As it turns out, the eternity it took me to finish reading Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo was merely my subconscious holding out the inevitable for as long as I could. I simply didn't want to finish the book. I wanted to prolong reading it until I grow old because the story here is so heavy and feels wildly important for a later time in my life.
This is a story about the truth behind a successful-not-so-successful marriage. The truth that starts as you imagine: two pesky teenagers crazy for one another. Dying to marry and share the rest of their lives together. It's a story about instant attraction to your better half, the kind that runs deep in your bones, sending tingling senstations throughout your body. The kind you want to feel every day, to have this person who has so much power over you be devoted to you forever.
I always think of marriage as a way to control a person. When you marry someone, you say binding vows to each other. I will love you for the rest of my life. I will be by your side, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. It doesn't account for the only constant in life: change. Change for life to go on. Change will come. You both know this, so you tell each other that it doesn't matter when or how the inevitable change(s) comes. Whatever it is, I will stick by you.
How can a sane person say yes to that? Maybe I haven't loved, truly. Maybe I'll experience the kind of love that makes you go crazy sometime in the future and commit to rules that don't make sense. And, as always, I digress.
I just want you to go into this book understanding that the two people illustrated here committed to one another very many years ago, and then comes life with its ludicrous unpredictability. But they stick by each other's side through it all, or at least till the very latter stages of their marriage.
Even when they have been trying for years to have a baby, even when the in-laws pressure them to have a baby, even when the in-laws bring to their matrimonial home a second wife, forcing a stranger down their throats, to come between the vows they swore to one another when they’ve already gone through the worst to keep it safe.
Did you know you can develop a mental illness that makes you believe you're with a child? No, really, the works: nausea, tummy sticking out, and all. I had no clue. This is the new reality the couple in this story faces, with angry in-laws, an aloof second wife, and a brother willing to do what must be done to solve the main problem that’s making everyone go crazy.
A child is what you need? A child is what you'll get. It's easy, really. Well, if the woman is barren, the man can impregnate someone else - the second wife. If it's the man, a brother can sort the whole thing out, but in secret. An affair, if you will.
I feel like an affair is the biggest grown-up drama you can indulge in. At this point, you know some crazy drama is about to unfold. And, thanks to Ayobami Adebayo's writing, the events that follow are so surreal you want to cry, you want to scream, you want to be alone to digest just what the hell has gone down and keeps going down - it never stops. Read it, will you? And let me know what you think of it: marriage and all the shenanigans shielded by its holy chains.