“If at age 36 you are still a virgin, then, you should have had more
patience and waited till your wedding night instead of giving it away to a
total stranger and for a mere N10,000.” he said to me….
This was sent in from a reader (usually I don’t publish stuffs like this but this one touched me somehow)…read on:
I still remember that cold night of
September 1, the day I decided to sell my body even though I claim to be a born
again Christian. I did that because I was tired and frustrated about my
father’s constant nagging because I was still single at my age.
He made it look like a sin to be single. His constant nagging made me feel that
God had forgotten about me after all my years of serving Him.
It was frustrating still being
a virgin and single at the age of 36. As a growing young woman, I had wished to
be married at the age of 25 to the most loving and wonderful man on earth and
be done with child bearing at age 30 or 31 but like the saying goes, man
proposes, God disposes.
I became a born again Christian in my second
year at the University of Lagos. I was so deep into Christianity that all I had
time for were church programmes and my books.
I had some ‘brothers’ who liked
me but then I was not interested in men because I felt they would be a
distraction as I wanted to focus on school and God alone. I am the eldest of
four children, three girls and a boy.
Our mother died about seven
years ago and we were left with our father. I am the only Christian in my
family, the others hardly go to church but it seems everything moved on fine
for them except me. My two younger sisters got married to responsible and
wealthy men while I was still praying to God to give me a husband.
My father believed that I was
still single because of my rules and standards; hence he decided to frustrate
me. Sometimes, when I got home from church, he would ask the gateman not to
open the gate for me which means I had to go and sleep at any of my sister’s
place.
He would say ‘You carry the Bible everyday yet
you are not married. Your sisters who do not even go to church
are married so what is the essence of carrying a Bible every day? You
better ask your sisters how and where they got the men they got married to from
so that you too can get one.’
It got so bad that he complained
about whatever I do and this really worried me. One day, precisely September 1,
I took a rather drastic decision which I still deeply regret. I said to myself,
“What has serving God and being a virgin at my age benefitted me? I am still
single and my father is frustrating and making a mockery of me. I am tired. It
is all going to end this night, I want to be wayward tonight,” I murmured. That
night, I lied to my father that I was going for a vigil; he looked at me from
head to toe, hissed and walked away. I found myself in front of a brothel with
some other girls as my heart was beating so fast. In less than 20 minutes, two
men arrived in a jeep and one said he was interested in spending the night with
me; he introduced himself as Gabriel while the other man sat quietly as if he
was disgusted with what his friend was doing. He later introduced himself as
Robert. Initially, I was so scared but after we talked for a while, I followed
them to their room. Gabriel proposed to pay me N10,000 and I agreed.
When we got to the hotel, it
was obvious that they had just come into the country. I spent the night with
Gabriel in his room and he was surprised that I was a virgin. He asked me my
age and I told him. He shocked me when he said, “If at age 36 you are still a virgin, then, you should have had more
patience and waited till your wedding night instead of giving it away to a
total stranger and for a mere N10,000.”
Tears dripped down my cheeks as
if a sword was being used to pierce through my chest. “Abigail, the truth is
that no matter what you are passing through in the hands of your father, you
should have exercised more patience. But the truth is that if I was not already
married, I would have married you,” Gabriel emphasised.
I left Gabriel’s hotel room feeling
so sad and rejected. A week later, Hannah, my friend in church came to pay me a
surprise visit at home. “Hannah, I can’t remember the last time you came to my
house,” I said. She smiled and told me her brother who lives in the United
Kingdom just came into the country. “My elder brother just came into the
country. But Abigail what you don’t know is that I have told him a lot of good
things about you. One of the reasons he is in the country is so that he will
meet you so that you people can talk. He said he is willing to settle down
within three months if you agree to marry him.”
At first I was happy but when I
remembered what I had done, tears rolled down my eyes. For Hannah, she thought
it was tears of joy that I was finally going to be married whereas for me, it
was tears of regret. Three days later, Hannah called to inform me that she had
arranged for me to meet her brother in their house. I was so eager to meet him,
however when I got there I prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me. I
discovered that her brother was Robert and he recognised me instantly while I
pretended never to have seen him. “Brother Robert, meet my friend Abigail, the
woman I have been telling you about. I know you will like her,” she stressed.
“I have seen this face before. Yes, she was the prostitute Gabriel picked up
some days ago,” he disclosed. Hannah tried to tell him that he was mistaking me
for someone else but he was so sure of what he was saying because I didn’t
defend myself. At last, I told Hannah what happened and she was so
disappointed. Robert told me, “I actually came to Nigeria because of you. My
sister wanted me to get married to you because she likes and admires you so
much. Hannah told me, you are the best wife any man could ask for but I guess
she is wrong. As a born again Christian, you should have held on firmly to God
no matter the temptation,” he emphasised.
He told me to go back to God
and ask for forgiveness. He also opened up that he would have gone ahead to
marry me if I had slept with another man but not his best friend, Gabriel who
was already married. I left there in tears and shame. Hannah told me he went
back to the UK about three days later disappointed and heartbroken. Well, I
know some ladies out there would have done worse than I did, but I am not
judging anyone. My main concern is that parents should stop tormenting and
putting pressure on their unmarried daughters because they would only push them
to do unimaginable things which they later regret in life and find it very
difficult to forgive them. It took me sometime to forgive my father because I
blamed what I did on him. But just as Robert advised, I went back to God and
asked forgiveness and I am happy to say that God gave me a second chance at
marriage. I will be getting married in a few weeks….. Just wanted you
to share these with single ladies out there….