I had a son when I was seventeen years old. It affected my growth and slowed down my life. My dad became my enemy, and he stopped taking care of me. The man I had the child with ran away. He was older. He feared the repercussions. I saw my mates going to school and having dreams, and it pained my heart, but I told myself, “God gave me a child, and that’s fine.”

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I went back to complete SHS through the help of my aunt, and after SHS, I started hating my son. I’d come to accept he was the reason my life had stalled. I’d come to hate what his father did to me and the fact that he’d run away. I hated to see his face, so I did everything to stay away from him.

After SHS, my mom called me to come home for the child, and I went. He was five years then. I put everything he had together, went to the compound of his father’s house, and left him there. I traveled back to my aunt because, from all indications, she was going to help me through tertiary. My parents heard what I’d done and went back for the boy, but this time, they didn’t ask me to come for him.

My dad died when I was in my first year in training school. When I went home, I saw my son and couldn’t look at him in the face. He recognized me and tried coming to me. I avoided him until I finally left town without telling anyone.

I completed training school and started working. My mom sent me a message to come for the boy so he could attend a good school. I had no choice, so I went for him. He lives with me now, and I’ve looked for every opportunity to dump him somewhere. I’ve visited his father’s home several times asking where the man is. They tell me they also don’t know his whereabouts.

I’m currently thirty years old but have no love life because of my son. I’ll meet a man today and tell him I have a son, and the next moment, he’ll ghost me. I’ve met great people. Those with money and those with big hearts. They all vanished because they didn’t want a woman with a child.

So I stopped telling them I had a child. That’s how I dated Samson for two years, and all that while he thought my son was the last-born of my mother. I warned him not to call me mom. I asked him to call me by my name, and he learned to. But the truth does come out eventually, right? Samson got to know about it, and currently, he’s also ghosting me.

I regret this life already. I yearn to belong to a man. I yearn to have a life that’s only mine and not a child in it. Unfortunately, he’s tied to the hip of my story, and I can’t tell the story without him coming up. My aunt wants me to send him to her. She wants me to have a man first, settle with him, and later come for him. Sending him away doesn’t change the story, and I’m scared I will continue to hate him if I send him away, so he’s with me and currently learning to love him each passing day.

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It’s not his fault, but it’s also his fault. It’s not his doing, but he’s the one doing me—the reason I can’t find love. And then I had this thought recently that maybe the love I’m looking for is in him, and once I learn to love him, the rest will fall in place. So I’m learning. It gets better each day. Yesterday we looked at each other and we smiled. It felt genuine. It felt deep. Night by night, growth will happen in the dark, but we’ll definitely see it when the day comes. He’s mine. I’ll learn to treat him like he actually is.

—Debby

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