Benjamin was raised by his father alone because his mother died after she suffered some real complications during his Birth. He battled lots of emotions while growing up and was arrogant at some point because there was no presence of a woman in his life. He dated a lady briefly in school before they broke up and the reason for that was because Benjamin found out that the lady was also raised by a single Mom. He believed that she would definitely be battling with a whole lot of things because there was no father figure in her life. The twist was that Benjamin's Father got entangled with a woman and the woman was Benjamin's ex whom he broke up with in school. His brought her home to start living as family and that was when Benjamin saw his ex in their house.
Chapter 1 JASMINE
Benjamin was all alone in the sitting room thinking about the series of events that had played out for him since he was a little, the fact that he was raised alone by one parent and the fact that his dad who raised him did not give him so much opportunity to explore how he wanted when he was little. The fact that his mother was not there to feed him with her breast milk and comfort her with her ever soft gentle arms even made it worse.
The only memory Benjamin had about his mother was the pictures shown to him by his father, and the imaginations and stories he heard thus far from his father and relatives. Benjamin also noticed that the reason he always feel as though he got everything figured out was the fact that he was raised by a male single parent who will always assume that he got everything figured out and would never show emotions in front of anyone.
This was the exact toxic masculinity that Benjamin had learnt from his father and also the societal narrative about who a real man should be. He sat across the brown sofa with his hands placed around the bottle of milk he had made and placed on the fridge to get chilled, then he started remembering the stories that his father had told him as he fixed his eyes on the only picture of his mom in his wallet, hoping that she would just appear to him that moment and tell him that everything would be fine.
You now how imaginations work right? Many times when you are imagining something and you end up sleeping off, there is a huge tendency that you will dream about that same thing you were thinking of, that's why when you have imaginations about someone in a sexual light, you may end up sleeping with the person in your dream because your imaginations play a vital role in the dream you have ( that is if you dream at all ). So when ever Benjamin sleeps with such imaginations about his mother, he would have dreams about her, he would see her happy, sometimes sad, sometimes indifferent about many things. One of the days, Benjamin had a dream about when his mother was carrying him as a baby and bathing him. He would wake up from those dreams feeling bad and angry sometimes but he believed deeply that his mom loved him even unto death.
So Benjamin recounted the story from where her father had told him from, he felt pretty sad because he felt Like he was the one that actually killed his mother based on the story he heard, even though the father had told him countless times that its not possible for a baby to kill a full grown adult, he still believed that his birth was what caused the death of his mother. He had suffered from this thought and wished that his parents could not have tried giving birth to him but on a more logical point, he knew that what happened to his mother could have actually happened to any other person, but that does not stop him from missing the mother he wished he had.
Benjamin's mother had died when she was giving birth to Benjamin and ever since then, the father had remained single for a very long time. Although he still finds a way to pleasure himself by pursuing some ladies but he never did that for any form of commitment with them, in fact he believed that nobody could be able to replace the place of his dead wife, Jasmine.
Many times he would tell Benjamin about how adorable his mother was, how unique and helpful she was to him even before they got married. He would tell him that they planted the farm in front of their house together and they watched it grow. He also explained to Benjamin back then that Jasmine has always been scared of giving birth and that was why they stayed about 3 years without giving birth, he narrated that he was suggesting they adopt but Jasmine insisted that if a kid must cry in their home, then it has to be from their loins.
So the moment they decided to make babies together, she started having some real complications, in fact one time she wanted to just abort the baby but the doctors told her that it's a fifty to fifty chance that she will make it if she goes for abortion, the reason was because of the way the baby was positioned in her stomach. After long deliberation, they decided to keep the baby till delivery. On the day of delivery, Jasmine was happy and the delivery was smooth, some minutes after delivery, she kissed her baby gave her to the nurses to clean up but some minutes after that, she started shouting that she could not breath and this attracted the attention of the doctors in the ward who tried their best to make her steady and breath but they could not do anything substantial until she passed away smiling towards the direction of her baby, Benjamin.
Benjamin was actually a name Jasmine had picked right before they gave birth to him, although the father wanted a more generational name like Smith but the death of Jasmine made him to just name the baby Benjamin in respect to his wife's wish before she passed on.
Benjamin sipped the glass of milk in his hand and took out some flower from the garden, he then headed to the venue where he learnt her mother was buried. The father had hidden the location from him because he knew that Benjamin was really an emotional person and the revelation of his mother's grave yard might make him break down, but after he came of age, he told Benjamin where she was buried and for the first time, he would be visiting the graveyard as an adult to pay his respect and see if he can find peace.
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