I saw the topic of this week and I thought to myself, this is really basic right? There isn’t anyone that would want to choose the contradicting option. Who doesn’t want to be happy? More than that who wouldn’t seek happiness for her child? But then I thought of people I know, really close to home, and I kept saying to myself, “No matter how bad life gets, I’d never live like this.”
It’s not common and very much frowned upon by a larger scale of people, but it’s something that happens. Living with a particular person when you’re not married for years, having kids and all of that. The problem with this kind of arrangement is that, if the relatives of your husband are unkind, they’d remind you every step of the way that even though their kin married you, you’ll never be part of the family. Now, in case anything befell said kin, you realize how well and truly alone you are. I've seen it up close and I think it's one of the really terrible things anyone would want to go through.
I'm not sure there's the possibility that something like that could happen to me, but if it did and I was so unfortunate that it had to be with a spineless person, incapable of standing up for himself, and his in-laws were rude and didn’t think of maltreating me, I would walk out of that relationship and opt to raise my child alone without a moment’s doubt for a few reasons.
I think the first is the fact that I’m loved at home. One problem a lot of people face that makes them endure toxic or abusive relationships, and tolerate maltreatment from people they shouldn’t, is probably because they weren’t shown love when they were growing up. Many of the things we tolerate and feel okay with as a person are more psychological than we think. Why would I, not just stay with people that maltreat me, but raise my child there when I grew up with love around me? Everyone deserves love and even if I choose to deny myself of that, why involve my child?
I am an advocate for positivity and avoidance of negative energy. If I intentionally decide to stay in a place with people who would make me feel small and less of myself because I got affiliated with their son would go against everything I believe in. Whether or not we realise it, the more we stay in toxic environments, the more normal we begin to feel it is.
Because if I believe in a particular thing but I constantly stay among people who believe in something else, I would soon begin to slip, begin to let go of what I believed in previously or at least have it diluted steadily till it became non-existent. So staying with rude in-laws and constantly listening to them talk down on me, I’ll soon enough believe the derogatory things they say about me and think that I do deserve the maltreatment I’m getting. It’s too scary to even think about.
And then moving to my unborn child. Children, more than anyone I think, are more sensitive to their environments. They pick up so fast on anything they find in their immediate environment. The good, the bad and the ugly, without discrimination. So, I’m imagining my child growing up in an environment characterised by foul language and wrong attitudes. I’m imagining my child thinking that it’s okay to call his Mama something terrible because he saw me calmly accept when my in-laws called me the same name.
Two things would happen to a child who is raised in a home where his mother is treated with disdain. He begins to think it’s okay to treat other people like that or somehow, his heart is turned against me to believe that somehow, I’m the cause of everything wrong that happens around him. And that it's okay to treat me just as terribly. It is sheer injustice, in my opinion, to allow a child to be raised in such an environment.
I can’t say this is such a simple choice and there may be reasons people who have been in or witnessed someone in this situation might give for staying but it’s something that I tell myself when I want to make difficult decisions. “Do it to protect your peace of mind.” I have lost things and people because of this but I say it’s for a just cause because of the peace I felt afterwards.
I would never want to compromise on the peace of mind that I and my unborn child deserve. So I would choose every day of my life to be free. To pursue peace, joy and happiness like our lives(myself and my baby) depended on it. And in a way it does.
These are my honest thoughts about this week’s Ladies of Hive. It may not be as perfect a reason as it should be, but then again, I’m learning every day. Who knows?
Jhymi🖤
Image is mine.