𝑴𝑨𝑺𝑲𝑺

Prologue

..."We don't even ask happiness, just a little less pain" -Charles Bukowski

Iretiola's POV

I was 8 years old when I first saw my father cheating on my mother. Each day after she left for work,a different woman would go into the house and they would play in my parents bedroom. I didn't know it was wrong,I thought it was normal so I didn't say anything to anyone.Daddy didn't even know I usually saw him.

Daddy never acted liked he liked me, he only cared about me whenever mummy was around.

All my life normalcy was my mum working and my dad spending,my dad beating me and my mum not knowing,my mum hitting me with her omorogun(turning stick) whenever I acted out,my friends torturing me and my little brother saving me whenever he saw them.

Ademide would always come back and report to daddy not knowing how much trouble he was getting me into for not fighting back and getting tortured.

I was smart and funny but no one wanted to be my friend.It always felt like I was an intruder in my friendship circles

. I was hated but they pretended to like me at least. Were they jealous?? Nahh I don't think so why would they be jealous of me, I wasn't as pretty or as curvy as them.I was a flat little 8 year old primary 4 student who always wrapped her pinafore around her waist so it'd look like I was a tiny bit curvy.

Jessica was the queen bitch back then, I never understood why though cause she was always stuck on third or fourth position at the end of each term,but I didn't care about all that when we finally got to primary 5 and she gave me a boy what hurt was that she asked me and my best friend Uche to share him. Silly right?? Two of the smartest girls in the class were fighting over a boy.

As much as Uche was my best friend,she never knew what was going on at home.She didn't even know when I rushed to her house to call her mother who is a doctor to check up on mum after the stitches she had gotten from giving birth to my new born baby brother had opened up from working in that condition.

She didn't know I ran to her house while my daddy was doing nothing in the house.
The boy that chose me in the end didn't know me at all he only knew what I had shown him and we loved each other. I'd like to believe he loved me cause I think I loved him too.

I was what you'd call;
"Lonely in a crowd"

After my primary 6 exam,we had to move to Kaduna State from Lagos State and I was devastated to find out . To top it off, after my graduation I also found out that my supposed boyfriend was cheating on my best friend with me.I was the side piece the entire time. I was sad and I desperately wanted to leave and we did leave.

We got to Kaduna and we moved into a beautiful 3 bedroom house where I was isolated for a while before going to write my common entrance exams in the private school around. I scored a very high score and was asked to start immediately with one of my little brothers,the other was still a child so he stayed home with my daddy.

At this school,all the girls were friendly and I even had my classmates fighting over who'd be my school mother cause I was the youngest and apparently the cutest.I chose Priscilla though, she was always so happy that I wanted to be exactly like her. Everytime,the girls would huddle up to talk about their daddies doing stuff and buying stuff for them, I would feel heavy cause I couldn't relate,I couldn't understand what it meant for my father to care for me.

When it came to boys, I crushed on every single boy who showed me a little affection because I never knew what it felt like to be wanted.Back then relationships always felt like a cage, a barricade blocking all the want from other guys and I was to selfish to only be wanted by one person so i decided to stay single.