A Mother's Struggle

Chapter 1

"Thabo, please. Please, don't do this to me. Please Thabo, I am begging you." I panted as I tasted my own tears. Not only did they taste like sea water, but they were also sorrowful and carried pain to last me a lifetime. I winced as the salty streams of water met the bruise below my eye. I caressed the bruise as the memories of how I got it intruded my mind.

It was the night after his birthday. He had come home drunk, and I got slapped because I confronted him about it. He also pushed me so hard that I hit the wall. Not to mention that I was carrying his child and our four-year-old son was in the next room, probably listening in as his mother was turned into a punching bag.

Did he care if Lesedi was listening? I doubted it. I doubted that he cared a damn about anything or anybody but himself. I knew it was crazy that I mentioned how horrible life was with him, yet I was still begging him not to kick me out.

Three words to explain it; I loved him.

I was in love with that conceited, selfish son of a bitch.

And he wasn't always abusive. At some point, Thabo was a considerate gentleman. He showed me love and treated me like a princess. It all stopped when Lesedi turned three. So, in simple terms, I was still holding on to the good memories, hoping for dear life that he became that man again. The man that I had fallen in love with. I could not be blamed for having hope. What are we without hope anyway?

"Mom! Mom!" And that would be our son wailing because his father was kicking us out of our home. I was helpless. Les...

"Mom, get up. Calm down, it was just a dream." My eyes slowly open and reveal Lesedi, who is now fourteen years old. I raised a handsome young man. I smile at him, and he mirrors it. He takes a cloth to wipe the sweat off my forehead and neck.

"You were dreaming about the last night at dad's again, weren't you?" I sit up and pat the empty space next to me for him to sit. His sister, Naledi, is peacefully sleeping next to me. I lie and tell him that was another awful dream, and not about his father. Whom I throw up in my mouth a little whenever he invaded my mind.

"Mom, you kept on calling his name and asking him to not do it. You don't have to lie to me." I shamefully face down but then he caresses my back to comfort me. An act that always eases my heart. I raised a thoughtful young man. Words could not express how much I love him and his sister.

"Its been about ten years though, why does it still bother you mom? I thought it would get better with time." I sigh as a response to him.

I have no words. I cannot find the right words to explain to him why my heart is still in pieces or why the memory of that night and life with that man still haunts me to this day. Because quite frankly, I cannot comprehend it myself. I also expected time to have done me mercy, but I am still stuck in that tunnel of trauma, heartbreak and hurt and it looks like there was no way out.

I think about how if I had made the right decisions back when I was younger, I wouldn't have gotten myself in such a crappy situation. I regretted everything I had done to ultimately land myself there. To land myself with an abusive boyfriend, whom I stopped talking to my parents for, dropped out of school for and gave him two wonderful kids only for him to kick me out to the streets when I had exhausted him. I hated him with every bone in my body.

"Mom." He pauses for a bit. "I want to know what you aspired before your life got messed up by dad. Your dreams and aspirations." He holds my hand and caresses it with his thumb.

I chuckle and face down. I had to look up to stop the tears in my eyes from falling.

"See, growing up, I had an idealistic picture of how I wanted my life to turn out. To be specific, I wanted a mansion that had beautifully trimmed ferns, an exquisite garden, a well-paved backyard, floor-to-ceiling windows, chandelier, you name it," I let out a scoff because of the irony of the situation. Because instead of all that, I lived in a shack, in the outskirts of town, very discrete that nobody knew where I lived—we'll get to that later. I shared a bed with my daughter, Naledi. Lesedi slept on a sponge bed. We had a two-plate stove, two light bulbs, the kitchen and the bedroom were divided by a curtain. It was a very small place. In fact, small was an understatement.