DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE

I stood on the balcony of my house holding her picture with her blood stain still on it. My wife Stephanie was playing with our daughter Amoy downstairs. I was watching them from the balcony not until I brought out the picture and the past filled my mind making no room for the present. I looked at her picture and it all began to reoccur in my mind again. The blood stain on the picture made me shed soft tears. “She never deserved to die." I would always say. My mind flashed back as I gazed at her smiling visage in the picture; I could remember everything. It all happened 20 years ago but it was still like 20 days ago to me. I was 17 years old when it all happened, I was still a very young boy then but I actually became a man during those periods. I flashed my mind back to the events of yesterday, the time I stood on the altar with my wife, Stephanie. I flashed it back again to the day I woke up in a hospital recovery room in Santiago de Cuba with no sound heard other than that of the beeping monitor and the rotating ceiling fan. I flashed it back to the incident that led me to the hospital and I stopped on the day it all started. It was on Sunday, 2nd day of May 1999. I was a young boy then. A young boy of about four and a half feet tall. I had a baby face and I was blessed (I guess that what some will call it) with a gap teeth that always made me pretty whenever I opened it. Most people called me prince charming and some ladies thought I was gorgeous. That Sunday, I appeared in a suit matched with a tie. I looked so handsome and innocent. You could say I was a responsible child judging by my outfit but believe me, I wasn't like how I appeared that Sunday. I wasn't in my real form that Sunday; you can call it a cover up or a disguise but I was up to something that Sunday, something that led to my transformation, something that changed my whole life. I was a boy who followed bad gangs, I was a boy who stole from his father, I was a boy who never greeted his elders but preferred insulting them. I was a headache to my parents. You could call me a spoilt brat then but it wasn't a new name to me especially in my school. In all those bad behaviors of mine, there was one which I could call the worst of it all now, I was a misogynist. To me then, all women were a mistake except for my close relations even though I valued them a little lesser especially my granny but for my mom, I think she is a special woman unique from others. As I was saying, I was a boy who thought of marriage as a sin and boyfriend and girlfriend act as an act of stupidity performed by most of the youths. I was a boy who thought of women like pests and worms. I was a boy whom you will find unbelievable. I am PETER CHIBUIKE JOSHUA.