The Second Marriage of Sylvanus Greybeard

This article is about my second marriage and is also the one in which I lost everything: my three children, my wife, my second business and my money.

After my first marriage, I was single for two years. During this time, I worked for my father in his business and also lived on the premises. I was 32 years old when I met my second wife.

A woman who worked at the business got sick, and a stunningly beautiful woman came to work in her place. She was 21, and I fell in love instantly. After a few days, I asked her to go to a nightclub with me, and she ended up staying the night right away.

Not long after, a few months if I remember correctly, we got married. In the months before we married, I got to know her father.

Her father was a sympathetic man, but getting in contact with him meant my total downfall. He was a notorious criminal who owned a cafe and a sex club and was a drug dealer.

The first time I met my wife's father, when I was 32 years old, was in his cafe, a place primarily frequented by underworld figures. I was sitting at the bar with my girlfriend at the time, and she placed a small white bag on my knee. I asked her what it was, and she said, "This will help you drink better." It turned out to be cocaine, and at that moment, I didn't even know what it was.

A bit about my second wife's father. After the liberation of Belgium following World War II, there was a liberation party. The mother of my second wife's father, my second wife's grandmother, went to that party. Shortly after, she realized she was pregnant. Of course, everyone thought she (who was White) was pregnant by her (White) husband. During childbirth, instead of a white baby, a Black baby emerged.

This Black baby was fathered by a Black soldier in the American army who was also at the same liberation party. The stepfather still raised and protected the child as his own, which I still think is quite an achievement. I write this to show that growing up in a white farming village as the only person of color, with the necessary discrimination, shaped him into what he became: a criminal.

Around the same period, my two brothers—one younger and the oldest—and I took over the business from my father. My father had a heart attack but survived, and the business was in a lot of debt. More on this in a future article.

After I first came into contact with cocaine, I only used it when I went out to a cafe or nightclub. After all the misery I experienced with my father, more trouble came, especially with my oldest brother. The more misery I felt, the more I went out, which meant the more cocaine I used, which destroyed my marriage, which in turn caused even more misery. We were married for 12 years and I was 42 years old at the time.

In the period after the divorce, I went completely off the rails. I started a relationship with a Hungarian, cocaine-addicted prostitute with the brains of a chicken. This made my already terrible situation even worse.

Eventually, three years after my divorce, I sold my shares in the business to my two brothers. The money I got for the shares was spent in six months. I no longer cared about anything or anyone; I lived in a haze of alcohol and drugs.

What hit me hardest (and still does!) were my three children, whom I was crazy about, who experienced a lot during the marriage and who, after the divorce, fell into complete misery due to their mother's behavior. The mother went back into the criminal underworld, so my children had one criminal stepfather after another.

I have two sons and a daughter who was three years old when my wife and I separated.

My Advice

• Cocaine is the white destroyer; it destroys you mentally, financially, and physically. Stay far away from people who are in contact with drugs, and those who use or sell drugs.
• You become what you surround yourself with. Seek out a valuable environment that gives you the opportunity to make something positive out of your life.
• As I mentioned in a previous article, choose a woman not just with your heart but also with your mind.
• If you have the chance, start a business for yourself and not with family.