Diary of a Zimbabwean single mom 16

I had so much bitterness, so much hurt and it felt so hard just putting the pieces together. I felt as if I was not of this world. Love didn’t love me, life didn’t love me either. I had had the hope somehow but I guess that was just me being naïve. I couldn’t make sense out of it, neither did I want to. When I got home I didn’t feel like talking about it neither did I want to go through the whole drama again. I kept to our room. I couldn’t eat. No matter how hard I tried it seemed my throat had shrunk besides that all the food seemed tasteless. It was like I was eating paper so I just stopped. My sisters were worried and I guess so were my parents. I felt I didn’t have the strength to do it anymore, to live…to be whole. 
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Charles called and I couldn’t talk to him. I didn’t want to. Just the thought of him made me feel so low. It was the third day from meeting James and my mom came to talk to me.
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‘Tess, you can’t do this…. you can’t do this to yourself, to the baby and to the people close to you. We are all trying to reach out to you, don’t slip away from us. We want to share your pain, that’s what family is all about. Right now it may be all hard, but one day you will realize it was better this way. Life doesn’t have a manual that we refer every once in a while when we face difficulties, but we trust our gut feeling. Baby, don’t mourn him; don’t let him have a hold over your life. If you can’t do it for me, please do it for this baby. The baby deserves a chance and it needs to be given that.’
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‘mom I feel like there is a hole in my heart. I feel so lost.am asking myself over and over again why me, what now?’ I wailed
‘Take the easy way out dear, let him go. Am here, your dad, your sisters…I need you to choose us, I need you to choose to live.’

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She held me, held me close. Once again I was at crossroads, but I chose to live. I chose to go on. I wouldn’t look back. I had to find a way to make it for me, for the baby and for my family. I knew I had made that decision when I had walked out of that restaurant. I just needed to find balance. I so hoped that the birth of this baby would bring me that.
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So I woke up feeling lousy this other morning I was so irritable and the whole day I really couldn’t figure out what it was that I wanted. I went to sleep early. At around three in the morning, I felt like something was gnawing my insides. I went and woke my mother and explained to her what I was feeling and she told me to go back to sleep it was nothing. I slept through it. I woke up around eight and this time it was a bit of pain. Mom told me to bath while she packed the bag. We were going to the hospital she said I was in labor. Mom didn’t let dad drive us, she said we would walk since it was a walkable distance. She actually said the walk would make the baby come faster. The pain wasn’t that bad and I thought so what was the fuss that women made about labor pains. Little did I know what was waiting for me?
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We got to the hospital and I was admitted into labor. Mom left me. The pain grew and eish I walked up and down the labor ward. Somehow I couldn’t keep still. I had the screams from other women and I got terrified. At around five during visiting time my mom, Judith and my sisters came to see me. Though they talked and I wasn’t in the mood. I was in pain. I wanted this baby out of me. They left me to my misery. If I had known it would be like this I would have stayed away from that idiot. 
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At around eight in the evening the pain got terrible I was now lying on the bed. I couldn’t keep my legs together. I called out to the nurse, it more like screaming and wailing. I had had enough. The nurse came and said it was time; I was whisked off to the labor room. The nurse left me and told me not to push. I think that was the most insane thing you could tell someone in pain…it just happened. The baby didn’t want to stay a minute longer in the belly and eish we put the effort together. By the time the nurse returned the baby’s head was out. She scolded me of course. The baby was born. 
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.It was a boy. A BOY! It gave its first cry and I can never explain the joy I felt. I was a mother, I had made a little human being… as I lay there, the nurses cleaning me and the baby I felt a cold chill right through to my bones. i trembled so much they had to give me extra blankets afterward. They wrapped my baby and to me back to my hospital bed and I was so weak that I slept till morning.
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Mom and Judith came for the morning visit and found me asleep. They woke me and they were so happy. I had never thought of the name for the baby. I didn’t know what to call it. My mom said 
‘oh Tess you have given me a relative.’ Like seriously she had a whole wagon of relatives. It was funny but I figured out that perhaps she felt like this was the son that she had never had. So there came the name: TAWANAHAMA. We have found a relative, more like someone who would look after us. I liked it. That was his native name. His English name Clinton. Wow
So when the nurse wanted to fill in the baby card we gave her the names and added my surname to it. He was my baby. He was mine after all….

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Motherhood
I was now a mother. A single mother….