I do not remember when but I know that at about seven years old I was very hardened. , I did not really care and I could not understand why all the young people around me cared. They would constantly remind me that I was a girl, I needed to be soft and prettier. I knew myself as a survivor; ever since I had known myself, I knew I had to fight for myself and what was right.
Once upon a time when I was a baby, I used to sleep on a piece of tattered clothe on the floor and watch old and older men smoke and drink. My father owned a drinking spot, it was in the most obscure places, as to how people got to know and frequented there, I do not know. All what I knew was that life was all about drinking and smoking. When I was older enough, like nine or ten, I started to sell alcoholic drinks and cigarettes to old men. Some of them touched my breast (I did not know what they derived from it but my father looked on as they did), some also had sex with me (I had my first sex when I was eight, it was very painful), I had a feeling my parents knew but I was getting tips from the people who slept with me so I never reported.
At school, I never had too many friends, the few I had drunk and smoke like most men I used to know. When I reached JHS One, every girl I knew started getting into a relationship of some kind. Everyone had this strange belief that I would never get one but I did and this shocked everyone. What shocked them the most was that he was two years older, was in a first class Senior High School, had averagely rich parent, so handsome that he was close to beautiful and on top of it all so quiet and calm. I do not know what attracted him to me but he really loved me.
He thought me how to be soft, apply make up, walk, be beautiful and more importantly self dignity. I no longer slept with older men, I no longer sold drinks in my father's shop, he changed me so much that even the mirror in my house saw me as a stranger. Our relationship lasted for eight years, it ended when he went abroad. At that time, I was in the university and my father was so proud of me. When he left me, I was so depressed that I found solace in older (but this time richer) men and my old behaviour.
I had to re-learn all my old habits just to forget him, I had to re-learn that there was no difference between happiness and sadness. When men are happy they drink when they are sad they drink more. When men are alive they drink, when they die people drink on their behalf.
