Okay, where do I start? Sigh..! I come from a family where we joke about everything and anything. If something funny happens at a funeral, an eye contact itself is enough to get us all laughing. My mom’s lines are always the funniest but that is not the story.
I have always been that girl that grew up with dreams but learnt to not let those dreams be expectations. At least before I joined university, I already knew expectations were not a thing for me to have. I had been disappointed by the people that I thought they wouldn’t before and I had learnt the hard way. I chose to stick to my dream corner alone. I’ve started to sound like a motivation speaker, right? Well, the ball slid off my hands, I ended up having expectations of how I wanted my graduation party to look like once I finished my University studies. I saved for my graduation party for as much as I could. Shame on me, I thought it was all about money.
When the final graduation dates were stated, I contacted all my people including family and friends to invite them for my graduation party. I had everything set in advance just so I would not have to stress last minute. All the party plans were held on phone as I was in the city and my mom was home in the Far East, where the party was happening.
I had a list of people I wanted to have at my graduation party, contacting one by one. As I sat on a chair next to the bed in my room dialing all the numbers I had on the list, i dialed his number, asked him how he was doing, let him know that I had finally made it to my university finish line. He said “I have a lot of work and I am going to be busy that weekend, besides, there is Covid- 19 I don’t do gatherings. You can even ask your cousin I did not attend his wedding.” My heart dropped, my head hurt, all my bone joints felt weak instantly. I had forgotten the fact that I come from a broken family and not any broken family but a broken family where co-parenting barely existed. My own father had said no to my graduation invitation.
While my bone joints started shaking, I slowly slid into my bedcovers. I went on with the rest of the calls because I wanted the final list sent to my mom for easy planning. It was quite a busy week for me, I did not have much time to myself to process all of that, but I kept having watery eyes (thank God because of Covid 19, I had my mask on and no one could notice that I am crying). In my whole life, effects of being raised in a broken home had never actually gotten to me till this day. As a child, especially a daughter, I realised how it is essential to have both parents on your side.
Now breaking the news to my mom! So, every time my father didn’t do as he should, I and mom usually turned it into jokes. These jokes were always funny as hell because my mom’s lines when she is being funny and sarcastic can win medals. Speaking of how she is sarcastic, I remember one time when I was a kid, my cousin sister sent me to go and ask mom what we would be cooking that night, with all the stupidity a child can ever have, I went to find her in the living room, screaming on top of my voice, asking her what we would be cooking that night, I also kept mentioning my suggestions as well. “Winnie sent me to ask you what we are cooking to night, can we do matooke” I asked on top of my voice. My mom had guests over and they were all staring at me at the moment. Now, you know what that means in an African home with an African mother. It means fiiireeee. So my mom did not want to act rude in front of all those guests, she said “do you remember the other new Kitenge I recently bought? Go and fold it into the saucepan that will be enough for all of us tonight.” Leaving all the guests laughing, I slowly went back to tell my cousin sister what mom had said. We both went behind the house to laugh as loud as we wanted because if she had heard us laughing at her, that would be another story. Till this date, we still laugh at that level of sarcasm.
There is this thing that used to be kind of common, when kids broke off school for holidays, my cousin sister would go to visit her parents and I would always complain that I also want to go and visit my parent (father), my mother would give me the phone to call him myself and ask him to come and pick me, he would never pick the calls. One night i lost my grandfather (mom’s father), and as I was throwing tantrums of wanting to go visit my father as well because we had broken off school for holidays, my mother joked about how I was lucky that I had a father to visit unlike her. Bottom line was that she was asking me to chill.
As a second version of my mother, I have learnt to always read behind the lines. My mother is that woman who will say something and I am the only person that will be able to understand what she meant. Yeah, this is a disadvantage because she sometimes cracks a joke and I am the only one laughing in the room.
Where was i? The graduation day finally happened. Everything went smooth. One of my friends that had attended my graduation asked me whether my dad had come over. Reality hit again. Due to a lot that was happening during the day, I was all day destructed until the time for speeches. As all the speeches went down, I realised that every person talking (especially family) were avoiding to talk about my father.
Now mom’s turn! As she was giving her speech, she became emotional. The last time I had seen my mother cry was back in 2011 when she lost her dad. Eleven years later, she again cried. The guests around thought she was crying tears of joy because her daughter had graduated, but again as I have always read behind her lines, I knew she was broken. I knew she was sad that her baby daddy had not showed up for the daughter’s milestone.
As she has always done, she covered for my dad. “Rwandan Belle we love you, you know daddy would love to be here but he could not due to unavoidable reasons as he communicated….”she said. In my mind I was like, shut up mom just shut uuup. We both knew he did not want to be there, and i had gotten tired of mom always covering for him.
As she proceeded to give her speech, half of my mind was not listening. I just had questions that I was sure I would never verbally ask, and if I had asked, i knew I would not get the answers. I started wondering if he is going to even attend my wedding. I thought of what I would do if he didn’t show up. But clearly I would do what I did when he didn’t show up for my graduation. I would NOTHING.
When it was my turn to speak, I had a list of people that I would appreciate specifically. I am not going to lie; it killed me not having my father on the list. Did I even have what to thank him about in his absence? In the moment I had nothing.
The party went on so fast and in a blink of an eye, everyone left. And just like that, I and mom were seated alone in the living room opening up gifts. I saved opening mom’s gift last. May be I would have saved two (my mom’s and dad’s) but forget about it.
Did I mention that my mom is very observant and a detailed storyteller? I have never worried of not attending something when I know that she is going to attend. This is because she will bring me first hand detailed stories about what she attended. Every time we attend something together, we gossip and laugh about everything we saw when we get home. I expected the same energy and spirit that night, but surprisingly, none of us even brought up anything. The only thing she asked was “did your father give you a call to congratulate you?” it hit again that he should have done better1! “No!” I said. That was all we conversed about the whole day.
We both straight up went to our bedrooms claiming that we were tired, but we all knew how sad and broken we were. We all didn’t have what to say to each other, or even joke about like we always did. This night, we didn’t have what to joke about.
Like I mentioned before, this is the first time reality hit that I come from a broken home and only to know that I was raised broken too. Because, what is joking about your father’s irresponsibility? And saddest thing, mom is even more broken that I am.
All the smiles behind joking about it all faded that night and I turned into the most fragile soul alive. My emotions became weak for the next three weeks and my productivity dropped to negatives. First time my own story had become hard to own. It affected my friendships, job but especially me. I can’t count how many times I cried in my room. I don’t cry in public because you don’t want to see my ugly crying face. Some mornings were so difficult that I didn’t want to wake up and go out. I didn’t want to interact with anyone. First time in forever, I did not even want to touch my phone.
Have I decided to let go/ heal? When this all happened, i completely went off my real zone and a few close people noticed. One of those people was my boss. This one morning she texted in a work WhatsApp group and asked if someone could buy me coffee because I had been irresponsive for some time. This is when it clicked that I needed to put myself together because if I didn’t, I would be harming myself even more.
One of my mentors who had always encouraged me to outsource healing and happiness told me that this was the right time to outsource my healing. I was mad when he said this to me. I had actually just realised that all along I was broken and I felt like he was pushing me to heal before I even nursed my wound.
One thing I could say is that; it is possible to be broken and not know, until something happens, triggers you’re bleeding and then you will realise that you have been wounded all along.
The other thing I could say; there is no timeline to healing. But the beauty is, however much finding out how wounded you have been can be painful, that is what always marks the beginning of your healing. We only heal when we know what to heal. I now look back and realise that if it hadn’t been my father’s absence on my graduation day, I would not have realised how much wounded I was from being brought up in a broken family. And finding out this wound, I now know what to nurse and heal from.
Healing doesn’t come in a blink of an eye. I started off by baby steps. I have currently started journaling my emotions especially that talking about them is still a tag of war. However, journaling can be not the easiest way either, because sometimes you don’t know how to put your emotions on paper. But I know I will one day look back and be proud of how I never let my story rob me joy.
So touching 😪! No one deserves to go through what Belle went through!
I wish healing to Bell and her mother.
Thanks for sharing your story.