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My Life Has Been a Waste
Where I live, girls have to make sacrifices so their brothers can finish school. It means that finishing school is not a priority for girls, that girls have to start working at a young age to pay for their brothers to go.
My brother and I are nearing 40.
How has my brother turned out after I stopped going to school when I turned 11 and worked in factories to ensure that he was prepared for future job prospects and marriage?
He has had many jobs without staying in one for even a year. There has not been a woman that he’s stayed with for even 6 months.
He drinks and gambles away money.
He stays in the room of our childhood home a lot, not wanting to search for work most of the time.
I’ve wondered for a long time about what the point was of working for him to finish school instead of me. Especially when, for a while, I prostituted myself on a US military base because I could get paid much more there than anywhere else around here. There were times when I was in my late teens and young womanhood when the soldiers didn’t pay for whatever pleasure they got out of using me. I still remember, too, when I felt more than broken as I stared blankly, thinking nothing, as I thought about how my brother’s finishing school and being given the best didn’t amount to him turning out to be…
