For the Ones Who Never Asked to Be Here

 PART II

A daughter of endurance, learning to love in a world that first abandoned her.

After the applause faded and the photos were taken, after the robe was folded and the certificate framed—life moved forward.

Amara had graduated. The girl from a one-room house in Kawempe, who once stared out the windows wondering why her father never showed up, was now a lawyer. A symbol of victory. A beacon of hope. People clapped. Aunties boasted. Her mother cried.

But deep inside, something lingered. Not the poverty. Not the struggle. But the wound of absence. And as life opened up with freedom and new paths, so did vulnerability.

She started dating. At first, cautiously. Then with hope.

The first man she liked was kind, ambitious, and charming. He called her "queen," opened doors, sent long messages with poems that made her smile.

But every time she felt happy, a voice in her whispered, "Don't fall. They all leave."

She became suspicious of kindness. Every compliment felt like a setup. Every "I miss you" reminded her of the father who never once said it. Every promise sounded like an echo from the past—pretty, but empty.

And when disagreements came, even minor ones, she didn't argue—she panicked. Her mind didn't hear, "We'll work it out." She heard, "I'm out of here," and she'd shut him down or push him away before he could leave.

Because in her world, men left.

She didn't hate men. She feared them. Not because they were evil, but because her earliest encounter with one—the man who helped bring her into the world—had vanished without goodbye.

She craved fatherly love even in romantic partners. She wanted protection, assurance, stability. But she hated needing it. She didn't want to be "weak." That's how she viewed love—dangerous, disempowering. Yet she longed for it deeply.

And she never told anyone this:

At night, after long days in court or alone in her apartment, she would sometimes imagine what life could have been like—if she had grown up with a father.

What it would've felt like to be walked to school by two parents.

What it would've meant to hear, "I'm proud of you," from a man who shared her blood.

What kind of man she might have trusted, had her first model of one who has not been absent.

And while her mother was her hero, she hated that her childhood was spent protecting her mother's feelings. Being the "strong girl." Wiping her mother's tears when her own heart was breaking. She was the child who never got to be a child.

The men she dated didn't understand.

They saw the confidence, the beauty, the brilliance. But they didn't see the little girl inside who still whispered, "Don't trust too much."

One boyfriend once told her, "You're too guarded."

She wanted to scream, "Do you know how hard it is to grow up without a father and not build a fortress?"

But she didn't. She simply walked away—again.

It wasn't until years later that she sat in therapy and finally said it aloud:

> "I wish I had a father. Not for money. Not for pride. But so I'd know how to let someone love me without fear."

Her therapist nodded gently, and for the first time, Amara didn't feel like she had to hold it together. She let herself unravel. She didn't want to pass on broken patterns to her future children. She wanted to heal.

And healing didn't mean forgetting the past.

It meant understanding it.

Speaking of which.

Then slowly, slowly rewriting it.

She called her mother that evening and said, "You gave me everything. But now I need to give myself the chance to love, freely. Without fear."

Because her story wasn't just one of endurance. It was one of reclaiming trust, of choosing not to let abandonment define her forever.

Yes, children never ask to be born. But grown children, like Amara, get to decide what becomes of their pain.

And she chose to turn it into power—with softness still intact.