All She Had Was Me (Part 2: Taken From the Only Love I Knew)

The day they took me felt like a piece of my heart was ripped away. I didn’t want to go. I held my mom’s hand so tightly, hoping they’d change their mind. But I was too small, too young, and my voice didn’t matter. My mom stood there, silent tears falling, while they pulled me away with promises they never planned to keep. They said I’d be better off. They said I’d have a better life.But they lied. I moved into my dad’s house, where his new wife a nurse was already living. She wasn’t cruel at first. Just cold. Distant. But soon, that coldness turned into quiet punishments. Long silences. Side glances. Hard chores. Blame for things I didn’t do. And slowly, I began to feel invisible. My dad was hardly ever around. He traveled often for work, so I was left alone with her. She made sure I knew I wasn’t hers. She made sure I felt like a guest in the house I was supposed to call home. Every day, food became something I had to hope for. I ate only once or twice a day sometimes not at all. My stomach always growled, but I learned to keep quiet. Crying didn’t change anything. Complaining brought more trouble. I trekked long distances to school on an empty stomach, under the sun, with worn-out shoes. There were days my legs ached so badly I wished school didn’t exist. But I still went because it was the only place that gave me some space to breathe. At school, lunchtime became a quiet kind of torture. I watched my classmates open their flasks and lunch packs. I watched them laugh and eat while I sat quietly with nothing. Sometimes, a kind classmate would give me a piece of their food and I’d say thank you like they had just given me the world. But the hunger always came back. I started struggling in class. My notebooks were empty. My head was heavy. My grades dropped. I was always tired, always distracted, always afraid. I went from being a curious child to a shadow in the back of the classroom. I kept coming last in my class and I started to believe maybe I deserved it. Then came the day that changed everything. I was desperate. I hadn’t eaten properly in days. So I did something I’ll never forget. I took ₦500 from my stepmom’s purse. I knew it was wrong. But I was just a hungry child trying to survive. When she found out, the beating came fast and hard. But what hurt more than her hands… was my father’s voice on the phone. He called my mom not to ask if I was okay but to shame her.“Your child is a thief,” he said. That call broke something in me.But it also sparked something. Because after all that silence… I finally heard my mother’s voice again. I had memorized her number, hoping to one day call her myself but I always got it wrong. I was losing hope of ever seeing her again. I thought I’d been forgotten. But life had a different plan.One day, my teacher noticed I never ate during lunch. She saw the sadness in my eyes. The weight on my shoulders. She asked me what was going on. And for the first time, I opened up. And somehow, my teacher got through to my mom. The day I saw her again at school… I ran into her arms.I felt safe again. I felt like me again. And from that moment, I knew: no matter how far they took me, my mom would always come back for me.

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