7 July 2021 — 7 July 2026

Dawnda.

Dear Dawnda,

Five years ago today, I married you. The only thing worth giving you today is the truth — the beautiful and the hard — with nothing asked of you in return.

One hope, before you read on: that none of this stirs the hurt. Memory and pain live close together now, I know. I’m hoping they can stand apart for a few minutes — because hurting you is the very last thing I would ever mean to do.

I — Vancouver · 12 August 2016

It began on the 12th of August, 2016. I got to your place in New Westminster half an hour early and just sat in the car — I couldn’t stand the thought of being late for you. Then you came out in that black-and-white dress, and I forgot everything I’d planned to say. Cactus Club. I don’t remember the food. I remember you.

Black-and-white selfie of Joba and Dawnda, Vancouver, 2016

II — The Knowing

A few nights later, we went dancing downtown. I stood there watching you move, and I knew — not hoped, knew, somewhere deeper than thought — that you were going to be my wife.

Joba and Dawnda in Nigerian traditional dress

III — Nigeria

You left your whole world and followed me to mine. We started with a bare apartment, and you made it a home — the curtains, the little touches, the shine you put on everything. We didn’t have much, but you could take the little we had and make us gleam. And you paid for it in lonely hours while I was out working. I haven’t forgotten a single one of them.

IV — The World

Cheap hotels and long roads — and every one of them was home, because home was wherever you were.

Hot-air balloons over Cappadocia at dawn. The warmest people we ever met. Pizza in Antibes.

Nice. Portugal. Liechtenstein. Wiesbaden. Croatia. Greece. Spain. India. Sierra Leone. We ran out of map before we ran out of world.

V — Turkey & Antalya

In a field full of wild horses in Turkey, I asked you to spend your life with me. And on the water in Antalya, I made it a promise.

VI — Paris

Then Paris. 66 Kléber, the sixteenth, the Eiffel Tower outside our window. Walks down the Champs-Élysées — and McFlurries from McDonald’s at three in the morning, because you wanted one, and I loved you wanting things I could still give you.

VII — The Mountaintop · 7 July 2021

And I married you on top of a mountain, at the top of the world. Whatever has happened since, I need you to hear this and believe it: that day was not a lie. None of it was. I meant every word.

VIII — Joziah

Then Joziah. You brought him into the world at home — no epidural, no fear — the bravest thing I have ever watched a human being do. I caught him with my own hands. And in that moment my love for you deepened a hundred times over; I saw you completely new. You are a great mother. Being his father is the greatest joy of my life.

Dawnda, expecting Joziah, among candlelight and feathers

IX — The Ordinary Days

And the life between the postcards. You could plan an exotic trip on a budget of almost nothing — it was a superpower. The thrift-store treasures. Toronto nights and late walks with Joziah, the three of us dancing at the end of the night, cleaning up together after. Even Costco.

And that first Christmas — the gingerbread house, the hot chocolate, the snowball fight on the roof at Drake. The best Christmas of my life.

I was happy in that life. I need you to know that: I was happy.

the years, scattered

Joba, Dawnda and Joziah, a family selfie

And then there is the part I owe you plainly.

The Truth

I also have to say the hard thing plainly, because you’ve earned plainness from me.

I broke your trust — before we married, and after. Even while you carried our son.

I won’t dress it up and I won’t explain it away. It was mine, and I own it, completely.

I know you feel you no longer recognise the man you married. I understand why. You are not wrong to feel it.

What Was Always True

I know how it must look from where you stand — that the lie reaches backward and poisons every memory it touches. I can’t argue with your pain. But I was there, inside every one of those moments, so let me leave you this testimony: the man waiting outside your door in New Westminster, the man watching you dance, the man at three in the morning on Kléber, the man whose hands caught our son — none of him was pretending.

The love was never the lie. The lie was mine alone — it lived beside the love, never inside it.

That isn’t an excuse. There is no excuse. It’s just a truth you deserve to have.

The first dance. Scroll.

I’m not writing this to ask you for anything — not another chance, not your forgiveness. That isn’t mine to ask, and I won’t put that weight on you. I wrote it only so you would have it: proof that what we built was real, that I know exactly what I had, and that I take full responsibility for what I did to it.

And I am not standing still in that failure. I am on a path of renewal and growth — doing the real work of becoming a better man than the one who failed you. I don’t say that to ask for anything. I say it because it is true, and because I never intend to be that man again.

Thank you for the years. Thank you for Joziah. Thank you for all of it.

Joba, Dawnda and Joziah together on a bench

Happy anniversary, Dawnda.

— Joba

7 July 2026