WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, my grandmother used to tell me that “the Lord never places more on a person than they can bear”.
Given what I have had to deal with throughout my life, I swear the Lord must regard me as a glutton for punishment as I had to struggle for every little thing that I wanted.
I am not trying to be funny when I say this, as you shall see. But I can say that from the time my grandmother’s eyes closed a few years ago, I had life real hard and most of the times, through no fault of my own.
The first thing that happened to me occurred a few days after Gran was buried. My uncle, my grandmother’s oldest son and a drunkard, got control of the house and told my mother, who is his sister but from a different father, that she had to move out.
He did that to spite my mother as he never liked her or her father. He always felt that Gran had chased away his father for my mother’s father. Because of this, he never got a chance to get to know his dad, who left Barbados shortly after that to work in England and he died over there.
On the other hand, Mummy’s father married Gran, had two girls – my mother and aunt – before he got killed in a road accident. As my uncle was Gran’s eldest and was working at the time of my grandfather’s death, she put his name on the house papers so she could get money to expand it.
But as the years went by, he started to drink and became a useless drunk who could not keep a job.
Destroying his life
While he was destroying his life, mum and my aunt learned well. My aunt became a nurse and went to America. Mummy worked as a secretary, got married, had me, and then had to run from my father, who cheated on her and would beat her when she complained.
That’s how we came to be living with Gran for just under three years before she died. And that’s when we came into conflict with my uncle.
When Gran was alive she used to put him in his place and she allowed him to know that was his sister and he should not treat her so badly. In fact, she used to tell him that his anger towards Mummy was because he was jealous that she made something of her life, while he continued to waste his.
With Gran gone he was now free to get on as he liked – and he did. So when he told Mummy that we had to leave his house and she refused, he called the police.
They advised my mother to leave, given that the house was his and he was uncompromising in his attitude toward her. However, they told him that he should at least give Mummy a month to find somewhere to live, as it was unreasonable to just spring a demand like that on anyone.
He didn’t like that one bit, but agreed.
But mum could not afford to leave, and so began a near four-month battle with my uncle, with the police being called in no less than seven times in that period to settle heated noises that erupted between us.
To run us out, my uncle stooped low. He used to play the radio and television loud late at night when we wanted to sleep. He would always be cursing in the house and bringing over his friends to drink until late in the night. Then he started keeping his dog in the house because he knew mummy was allergic to dog fur.
The combination of that fur, the dust in the house, and the stress of living in a quarrelsome environment caused her to have a severe asthma attack.
After that episode which caused her to spend three days in hospital, we moved in at a cousin. I was 14 at the time and mum’s cousin had two disgusting sons, aged 14 and 16 years old.
To make a long story short, they started sexually abusing me and threatened to beat me if I said anything. That went on for nearly three months before I found the courage to fight back.
I told my teacher who contacted mummy, and after she heard my story she confronted the boys who admitted, after initial denials, what they had done.
Though I still look back at that as the worst thing ever to have happened to me as I felt powerless, at least it brought Mummy and me close.
After that we moved again, but this time mum rented a house for her and me. But making ends meet was difficult, given her salary.
I suspect that was one of the main reasons why she agreed to have her boyfriend move in with us after about seven months. At first he was okay, and I liked him a lot because he made Mummy happy.
That all changed one morning in my long vacation after I came out of the shower. He grabbed me and raped me. This time I told my mum, though he apologised and said how sorry he was after.
Mummy kicked him out. She never called in the police because of the publicity that would come from a court case – so he got away with hurting me too.
A few years later just after my 22nd birthday, I met my first boyfriend. To me he was everything and we became really close. We became so tight that eventually I moved in with him about five months after we met. I felt I had found the man of my dreams and someone I could trust. So I told him about some of the stuff I went through.
Big mistake
That was a big mistake because it seems instead of making him cherish me more, it made him despise me as thereafter he started treating me with disrespect. I noticed how things were going and when I challenged him on it he told me how worthless I was and beat me up. I had to flee from that apartment and go back living with Mummy.
For nearly four years afterwards I had nothing to do with men. Even when I thought the person was genuine, I did not give them the time of day. That was until I met my last boyfriend. We talked and went out together as just friends for about three years. He was such a gentleman that I couldn’t resist wanting to be with him. So eventually we got involved and within a few months I again ventured into a live-with situation.
For the last two-and-a-half years we had a great relationship. I felt really secure, because of his considerate attitude. But it was all a charade, and I only found out how meaningless it was in the worst possible way.
Again to make a long story short, my man turned out to like men more than me. I only found that out because one of his “liming buddies” in a fit of drunken anger one day told me I should leave my boyfriend to him to love. He said that as long as I was in the picture, my boyfriend would never be what he really was born to be.
That devastated me to say the least. But it has left me wondering “Why me?” What have I done in some other life that I have been so afflicted?
I wish I could get a good man, but after what I have gone through, I don’t think I can ever trust another man again.