10 Years Free!

For any other person out there, today maybe just a simple Sunday or simply 17th June. For me, it's a milestone. Ten years ago I woke up in a Mabati house I had called home for less than any year. We had moved house from a dusty village located north of that Mabati house. The reason for moving was to start afresh after sitting again with his parents.

They advised him it was best to move from a place we had lived for close to a decade to try and fix something I already knew was broken -our marriage. This had dawned on me years earlier but the nerve to leave kept going numb. Maybe this was because his fists knew every inch of my frame. I was in a half-baked marriage enduring domestic violence.

We met in my late teens and I fell like the teen I was. My trying to get away from highly inconsiderate relatives (it was barely a year after I lost my mum) and his seemingly friendly soul whisked us to a come we stay sort of arrangement. Soon I'd find out of his short temper and his ego but determined to appear on the 'Parents Magazine' column dubbed Marriages That Last five decades later, I chose to stay and make it work. After all, where would I go?

My late mother had raised us in rental houses and when she passed nothing was left in our name but loud relatives drumming their trash on us. I was the eldest and in a bid to 'set' a good example to my younger sisters and put an end to the doom desirous society expecting my children to be born out of wedlock plus silence my relatives, I got myself in an early traditional marriage.

Fast forward a decade later back in the Mabati home waking the last time in his bed. I had paid a small house somewhere and the guy who was to help me carry a mattress, clothes, stove and a few pots there. The minute he left the house (which he usually did around 11 am) I dialed my transport and packed my all in a single boot and left.

From Giphy

I will never forget that on a day like today ten years ago, I made the decision never to let a man hit me. It was then I also decided I am to be talked to like a human being, not yelled at like a misbehaving dog. I walked out of something I had refused to walk out of because of that being raised in a single mom's home. No one who relates to me wants that for their children or child.

In this tenth anniversary, I am celebrating my freedom... because for me being a single mum came with that and inner peace. The peace in knowing you love yourself enough to withstand the mockery that comes with being a single mum as this pretentious society expects every woman to be married and enduring shit than be with someone who breaks you from the inside and outside.

The domestic abuse took away a lot and I have struggled to be where I am but I am happy to announce I worship myself over caring or getting myself bitter over people thoughts or expectations. I almost died and many didn't care about that but it was imperative they understand why I was leaving my 'husband' or breaking up my home. Weird, right?

To ten years of freedom and free of abuse!!!

Geralt-Pixabay