Not theirs, but they loved me anyway.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learners' featured post. Trust me, this prompt made me journey down memory lane to one of my funny memories with my African parents. One faithful day my dad flogged hell out of me for failing to carry out my house chores, and with tears rolling down my chin, I wrote a letter to my mom asking if I was adopted because my biological father would never beat me in that manner. African parents will shock you; you will not believe my mom gave me another round of beating for asking such a question 😂.

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Growing up with my parents, my dad was super strict and gave no room for mistakes and never tolerated any form of misbehavior. Trust me, his level of being strict helped fill my mind with questions like, What if he is not my biological father? What if some day I come to find out that I was adopted? Today I appreciate him for being strict and for raising us the way he did because all that shaped both my siblings and me into who we are today. Probably if he had given us the type of space we wanted, we would have grown up to be wayward, but till date the fear of what he is capable of doing just to make sure we act right still crosses our minds.

At some point in our lives we have all let some thoughts to cross our minds or probably imagine certain things. Some of these things we imagine are things that we have seen happen in movies, and we try to picture ourselves in that situation and how we would react to it. Trust me, even before this prompt, I have asked myself the question, what if my parents are not my biological parents or what if i was adopted? Hearing such news at this age might break me down and hurt me deeply because, in the end, all my life I have been living and believing in a lie, which makes all my life a lie. Going back to change the narrative or how people see me would be difficult.

In a situation like this, I would be mad at them for making me believe in a lie and for fooling me for a very long time. It would not be fair to get someone to be living in a lie for this long and expect them to get over it like it is nothing after they find out the truth. At least I deserve to know the truth at some point in my life, and it was supposed to be a long time before now. Being the only one adopted would even hurt more because certain things are definitely going to change. If care is not taken, how your other sibling sees and treats you might change as well.

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One thing is for sure: my love for my parents and siblings would always remain the same because, despite the fact they are not my biological parents, they still tried their best to give me a good life; they treated me like their own and never once made me feel like an outsider. It is difficult to come across people who are so welcoming, so I will not take because of a single wrongdoing and scatter everything (family) we have built over the years; at some point I will have to forgive them and we get back to the way we used to be. Never use a single wrongdoing to cancel out all the good deeds; always remember.