Growing up in a divorced household, Tejiri always thought love was a myth. A sham. A promise dangled in front of you to lure and trick you into putting your heart out.

But would you blame her? She grew up praying for peaceful mornings and quiet nights.

She grew up praying that her father would spend his nights at his girlfriends’ houses and not theirs.

She begged for peaceful mornings just so they would not be late to school, and their teacher would not mock her lateness when she said, ‘it’s not my fault.’

She used to pray that her mother and father would ‘get back together,’ but then she slowly realized, what she should have prayed against, is Love.

She saw that love made her mother sacrifice her entire life, for them, for him.

It made her turn a blind eye to a lot of her his shenanigans, and made her ignore her needs and focus on her husband and children.

There was a day Tejiri would never forget, it was “take your child to work” day.

She followed her father to work and watched the receptionist lock herself in his office with him.

She never found out what they did, but she knew it was bad.

Then they got home, mum hugged him to welcome him, smelt someone else on him, and her father said, “I had lunch with a female client.”

She saw the doubt and defeat in her mum’s eyes, her mother knew the truth but decided to keep the peace.

Was this love?

If it was, Tejiri knew she didn’t want it.

Tejiri grew into adulthood, knowing she didn’t want to get married. She grew up hating the idea of love and sacrifice.

What was the point if the love was never truly nurtured or reciprocated?

Then she fell in love, it was beautiful, magical.

She hated it.

She spent her whole life running away from love just for it to find her.

She talked to her mother about it and tried to hold her anger as she watched her mother jump with glee.

Her mother noticed the disgust on her daughter’s face and stopped.

“Ọmọ mė”, the mother fondly spoke to her daughter, “love is a beautiful thing.”

“Then why wasn’t your love beautiful?” Tejiri spat out.

“Answer me mummy. You cannot expect me to have seen all that happened and be joyful that I have contacted this disease called love.”

Tejiri stressed the word ‘disease’ to further drive home how she felt.

Tears clouded the older woman’s eyes as she watched her young daughter spew her resentment on her.

The one person she was supposed to protect, her first born.

She ruined her and made her hate love.

“Tejiri,” the woman’s overflowing emotions, made her voice shake.

“I was young, I didn’t know.”

She watched her daughter just stare at her, maybe with pity.

She would never forgive herself. She broke her daughter, her first fruit.

“He hated you and hated us,” Tejiri’s voice continued in a sad, quiet tone.

“If what I saw from him was love, I will never love.”

She stood up and walked away.

Her mother stayed and stared at her feet asking herself the same question, she had asked all these years… Why?

Why did she stay? Why did she love a monster?

Why was she not strong enough to leave for her children?

She always had the same answer.

At the end of the day, people are people, and people get lonely.

She was lonely and he was the only man who loved her.

Maybe he never did, or maybe he loved her in his own way.

No matter how bad he treated her or her kids, she stayed.

That’s because, there is one thing her daughter was yet to realize, it was that at the end of the day, we all want love.