Favour Okoi
@favourokoi771864
1 year ago

#stories
I LOST

“ Tuehhh! you do not say those kind of things about family” Papa said almost screaming, he turned facing mother and directed his index finger towards her, screaming “woman, teach your daughter morals or you’ll end up begging men to impregnate her without dowry and none will accept.

Mother retorted almost immediately, “If you do not protect my child then I’ll teach her to protect herself” the hard way, she added.

She stretched her right arms and dragged me out of papa’s hut as soon as her hand could get a firm group of me
I still hadn’t figured why papa did not want me to talk about the painful things uncle Uchendu did to my body in that little hut

I didn’t know if I felt hatred for Papa or Uncle Uche but I knew my heart was burning with rage and it was for either of them

The lust I grew to know from this childhood trauma that got swept under the rug of preservation of self, image, identity and family. My family name was at stake, but so was my mental health and estimation of self, but nobody cared as much as what uncle Uche did never made it to the news. I was defiled, but not discarded as he kept creeping into my room night after night almost at about thesame time my parents were snoring. I guess he knew that or they knew and only played deaf to avert the brunt of this ill-fated situation on his conscience

Shhhhh! Don’t tryna scream, Uncle Uche said, and this is me wondering why I’d be stupid enough to waste my strength screaming instead of preserving it for the deep thrustings uncle Uche was here for, yet again. I changed posture, laid on my back facing my old rusted roof, because this is the posture uncle Uche had taught me

He pulled his short, crept into my bed and held my little body down with his sweaty underarm almost suffocating the miseries of life out of my already miserable little being. At this point I only wished he’d be done sooner than normal because I was tired of wishing to be heard, I was tired of hoping for a listening ear. The only thing I wished these days is that he finishes quickly and just so my room smells a bit better than it does when he thrusts all of his life’s problems down my not so well developed vagina which he now calls “Home”.

Vagina fistula, something I came to learn after he left me ruptured and misappropriated before age 15. I was blamed for it all, they said I erred the gods and it’s why I drip and ooze of infested scent that magnetize flies . I’m 23 now, but I still bed wet, it’s not of my making but uncle Uche’s. He didn’t just defile my system but damaged my body.

So, I sat here thinking of everything I’ve done wrong and I just realized that my only wrong was being born into a society where a woman’s voice is too wrong to be heard and being raised by a father who protects family ties at the expense of his child’s life. I thought of everybody that failed me, papa knew he had done me wrong, but nahh! I don’t expect a man of his caliber to breach his status in apologies to me. I knew mama tried to help me, but she didn’t try enough

This society raise males to be strong, hardworking, skillful and even make a living out of talents, but women are raised to be feeble and submissive only. Would’ve called it pathetic but my life is more pathetic.

I thought of how papa said I should be taught morals if not I won’t get a man to marry me, of which mama did teach me to be quiet in the face of everything uncle Uche did, and I still won’t get a man anyways because I stink of Uche’s sins so badly

I lost anyways, I lost even with the morals

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@benjaminolawuyi079090 @dorcaschukwuma164034