Sometimes when I look at how my life is, I feel like I am in another realm. It feels like I am frozen while everyone around me lives and progresses. I look back at my childhood and I am filled with fond memories. Life was rosy then. Mum and Dad were doing well financially, and our family had no lack.

Our good fortune extended to everyone around us. My dad was a very generous person. He was always concerned about the well-being of others. He used to pay school fees for other people’s children. He also took care of other people from afar. He always said, “I love doing good. I love knowing that someone’s life is a lot easier because I extended a helping hand.” And you could see in his countenance that he indeed enjoyed helping people.

We were living our best lives until Mum and Dad started fighting. I don’t know the reason behind their fights but it was bad. It got to a point where our mother left us. I remember how Dad cried and begged her not to go but she wouldn’t listen. Her mind was made up and not even the tears of her beloved children would soften her heart. After she left, my brother and I became the center of our dad’s world. He took such good care of us that we barely missed our mother. We were always happy, despite the fact that we had only one parent present.

We grew up loving Dad so much that, we felt lonely whenever he traveled. Dad also refused to remarry because he was scared we would be maltreated. There were times I would see Dad crying. “What’s wrong Daddy? Did someone die?” I would ask. He would say between sobs, “I miss your mother so much. I wish she will come back to us.” I hated how Mum’s absence affected him but I was just too young to do anything about it.

Once in a while she would visit us and bring us presents, but it did not matter to us. Her gifts could not substitute the role she would have played had she chosen to stay. So we gave her little attention until she stopped visiting us completely. Truth be told, we did not care when she stopped coming around.

When it was time for me to go to secondary school, I got a school that was far from home. So I had to go to the boarding house. I was always delighted to come home on vacations because everything was good. It was when I was in my second year that our lives changed. Dad became very sick. It was a stroke. We used all his savings on medication until we ran out of money.

I remember how I used to spend all my vacations with him in the hospital. My half-brother came in to help but there was no improvement in our father’s condition. As he got worse, I was terrified. You could see he was scared as well. He knew no one else would be able to love us the way he did. When hospital medication failed we tried herbal medicine, but nothing worked. We kept at it and kept hope alive, but God knew best. Our dad passed away.

The most painful part about his death was that nobody told me when it happened. I was in school at the time. Every time I called home to ask about him they to me he was fine. It was when school vacated and I came home that I got the shock of my life. “Dad is gone,” they said. It’s been eight years since I received that dreadful news, yet I still grieve him. I cannot go a day without thinking about him. There is a gaping wound in my heart that has not healed.

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Life has been very hard since he left but with the help of my elder brother, I was able to complete the University. Now my headache is where to get a job. I have tried all I could but to no avail. My brother who was helping me to get a job fell ill at the beginning of last year. We prayed and trusted that God would heal him. But the Bible says, “His ways are not our ways.” And so it happened that after several months of hospital admission, my dear brother did not survive his illness.

My life has become something else. All I do is wake up and cry all day. Those who were making my life better are all gone. There’s no help coming from anywhere. There is no one to even give me comfort, or share in my struggles. I am not even in a relationship to say my partner gives me his shoulder to lean on. I am utterly alone in this world.

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I am always praying and crying to God to help me find happiness again. Or he should at least let me get a job so that life can get easier for me. I apply for jobs every day but I get nothing. With the way things are going, I feel I’m not going to achieve my dreams. Men promise me, “I will get a job for you.” But the moment I accept their offer they ask for a pound of flesh in return. What’s even the guarantee that if I give them my body I will get the job? And what if I have to keep sleeping with them in order to maintain the job? This is why I haven’t agreed to do it.

I know that if my dad was alive, my life would have turned out differently. But what is done is done. All I need now is a job, so I can find my feet. This is why I am here today. I have an HND in Accounting with second-class upper. My life depends on this, so please help me.

– Cynthia

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