“Talk to you on Monday,” said my boyfriend on Thursday morning.

He was going for a retreat. This wasn’t the first time that he’d done this. He periodically went for retreats to reconnect with himself. Sometimes he’d go to a cabin in the woods and stay off-grid for a couple of days; other times he’d go for staycations in serene places.

I had long accepted that that was who he was and needed such breaks. He was a workaholic, and this was his way of avoiding burnout. As a person who often needed space or silence to hear my thoughts, I endorsed this practice.

On Friday, midday, the following day after I last spoke to my boyfriend, I was working from home. I went to the kitchen to prepare lunch for myself. I wanted to cook both lunch and supper because I had a side quest I wanted to work on after finishing up the day’s work.

I also used such breaks to scroll mindlessly on social media. In between preparing the ingredients and cooking, I went to Instagram.  I hadn’t scrolled past five story posts when I saw a wedding name board with a familiar name.

“Oh, someone who shares a name with my boyfriend,” I mused.

Theophilus isn’t such a common name, and I was excited to have come across a groom with the name. The post belonged to a wedding planner I followed. Naturally, I viewed other stories and posts to see my boyfriend’s namesake.

The wedding planner mostly covered the space, décor and such items, but they’d tagged the person doing the photography and videos, the MC and the makeup artist. My eyes almost popped out as my heart nearly stopped. The smell of burning food brought me back. In confusion, I hurriedly opened the sufuria, and steam burned my wrist.

I quickly ran water on my wrist with tears falling. I wasn’t sure whether I was crying from the burn or the videos I had just watched.

“Or maybe he has a cousin who shares a name and who looks like him?” I asked myself as I rewatched the posts and reels.

I tried calling him, but he’d blocked my number. Now, I knew for sure this was happening. I was paralysed for the rest of the day and told my immediate supervisor that I had a medical emergency. I wailed as I waited for new posts from either of the wedding vendors. A part of me accepted what was happening, but it still felt unreal.

I studied every inch of the wedding: the bride, bridesmaids, cake, décor, vows and every recurring face. I followed to see every tagged person and went down a rabbit hole trying to piece everything together. It didn’t take long for my friends to come across the posts.

One of them came over hoping that I hadn’t seen the posts.

“How could I have not suspected he had another serious relationship?” I kept asking out loud.

I went through every single aspect of our relationship, trying to figure out what I had overlooked.

“Were all the retreats a cover? Is he even a workaholic, or did he spend that time with the other woman?” I asked my friend as I bawled out my eyes.

As I began to spiral, my friend took away my phone. I cried myself to sleep. My friend told me I was still sobbing intermittently in my sleep. When I woke up, I wanted my phone back.

“Maybe he’s tried calling or texting me,” I pleaded.

“Babe, he married someone yesterday,” she told me as she hugged me.

I cried some more. My friend tried feeding me, but I had no appetite. She offered me alcohol, and each sip tasted worse than the one before.

“I just want Theophilus,” I said.

Later, she’d confess that she would never have guessed Theo was short for Theophilus.

I asked for sick leave, which was granted, fortunately. I felt physically sick for the next few days. Save for my close friends, I was ashamed to say I was going through a rough heartbreak that was making me physically ill.

Theophilus didn’t contact me until about six months later. In the weeks after his wedding, I had thought talking to him would give me closure, but when I saw his text, I realised that I couldn’t trust anything he’d tell me. I blocked him after I read his apology message.

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