When Life Gives You Lemons
On the day I learned about it, I knew my life was about to change forever and there was no turning back.
The unforeseeable dark future that stood before me was indeed more daunting than anything I’ve ever been faced with in my twenty-three years on earth.
Yes, My life was just beginning and here I was caught between a rock and a hard place. A place where my actions and the painful grips of reality stared me deep in the eye. Daring me to curse my oddly placed priorities and bad fortune.
Before now, I had outlined what I wanted to do as soon as I turned 23. First, I’d planned to do my best to ace my final exams at the University beautifully. Then, I’d go on to apply to one of those top-grossing Communication Technology Firms for my Industrial Training. Immediately after this, I’d leave the country for my Masters’ study abroad…on and on it went. I had it under control till I turned 53 too. After all, they say you can’t prepare beautifully for what you didn’t plan for.
It was a smart plan, and my parents were proud to see how much I appeared to have my life in total control.
This plan was set on an unflinching and unmovable rock. There was no way my life could go anyway else.
Until I met Debbie, and love got involved. life happened and ruined everything for me—for us.
Now, the reality that stood before me as she tearfully delivered the news was nothing resembling the mental list I had earlier planned out.
I had my entire life planned out carefully and efficiently till after I turned 53! Yet, I could not understand why the plan was changing and taking a new form suddenly. I was barely even 23 yet!
It appeared as if my whole life was running so fast like a movie in playback mood, I had to take an abrupt halt, as I sighed and stared dedicatedly into the ceiling.
My feelings and brain churning into mental overwork.
Where I come from, there are only two things that are considered and labeled as unpardonable sins—the sin of murder, and the sin of becoming illegitimately pregnant.
Even the throes of hell did not have space for such heinous crimes. Such crimes were reserved and judged by the devil himself.
Learning that you were soon to become a father to the young fetus growing within your girlfriend’s womb could be a reason for celebration. But things are bound to take an ugly shape— definitely not the best idea if this news greets you as a 23year old undergraduate; broke, desperate and uncertain about the future.
We learned about it very strangely. First, it started with incessant bouts of illnesses that had particularly terrifying symptoms. Young, naive, and stupidly in love, we did not care to consider that this might be a result of our unrestrained actions.
At first, we’d dismissed it as nothing other than ‘regular student sickness’. When it showed no sign of slowing down, we had gone on and tagged it ‘Malaria and Typhoid fever’ until bouts of self medications only led to further depreciating symptoms.
Then came other symptoms: the morning sickness, the incessant cravings, the anxiety, and the saturated bloating here and there.
How did a sick person look so fat? That’s when I took the cue. This was more than a ‘student sickness’. it was something bigger. Something we were trying to deny.
And that’s when Debbie decided a visit to the Doctor was indeed required after she missed her time thrice consecutively.
You should then have imagined my immediate reaction and present existing confusion when I received the news that my girlfriend had just been confirmed to not only be sick—Debbie was pregnant with a child.
A small seedling was taking shape within her with every day, hour, and seconds that passed by, and I was undoubtedly the father of this child.
They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and add vodka. But how do you make lemonades when you don’t know how to?
I stood up pensively and paced across the room as I watched her squirm in tears. I longed to reach for her rapidly and twirl her around my chest. To assure her that all would be okay eventually. But here I was, too tense to put into action whatever my mind was suggesting to me. We both needed comfort. How did we get to this point anyway?
How did we live in denial for so long?
I stopped pacing almost immediately, turned around, and headed towards her. I watched her heart-wrenching sobs fill me with dread as each sound drew me closer to where she stood overtaken by sorrow. Cross-legged on the floor, head in her hands, I knew immediately that she hated herself for making wrong decisions in a rush of ecstasy, she hated and blamed me for everything too. After all, I was undoubtedly her only partner in crime on the specified matter. How did love and passion turn into something this dreadful?
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Shush! I cautioned myself inwardly. A child was a blessing to our relationship, but this ‘blessing’ would have been better appreciated in much better circumstances.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I was glad that the woman who I loved more than anything else in the world was gonna be the mother of my child. But more than this, it could have been better timed, and not like this when I was yet to finish up my undergraduate studies at the University.
I was not ready to be a father, neither was she.
Plus my 53-year plan did not have a baby in it at this time.
As Debbie sat weeping passionately, I watched as she unconsciously wrapped a protective arm around her womb area, as if shielding our child from the inevitable storm that was to come. First, from our parents, and then society.
Our lives would change swiftly with the arrival of this child. We both knew it, and I could tell we already loved something that had not even been born into the world, yet —I had no choice. I had to love it—this child.
This child was the evidence of true love —our love, and even the world could never take that away. As I stared at Debbie, I knew what her decision would be. She too would never throw away such a unique gift of nature even if the circumstances were entirely unfavorable.
Our lives were about to change forever with this unspoken decision.
We had to keep the baby.
Keeping a child meant a lot of things for every couple, but for young undergraduates, it meant they had just embarked on a fight against the entire world: their career, ambitions, themselves, and the future. Everything was simply on the line.
How could a pregnant undergraduate scale through a successful career path without tussles? Such things were only possible in story scripts and motivational speeches.
Pregnant and unmarried? Debbie and I indeed had more than we’d bargained for.
With the unspoken decision reached, I reached out and hugged her tightly. Together we would fight this battle against the world and win with our baby.
Decisions are always followed by action, and we had to inform our parents about it all.
Debbie’s father who was a wealthy tyrant of a man did not find the news nor the circumstances pleasing at all, and in a fit of anger, threw us both into the streets yelling that he had no room for a prostitute under his roof.
As he spoke these words, Debbie had been badly affected and had broken into more tears. She kept muttering “I can’t do it without my parents’ blessings”.
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In a society that frowned on premarital affairs and illegal pregnancies, Debbie’s father’s reaction had not come as a surprise, to say the least. It had been expected even though Debbie was his first and only daughter.
The sin of fornication was one of those unpardonable sins to the older generation. They could just not have it.
Debbi and I had been scared beyond words during every step of the way. At some point, I began to notice an unspoken strain in our relationship. Alas, none of us had it easy, but it appeared society took the better lash at her. It was almost as if the snide glances were directed towards her alone and for some unknown reason, I was vindicated from it only because I was a man!
With time, it became impossible to find joy anywhere else.
Debbie loved me dearly, I did love her too, but it was impossible to swallow the elephant that hung in the room. The plague of guilt, shame, blame, and involuntary loss on her part.
As the pregnancy progressed we began to experience new problems. Without any support from our parents, she gradually had to quit her studies as she neared the last trimester of the pregnancy. As the baby grew within her, I began to notice that her hatred for me started to spiral out of bounds.
She’d pick up fights over trivial things like the towel in the bathroom, the kind of cloth I had on, the length of my hair, and even the sound of my chewing during dinner. It was as if the very sight of me repulsed her greatly.
Understanding that these were symptoms of her raging hormones and the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, I did not let it get to me at all. I knew I had to learn to stay patient with her through it all.
However hard I tried to be more supportive, I realized I had to find new ways to balance my sanity. I began to live more in the past than in the present. Drawing succor from the beautiful memories we had together before the child came along.
I’d remember the days we spent gisting, laughing, and cooking together in my small minimalist apartment. How she’d pull my ears whenever I teased her, and kiss me passionately as we giggled away like little children.
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Truly, I loved her first as Debbie, and now that she was going to be the mother of my unborn child, I knew I’d cherish her forever.
I just wanted us to get back to normal again. Back to being us.
My mother was the only adult who provided support to both of us. She’d sneak her way through the back door without the knowledge of my father just to bring foodstuff to support us in our one-room apartment. She said it to us even though my father had involuntarily renounced me as his son.
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She did this at the cost of her marriage, for which I will eternally be grateful to her.
While I counted down to the day of the childbirth, I took up menial jobs alongside my studies determined to make Debbie comfortable at all costs. I did everything to return her to normalcy.
Even if our lives would never return to what it originally was. At least, I saw a way forward with my Debbie and our child.
Few months before we learned the baby was due to come. The doctors informed us that there were unnecessary complications with the child and we had to take caution to make sure that both mother and child survived the entire process of delivery.
One day, in the eight-month of the pregnancy, Debbie woke me up with groans and cries. She was panting and had uncomfortable contractions. Her cries startled me suddenly as I noticed her clutch her stomach tightly as bouts of pains seared through every sinew of her flesh.
It was an unbearable scene to watch. The contraction was stronger than the others we had witnessed before. And even I thought it strange as she wasn’t supposed to be due until next month.
Something was wrong, and I realized immediately that I had to take her to the hospital at once or I risked her life and the life of our child. When we arrived at the emergency ward, the look on the doctor’s face was enough to answer my questions.
Something was very wrong.
The baby had decided to come out too early.
Debbie’s screams and cries of pain filled the room as she struggled to bring our child to life. I had been utterly confused. With no one to call, nowhere to go, and I fainted twice following the screams that seemed to erupt from the delivery ward.
The cries erupting from the emergency ward weren’t the sound of a woman travailing in uncomplicated childbirth if, for anything else, it sounded like the wail of a woman crying and begging for the mercy of death.
I was scared to my teeth!
Turning immediately to God, begging with everything within me, I asked for Debbie’s life to be spared just this once, promising to do absolutely anything if he’d just consider my prayers.
With tears and absolute fear pulsing through every sinew in my body, alone in the hospital ward, I sunk to my knees in prayers. I needed Debbie to stay alive. If not for anything else, for the sake of her life that she’d not lived—For the future that lay ahead of her.
As I begged God to spare us and forgive the both of us, I knew she was too young to die—to die in this way for that matter.
A few hours later, the sounds, grunts, and screams died down abruptly. The heavens had been closed against us. The ward was utterly silent, safe for the soft wails of a newly born baby.
Our baby girl had been born.
When the doctor emerged from the emergency ward, I knew the worst had befallen me. Even the heavens had turned against me.
“I’m sorry Chris. Debbie couldn’t make it.”
The world suddenly spun, and I found myself on the floor. I stood there staring at him and ranting on and on about medical terms I didn’t care to understand. The only thing I could think of was how could she do this to me? Why did Debbie leave me alone with a child?
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The doctor continued to indistinctly mutter about how they managed to save the baby, but Debbie had died from severe bleeding and maternal related complications.
My love was dead. Debbie had deserted me forever, leaving me to fight alone for our child in this cruel world. As I sank to the ground in pains and regrets, I only had one thought. I wish I had never met Debbie at the time I did. How would I leave without her now?
And the child, what would be her fate too?
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