I remember being beaten and slapped by my then single senior aunt and sometimes my mother every time they were within ear shot of my utterance. It was never a palatable experience. The slaps became harder as I grew up. I never understood the fuss anyway, it was my life and my decision to make whether I was cut out for marriage but apparently they thought otherwise. How could a young girl declare boldly, she wasn't going to be married? And she was going to become a Nun? It made my mother cry frequently. Marriage was and still is a thing of pride here in Nigeria. If you aren't married from a certain age, then something is 'wrong' with you.
As I grew up, I looked for a reason to change my mind about the entire concept of marriage because I saw it as a sham. An excuse for people to have sex legally and procreate - what's the fuss about that? People go their entire lives without it. And besides, I had older sisters and brothers, if grand children were the issue they had it covered. There were no good examples for me to see and want to aspire to. All the married couples I knew were miserable, particularly the women. The men were philandering husbands who did whatever they liked outside their matrimonial homes but came home and pretended like saints. Some wives knew and pretended not to know, while others embraced the adage of 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander' and carried out their own affairs.
Seriously! That's what they wanted me to become? An angry, discontent, troubled and depressed woman for the rest of my life? Just because my parents wanted to experience the joys of throwing a party so their friends could see that they too had a married child and the grandchildren would soon flow. Well they have another think coming.
Marriage is not for everyone. And I had established it within myself that it wasn't for me.
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