15TH MAY 2007 EPISODE 4

Overnight, my life turned into a shadow of its old self. My father became worse than over-protective as a result of what happened. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without a female body-guard. I became frustrated and my pain knew no bounds. Every night, I cried myself to sleep and woke up with sore eyes. There was no night that I didn’t suffer from night mares of being raped or abused. Inside me, I developed intense fear of the male gender. If I came out of the house and saw a man, I would shiver like a leaf despite the fact that I had an escort that followed me everywhere I went.

My situation was actually worse that I can describe. Let me explain better! On a Sunday morning, while we were at church as the pastor preached, I found myself turning right, left and centre hoping that no man was going to come and attack me. And then, something mysterious occurred. The Pastor who was preaching on what I didn’t care about began to walk towards me. As he came from a distance, I was still relaxed until he was very close to me and that was when my outburst began. In reflex, I began to shout “Don’t come near me”. It was probably the most embarrassing day of that Pastor’s life. To crown it up, I had to stop my schooling because of the pregnancy.

I found nowhere to vent anger except on the fact that boys where responsible for the damaged life that I now lived. Slowly but painfully the venom in me towards men built up into gross hatred against the opposite sex. My fear of them graduated into solid hatred towards them. I never wanted to have anything to do with any boy or man.

I looked up at Henry who was deeply engrossed in the wild story of my life. I noticed that he struggled to stop tears from flowing down his face and had concern written in his eyes.

“So what happened to the baby?” he asked gently as he stretched forth his hand towards mine. If he had done that a few days ago, I would have given him an ugly scowl but I found myself allowing him to hold me.

After pausing for a while, I responded sadly “I lost the baby”.