I married just three months after leaving secondary school.
I was only eighteen, with my school jumper still lying on the chair and my head full of dreams.
Everyone at home knew I had a boyfriend.
My parents pleaded with me to wait, to study, to make the most of the opportunity they wanted to give meto go to university.
But I didnt listen.
I married a man five years older than me, certain that love was enough to carry us through anything.
We started out in a rented bedsit, with a borrowed bed, an ancient cooker, and a fridge that rattled and groaned like a lorry.
The first years felt like a race against exhaustion.
By the time I was twenty, I was pregnant with our first daughter, and not long after, our second child arrived.
He was working then, coming home drained, irritable, and often without a full wage packet.
I became a magician with groceries: stretching the rice, saving on oil, learning to cook lentils in ten different ways.
I washed everything by hand, carried buckets of water, barely slept.
I never liked to talk about my troubles.
On the outside, I appeared serene, neatwell married, people would say.
But inside, I was worn thin.
After five years, with a modest council house to call our own, everything fell apart.
I heard he was seeing a married woman.
It was more than just gossipthe woman’s husband started to hunt him down, sending messages, and appearing near our home.
One morning, my husband packed his things, told me he had to leave for a few days, and simply vanished.
He didnt just leave.
He abandoned me with two small children, bills piling up, and a house to hold together.
Thats when my real life as a single mum began.
I got a job cleaning at the local primary school.
Up at 4:30 in the morning, Id half prepare lunch, wake the kids, drop them at my mums, then rush to work.
My wages barely covered what we needed.
Some months, I had to choose whether to pay the water bill or buy new shoes for the children.
There were weeks of bread and beans, rice with eggs, thin soup.
I never asked for help.
I gritted my teeth and kept going.
My mum was my rock.
Shed collect the children from school, feed and bathe them, help them with their homework.
I came home at night aching with fatigue, my back sore.
Sometimes, I would sit on my bed and cry quietly so they wouldnt hear me.
I never wanted them to grow up pitying their mother.
Meanwhile, he never once came back.
Occasionally hed send feeble apologies, promises that were never kept.
Child maintenance arrived when he felt like itif it came at all.
I learned not to expect or rely on it.
I sold insurance to fix the roof, worked extra hours in offices, gave photography lessons on weekendsskills Id taught myself.
Sundays, I hand-washed laundry late into the night because I couldnt afford a washing machine.
The years rolled on.
My eldest daughter grew up watching her mum leave early and return late.
She learned responsibility so young.
My little boy became disciplined, serious, fiercely protective.
I had no social life.
No time for dating, for strolls or holidays.
My rest was the quiet nights when everyone slept.
The day my daughter graduated in law, I sobbed like never before.
There she was: confident, speaking eloquently in gown and mortarboard.
I remembered that eighteen-year-old girl who’d given up education for love.
Suddenly, the pain and sacrifice felt meaningful.
When my son stood tall in his flawless army uniform, newly commissioned, I felt the same lump in my throat.
Today, looking back, Im still amazed at everything I survived.
I was a single mum for most of my journey.
I raised my children with grit, discipline, and love.
Nothing was handed to me.
No one carried me.
Yethere we are.
