Project 27 The Rise Of The Forgotten-Season 1 Episode 6: The Final Rejection

Season 1 Episode 6: The Final Rejection

A few moments after eating and getting a bit warm, she called me to come to where she was, then she told me to listen carefully to what she was about to tell me. "Tomorrow, you're going back to your grandfather's house. I'm going to leave you, and you will never see me again. Never see me again," she said. I wanted to scream and cry like a child who had lost her beloved mother, but I couldn't. I wanted to explain why I can't go back to my grandfather's house. I tried to speak, but every time I opened my mouth, she hit me. She didn't even wait for my words. Before I could speak, she was beating me in the face, pulling my ears, hitting me wherever her hands landed. No care. No mercy. No chance to be heard. Just rage. And still, I tried. I thought maybe she was joking. Maybe she would change her mind. But the next day she was serious. She was really going to leave me again. And I couldn't stop it.

"Hey, wake up. It is time to go to your grandfather's house. I want you to go," she said. I cried, "Mom, don't leave me. Let me go with you, please." I did all I could to beg her so that wherever she was going we could go together, but the more I showed her that I was hesitating to go, the more angry she became.

I had been hoping that when my mother returned, she would give me a chance to speak, to tell her what had happened while she was gone. But before I could even open my heart, she was cursing me by repeating the same cruel things they used to say and beating me up. But not only that—look at her now, she is crying. What do I do now? And somehow, I felt like it was all my fault. She looked at me and said the words that shattered my soul: "It was a mistake to give birth to you. Did I even give birth to you? Am I your mother? No, I gave birth to nothing. If you could be a boy then I could understand you, but now you are a mistake, the forbidden kid. If it wasn't for you, my life could be better, but now you are a curse. A miserable child." She repeated the same words her siblings and her stepmother had spoken over me when she was not around, and hearing those words coming from my own mother, it hurt me so badly. It crushed me and inside I was like, "Yes, it is true. Then I am bad luck."

I wondered what I could do so I could not be who they said I was. I regretted that I was a mistake and I hated that I was the kind of kid who was not needed by my own people. What my mother told me brought me to my knees. At that moment, I knew: it was a mistake for me to be born. I knelt down in front of her feet after a night of being beaten. No kindness. Nothing. And I begged her for forgiveness, not for anything I had done wrong, but for simply existing as a girl. I said, "Mama, I'm sorry I was born. I am very sorry that I was a girl. I promise I will never be born again. And I'm sorry I was born as a girl. I didn't mean to be a girl. Please forgive me and take me with you. Don't send me to grandfather's place again." I thought maybe, just maybe, if I said sorry she would love me and let me go with her. Instead she said, "Get up, let's go."