A Mother's Struggle

Life has always has its ups and down but for one woman everything was crumbling down before her very own eyes one after another. She suffered an ordeal of the most grievous kind. It started when she was just a young innocent child of six years old, the only daughter of Marissa Lockhart. The reason I didn’t mention the fathers name was because she has no father or rather she didn’t know who her father was. Her mother works as a companion to old rich men in a club called Illusions. She was beautiful alright, long golden honey hair on a small heart shaped face, a tall voluptuous body and a perfect white skin which the child inherited. She was one of the top butterflies in the club with men everywhere falling for her and gifts ranging from jewelries to money presented to her but all this couldn’t make her a better mother. Her only daughter was left alone in the cold and dark room to scour for food in the streets in a rag dress. The only times she came home was to make bruises on the child blaming the innocent for her undesirable life. It was on that dark stormy night after many, many months of struggle and suffering, at the age of twelve, she was left by her mother eloping with a rich man.

What was left of the child was found hiding at the dark corner of the small room by the old landlord who took her into his care. As a result of his old age he was not able to take care of the child for a long time. Nevertheless, she was fed properly, given decent clothes and had her blue-black bruises treated before he sent her to a foster care. It broke her heart to leave the place because in her heart her mother would come back and bring her along into a better life but when the people from the foster care came she didn’t shed one tear. She was unable to cry.

Eight years of moving from one foster home to another, she thought she would found peace in a stable working man ten years older. Just eight years into her marriage brought her one stout and good-looking son and a daughter with her exact image. At that moment, she believed that she was moving towards a higher, nobler, and happier destiny. However, no one could realise that a man would purposely and willingly degrades his own wife and daughter. Sometimes a man forgets, or he never knew, that the duties of a woman spring form their rights; and in proportion to the rights they enjoy, are the duties they owe, and he that enjoys the most rights owes in return the most duties; though until now, while man enjoys the rights, he preaches all the duties to woman. It started with a bad investment that caused his company to go bankrupt. After losing his job and with his son gone to join the military, he turned into a drunken monster that sexually abused and harassed the wife he took into his care. Each day the tortures of her life grew and when it seems to calm down when he leaves it got even worse and it even spread to his twelve year old daughter when he got tired of abusing his subservient wife. On a calm night he came in a drunken state, this monster holding a pocket knife in his left hand while smiling in great delight. The first attack was on her hands as blood ran gushingly out of the torn flesh. She saw a faint glow of insanity in his eyes; they were going to die in this monster’s hands. She looked at her frightened daughter and bade her go hide. It was the last straw she was not going to let it all end just like this. She knew that she has to aim for victory in spite of all terror—victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. There was no telling what was going on as it happened so fast in the dark room of the kitchen. The next thing she knew blood was spilled everywhere but it was not just hers. His body lay still beside her unmoving, dead.

That was the image her son had seen of her and the man she called her husband. His loving attachment to his father before he went to camp caused him to declare his own mother a murderer. In ignorance of her cause and sufferings, he conceived ideas, laid down the rules, and enacted laws concerning her destiny and rights. This woman, the mockingly so-called “better half of man,” has yet to plead for her rights, nay, for her life; for what is life without liberty?

When her own son accused her in court of Law in killing the father he admired. The look of anger and hatred in her son’s eyes along with the trauma of abuse and near death caused her to lose sight of her sanity. The court and its law declare that she was to be placed in a psychiatric ward for the rest of her life and her abused daughter to be under the care of her brother. This is the law, but where is the justice in it? In the laws of the land she has no rights; in government she has no voice. No one was there to help her in her dire strait or change the awful state of things. She was forced to let go of her daughter and only supporter. She has to pay the penalty for disobeying men made laws, and far greater penalties has she to suffer from ignorance of her far more complicated nature than him.

Now she sat in front of me on the wooden chair staring into space unconscious as age and time passed by her. This was the result of offering her blood, toil, tears and sweat to a man. Her white hair in disarray, her once beautiful voluptuous body now turned to skin and bones, feeble and weak and the bruises on her skin gradually disappearing but the scar in her heart was embedded in her soul forever. She may have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but she has the heart of a king. I took her wrinkled hand in mine and said; “I will always support you”. She looked at my face and tears welled up in her blue eyes. I knew she’d recognize me, a mirror image of her. I’m proud to say that this courageous woman’s name is Diane Lockhart. She is my mother.