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Barbara averted her gaze from the cuddling couple she recognized from her neighborhood sitting at the farthest corner of the plaza’s cafeteria back to her meal of spaghetti and fish sauce. It wasn’t her favourite meal but she didn’t have a choice, it was the best they got and frankly the best she could afford at this crucial period of her life, plus her office was just a floor above which made it easier and cheaper. She let her gaze stray back to the couple she noticed earlier and allowed herself a smile. That was the initial stage of marriage before the dose of reality. She thought back on her own crumbling marriage. They had started sweet too and wouldn’t leave each other’s sight for the first few weeks of marriage then the real issues came in and they were fighting every second. Soon they moved from being best friends and lovers to being roommates as they were just co habiting. She shook her head wistfully at the thought of her marriage and the future of the couple seated across the hall.
“Wait till you see that marriage is a trap, then you would flee just like I plan to” she muttered under her breath as she pushed the almost empty plate of spaghetti to the edge of the table. She reached into her bag and pulled out the envelope containing the documents that held the key to her freedom. She was going to get a divorce. She was going to be a free woman again. She brought out the content of the envelope and read through again to be sure there were no mistakes. She had an appointment with her lawyer the following week and he was going to give it the final proofread. She slid the envelope back into her bag and stood up, smoothening out the wrinkles on her skirt as she headed towards the door, to the flight of stairs that led her to her one-room office of two of the three years that she had been married. Her profession had been one of the problems they had in their marriage. Edward never respected her profession and always looked down his nose at it. “Why become a therapist in a country like Nigeria where the citizens either believed all psychological disorders were caused by lack of money and could only be cured by the abundance of money or that there was no use in seeing a therapist when there were churches and mosques and shrines to bind and cast and wash off through sacrifices, the source of your problems?” he would always say. But this was what gave her pleasure. She didn’t bag degrees both home and abroad to let it go to waste just because of the situation of the country. True she was not making as much as she would have loved to, and things are pretty tough now, but she still loved her job. Most of her clients have healed and recovered well and she was beginning to get referrals from outside Nigeria. She was good at her job and she knew it. She was pretty good at everything- everything except being married and she knew that was not her fault. She tried her best, he didn’t. Simple.