LIFE IS just not fair. I guess you hear this almost every day and probably would not get my point until you hear my story.
My life has been a series of challenges for as long as I can remember, but my biggest challenge came when I became a 19-year-old single mother in every sense.
Today I live with the knowledge that in this life you do not always get a fair break.
My feelings came to the fore when I had my most life-changing experience, to say the least. The death of any family member is always hard to take, but the death of my daughter’s father just six months after I had given birth was devastating.
Having to raise a child was already a task of great concern, but having to do it alone was unthinkable.
As a new mother learning many new things for the first time, I was happily looking forward to sharing all these new experiences with her father. In dismay, I watched my daughter’s father being buried along with all my dreams of giving her a family and a normal childhood.
What was even more frustrating was that the person responsible for killing her father was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to six years in jail.
Life isn’t fair
My guess is that he is now back on the streets walking freely while my daughter longs for a father in her life. Again, I say that life’s not fair because he is living happily while my daughter longs for a father, one she will never know.
It has not been an easy ride since then, and the last few years have gotten even harder. When my daughter was a toddler and did not understand or care about a father it was bearable, but as she grew daily before my eyes, wisdom came along with age and a plethora of questions started. It became increasingly difficult to keep her from realising that something was missing from her life.
It was easy at first as she did not ask about her father, but as she gets older and grows in understanding, she longs for that all-important part of her life.
As she hears her friends at school talking about their fathers, it makes her sad; it makes me sad too because I don’t know how to be a father or how to do or say things the way a father would.
There is a void in our lives that cannot be filled. I have failed dreams because I cannot create for my daughter the type of life I have always wanted her to have. I feel her pain when I see my nieces and nephews interacting with their fathers. My heart hurts that she will never be able to truly experience life fully.
School has been rough, with fretting and teasing, and she acts up at school and often lacks focus. Counselling sessions have been of little help and I cannot help but wonder whether she would have been doing much better if her father were here.
I cannot do it by myself and though I try my hardest, I still seem to fail miserably at offering her a well balanced family upbringing. Though I have been in other relationships with men, none of them has ever been willing to assume the role of father in its truest sense as they can never be her father.
Attached to me
My daughter never seems to appreciate anyone I meet, and I try not to bring too many men around her. She is now so attached to me that if I try to talk to anyone she makes it an issue. Late last year she left a note on the wardrobe for me to see when I got home from work. It stated that she wanted to see her father. I tried to assure her that just because she didn’t have a father that it didn’t mean that she was any less than her friends or the other children at her school. That discussion didn’t get too far as she became emotional. Since then she has been against further discussions about her father because it makes her want to cry.
Ready to experiment
I know that she is approaching a time in her life where she will soon be ready to experiment, and in a sense come into her own as she tries to find her identity. This scares me. I am afraid that I will not be able to handle this situation on my own.
Even though the support network from my family is great, I still cannot fill the void her father left and it is just not fair. Her father’s parents have been non-existent in her life; she may get a call at Christmas or on birthdays but nothing substantial. I take her to visit them sometimes but it makes no difference; they can never fill the role that only her natural father would have played.
Sometimes I wonder how different my daughter’s life and mine would have been if not for that fateful day when he died. Would he have provided her with the love she so desperately needs? Or, would he have done like some dads and shy away from his responsibilities?
Whatever the answer, I still think it would be much better to have a father than none at all, after all they say a bad father is better than none at all.Life’s not fair but I have learnt to roll with the punches and live by the mantra that everything happens for a reason. Maybe God is shielding me from something that I could not see.
They say everything happens for a reason and I guess God knows best, but try explaining that to my now ten-year-old daughter.