This is the first part of a series of stories detailing the lives of five young women who have been through an avalanche of misfortunes that shaped their very existence into silhouettes of grey and ash. Some are fictitious, others aren't. My personal story will be included at the later parts.
PRINCESS (The First Part)
Her father died when he was in his final year at the university, shot dead by cultists on the eve of his final exams, leaving behind her 17 year old mother who was already 2 months pregnant with her.
The deluge that followed her young mother’s life after her father’s demise swept away every shard of hope that may have been littered on the floor of her mum’s existence. The animosity for the unborn child began long before she was born. A girl already rejected by her grand parents and forced to be born into a world stifled with the acrid smell of nemesis from so many bad decisions. She was named PRINCESS 2 weeks after she was birthed but that was a far cry from her reality for so many times, in her first few days of life, when she squealed for the tender care of her mother, the young woman looked away at the wall and rained bitter heavy tears.
Princess grew up slowly, confronted daily with the blistering heat of her mother’s discontent. For a little girl saddled with so much innocence, she never could understand why her mother hated her so much, she never could understand why her mother attacked her with the fury of thousand wounded lions for little mistakes she did and made her cry countless times to bed on an empty stomach. But how could she? How could she know her young mother blamed her for ruining the semblance of life she had had. When Her pregnancy had caused the young woman to drop out of school and to live with the perpetual disappointment of her parents. She was a taboo, her father had died at the really young age of 21 and she had had to bear the crippling burden of paying for everything, of living each day hating herself for being born, hating her mother for not opting to terinate the pregnancy.
But love dealt us a cruel hand sometimes, for in Princess’s face, her mother could see her handsome father and maybe, it was with this comfort, the young woman had decided against all odds, to birth the pretty little girl.
As princess grew older, she and her mother grew farther and farther apart emotionally and lived like two strangers in the same house. She was forbidden to see her grandparents and thus, a great chasm of blinding emptyness grew inside her.
An emptyness she longed to feel with love – love of any kind or semblance. And since her mother was a slab of cold hard granite walking in the skin of a human, Princess knew this love could never ever be found in her immediate family.
By the time she turned 16, she was indeed a princess physically. Blessed with beauty and grace beyond that of her peers, Princess attracted the attention of men and boys. Such attention was new to her and she happily welcomed it, embraced it and stoke it’s fires till it blazed into a raging inferno.
By her 16th birthday, she was sexually molested by her much older lesbian neighbour, countless times and as the false ecstacy of forbidden pleasures sipped it’s pungent juices down Princess’s throat, she lost all cares to the wind and delved deeper into the false security that was immorality.
She began dating various boys at the same time and indulging in wild sex parties and orgies. She became a heavy drinker and a heavy smoker. Her mother rarely bothered about her whereabouts, deep inside, Princess yearned for that maternal love and even she could not deny her rebellion was a pained attempt at trying to win her mother’s affection and attention but the more she tried, the more distant her mother grew. Her education was long forgotten and long gone and she became just a pretty face without a brain.
By the time she was 18, Princess had had 12 abortions and had been into rehab 4 times. Her mother drove her out of the house and she took solace in the apartment of two male friends who used that opportunity to molest her sexually every night. Princess was done fighting and had given up trying to defend her existence. She let life take it’s course. And it was in the home of these beasts, she would have a flicker of sanity restored to her once again, a ray of hope shining bright through the darkened tunnel that was her pseudo-existence.
This ray of hope came in the form of Tony, a young boy who acccompanied his elder brother to come fix their plumbing issues one sunny Saturday.
Tony was 21, just the age her dad was when he lost his life so untimely. Whe he first saw her, she looked so skinny that he was compelled to ask if she was ill, when she responded in the negative, he asked if she was hungry which she replied affirmatively.Tony got her a generous portion of food from the nearby canteen and gifted her a sum of 2,000 naira. He asked for her number and that was how they would begin their friendship.
Tony was caught up with the sparkle in her eyes, for even in her vegetative state, her beauty never left her face and something else tugged at his consciousnesss, something that told him the young lady had been through so much in her life that she may very well have detached rom reality. From somewhere deep inside, he began to feel an inexplicable warmth for this young girl. Her strength was so endearing, he found himself thinking about her far into the night.
He came around often but she was always never around and the next time he would see her, (a month later) she was hurdled up by the stair well, crying bitterly. On closer inspection, he discoverd she had been raped by her male roomates and thrown out of the house. Now she had nowhere to go. By this time, Tony was already in love with her but he hadn’t told her yet. He didn’t live alone, he lived with his older brother and ofcourse, his brother would never approve of a stranger picked from the streets taking up refuge in their house.
With the little money he had at the moment, The young boy rented a hotel room for her for a few days and during this time, he was up and about, trying to raise money to find her a more permanent place. In the evenings, they spent time together, taking walks and having heartfelt conversations and it was in the course of these strolls that Tony would get her full story. He felt even stronger for her after hearing the sad tale. By the end of her stay in the hotel, he had gotten enough money to rent her an apartment for 6 months.
And then, they would begin a relationship, a relationship that would open Princess’s eyes to the possibility of true and unadulterated love, a love that was selfless and pure that it threatened to make her lose her mind. For Tony would mould her into a woman she had never thought she had the power to become, woman far above the reach of her wiildest imaginations, a woman she had long buried, a woman she longed for subconsciously.... and each time she asked him why he loved her so much, Tony had no answer.
He had no answer because he was a product of his own demons too and yes, like Princess, he had been forged from the recesses of muds thrown at the worst of humanity. So in a way, they were more alike than they had ever imagined, than they had ever expected and like the saying goes…..
Two wrongs never ever make a right.
