Letters day 42: the missing father
Sometimes I wake me up and I feel defeated. No matter how strong I want to be and no matter how much I try there are days when I just break down and cry. I want to reach out to someone and give me a shoulder to cry on but I am all alone. It’s a cry that comes from within but because I am so weak I have no strength to project the cry. I am just a child within that needs to be held. I look around me and all I see is blurred faces, no one sees me. I am just a child without a name. I wish I knew who my father was, and then maybe people would take me seriously; maybe they would call me by my name. I am just a face because when my mother got pregnant my father wanted nothing to do with her. She is a woman who tries to give me all that she can but people still call her names behind her back.
She is just a woman, who other women do not like to talk to, they are afraid she might take their husbands. Mothers do not like their sons associating with her because they say she is a loose woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child. They never stop to ask her story. So she cries herself to sleep in her loneliness, just whishing for someone to hold her and love her. She is not a loose woman she is just a beautiful woman who fell in love with the wrong man. This kind of man, who is my father, skips out at the first sign of responsibility. He is the man who had his way with my mother and gave her thorns and ashes. He has gone his way and living it up and my mother and I live in poverty. He makes no effort to correct the story or help out. I am sure one day when God opens doors for me and blesses me he will want to claim me as his son. Even when I was born he did not want his name on my birth certificate because he was two timing my mother. His family were hostile to my mother. They made her sleep on the floor when she was pregnant and she never got enough to eat. They went around making her a mockery in the neighbourhood. She was just a girl who wanted to be accepted. They made her life unbearable. When I was born, there was nothing to clothe me except hand me downs but my father was well up. I cry when I look at the way my mother is. She shares with me her past and her dreams. She cries a million tears within our walls when she thinks I am asleep. The way she holds me in her arms breaks me inside because I know she wants all the hugs she has never had, and I let her hold me. When I grow and find my way, how will she sleep the night?
She is just a beautiful woman and I pray every day a man will come with a special anointing from the heavens to wipe her tears away. I am a child without a name but I belong to this woman and I love her, in her rags, broken teeth and all