Growing up, I always believed my mother didn’t like me. We were a family of four; me, my younger sister, my mother, and my father. My father was always busy with work so we spent a lot of time with my mother. For some reason, she treated me more harshly than she did my sister. Every little thing I did wrong would warrant a torrent of insults and beatings. She was constantly telling me, “You don’t know how to do anything in the house. You can’t even cook. What sort of girl are you?” Sometimes too she would say, “You are so uncouth. You don’t know how to behave like a lady.” Meanwhile, she never taught me how to cook or behave like a lady. All she did was to judge and criticize me mercilessly.

There was a point when she packed my bags and sent me to live with one of her relatives. According to her, “You are too wild. You need a strong hand to break you so you can be tamed. I have tried my best but I can’t do it anymore. That’s why I’m sending you to live with my cousin. She will mould you into a decent human being.” Although my mother and I never got along well, I was sad to be separated from her and my sister. I cried a lot when she sent me away. I kept wondering, “Why is it that my mother allows my sister to get away with the very things she beats me for doing? Sometimes my sister even does worse things than I do, but my mother never reacts to them. She just turns a blind eye to everything.” And though I felt this way, I never envied my sister or harboured any dislike for her. It was my mother I sought to understand.

Amid all of this, there was a man in my mother’s life. He always came to our house in my father’s absence. He spent a lot of time alone with her. She told us this man was our uncle, yet he never showed up at any family meetings. There were a few occasions when he met with my dad. And all those times, I saw with my very eyes that this man was afraid of my dad. This made me conclude that he wasn’t a member of my father’s family. I also noticed that my dad never referred to the man as, “Akonta”, a term my father used for all my mother’s brothers and male cousins. It means “brother-in-law”. So I concluded that the man wasn’t my uncle. I didn’t know his position in my mum’s life but I just assumed they were friends.

Sometimes my mother went on trips with this man. They had sleepovers too. He would either sleep at our place or my mum would go home with him and return the next morning. When I was living with my mother’s relative, she visited me once in a while. Sometimes she came along with the man. Members of my mother’s family knew about her friendship with the man but no one talked about him to my father or in front of him, so we the kids also never talked about him. However, when I was getting older I started to understand the dynamics of male and female relationships. I learned that people could be friends, and they could be more than friends.

I learned how friends behaved toward each other and how lovers behaved toward each other. I measured all relationships around me with this new knowledge. That’s how I came to the conclusion that my mother and her man were not merely friends. They were more. And I knew that their relationship was wrong. But nobody asked me so I kept it to myself. Then one day, my father visited me. He looked very hurt and so sad. He was the only one in my family who never made me feel unwanted, so seeing him in that state broke my heart. I asked him, “Daddy, why do you look so sad?” I could see traces of tears in his eyes when I asked that question. He shook his head and said, “You are too young to understand these things, but your mother and I fighting. People are saying things to me. They said she brings another man home when I travel for work. I don’t believe it. Because if that was t the case you girls would have told me.” Then he looked at me and asked, “If mummy was bringing a man home in my absence, you would have told me, wouldn’t you? Because secrets like this hurt daddy, you know?”

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I was always attached to my father, and I hated the thought that my mother’s secrets were hurting him. I wanted to wipe the pain off his face and bring happiness into his eyes again. So I spilt the tea. Every nitty-gritty detail of the man’s presence in our life that I could remember. After telling my father everything, he praised me. He said I was a good girl. He said, “You did the right thing by telling me everything. Now, daddy won’t be sad anymore.” This made me happy. I believed I had done something good. But the happiness disappeared from my system when my mother came to scold me. She said a lot of bad things to me. She told me, “You are such a terrible child. Who asked you to tell your father all those things about me and your uncle? He didn’t tell me it was you but I know it’s you. If he leaves me it’s your fault. Remember that.” It wasn’t the words she spoke that cut me, it was the venom in those words. I could feel how much she hated me.

I felt torn. In an attempt to make my father happy, I had earned my mother’s hate. She wasn’t even the only one who couldn’t stand the mere sight of me. All her family members shunned my company. I was among them but I felt so alone. After a lot of back and forth, my parents got a divorce. As was expected, my father took me away while my mother kept my sister. It was heartbreaking but I was also relieved. Living with my father was the happiest moments of my childhood. My mother on the other hand never missed an opportunity to remind me that I cost her her marriage and that she hated me. We never fixed our relationship. To date, we don’t have any mother-daughter bond. It’s not as if I didn’t try. One day I called her and asked her, “Whatever I did to offend you when I was a child, find it in your heart to forgive me.” She answered, “You never did anything wrong so there is nothing to forgive.”

When I became independent, I paid her and my sister a visit. But my mother wasn’t welcoming so I didn’t have the heart to visit them again. When it was time for me to get married, I informed her about the details and let her know how much it would mean to me if she came. However, neither she nor any of her family members showed up at my wedding. My happy day was tainted by their absence. And I couldn’t feel completely happy knowing that my mother still bore a grudge against me. After the wedding ceremony, I found out that my mother’s feelings for me were not a grudge. It was pure hate. People who asked her, “Why didn’t show up at your daughter’s wedding?” got a taste of her hatred for me. She spoke ill of me to them and let them know that I am the reason my father left her.

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She refuses to admit that she cheated on him and he found out. She even took my dad to court, for leaving her without cause. Thankfully, my dad won the case. Right now, I have given up hope of fixing my relationship with her. I tried and she rejected me several times so I’m done. My major problem now is my sister. Because we were both caught up in our parents’  problems, it created a rift between us. I want more than anything to fix my relationship with her so that we can be involved in each other’s lives. She is the only aunt my kids are going to have, and I don’t want her to be a faraway aunt. How do I go about this? I don’t want to incite any more trouble from my mother while I try to bond with my sister. Please I need your advice. I’m going through a lot right now, so be kind with your words.

–Luna

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