Growing up I had a father but it always felt like I had none. My parents have four children; three boys and a girl. I am the girl. My mum sells food while my dad is a committee chairman in our area. The position has given him money to run a poultry farm in our backyard. Although he is doing well financially, he doesn’t provide for the home. It is my mother who bears all the responsibilities.

Ever since we were kids, the only thing my father contributes to our household is abuse and embarrassment. He doesn’t spare any of us when he does this. Because of this, I learned how to defend myself at an early age. I talk back at him when he insults me and try to retaliate when he hits me. I have threatened to get him arrested so many times that he stopped hitting me long ago. He rather directs all his anger toward me to my mum.

Unlike me, my mum is very calm and peaceful. She doesn’t talk when my father abuses her. She is the type who says, “Hmm, I leave it to God.” I have told her several times to leave the marriage but she insists on staying. It isn’t that she doesn’t have anywhere to go, the house we live in belongs to her. And she has a food business so she is not financially dependent on my father. All she has to do is leave him and drive him out of our lives but she says no. She has put up with him over the years and now that we are all grown up, she is still putting up with him. My siblings don’t say anything because he insults them too.

My eldest brother is a weed and cocaine addict so no one expects anything from him. My second brother is doing some contract work but he keeps his money to himself. Maybe he’s saving it to move out. I would even encourage him to do that.

I have an HND in hospitality management. I moved out to do my national service but now I’m back home to help my mum sell. This is because my dad insults my mum’s workers until they get tired and quit. The highly tolerant ones who don’t leave, he sacks them. So my mum ends up suffering whenever she has to cook and sell. So I help her except on Fridays and Saturdays when I attend lectures for my degree program.

In the past few months, my father’s behaviour has gotten worse. He has been diagnosed with diabetes and he believes it is spiritual. He says it is my mother who has bewitched him. So every day when he wakes up, he calls my mother a witch; “You’re a witch. You’re the one trying to kill me with your witchcraft. Six different people have told me about your nocturnal activities. All of them can’t be wrong”

Even when my mother coughs, he insults her. He doesn’t just do it at home, no. He comes to the roadside where she is selling and makes a scene.

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My mum has reported him to almost all the Muslim clerks in our community and they’re even fed up with him. Now, he is doing everything to drive my mum out of her own house. He doesn’t insult me but my heart is heavy when I watch him insult my mother. I can’t stand it. He injects insulin shots, and there are days I want to replace the medication with something that will kill him but I always pray to Allah for forgiveness.

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All I do these days is overthink and cry. Everyone is asking me to be patient and continue praying to Allah, so that’s what I’m doing. I always tell him not to test us beyond our capacity but this trial is too much. We are tired. We don’t know if he is behaving like this because he believes he is dying or what. I have enough on my plate already, worrying about how to pay my fees, and now I have to be dealing with this man’s noise. I have become depressed. People see me and ask if I’m sick. It’s because I haven’t had a good appetite in a really long time.

With everything going on, I have met someone who’s interested in marrying me. I’m planning to bring him home soon but I am worried my father will mess it up. So I am praying very hard about him before I bring the person home. I just want him to allow me to get married in peace and leave home. That’s why I am here today. I don’t have any solution to my problem but I want you to pray for my family and pray I get married in peace so that Allah will rescue us from my father’s tyranny before it’s too late.

–Adiza

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