I want to be pretty like you.
So people think I’m beautiful when I get married.
But what will happen if I never become pretty like you?
I had just turned thirty.
Fifteen years ago,
It wasn’t normal to be single at the age of thirty.
At every wedding I went to, my aunts would tell me,
“We hope you’re next, dear.
May God reward your patience.”
They’d say it with sorrowful eyes,
You know the look.
domestic violence, gender violence, physical violence, motherhood, marriage, divorce
My family was always very critical,
And they tended to make fun of people.
I was born with flawed joints.
I could walk very well and run and all that,
But when I stood,
My knees bent backward,
At first sight, it looked like my legs had been amputated.
My family always called me “Miss knees,”
And my mother always made fun of me in front of my siblings.
She thought I was inverting my knees like this on purpose.
She once even called me “disabled,”
And told me to straighten my knees.
I was on top of him. I’d just come. He wasn’t inside me.
I was reaching for the condoms when he forced himself inside me, holding me down by the hips. I closed my eyes and waited for him to finish.
Something was wrong.
domestic violence, gender violence, sexual violence, marital rape, marriage, divorce
“We can’t have a divorced woman in the family.
What will people say?
Once you’re married, that’s it.
You can’t get a divorce.”
Around two and a half months later he told me,
“You must stay at home, because I’m about to start work,
So you must stay with the kid.”
I refused, of course, and told him, “I’ll send him to a daycare center.”