I grew up in a polygamous family. My mother is the first wife, and my father has two wives. In total, my father has 12 children, and from the way things are looking, the second wife is pregnant again. She has been vomiting and sleeping a lot, and I suspect she has conceived yet again.

We come from a very humble background. Even three square meals were not guaranteed. Our clothes were mostly hand-me-downs from relatives after they had already been worn out. I have seen poverty up close. I have sat with it, lived through it, and it’s pretty much my childhood.

As a child, I hated my mother. She was always frustrated, always shouting, always angry. Our home felt tense and unsafe. Some mornings I would wake up and pray that she would die, just so the shouting and anger would stop. I feel deep shame admitting this, but it is the truth of how overwhelmed and hurt I was back then.

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My mother has told me that she was married off at 13 and had her first child at 17. She was given to my father because her family hoped marriage would help them escape poverty.

But as I have grown older, I have begun to see things differently, and it has changed a lot for me. I no longer just see the angry woman who raised me. I now see a woman who has lived an incredibly hard life. A woman who has been emotionally abused, unsupported, and overburdened for decades. She is barely in her late 40s, yet she looks like someone in her 60s. She looks tired of life, like someone who has spent her years surviving instead of living.

With that understanding has come a lot of guilt. I feel guilty for not understanding her sooner, for resenting her when she was also a victim of her circumstances. I wish I could go back and show her more compassion.

At the same time, my anger toward my father has grown. I resent him very much for what he has turned my mother into.

I am also angry about the decisions that keep being made in this family. The second wife is pregnant again, even though my father can barely provide for the children he already has. He continues to bring more children into the world without thinking about the consequences. Why bring children into the world to suffer?

I hate the second wife because of the harm she has caused my mother. There have been many painful incidents over the years, and they have made it difficult for me to see her any other way. Her children do not give my mother the respect she deserves. They speak to her however they want, without regard for her position or the pain she has endured, and it breaks my heart to watch my mother endure that disrespect in silence.

I hate that she does not stand up for herself. I hate that she tolerates the mistreatment. Sometimes I see her as weak, and I hate myself for thinking that, but the feeling is there. It feels like her silence has allowed people to keep hurting her, and watching that leaves me angry, helpless, and deeply frustrated.

Overall, I find myself hating my entire family. I feel like cutting everyone off just to protect my own sanity, but even that feels impossible. The pressure of changing my home situation weighs heavily on me every single day.

I go to sleep thinking about how I will change my home environment, and I wake up thinking about how I can help my mother escape a marriage that is slowly destroying her. I feel mentally trapped between survival and responsibility.

I am also a student, and all of this has taken a serious toll on my education. I struggle to focus. I am constantly fighting uncertainty, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. While trying to study and build a future, the reality of how poor we are keeps weighing me down. It feels like I am carrying adult burdens while still trying to live a student’s life.

I want my mother out of this marriage. I want her to leave, rent a place of her own, focus on her business, and choose herself for once. I have encouraged her to do this, but I know it is not that simple.

This entire situation is draining me too. I am hurting every day just thinking about it. I feel stuck between loving my mother, resenting my father, feeling anger toward the second wife and the family dynamics, struggling with poverty, and carrying unresolved trauma from my childhood.

Everything is just too much for me. I just wanted to put this out there. Sharing this story is my way of letting it all out. I do not know how to deal with everything anymore.

—Bene

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