I got married just three months after finishing sixth form.
I was barely eighteen, still hanging up my school uniform, my head full of grand illusions.
Everyone at home knew I had a boyfriend.
My parents begged me to wait, to study, to make the most of the chance they wanted to give me and go to university.
Did I listen?
Of course not.
I married a bloke five years older than me, absolutely convinced that love would conquer all.
We moved into a rented room, with a borrowed bed, an ancient cooker, and a fridge that hummed louder than a double-decker bus.
The early years were a mad dash against exhaustion.
By twenty, I was pregnant with my first daughter, and just after, the second little one appeared.
He worked for a bit, came home tired, grumpy, and often with a pay packet as empty as my biscuit tin.
I performed culinary miracles: stretching the rice, rationing the oil, mastering ten ways to cook lentils.
I washed clothes by hand, lugged buckets of water around, slept occasionally.
I never made a fuss about my problems.
From the outside, I looked calm, tidy, the picture of a well-married woman.
Inside?
Absolutely knackered.
Five years into the marriage, we finally got ourselves a small council houseand then everything fell apart.
Word got out he was involved with a married woman, and this wasn’t just idle gossip.
Her husband began hunting him down, sending messages, cropping up near our house.
One morning, my husband packed his clothes, said he needed to pop off for a few days, and never showed up again.
Not only did he leave, he abandoned me with two tiny kids, bills piling up, and a house that needed maintaining.
Thats when my real life as a single mum began.
I started cleaning at a local school, up at 4:30 am, leaving half-made lunches, coaxing sleepy children awake, dropping them off at Mums, and heading to work.
My wages barely bought what we needed.
Some months, I had to decide between paying the water bill or getting new shoes for the kids.
There were weeks made up of bread and beans, rice with an egg, and watery soup.
I never asked anyone for help.
I simply gritted my teeth and carried on.
My mum was my rock.
She picked up the kids from school, fed them, bathed them, helped with homework.
I’d come home evenings, dead tired with my back in knots.
Sometimes Id sit on my bed and quietly cry, so no one would hear.
I never wanted the children to grow up feeling sorry for their mum.
Meanwhile, my husband never returned.
Now and then, hed send the odd textapologies, promises he never kept.
Maintenance money arrived when he fancied it, if at all.
I learned not to rely on it.
To patch the roof, I sold insurance policies; I worked overtime in offices and gave private photography lessons (learned all by myself, mind you).
On Sundays, I washed clothes well into the night because we couldnt afford a washing machine.
Years passed.
My eldest daughter grew up watching her mum leave early and come home late.
She picked up responsibility early on.
My youngest son became disciplined, serious, protective.
I had no social life, no time for dates, strolls, or holidays.
My break was the quiet nights when everyone was asleep.
The day my daughter graduated from law school, I cried like never before.
Seeing her in her gown and cap, confident and eloquent, I remembered that eighteen-year-old girl who gave up her studies for love.
I realised, in a way, that my sacrifices werent wasted.
And when my son finished as an officer in the armystanding tall in his immaculate uniformI felt the same lump in my throat.
Now, looking back, Im still surprised at all I survived.
I was a single mum for most of my children’s lives.
I raised them with effort, discipline, and love.
No one handed me anything; no one carried me through.
And yethere we are.
