I AM SCARED about my future. Quite frankly, the way things are going for me today, I can’t see how my life will ever be better.
As far as I can see, unless I win the lotto, I will forever be renting, barely having enough to eat, having nothing really fancy to wear, unable to afford overseas travel, and open to people trying to take advantage of my poor state.
Right now I am unemployed and trying to raise two children on my own. Their fathers give me nothing for them. Even though I have them in court, they don’t put any money there. I went to both of them recently about this and each said he was not working and bellyached about how tough things were.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected any more from them because both are cut from the same cloth – they love themselves more than anything else, even their children.
So now my children and I have to depend on handouts from Government. The Welfare Department pays for my light, water and rent. And they even give me a voucher to take to the supermarket. I thank God for that help.
What really hurts me, though, is that the kindness of these people is the only bright spot in my life. There is nobody else I can call on – nobody! I have no mother, don’t know anything about my father, and I have few relatives that I know. In any case, they consider me beneath them, and not good enough to associate with.
Of course, when I was younger and they needed their house cleaned they would send and call me and give me a few dollars for working the whole day. But that was when my mother was alive. She used to encourage me to give up my weekends and work for them. She always used to say that you never know when you’ll need people, so I should always seek to do a good turn.
Well, I did my good turn, but now it is time for them to help me, they have turned their backs on me.
It’s the same with my children’s fathers. I was never “wutless”. My first child’s father was the first man in my life, and the second one’s father was the second one in my life – so I never used to knock about.
These men knew this. Yet they took advantage of my honesty, loyalty and trust. They used me, abused me, then dumped me. That is why I want nothing to do with any man again. That is why, too, I put them in court for maintenance. They have to do what is right by their children.
I can’t do anything about them having me and then leaving me for somebody else. But I will never let them forget that they dropped their seed – they must pay for that.
It is not that I want to get back at them. It is just that I believe men in Barbados refuse to take responsibility for their actions. They cannot be allowed to continue to have children all over the country and then go along as if nothing has happened. If they impregnate a woman, they should be man enough to pay the bills to raise the child.
Think about it: when a man runs and leaves a woman with a child, what does he expect that woman to do to get support to feed his child, especially in these tough times when there’s no work?
Every woman is not strong enough to resist accepting money from men for sex in order to survive. Based on what I go through, I know that well.
You meet a man, and from the time he hears you are not working he comes on to you. He is ready to give you money because he is looking for sex. From the time you give in to him, the money flows – but only as long as the sex does. And because in his mind you are no more than a whore, he expects to get as much sex as he wants whenever he wants it, and expects to be able to put his thing wherever in your body he wants to.
And if you don’t allow him to do whatever he wants, the money slows, then disappears. Or, as in the case of a girl I met, he accuses you of having another man and beats you. He does this because he regards you as his property – after all, he is spending money on you.
That is a man for you. That is why I don’t want another one.
But as the Government can’t do everything for you for as long as you need the help, you have to depend on someone. And that is my dilemma. How can I and single women like me survive on our own?
That is the tragedy of what is going on in Barbados today. And that is why I am so concerned about my future.
