Dear MIMsters: Am I Right Or Wrong To Feel This Way About My Family Considering These?

I am the first child of my parents. My mum divorced my late dad when I was about 5 and my younger brother, 2, and married a man from another tribe. Few years after the separation from my mum, my dad died but not before efforts to reunite both of them had been frustrated by my dad’s supposed siblings.

After my dad’s death, my younger brother and I were ‘distributed’ to live with my dad’s siblings.
My sojourn with my aunt lasted for nearly 25 years. This quarter of a century was packed with very sad experiences that, if catalogued, readers will marvel. My stay was that of hell on earth.

By nature, I am quiet, gentle and obedient. But despite my gentle disposition, it is still unfathomable why I had to receive the kind of treatments I received while living with my aunt. To mention a few of my travails, let me share the following instances with you:

*I was always decked with household chores while my aunt’s kids were exempted.
*I was always on business errands for my aunt like hawking, freighting of produce, etc, while her kids were exempted.

The chores and errands impacted negatively on my studies and health, yet my aunt felt unconcerned. I grew up in pain mainly due to the severity of the tasks entrusted to me which were far above my age and capability. I was once tempted to ask a schoolmate then if she was always having pain and headache because of my belief that everybody was going about with pain and headache.

When it dawned on me that academics was a no go area for me, I personally funded my apprenticeship in tailoring.

Meanwhile, throughout my stay with my aunt, I didn’t see my biological mother. My mum’s failure to seek us out throughout the over twenty year period is still a mystery. It was very traumatic and served as a tonic for my aunt to abuse me however she pleased.

On my first menstrual flow, I had no prior tutorial on such an occurrence, so I continued with my mandatory chores unperturbed, despite the stain on my cloth. When my aunt saw this, she openly rebuked me and she publicly stripped me naked; I was just 14 years old.

The peak of her ill treatment was when I came of age and suitors were coming. She would always oppose my preferred suitors and frustrate such relationships. When I finally got the one I loved, at about 30 years of age, although not of my tribe, I summoned courage to tell her. She got furious and displayed very negative emotions. She rained invectives on I and my mum which are unprintable. She predicted that I would elope with my heartthrob, and that I would get pregnant but shouldn’t bother myself to communicate the delivery of my baby to her.

I reached out to her husband, who was of the same tribe like my suitor. He was initially sympathetic about my cause, but later made a u-turn by saying, “I am on the side of your family members on your choice of marital partner.”

I moved in to live with my suitor after I returned home from work one day and my aunt’s youngest daughter, who was physically challenged and whose welfare had been my responsibility, warned me to leave the house immediately because “they want to kill you”. After due consultation with my closest friend then, who was with me when my cousin gave the warning, I resolved to leave.

Very soon I got pregnant and safely delivered. My mother-in-law approached my aunt to give the news and she ordered the old woman out. She was embarrassed and confronted me with her doubt that the woman was my mother. This gave me the opportunity to own up as to her real identity. With this development, I received no congratulations, neither was there any succor from my family members as I reared my children, even within my aunt’s precinct.

On a Sunday afternoon, after service, my husband, our baby and I (a week after my mother in law’s encounter with my aunt), met my aunt on the way. We greeted her but she ignored us and went her way.

During this trying period, my mum was still untraceable and my aunt very antagonistic to my cause. But providence gave me an uncle, my late father’s younger brother, who urged me to go along and marry the man of my choice saying that after all, my aunt didn’t marry from our tribe and that if my choice of a non indigene as husband is an offence, my aunt is equally guilty.

This uncle declared that as long as he was a male child, and have my dad’s blood in his veins, he authorized me to go ahead and handed me over to my suitor. We solemnized the union under Nigerian law at Ikeja Marriage Registry about two decades ago, and to God be the glory, the union turned out to be a blessing, contrary to the wishes of my detractors.

On one occasion, after the marriage, my aunt sent a query to me through her daughter, that why was I hasty in getting married, after all I wasn’t forty years of age. The reason for this opinion I can’t fathom more so as my aunt’s first daughter, who was younger than myself was already married with a baby before I got married.

My aunt used the case of my inter-tribal marriage to create a schism between me and my brother. He was instigated against me in order to scuttle my marriage. He was not successful, only by the grace of God. It was during the period of estrangement between I and my brother, who vowed to denounce me as a sister, that he died in an auto crash. His life story was not different from mine: he became a house boy, later an attendant in a hotel and ended as a motor boy with one of the eastern states bound transporters and he died as a bus conductor without education; he was not married and had no children. His life pattern and death is one of numerous burdens and pains of life that I had to carry.  I feel the pain more when I realize that we had aunts and uncles who could have helped.

I’m glad that my husband, though from another tribe, has been a pillar of support all along. The bliss was not absolute as I had to experience excruciating bodily pains and challenges during my seasons of childbearing. Doctors claimed that these challenges were attributable to child abuse which I had suffered.

At a point when I had found my feet, I ventured to locate my mum but it became a mission impossible as non of my aunts, uncles and cousins were willing to assist. Even cousins, who were yet to be born when the controversial divorce between my parents took place, had been indoctrinated to hate the woman they didn’t know, and therefore were not helpful.

While at that junction of confusion, trying to find my mum, the same aunts and cousins, who had been obstacles between me and finding my mum and ascertaining the reasons for the divorce, and possibly the cause of my father’s death, all of a sudden began to bombard my telephones with the news of my mother’s death!

The news came with a great emotional pain and shock. Here was a mother that I can’t describe her look. The news took a better part of me as I took ill critically and was hospitalized. Another pain was that I couldn’t be physically present at my mother’s interment due to my being hospitalized.

The big question now is, what led to all these complications?

Surprisingly, my aunt, now a septuagenarian, is evading this question. She is rather busy requesting me to come back home to finalize my marital rites with the family. Which family? I may be wrong but I don’t see any family; I only see enemies. I sincerely request this forum to kindly ponder on my case and offer suggestions. I have been happily married for almost 20years and about 50 years of age. I don’t feel any sense of attachment to my own extended family. Is this right or wrong?