The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 54-year-old woman who has three children she doesn’t like. She talks about how they felt like distractions and how her relationship with them has only gotten worse with age.

Let’s start from the beginning. How old were you when you got married?
I was 26. I wanted to get married, but I wasn’t really sure who I wanted to marry. I had a number of options. I was sleeping with one of these options — he was a colleague in a different department.

I got pregnant. Abortion wasn’t an option. I was Anglican then. Even though I’m religious now, I won’t judge anyone who aborts a baby. Back then, I couldn’t even think of it. Also, I was scared of dying.

My parents too would have killed me if they found out I had an aboriton. So when i found out, I was worried about what to do. Then I came up with a plan to tell my parents I was engaged, so that once I started showing, the pregnancy would not shock them.

You didn’t tell the father?
That was the next step in the plan. After I told them I was engaged, I went and told him I was pregnant and that my parents said we had to get married.

Truthfully, that wasn’t a problem because he was ready to marry. I just wanted to rush the process. I had to do a lot of people-management to ensure that nobody spilled what I had told them.

How did your parents react?
They didn’t want me to court for long. You know how mothers are. My mother, God bless her, just wanted us to have a really big wedding as soon as we could. We got married three months after. I wasn’t showing, so my parents didn’t know. They began to suspect when I started showing within a few months of being pregnant.

Did anyone catch your lie?
Oh, not at all, but I eventually told my husband that my parents never forced us to get married. I’ve always been the kind of person to sneak around. As a young girl especially. Although I’ve changed now, I do think I enjoyed the thrill of doing that. My husband didn’t feel duped. He wanted to get married. He was much older, I should mention. He was in his 40s.

So what was that like? Getting married so fast? How much of him did you know?
Quite a lot from working together and going out together. But we were not necessarily in love. I was a romantic then. I wanted to marry someone I loved, but he wasn’t all about that. He was the opposite, a strong-head. People were not marrying for love as they are today, but I was optimistic that we would eventually fall in love. And we did, sooner than I expected.

How did that happen?
I had a stillbirth. That was the first real traumatic experience I had in my life. I had never experienced grief like I did. I was just crying and gnashing my teeth. I said God hated me.

That should have pushed us away from each other, but it drew us together. I say that it should have pushed us away from each other because first of all, he really loved that child. Second of all, it was the foundation of our marriage. When it happened, we became so close and started protecting each other. That was simply how we fell in love.

That’s sweet. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Thanks. We went a few more years before trying again. I felt that our relationship had become monotonous and didn’t have any ideas on how to make it better. All we did was talk about work. Even though we no longer worked together, we still worked in the same industry. We were both very career-oriented people.

Unfortunately, getting pregnant this time was war. We simply couldn’t get pregnant, no matter what we did or how we tried. The doctor said we were both fine, that we just had to keep trying.

When I turned 32, I got pregnant. I decided I was going to resign and be extra careful because I was scared of miscarrying or having a stillbirth. The doctor said I was okay to work way into my third trimester. I said I didn’t want to. I had a very easy pregnancy, but I was in bed almost all through. I took up sewing and would make many things for my baby. I wasn’t excited because I was scared, yet, I was expectant.

When my baby girl came, I didn’t feel anything.

What do you mean?
I had assumed that I’d at least be excited that I got another chance to have a child. But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad, and I’m not sure if I was depressed, but I wasn’t happy at all. I would spend hours staring at my child, expecting to become happy by just looking at her. Nothing happened. I faked happiness though. I faked the tears. Everyone around me was so excited; I just had to. And I couldn’t tell anyone.

That must have been hard for you.
Yes. Then child number two and three followed in quick succession. For number two, it was a difficult pregnancy. When I cried after giving birth, people thought it was tears of joy. It was, but it wasn’t because I was happy about my child. I was just happy I had gotten him out of my body. Once I had my third child, I told my husband we had done enough.

Continue: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-i-love-my-children-but-ive-never-liked-them/