My name is Nandirr. I’m 21 years old and I have done 7 abortions. But before you judge me, you might want to know my story.
I am the first child and the only daughter of a family of four. In my family, it is almost useless to have a daughter. I grew up with so much hatred around me. My mother has always cursed me referring to me as the reason my father hates her because he wanted a son and I turned out to be a girl and a first born for that matter. Growing up, my father hated seeing me. I didn’t go to places he was; I didn’t eat from the same plate with the rest of the family, I wasn’t allowed to say my name with my surname, I wasn’t taken to school like any other child and many other things I am trying to forget now. All I did was house chores. The best thing I knew was to work like a donkey. At age 5, I started cooking and cleaning, working like a slave. No one ever showed me love. My brothers are as misogynist as our father was. They addressed me the same way our father did and showed no compassion towards me.
When I was 11 years old, my body started forming and all my curves started to show gradually. When I was 12, my father ordered my mother to burn all my dresses and buy me only wrappers because he said my body was beginning to annoy him. My hips started growing wild and my breasts too. A day didn’t pass without him bullying and body shaming me. As if my body likes his bullying, it started growing faster. As days went by, my father started harassing me. He would bully me by touching my body. He would talk about my breasts that it wasn’t actually breasts but just skin and fats and for this reason he would be controlling what I eat. He would press on it. It used to be so painful because I actually started having breasts around that time and normally would be painful.
One day, my father came into my room around what would have been 3am. I wasn’t sleeping because a man came earlier that night introduced to me as my future husband. Seeing how my father treats my mother, I started feeling scared for myself. So, I stayed up all night crying. I thought he heard me sobbing and was there to beat me up as usual. He came up to me and sat on my bed. I was so terrified at seeing him in my room. He never stepped in that room. To my surprise, he came in sounding nice. Without asking me why I was crying, he said:
‘’I am here to test you and see if you are ready to be a wife or not.’’
As terrified as I was of my father, I did everything he asked without questioning. He asked me to remove my clothes, he laid me on the ground and had his way through me. All I remember that night was pain. I felt so much pain that I passed out. I was covered in blood. Immediately I gained consciousness, he had his normal stern and wicked voice back and ordered me to clean up and not tell anyone what happened and he then left. I got up immediately and started cleaning the ground covered in blood. I can’t remember how I slept. I woke up sick that morning with a swollen face but nobody cared. I was struggling to even move my legs and do my normal chores but no one seemed to care. As usual, my father and brothers giving endless commands.
My father later rejected the man who came for my hand in marriage claiming the man is not responsible enough. 3 other men came and he rejected them on different grounds whilst he slept with me every night. I then started seeing my period. My hips got broader and that made my father wilder. He would sometimes sleep with me twice daily. I got pregnant the first month I started seeing my period and he sent the rest of the family to go visit his family. I stayed home with him. He mixed herbs and asked me to drink. It was a dirty and smelly concoction. He forced me to drink it and hours later the pregnancy was aborted. I can’t explain the amount of pain I felt. I couldn’t believe I would survive that. Due to severe pain and bleeding, I did not open my eyes for two days. I couldn’t walk for nearly a week and I had to go through this same thing 6 more times. He did the same things during all seven of my pregnancies in 3 years. My father aborted all my pregnancies before he brought me contraceptives and since then abused me even more.
I hated him more than I hate anything in my life. A sight of him feels like I was eating my own heart. So painful. So bitter. I swear I could have eaten that man alive if I had the power. I have been through hell and I mean it. Sometimes I ask myself why me. At my age, going through so much pain with no one to talk to, no one who cares about me.
Hear me out because this will be the last time I think about that beast. When I was 17, he came to my room that same night. he was there to sleep with me again, to reap me off my innocence, what he didn’t know was I had a knife with me which I carefully wrapped under my wrapper when I was washing bowls with my mother that night. he came closer, robbing my entire body, mercilessly pressing my breasts and buttocks. He took my wrapper and stuffed it in his mouth claiming that he was so horny and would do that so other would not hear him mourn. I smiled at that because things were about to go my way. Immediately he had stuffed the cloth in his mouth, I stabbed him five deep ones and as fast as I could. I left the knife in his stomach and put his hand on it and cried myself to sleep. When I woke up that morning, his body was still there. I screamed and everyone came into my room. Soon after the police came in too. My mother was the first to speak to them. I literally was dumb that day. I didn’t believe I did that. When I sat to talk to the police, my mother came in with a suicide note from my father. The letter explained that my father committed suicide because he was ashamed of having sexual intercourse with his daughter.
Later that day, I was taken from the house to a temporary Placement Centre to recover. After 4 months of not seeing my family, my mother showed up on my final day at the placement Centre. She gave me some money and asked me to go find a new life. She apologized for not standing by me because she was equally powerless. She said she saw me that day when I was hiding that knife and she knew exactly what I was going to use it for and it was after washing the bowls with me that she went in her room, took a paper and wrote that letter of suicide she claimed was from my father. I cried my eyes out that day. I cried so much that I thought I would die. A woman I hated so much for not standing by me all my life saved my life. She notices my pain. I didn’t have any idea that my struggles are hers too.
My mother and I made peace, we moved to another city and started life all over again where my brothers got the chance to go to school, learn new ways and become better men. I am 21 years old today and I am a fine thick woman. My body seems to interest a lot of people and I now work as a model making good money for myself and my family. It was a little late to go to school so I hired a personal tutor and I’m doing just fine.
I have missed so much on life but I’m ready to live the rest of my moments like I’m the only one in this stage called earth and have the world hear me out at once.