All I Want This Rare Christmas! #DearDiary

Taken at a Christmas Party in Dagoretti Rehabilitation Centre Last Sunday!

On this day twelve years ago(17th Dec 2006), I was dealing with my third day of false labor due to being battered while heavily pregnant with my last born. My former husband had found another lame reason to punch my protruding belly a week earlier and disappeared behind the curtains of a local pub that had taken the role of home for his drunkard soul for a while.

My early abusive marriage was balancing on a steep cliff and my determined soul was giving up on turning a nightmare to a beautiful dream.

Forty-eight hours later, my little man was born in a local health center and named after a man I love with everything I am, my grandfather. His birth only made my 'marriage' worse as his father felt he was 'too young' to be called dad by three children and I had refused to abort him. I tried for a few more months to make it work and after realizing that I couldn't heal a violent soul with my patience, I walked out.

Fast forward two years later on this exact day (17th Dec 2009) a decade ago... After refusing to go back to his abusive ass, he came my older two children saying his tribal names weren't meant to be raised by a single mother. This was done in a dramatic village scene that left me stained with unbleachable shame. The kind one can't scrub off even after years of washing inner self with meditation or yoga.

For a decade, my soul was detained in a dungeon of guilt and the inability to cleanse it even with good deeds that aimed at making myself feel better about myself. I struggled to accept I was a good mother based on the guilt of not having to raise what I painfully bore. This happened even with my understanding that if I didn't leave their father, I'd probably be dead or serving a sentence over defending myself.

Today (17th Dec 2018), I am writing this as all of my three children enjoy their supper while watching something hilarious on Nickelodeon from a couch just across me. It's been almost two months since they came back in my life. The little man I chose to keep is going to turn 12 in less than 48 hours and he can't wait to celebrate his birthday with his siblings around for the first time since he was two years old. It means a lot to him. To all of them as a unit.

The Christmas Cake...

It will also be their first Christmas together for the first time in a long time. Something my soul has yearned and craved for in a decade. I still can't believe that it's happening. That after withstanding a ten-year long torturous episode of feeling partially lost and empty all the time, I get to have this back. That I get to worry about how they will join school next year over if their emotional status this Christmas.

Because I can see how they are doing emotionally. They're catching up on lost time and making beautiful memories. They are getting to know each other even while bullying each other with light moments. It's like watching them heal themselves of what separation did to them. Something I had understandable doubts that I will one day get to witness. Life is all about unpredictability... Right?

I am ending my shaky 2018 with confusing emotions and achievements. I escaped death twice this year by surviving a killer blend of African Malaria and Typhoid in April and a house fire that almost had me in an urn as we ended June. I spoke at the United Nations last week and I get to have my all of my children home for Christmas in a decade. It's all unbelievable!

But...

I am also worried about how I will feed them, clothe them and school them. I can feel my old bones cracking to the weight of not wanting to fail them as their old man and his relatives are expecting. I can feel the need to move them from a not so safe environment take away my sleep most nights. The urge to move them to a cleaner environment where they don't have to walk all over raw sewage or share a bathroom with fifty more people taking over my thoughts. The need to move to a more spacious space to enable a little bit of privacy which my one room doesn't offer us.

That is all I want for Christmas. To have a way out of the confusing emotions and be able to enjoy this rare Christmas! :)

Also posted in my Whaleshares

Thank you for coming.