They say a child expresses the purest form of love. When you’re young and in love you feel like you’re on top of the world. Being young and in love you think you know it all. Don’t get me started on being a teenager in love, finding your first love. Knowing that someone other than your parents or friends care about you on another deeper level is a feeling that is unreal, almost like wow so someone can love me like this? care for me like this? its a whirlwind of emotions that feels like a special type of high.
Your first love is meant to be something special, some people even marry their first love but I never thought that my first love would hurt me. I was 14 years old when I met my first love Mukhtar in secondary school. He was actually younger than me by just a year. I met him on the first day of jss3. The first time I laid eyes on him, it was a crush like no other. He was this bad boy and you know teenage girls and bad boys are like 5 and 6, but don’t get me wrong there are girls out there that are into good boys. Mukhtar wasn’t too tall, average height for a teenage boy, and quite chubby, I remember he had a lot of pimples and he had hips for days. I went through the whole of Js3 having a crush on him secretly. If only I knew this crush would change my entire life, I would have ran for the hills and just kept it as an innocent crush.
One day during after school lessons, while preparing for the senior entrance exam. I was the only one in the class, and he came into the class and approached me next thing He is trying to kiss me and I pulled back. it was horrifying but then at the same time this is your crush so as a naïve teenager I saw it as a sign that he liked me back. So from that day he tried to get close to me as a friend and we became very close and eventually started dating. it felt like I was on top of the world. It felt so surreal to me. I was in love and I thought this was the person I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.
until one day when we got into a fight and he just slapped me. I was shocked, angry and upset but that was the beginning of many other slaps. After he would slap me he would come and apologize and make it seem like it was my fault and because of the love I had for him I believed it was truly my fault and we would make up. It was so bad that everyone in school knew about it. Now that I think back on it, there was no adult there for me despite knowing what was happening, there was no support system for me. There was no one there to advice me that I deserved better or to show me what love is. Even my parents as much as they tried to separate us, they never really sat me down to explain things to me. So I just thought what was happening was okay, I didn’t know that love isn’t meant to hurt you.
After a year of going through abuse, I met someone on Facebook that made me realize that what I was going through wasn’t okay. He made me realize that love is meant to be gentle, kind, understanding, respectful and fun. He gave me the courage to walk away. Although it wasn’t easy walking away it was the most free I had ever felt in my life. I was young and in love and blinded. Love is truly blind, now that I look back at it the signs were there that he wasn’t a good person but I was blinded by love, I thought he would change and I thought he would never hurt me but he did.
After that relationship, I never really considered what I went through as domestic violence or considered myself a survivor till now that I’m all grown up. I thought I was just young and dumb. I thought only married people went through such and since it was only slaps, I thought it wasn’t a big deal compared to what other women go through.
The lesson I have learnt is that anyone can go through abuse and abuse comes in many different forms. It’s not just grown women that go through it but also young girls. I have come to accept that I am a survivor, and I have a wonderful life ahead of me. I now know what love truly is not willing to settle for anything less than what I deserve. My story may be all over the place but I hope as a reader it opens your eyes, and also teaches you a lesson that we should be there for our young girls and teach them self worth.
