Shattered....

Chapter 5

One Sunday morning. I was with my grandma and we were preparing Sunday lunch and she received a call from my mom. I  didn't realize that my grandma would tell her about me dating someone and always going out with that someone. I was just only helping her out to cook. She came back to the kitchen and she asked me something that shook the crap out of me. "Which one of Irene's sons are you dating?". "Uhm....... Tlhokomelo". And that was day I saw my life turn upside down, the day I invited five people into my life.. Pain, anger, regret, hurt and guilt. I always knew that this day would come but not so soon. As soon as I mentioned Tlhokomelo's name my grandma freaked out. She insulted me and told me very horrible words. Words that still keep playing in my mind even at this moment as I'm reliving what happened that Sunday. She threatened to disown me if I continued to see Tlhokomelo and even went to the extent of going to his place and confronting him. She even wanted to go his parents' place and tell them to tell thier son to break up with me. She said so many horrible things about Tlhokomelo's family, about how promiscuous his younger sister was and how dysfunctional his family is. I was excruciatingly devastated.
Everything happened so fast in one day

She even went on to tell her sister and my other cousins about me and embarrass me in front of the whole world. I was now a black sheep and I was now considered as promiscuous and uncouth. My grandma and I alongside with my mother fought for three whole days over a guy who has done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong. They judged him harshly simply because of his background... I mean who does that?....and why would you do that?...I felt very foolish and stupid. I regret the moment I told my mother who my boyfriend was, I should've kept quiet. Even so, she had no right to tell anyone who my boyfriend was.. I was the one who was supposed to tell the whole family who my boyfriend was, not my mother. I was the laughing stock of the family. What pained me is that she was supposed to take my side as her daughter and not judge Tlhokomelo because of how he grew up and what other people think of him. There are so many guys who have terrible backgrounds, but they don't let where they come from define them. I couldn't sleep for three days. My heart was always pounding, I was always scared... Scared of what might happen next. I was extremely stressed and anxious. I prayed to God to give me strength to get through this terrible ordeal. Imagine your own grandma calling you names and insulting you, can't it get any worse. My cousins were there for me through this terrible experience, they never judged me because I was always telling them about the kind of guy Tlhokomelo was irregardless of how he grew up and everything else. They knew he was a genuine guy. That same week on Sunday, one of my uncles (My uncle Joe) literally came and fetched me and I went to live with him and his girlfriend (Katlego) for two weeks. What's funny is that my uncle was not hard on me, he didn't even bring up what happened everything was just normal to him. Initially, he thought that my mom and my grandma are overreacting for sending me away. My uncle's girlfriend also thought the same thing, and she was there for me, I told her everything that happened and I felt like she gets where I'm coming from. I admit that I did lie about not sleeping with him and about seeing my period last month. I thought that I was protecting Tlhokomelo by lying, only to find out that the harder I try to lie and the harder I try to keep it together is only making things worse, I was digging a grave that was near the Earth's core. I didn't even realize that I was inflicting so much pain on my myself. My mother kept on asking me to take a pregnancy test but I just kept on denying. I just thought that this whole facade was going to pass on its own.

About five weeks later.... I discovered that I was pregnant. That was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me. The night before I discovered that I was pregnant, my mom and I argued about the recent events that happened. I broke down in tears and I told her everything. I thought that she was going to take my side and understand even though I've betrayed her trust and the whole family at that. But I was also hurt and scared, because she didn't want to listen to me or understand where I'm coming from. I'd never seen her so disappointed in me and so betrayed. She felt like I was going astray (By the way.. I'm not going to mention my mother's name) the whole family felt betrayed by me and they were all so disappointed in me. My mother asked me what I wanted to do... Am I keeping the pregnancy or not.. And I told her I can't be pregnant or be seen pregnant. I wasn't ready for to have a baby and I don't want a baby at this age. My whole family had already made it clear that they were not going to support my pregnancy and I felt like I couldn't handle being pregnant. It's my first year of college and I can't drop out and I can't put my whole life on hold for someone that I didn't even plan to have. I just felt like if I kept the pregnancy, I was not going to love and take care of the baby the way it deserves and Tlhokomelo wasn't even talking to me at that time. He didn't even know that I was pregnant. I decided to terminate my pregnancy and I did. I did it without telling Tlhokomelo because I knew if I told him that I'm pregnant and that I'm terminating, he was going to stop me. For so many nights I struggled to sleep and to just live my life my life normally after terminating the pregnancy. I battled the emotions of guilt, anger, hurt, pain and regret. I even stopped praying. I just wondered to myself, how did it get to this point and why did I allow it to get to this point. I felt like there was a deep void in my heart that needed to be closed up. I felt like the pain that I was going through was going to torture me and torment for a very long time. I didn't even know myself anymore, I was losing myself. I was watching my life slowly fall apart. I was stuck emotionally and mentally... I needed to be moved to another world or universe. Some days later I started realizing that what I did doesn't make me a bad person. I just need to gather the strength, the knowledge and the courage to move on from this terrible ordeal. Every girl out there goes through some sort of pain and she eventually heals and moves on. I felt so broken and shattered, like there was nothing that could fix me. I bottled up all of my emotions because I felt like it was useless talking to anyone about how I feel especially my family, I felt like they were still going to judge me for what happened and telling me that I brought this upon myself.

I just wondered how am I going to tell Tlhokomelo about what I did, because I've been sending him texts and trying to call him so that we could talk about what happened even though we were far away from each other. One day he sent me text and I replied to him. I asked him why he wasn't retuning any of my calls and texts. And from the way I saw it, he was very hurt and furious about what happened. We made plans over the phone about how we could see each other and talk things through without making anyone suspicious. I was terrified of meeting up with him because of what I had done. I loved Tlhokomelo and I wasn't going to leave him because of what people or society thinks of him or how they perceive him. Tlhokomelo had a good heart.. A heart of pure gold. I was forced to stop seeing Tlhokomelo and to delete his number and anything that connected me to him. I was hurt. If this was a dream, then I need to wake up. So Tlhokomelo and I continued to talk after he sent me a text and we secretly met at his flat in town. My mom and I were at my grandma's house for the holidays so I made up a random excuse just to see Tlhokomelo. I said I was going to the mall to shop for a few things because the holidays were almost over. I said I needed some toiletries and a few other things. So my mom believed me and transferred some money into my account and I called Tlhokomelo immediately and told hlm that I'm coming, we'll meet in town and then we'll go to his place afterwards. You know I actually didn't need anything from my mom because I still had some money in my account and I still had toiletries and everything else that I needed, I just needed a valid random excuse to go see Tlhokomelo and tell him everything. I knew that my relationship with him is over, there's nothing left, all that's left is to tell him the truth about what he did, because he didn't know anything about me being pregnant and he didn't deserve any of this. I owed it to him.

The following morning, it was on Friday and it was 8am. I was in the taxi and I was neatly dressed on my to town and Tlhokomelo was waiting me for me in town. I was nervous, I had a lot going on in my mind. I couldn't think straight although, a part of me felt ecstatic to see Tlhokomelo after 3 months but at the same time I knew what was going to be the outcome of this day. About forty five minutes later, the taxi arrived in town and there was Tlhokomelo waiting for me at the garage. I got off the taxi and walked straight to the garage to him. He was overly excited to see him that he hugged so tight and kissed me. "Are you okay?". "Yeah I am okay". "Come on, let's go grab something to eat and then we can head over to my place". So held my side bag for me as we were walking to McDonald's. We were just having a light conversation about the recent events that happened. As he was talking I couldn't even pay attention to what he was saying because I was scared,he could also notice that I'm not fine even though I pretended to be okay. We arrived at McDonald's and we ordered two burgers and fries with soda. I couldn't even eat, I just didn't have any apetite. I couldn't even finish my food. "You know, you don't have to try so hard to be okay.. I can see that you're not alright Kea.... Is there something that's bothering you, maybe... Something that you need to tell me?". "Uhm... Actually... Yeah... There is something that I need to tell you, but I'll tell you all about it once we get to your place". "Okay, if you say so".