I hate being a victim
I guess I can’t remove this tag ever.
I never asked to be born! I never asked for this life! Why is it full of so much hurt and pain?
I glance at my mum, and her misery breaks my heart anew. At first, I believed she hated me until I heard the tale. The tale of how I came to be. The tale she can never rewrite. One that brings her pain. The pain she can never let go of. The memory that sticks more than glue. The face she never knew but came to see in me. The reminder she never set but gets each breaking day.
I heard the tale from two neighbours. Mama Sade and Aunty Kaffy. They didn’t know I was there listening. They thought the walls were thick enough not to leak their conversation. In their voices, I hear pity mixed with mockery. “Ah! What a pity! Ah, O ma se o! (they repeated in Yoruba). And she was really regal in her days. She always had her head up high whenever she was walking back then. Her beauty was well-known all over the town.” Aunty Kaffy kept on like a drone. “My younger brother wanted to marry her then, but na so so shakara,” Mama Sade chimed in.
All these I can’t seem to see in the present. My mum looks more of a shell than a person. She walks dazed almost all the time. She looks at me, and her eyes fill up with tears. I feel like that’s the only time she is out of her trance. Yet, I love her. I have memories of her smiling down at me. But looking back now, I see that the smiles reduced as I grew older. I believe it’s because her reflection in me kept reducing as I grew. Now, it echoes that of the assailant who made her life take a different trajectory as opposed to her plans. The man ever living in her memories.
But why have me? Why subject me and herself to all these? Why do I have to suffer the sins of a man I know not but have his features? Just why?
Her parents also didn’t help matters. I swear, they would regret this! Sigh. I honestly wish I could turn back the hands of time and change the narrative. I wish I could. It hurts so much to see how much she is hurting and yet ensuring I’m well-fed. It hurts to see how much she toils just to ensure I am educated.
I swear to make her proud! I swear to be the best lawyer anyone has ever seen! I swear to do my best to find who my father is, just to make him pay! I swear to ensure no one goes through what I have been through, going through, and will still yet go through. How that would be? I don’t yet know, but I would not stop finding and fighting toward that goal.
I just wish I was born under the right circumstances. I want to be like Bayo, my friend, and I wish my family was like hers, if not, at least close. Sigh…
