the same floor, for the same company, used the same elevator, parked in the same basement, yet they never met until a colleague she had sought help on a project said, “Look for Tom, he will help you with the logistics of this event.”
It turns out Tom was the guy you needed to know—the Go-To guy, the problem solver. She was informed that Tom sat behind her, at the desk in the corner of their open-plan office. He was a senior manager for a different business unit. She walked up to his desk. The man seated there was not familiar. She had never seen him in the few months she had worked there.
“Tom?” She said.
He looked up from his laptop. He had tiny spectacles like a horologist. A quieting face. She could feel the glow of his silence through his gaze. “My name is Sandra; programmes and projects. I’m new, sort of.” She introduced herself, “I’ve been trying to call you.”
She consulted him a few times in the days leading to the event which was a success. He was quite helpful. A month sailed by. From the blues, he asks her out to lunch. It felt out of character for him and odd for her because she didn’t believe in toweling where she takes her baths. “But he had helped me greatly, so I went for lunch and he struck me as very smart, nerdy, reliable, quiet, that sort of person you will hear laugh once a day.”
Another month passed of casual hellos and office chit-chat. But then he asks her out again, for drinks this time. She excuses herself out of that one. The next time he invites her again, and keeps calling her until she relents and goes. It’s a weekend. She met him at an old rundown bar in Karen. He was with his three friends, their two girlfriends, and a Pilsner.
“It was awkward. It felt like we were all on a date.” She recalls. “He was tipsy and very touchy. He said, “I have been gathering the courage to ask you out. I’m glad you came out today.”
She nodded and sipped her cider. To fill the awkwardness she asked him how old he was.
He said he was 45. He didn’t look it; he looked late 30s. [She was 33]
“Oh really, you don’t look it.” She told him.
“Thanks. I have three kids. I’ve been divorced, 10 years actually.”
“Okay.” She didn’t know if she should congratulate him for staying divorced for so long.
“My ex-wife has one kid.” He said. She chuckled and asked, “And who has the other two kids?”
“The person I’m with now.”
“Also known as a wife.”
“No, I’m not married to her.” He said. “I don’t intend to get married.”
She immediately switched off because she had just gotten out of a situation exactly like that with another man; a married man who isn’t married. It was all familiar and cliche; men who were married but not sleeping in the same room with their wives. Married men who found nothing in their marriages. She had read that handbook. Those aren’t the kind of men she was looking for. She switched off. As he talked, all she was thinking was how she would go home and take a long shower, and make some herbal tea. Maybe watch some trash TV.
But then he held her arm urgently and said erratically, “Give me a chance.”
“A chance? To do what?”
“To be with you!” He sounded mad. “I like you.”
She laughed and told him, no way! She explained to him that first, they work together, and second, she wasn’t going down that road with a married man. He insisted he wasn’t married, that they just lived together. “It’s nothing,” he kept telling her. So she told him that she literally got out of a thing with a man like him six months ago and she isn’t going back.
“This will be different, trust me,” His eyes were intense through his small glasses.
“It won’t be different.” She said, “Nothing will be different. It will be exactly the same. I can’t, It wi—..”He then does something strange; he leans over and kisses her on the lips to stop her from talking like that guy did to Ally McBeal in the 90s. They are both tipsy now but it sobers her up. She pushes him back and says, “No. Please. Don’t.”
She fled home. The next day “he starts love bombing me. He is texting me, calling me, checking up on me. I’m telling him nothing can happen here, we can only be friends, but he’s ignoring me, just texting saying he is sorry about last night, and he will take it slower. I tell him I don’t want him to take it at all!! I don’t want this. He keeps saying, give me a chance. He is relentless. ”
But then they have another drink in a week. “There is this thing men’s friends do,” she says, “where they tell the new girl how their friend has changed since he met you. They say, ‘We have never seen him this way, ever! He is so happy, so different, what have you done to him….blah blah blah. His friends are also love-bombing me now. It’s like a campaign. He is now calling a lot and texting a lot, acting like we were already in a thing. And it worked. I felt like someone was paying attention to me. I don’t know how but I lost the strength to resist. In hindsight, I’m not surprised at the turn of heart because they say that women are attracted to men like their fathers. That stuff is true because this man was exactly like my father; very disciplined, very responsible. The leader in his friend’s group – the silent leader. The one people go to for advice. Takes very good care of his children, good at his job. Just very focused. That’s my dad. I think that gave me comfort.”
When they became intimate it was at an Airbnb because she didn’t want him coming over to her house. “I thought it was just a fun time, it will die out in no time.”
Only, it didn’t.
It kept rising like mercury. They met a lot, mostly in bars. She noticed that he was never home. He avoided going back home, preferring to drink with his two sets of drinking friends; in Lavington and Langata. She remembers him being a totally different guy with these two groups of friends; “In Langata he was a more animated person, unhinged, drinking a lot, giving a very wild and youthful vibe. The guys he was drinking with in Langata presented themselves as unhappy, and miserable, like they were stuck in a period in the past. They didn’t seem like men who had grown up, men who had refused to grow up. He’d stay out late with this group, often leaving the bar at 5 am. With his Lavington drinking mates, he was more polished. With the group, you felt like you were around seasoned men, in their conversation. He was a different person in each of these groups. Some days I would meet him and he’s just miserable, drowning himself in beer. Those days he’d open up about her, this person he ‘lived with’, telling me how she complains about everything, how nagging she is. I did not know what to tell him. I didn’t want to be involved in his personal life.”
Then she found out she was pregnant.
“I didn’t think he would make me pregnant;” she said rather naively. “He is in his 40s, he’s old!”
[That pierced me. I literally felt it go through me like a barbed arrow.]
Of course, she wants it out. She tells him she isn’t in the right space to have a baby. She barely knows him; it’s been two months. [Besides, he drinks Pilsner.] How will she be able to take care of this baby? Besides, does he not have three kids already? Who needs four kids? No.
“I will take care of this child,” he insisted. “I love all my children. I would like you to keep it.”
The love bombing intensified. He would say; why would you consider doing this to my baby? You know I love you. I will take care of the kid. I will take care of you. I’ll figure it out. I’ll make it work. He’d call asking if she was all right and if she had already eaten. He’d see her taking painkillers and get angry. “What are you doing to our baby?”
“For a second there, I almost bought into it,” She recalls, “but I said, no. I don’t want to bring a child into this complicated arrangement. The child deserves better, if I don’t.”
He sent her money and she handled it.
Then he started changing. Gradually. He was no longer calling or texting as often. Her 34th birthday came and went. He promised to do something but did nothing. Meanwhile, she was struggling mentally and emotionally with the abortion.
One night when they were out having dinner she asked him, “Tom, are you happy?” He said he was. She was quite surprised at his answer.
“I mean how can you say you are happy when you’re staying in a house with someone you don’t like? Someone you avoid. You have two children and another child with your ex-wife. You’re miserable half the time, avoid going home, always out drinking with your friends. On top of this, you have a girlfriend who just aborted your baby. How can you say you are OK? That made me question many things. I started questioning myself. Maybe I was the one taking things too seriously.”
When he asked her if she was happy. She told him. “No. I don’t think I’m happy. I’m not at peace. I’m thinking of seeing someone about my unhappiness.”
“Yeah, maybe you should,” he told her.
The following month they don’t see each other much. He had health issues; constant tiredness, and high blood pressure. She saw him at work but they didn’t talk much. She moved into a new house. Invited him over for the first time. Valentine’s Day came and he treated it like her birthday; with stony indifference.
“He is the sort of man who shows up empty-handed to your house.” She noted. “Not even a packet of milk, or flowers. Nothing. I never asked for money; I’m not that type, but come on, you just show up at a woman’s house empty-handed and drink her liquor, eat her food. He’d buy an occasional lunch, but that was it. I began to feel used and I started to complain and he’d say things would change.”
Things don’t change. Much. Two weeks he’d be improving, the next he’d be back to his usual self. She knew she needed to end the relationship, but she was unable to. Like one of those nightmares where you’re being chased by a monster but you keep falling. She’d resent him and then he’d call and she would go. She’d say next month I’m ending things, but then he would do something to give her hope. Then disappoint her. Then give her hope. She was tired of meeting in the same bars with his friends. “Men are weird. All they do is sit in groups in bars, drinking and drinking. Mostly they don’t even talk. They look miserable. They just sit drinking until late and go home. It’s a dilapidating lifestyle.”
This one Friday he tells her that he will be away for a family event in Murang’a. He promises to have dinner when he gets back. That Saturday her friend sent her a photo of him with a caption; “Isn’t this Tom?” It is Tom. His best friend is standing next to him. They are in suits. It looks like a wedding. He hadn’t mentioned he was going to attend a wedding. He had mentioned an event. Monday comes and he’s missing from the office. Tuesday morning he knocks on her door early in the morning. She opens the door and asks him to sit down.
“What were you doing this weekend?” She inquires.
“I told you I was with the family in Muranga.” He wore the look of a deer in headlights.
“Tom, this is your only chance to tell me the truth. Your only chance. I hate liars. What were you doing this weekend?”
He blinked and said, “I was renewing my wedding vows.”
She just stared at him.
“Are you serious, Tom?”
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You hurt me because you lied to me.” She spat. “You have been distant the past weeks because you have been planning a wedding!”
“I didn’t want to do it,” he protested, “Family put pressure on me. She put pressure on me.”
She felt stupid.
“Get out of my house.” She told him.
Then he started calling incessantly after a few days. They eventually reconciled but it was not the same. It was worse. He was now stealing time to see her; an hour here and there. He couldn’t commit to any plan and had zero follow-through. She was going crazy. She threw herself to the gym and started drinking a lot. “I knew I needed to get out but I couldn’t seem to get out of this cycle. I felt like a helpless insect in a spider’s web. He was still unreliable, inconsistent, and insensitive. I was losing my mind. Drinking. Running. Gyming. I felt like I was trying to hold onto something. This person was giving me attention, no matter how little it was and I was accepting it. It’s better than nothing, I reasoned. It’s all fear of going back to dating, being single and just being very insecure in who I am. And basically, no self respect because this person also doesn’t respect me. ”
Then she discovered she was pregnant again. She remembered the physical and emotional pain of the last abortion and decided she was not going through with this. She was going to keep the baby. She figured she’s 34, she might as well. “My biggest fear was how to break it to my folks.”
She doesn’t tell him; instead, she continues drinking because she’s just a few weeks in. One morning she wakes up with great cramps. It turned out days later that it was a miscarriage. The fetus couldn’t handle the alcohol and the stress. She called him and told him they needed to talk. He told her to join him where he was, which turned out to be somewhere in Ruaka. They were drinking in their cars in a supermarket parking lot.
What dingy friends are these? She remembers thinking. “This was the kind of stuff I did in my 20s. These men are grown!”
She refused to have a drink because she was running with her boss the next day.
He gets mad, accuses her of sleeping with her boss. She gets mad. They start biting each other’s heads off. She insists on going home and he offers to drive her. They fight the whole way. She says, “And to think I came here to tell you I’m pregnant. How am I supposed to raise a child with you like this? I’m not sure I will keep it anymore.” She is messing with him. He says, ‘You promised you would keep the next one!’
At her parking lot, she turns to him and tells him, ‘I’m no longer pregnant. Congratulations, you won’t be a daddy anymore.” He follows her upstairs to her house as they argue. He calls her out on the lie; “you shouldn’t have told me, why did you do that?”
She told him that he had been treating her terribly the past few months and wanted to get back at him. “I would have kept it. But now I’m realizing that this is just a huge mistake,” she said. “And this happened for a reason. The first time, it was me. The second time, it’s just nature, and I’m learning from it. I’m not letting it happen a third time. And we need to part ways.” He gets mad. He clicks and walks out.
Then he comes back in. “Just to be clear, does this mean we are done?”
“Yes, we are done.”
He walks out. It’s 1 am. He drives out into the night.
He sends a few messages but they never quite meet up and when they do, three weeks later, it’s awkward. “It’s just strange. I’ve done partial healing and I don’t see him as the same person that I knew.”
The last conversation they had was a few months towards the end of last year. He texted saying his ex-wife had died. She said that was horrible. How did she die? Where is your daughter now? Then later he said he could use a hug.
“I’m sorry,” she texted him, “but that ship sailed. I’m okay to be just your friend, but that’s it.”
“Noted.” He wrote. Like an email.
That was their last conversation.
“I was relieved that I had gotten out of this toxic cycle. I learnt that you don’t get into a relationship if you don’t respect yourself. I have been connecting the dots and I realised that I haven’t always respected myself in these relationships. I have been insecure. You feel like you don’t add value to people’s lives unless they tell you that this is the value you add. Seeking validation from others is very dangerous. And you meet a man like these men I have met and they love to bomb you and tell you stuff that you need to hear and you slide into hell. And it’s tough coming out of that hell. It’s the toughest thing I had to do in 2024.”
***
What’s the Hardest Thing you did last year? Ping me with a synopsis on [email protected] , subject; Hardest Thing.
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