PAIN BEHIND EVERY SMILE
It’s believed that rain falls from the sky,it has never drizzled from the ground upwards and so does arguments in a peaceful family.They have a source and that lies between the parents,but what about the children? Where do you place them when you want to divorce each other,go separate ways and start new lives?Who will go with the children and how will they survive without seeing both of you under one roof? One thing parents don’t know, they are the cause of every sorrow there children go through.The haste decisions parents make affect their children for a lifetime.
Depression,mental health,drug abuse and all these thing parents say they come from peer pressure, they are caused by the separation of parents.Researchers have it that the majority of homes mainly in Kenya are single mother raised kids.Where do the fathers go? How does the family survive without a father? After leaving where does he go? Later in life after all those struggles the mother has made, he appears from nowhere identifying himself as the father.Whenever you see a youth depressed, just go back to the roots and see what is behind that fake smile,that fake laughter he or she tries to make.
Boaz a 25 year old survey agent shared his story and it was quite painful.His father left the family of three,the mother,brother and him.His story shows how his father just threw there belongs away telling them to leave and never come back. Boaz at a tender age of 13years distanced himself from all his friends and started smoking. He says,”It was never my wish to start drug and substance abuse, one of my friends came to me and told me he knew what I was going through and all that was what he had gone through too,so he offered to give me a solution he had found.I agreed because anything that kept my mind at Bay I could accept.He first introduced me to alcohol and one thing he told me was that the alcohol was to make me numb and not feel any pain anytime soon.It was bitter at first but I opted to just take it if it was the only solution i could get.I was slowly becoming an alcoholic then was also introduced to smoking.The whole drug abuse just made me feel okay and I was swimming in the world of ‘no more pain’ and all that was to avoid seeing my mother cry because of lack of money to pay for my brother and I at school as school fees.”
Boaz later quit drug and abuse when he noticed he had bipolar at the age of 22years.His father later shows up claiming that he was sorry and he needed them back. As an angry boy Boaz couldn’t forgive but still as a grown up man,he needed a father figure even though he was not worthy the love from him and his brother.He forgave his father despite the fact that he had suffered alot since he threw them away.Parents should know how deep their children love them and everytime they think of how they miss either of their parents it hits much painfully than a nail on the arm.
Ann a 22 year old girl gives her story on how her parents broke up and she has never known the reason but still she sees it as a motivation to her inner drive.”I want to work hard to be nothing like my parents and if I get that chance of being a mother, my children will not suffer as I have suffered.”she says with confidence.
Mary a single mother agreed with the fact that whenever you see a teenager suffering please look back and check the roots, she narrated on how her daughter became a drug user without her knowledge because of the laughing stalkers at school calling her a bastard.My little angel was really depressed and she could ask me where her father was, she really wanted me to tell her where her father stayed but I couldn’t because of the way her father thought I couldn’t bare a son. Yes divorce is painful but still I believe am not affected as my daughter is.She knows her father because when she was 9years, we were a whole complete family.My daughter doesn’t want to quit drug abuse until she finds her father, which is painful to me too.I noticed she was into drug abuse when I found a bottle of whiskey in her room and the question myself’what does a 16year old girl do with whiskey in her room?’ then it hit me,my daughter was an alcoholic.I do love her and so I don’t think divorce do our children any good but harm.
Every choice that parents make, it has either a positive effect or a negative effect on their offspring.
By Monica Kemunto
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