Diary entry #3: Hamna
"I was married during 2014 and my marriage lasted for like 8 months. It turns out that he is gay and I was just a pathetic cover up.
It has been over a year since he kicked me out, and still I am looking for answers, answers I feel I will probably never find.
We are divorced islamically and there is no going back.
I am so hurt, gutted still, because this is something we wait our entire lives for. We save ourselves for marriage, only to have something like this happen.
I am in tears saying this to you.
Truth be told I could not accept it, I just cannot get it over my heart that he is gay.
Our families have known each other for over 60 years. He is a respectable lawyer, whom I met through his brother in law. Naturally, both families were in favour of the union.
I met him a total of 3 times before a speedy engagement, and nikaah just a
few short months later. He seemed like an established, successful man who knew what he wanted in life, as I did.
To my dismay, I found out that he takes chronic anti-depressants and sees a psychiatrist, something I had no idea about, and I was never allowed to know what he was being treated for.
I was married to a very sick man. I wonder if they really believed as they expected that I could cure him.
From day one, even on the honeymoon nothing happened.
Imagine, a young maiden, all beautified and readied for her wedding night, excited at the idea of consummating your marriage after years of resisting temptation, and not even a kiss.
It was as though he was just not interested. In front of the cameras and and out in public, he would hold my hand, but when we were alone, there was nothing.
In that eight months, he frequently went alone abroad and never took me.
He went to Cape Town once, he was seeing a psychiatrist for therapy that weekend.
I went with him. He was blind in one eye and needed a cornea transplant which I never knew about before marriage. He sat business class as the company paid his ticket while I sat economy.
And he earned a salary of 150 000 and could not put food in the house. I worked and did that.
To add to it, his moods were unacceptable. He was being treated for manic depression, bi-polar depression and border line personality disorder.
He said he was fat as a young boy and is being treated for that. I accepted it thinking it is a sickness. He was my husband, I wanted to support him through thick and thin.
He threw me out thrice, and the last time, after seeing my hesitation, he said if I did not leave he would hurt me. After that day nobody from his family, ever contacted me to try to reconcile.
All I heard after that was how bad I am and how good he is, and how well he has moved on.
From day one his family had and issue, they would never eat anything I took over to eat, even if I bought it from a bakery.
And everything he bought for his sister and niece, yet could not buy food in our cupboards. They had credit cards, they swipe he pays.
Six months of then marriage his dad was sick, and we were weekly at the hospital. And there, his personality was so different. He was nice and charming, to all but me.
So I started thinking what is it with me that makes him this way? What is wrong with me?
I suggested a counsellor, for us work through our barriers, but he simply said that a counsellor wouldn't make him love me.
People from his workplace approached me, saying they knew he is gay. And I could not accept it, no matter how much it broke me. He wronged me in enough ways for me to close that chapter but I still don't know why it pains me so much.
I feel like such a failure. Love is pure, how can it not win? Am I unlovable?
My parents are devastated.
Now it hurts more knowing and he makes sure I get the message that he is flying high. He keeps going abroad, buying luxury cars. He goes around telling people he will get a better wife.
And it should not bother me, but it hurts so bad.
Can he be over it so soon?
Divorce is a sin and I tried to save my marriage but couldn't. How did this happen?
I hurt my parents too.
It feels so unfair that he wronged me, yet this is where he is now, while I am feeling low, sad and struggling emtionally.
Not a day passes me by without crying my heart out.
Shukr, many believe me. I have support.
But it does not change the fact that he wronged me and scarred me for life leaving me with a divorced stigma forever. I am a divorced virgin.
I have tried it all, praying, counselling, holiday get aways, but still my marriage haunts me, and I fear, it always will."