My mom is pushing my boyfriend to choose my younger sister instead of me. She tells him I’m her daughter and she knows me better, and that I’m not the right woman for him. She didn’t end there. She said a lot of hurtful things about me to him just to push him away from me. Out of shock, my boyfriend came to ask me, “Are you sure she’s your real mother?”

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I was the first person to ask myself this question while growing up, looking at the way my mom treated me. I’m the eldest daughter. My younger sister came a year after me but we were very young when our father died. I saw him and I still remember his face. I still know his voice and still remember the way he treated me with love.

When my dad died, my mom went to live with my grandmother for a while. When the time came for her to leave, she took my sister along and left me behind, telling my grandmother that she would come for me later. My grandmother accepted to live with me, thinking my mom still needed space to heal and that the two of us would be overwhelming for her.

Until my mom settled and years later, she still wasn’t coming for me. She told my grandmother she would come for me after I’d completed JHS. After JHS, she didn’t come for me. She told her I should complete SHS first. At SHS, I went to a boarding school. My grandmother had to force my mom to pay my fees. She gave excuses when it came to me but, when it came to my younger sister, she did things my younger sister didn’t even need.

So every vacation, my grandmother sent me to my mom and the treatment was wild. I was the first to wake up and the last to sleep. All day I would work like a bull while my younger sister slept and ate. I didn’t hate her. I loved her as a sister but then my mom tried to fill her with venom about me.

If she saw us laughing together, she would run over and ask what I was telling her daughter to make her laugh. She would then scream, “Don’t come and corrupt her with your bad manners. I can’t wait for you to leave us in peace.”

School wouldn’t resume before my mom would send me away to my grandmother, telling her she was tired of me.

“Tired of your own daughter? What did Anna do to you that you don’t want to bring her to your side? Didn’t she come from the same womb that nurtured your younger daughter? Why treat her as if she is a stepdaughter?” my grandmother would question her.

She would rather make my grandmother feel like she was asking for too much or exaggerating the situation.

Right after SHS, my grandmother sent me away to her. She told my mom, “If you don’t want her, go and sell her in the market.”

My mom was forced to live with me and the hatred from there was legendary. She had a shop that some ladies were running for her. The shop used to close at 7 p.m. When I started living with her, she gave me the shop to manage and asked me to close at 10 p.m. My younger sister loved to be in that shop with me but she didn’t allow her.

When my results came, I did very well but my mom didn’t want me to go to the university. I stayed home for two years until my sister completed SHS and she didn’t do too well. While she was struggling to get my sister into the university, my grandmother called her and threatened her that if she didn’t send me to school and instead sent my sister to school, it would be the end of her. She would show her that she also had the heart to stand up for her own granddaughter.

So she sent me to school while my sister stayed home to better her results.

I swore I wouldn’t come home after my national service. I would do everything to find a job so I wouldn’t need to come back home, but life has a way of saying no to the things you desire and now I’m home, still working in her shop, still closing at 10 p.m. for a shop that no one enters after 7 p.m.

My boyfriend is a well-known guy in the church we attend. We started dating last year but it was a secret until it came to light not too long ago. He comes from a very good home and his parents are the people the church looks up to when it comes to finances. They are very rich but their status in the church was the reason I didn’t want to date him.

I didn’t introduce him to my mom but she heard about it through gossip and also observed us at church. One day she called Matthew and started asking questions about us. Matthew told her the truth, that indeed we were dating and he intended to marry me very soon.

That very day, my mom started destroying me.

“You want to marry this thing? Young man, you have a great future and that future deserves a better woman than this. If you must marry from my family, then wait and let me give you a better woman, not this one.”

That was where the pouring of venom started. Every Sunday after church, my mom had something to say about me to him, what I had done and what I hadn’t done.

My sister came home from school and my mom unashamedly introduced her to Matthew. “Just look at her. She’s young, intelligent and beautiful. You don’t want this but want the one who had an abortion for her ex?”

It was my sister who came to tell me this. She was shocked and angry at the same time. She came home to fight with my mom and warned her never to push her toward Matthew again but my mom, of course, fought back, telling her she didn’t lie about me and telling my sister to be obedient to her wishes or else she wouldn’t find good things in life.

Matthew called that day and said, “You have to leave home as soon as possible. Any job at all that would take you away from home, just do it. It’s better than living with this woman.”

I’ve been searching for a job diligently. Matthew is also talking to people on my behalf. He even went to our head pastor and told him everything that was happening between me and my mom and asked him to help me find a job.

Things are going smoothly and I’ve started feeling in my spirit that very soon a job will come my way and I’ll leave this place. Once I’m gone, it will be the last day of my life with my mom.

My grandmother is currently frail. I pray she will be alive when I get married. She will be my mom. My mom won’t be invited to my wedding no matter what anyone else says. If she has to come by all means before my marriage can happen, I will let the marriage go and before I finally leave this house, I will tell her all that.

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I’m not bitter. I don’t wake up thinking about her with hatred. She has done so many terrible things to me that she doesn’t surprise me anymore. I don’t seek her downfall and I don’t pray for evil to visit her. All I seek is a boundary once I leave her compound.

I love my sister to death. It’s not her fault that my mom doesn’t like me. She’s spoiled but, when it comes to me, she treats me with the respect an elder sister deserves. She tells me about my mom’s devilish plans concerning me even before they happen.

When all is said and done, she will be the one I keep as family.

—Anna

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