I turned 49 in June. I have never been married and I don’t have a child. Over the years, I have learnt to love myself and accept myself this way. But because of how prying my family is and the many questions I get from relatives about marriage and childbearing, I left home and gone to settle in a whole different region where no one knows me. I was willing to start life all over again and stay away from gossips who cannot mind their own business. There is nothing wrong with a woman who remains unmarried and childless at my age. I have chosen to stay this way, but it wasn’t always by choice. I transitioned from being a naïve girl who was looking for the perfect guy to fill in the void I had in my heart to a matured, complete woman who doesn’t need a man to be happy. It took a lot of pain and heartbreak to get here and I can clearly say that not everyone is strong enough to be me.
I didn’t grow up with a father. In fact, my mother was so angry and bitter at my dad for abandoning us that she would jump on any small opportunity to insult me. She was angry that I looked like my dad, angry that it was indirectly my fault that my dad had left. I started internalizing all of this and I would later grow up into a teenager with serious self-esteem issues. I was trying to find love in any guy who was nice to me and in the end, many guys had their way with me and just ignored me later. This cycle led me deeper into depression, because to me, it confirmed that there was something wrong with me and that is why my dad left when I was born and that was why my mother had never shown me any real affection.
In my 20s and 30s, I went into relationships with a few men and none of them ended up in a marriage. When I was 35, I met a gentleman who was 42. He seemed to be serious about me and he was there for me. I trusted him hopelessly and stupidly. I believed him when he told me he was a widower. He even showed me pictures of his wedding, but told me he lost his wife a year before meeting me. I believed him when he told me he would marry me. I allowed him to lead me on and feed me with one lie upon another until I found out he was happily married to the same woman he told me was dead. I was his ‘sidechick’ for four whole years without knowing. After that heartbreak, I told myself I was done.
I went on a journey of self-love. I consulted a therapist who took me through the process of digging up my past and discovering things about myself that I didn’t know. I became a confident woman for the first time in my life and I have learnt to put myself first. I am enough. I went through a complete process of re-scripting my life by relocating to a different region and staying away from people with shallow minds. I am happy, at peace, single and childless and I am almost 50. Women are more than childbearing machines, we have a lot more to offer!
