I learned how to love from my mother. I was the eldest. My dad came home mostly angry, and there were days little things got on his nerves so much that he started screaming at everyone. Even the dog wasn’t spared. He called us products of prostitution many times. I heard it. When we did anything wrong, he would shout at my mom, “Only God knows where you brought these idiots from. Are you sure they are my kids?”

Anytime he was about to blow up, Mom would point at the door and tell us to run inside. We would do it, but the walls were too thin to keep the insults from our ears. Mom would be apologising for very little offences. She never stood up for herself but would rather cry when Dad was away.

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I asked her, “Why is Dad always yelling at us?”

She always responded, “Because he loves us and doesn’t want us to do things that would hurt us. He wouldn’t shout if he didn’t care about us.”

So I learned that true love means yelling. You don’t truly love someone if you’re quiet about the misdeeds of the people you love. When I grew up and started loving others, I always looked out for strong energy in men.

“Will this one yell? No, he’s too quiet to yell. I can’t love him.”

I said no to guys who looked like they couldn’t hurt a fly and fell for those who had fire in their voices. Lesly had other women, but he was able to yell at me anytime I caught him. To me, that was love. He cared too much to choose me even when there were others.

Then I got pregnant. He didn’t say anything to me. He came home with pills, put one in my mouth, poured water into my mouth and said, “Swallow it. We can’t have that child.”

I tucked the pill under my tongue and swallowed the water so hard it made a gulping sound. He gave the rest of the drugs to me and directed me on how I should use them. I lied that I had used them. Meanwhile, I had told my mom about it, and she had warned me not to destroy the pregnancy.

Dad was no longer in the picture. When I was in SHS, he followed another woman and travelled out of town. He didn’t come back again.

It was my mom who shielded me from Lesly so I could nurse the pregnancy to safety. Lesly got so mad that he nearly attacked my mom. I smiled and called it true love. Mom said I was mad. Lesly left me because I had kept the pregnancy.

When that relationship came to an end, my life nearly came to an end with it. I had a daughter, but there was no father to yell at her like my dad did to me. Anytime I missed Lesly, I only recalled the rough days when he would hold me by the neck and throw me away because I challenged him.

When my girl was three, my aunt came for me to go and work with her.

Through that job, I met many men. I treated them the way they treated me. They were not serious, so I was also not serious with them. They had a problem with the fact that I had a child.

One day, Felix walked into the shop and took my number. I told him I had a child. He smiled.

“I also have a child,” he said.

I replied, “So you want a mother for your child, right?”

On our first date, I went with my daughter. He asked, “You were serious when you said you had a child?”

I nodded while sipping Coke through a straw. He ended up playing with my girl all night, and when we were leaving, he carried her on his shoulder.

I asked him, “You said you had a child. Where is he? Or is it a she?”

He answered, “It’s a she, and I’m carrying her on my shoulder.”

He didn’t look like he would yell. I didn’t see any fierceness in him, so I said no to his proposal. He kept coming. He made a friend in my mom. He made my daughter call him Dad.

For close to a year, I kept saying no to him. We had kissed, we had been intimate, we had spent several nights together, but I still said no to a relationship because I didn’t trust that he loved me enough.

One day, I told him, “I give you everything you want. Just enjoy and go. What else do you need?”

That day, he was very loud, speaking from a place of anger and frustration.

“Why are you this stubborn? Who did this to you? It’s been a year. Why don’t you grow up?”

Two years ago, we got married, and that anger I saw in him that day has never occurred again. It occurred to me immediately how broken I was and how much I needed to fix myself to see the light.

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I learned that my mom stayed with our dad because of us. It wasn’t love that made her stay, but rather self-hatred that made her stay that long. Through it all, I’ve learned that love isn’t loud or violent. I had to unlearn what I knew, what made me drop my standards so low, and learn what love really is. I’m glad I did.

This one isn’t perfect. We still fight. We still argue, but it’s different from what my mom endured. We say sorry. We talk about our shortcomings and agree to disagree.

It’s working, but when we need to make a change, we will. There’s always space for growth.

—Fanny

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