In my next life, I would still choose my mother to be my mum but I would change a lot of things about her first. My whole life, I have never met anyone who stays with an abusive partner and worships him the way my mother does her husband. Sometimes I try to understand her but there is no way I will tolerate a quarter of the things my mother puts up with.

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According to the stories she told me, my father deceived her. He hid the fact that he was married from her when they met. Even when she got pregnant, he still didn’t tell her the truth. It was when he tried to marry her after I was born that my mother’s family found out he was already married with three children.

Although he couldn’t marry my mum, my dad didn’t abandon me. He is not a saint but he is a kind man. In my opinion, my mother’s life would have turned out differently if she had ended up with him. There was nothing I lacked when I was growing up. Even when I completed school and got a job, he continued to take care of me until I got married.

Unlike my father, I have no praise for the man my mother married. I was in Class 5 when he came into our lives. At the time, my mother had gotten an opportunity to travel abroad. She passed up that chance and married this man instead. Even as a child, I tried to talk her out of it but she did what she believed was best for her. That choice plunged her into a life of misery.

I witnessed him beat her over little things, insult her family, and humiliate everyone around her. To this day, I hate the man for putting her through all this pain, but then again, who is enabling him? My mum. What you tolerate in a relationship is what continues.

Ever since I got married two years ago, she has been supportive. She comes over on weekends to help me with the baby while I further my master’s program.

Just last week, I came home and found her on the phone. The man was insulting her, just because she called him to see how he was doing. He said she was stupid for disturbing his sleep, among other things. This man went on and on until the airtime finished. Can you believe my mum called him back so he could continue insulting her? She was crying the entire time.

I told her not to call him again. “Even if he is the one who calls you, don’t pick up.”

I took the phone from her just to make sure she wouldn’t talk to him. A few minutes later, I got up to go take care of my baby. I wasn’t gone for long. Imagine my shock when I returned to find my mother on the phone, apologising to him. I felt so embarrassed.

She has two children with this man, yet he doesn’t take care of them. They live in my grandfather’s house—the same grandfather the man once pushed to the ground and attempted to beat when he asked why he wasn’t taking care of my mother and the children. It’s as if he does no wrong in her eyes. She doesn’t even listen to anyone except him.

Growing up, I suffered bullying from extended relatives because of the way the man treated her. “Look at you, you’ll end up just like your mother,” they would say.

She knew the things they said behind her back yet, whenever those same relatives gave her gifts, she would lie on the ground before them to show her gratitude.

I watched all of that, and her husband’s abuse, and decided that I won’t be like her. I fought very hard to be where I am today. What I don’t understand is why she never wanted a better life for herself.

Before you say I probably turned out well because my father loved me, well my mother put me through a difficult childhood. Every time her husband beat her, she unleashed her anger on me. I didn’t have it easy, trust me. Sometimes she’d curse me that my younger siblings would do better than me in life. Yes, my own mother bullied me. But that didn’t stop me from wanting a better life for myself.

If anything, I was determined to be everything nobody expected me to amount to. Now, I have forgiven her for the past. My siblings are innocent in all this so I am the one taking care of them. I have taught myself to rise above the experiences that sought to break me.

I wish she had done the same thing for herself. Instead of being a victim of an abusive marriage, she could have walked out and turned her life around but no, she shackles herself to the whims and caprices of her abuser.

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Sometimes I wonder if the man used juju on her. If not, then how does a mother allow herself to be so unloved and still choose to stay where she’s not wanted? She keeps sacrificing not just her happiness, but her children’s as well. My little sisters cry after every conversation with their father, because he insults them as if they are beggars asking for his help. Yet, she forces them to talk to him.

She is not setting a good example for them, in terms of dealing with toxic people. That day he insulted her at my place and she cried, I consoled her and advised her not to allow herself to be treated this way. She woke up the next morning eager to call him.

Three Months After Our Breakup, He Got Married

It’s sad o. I may not be old, but I know this is not love. I have decided that I won’t talk again. I’m stressed. Anytime she complains about how he mistreats her, I just smile and tell her, “You welcomed it with open hands, so enjoy it.”

I’m done crying more than the bereaved. Let me enjoy my sweet husband while she enjoys her bittersweet one—if there’s any sweet in him at all.

—Blue 

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