I was born out of wedlock to a seventeen year old first year college student when she became madly in love with a man from Flickerville. I didn’t know what that meant but I did not bother to ask my mother about it. Society condemned if I were a curse. Society made me feel I was a perpetrator of a crime. People called me bastard.

And this bastard craved and hungered for love. Yes, I had never felt being loved. Worse than this, my mother seemed to have lost her sanity and would always beat me mercilessly for every little misdeed. For years, I never knew love existed.

One afternoon, I got home with my white T – shirt got stained. When my mother saw it, she got furious. She hit me repeatedly with a bamboo stick.

“Mother, please stop.” I pleaded. But it was to no avail. I saw anger in her eyes. She kept on hitting me until I was bleeding.

“Blood! Blood! Oh my God, Mother please stop it. Why are you doing this to me?”

She paused for a moment while blankly staring at me. I though it was over. She hurried to the kitchen. When she got back, she had a bolo with her.

I ran as fast as I could to save my dear life. Just when I thought I got a way, I turned to her direction and I saw how she was hit by the speeding car.

“No! God! Mother!…mother!”

I ran toward her. She was soaked in her blood. I embraced her.

“ Mother, mother don’t leave me.”

My mother moved. She was alive but she could hardly open her eyes with blood dripping down her face.

I noticed people gathered around us. I looked up and saw those familiar faces who gave me the moniker bastard.

“Please, help me bring my mother to the hospital, please.”

They shook their heads. When I looked down my mother was still, cold, and dead.

“Mother, mother, don’t leave me. God why did you allow this to happen?”

That was four years ago. Now I am living with my father who searched for me for eight long years. He helped me heal the wounds of my past and nurture the love I have for my self. He made up for those lost moments with me.

There are a lot of children born out of wedlock. But do we deserve society’s condemnation? Absolutely no! No one has the right to judge us. No one has the right except God — only God.