The Choice That Made Me a Rebel

I was 33 and visiting my mum for the Easter holiday when Aunty Vee called. Aunty Vee is my mum’s elder sister’s step-daughter. We had never spoken on the phone in our lives. I only saw her occasionally. So when her name lit up my screen, I was already curious.

After the pleasantries, she hit me with it. “Eby, I don’t understand why you don’t want to get married. But don’t worry. I’ve got this great guy for you. He’s handsome, educated, rich, and ready to settle down immediately.”

That evening, the man in question reached out. I’ll give it to Aunty Vee. He was well-mannered and intelligent. Now, I should mention that I look much younger than my age, and so, he simply refused to believe I was 33. When he finally accepted the truth, his tone shifted. He decided he could not marry a woman three years older than him. In his estimation, I was unmarriageable.

But that wasn’t even the strangest part. What truly baffled me was Aunty Vee and her siblings turning around and blaming me. They insisted I had lied about my age just to reject another suitor. Oh well!

You won’t believe the bizarre matchmaking encounters I’ve had and the gossip. But let me not bore you with all of that.

As I got older, the matchmaking reduced in tempo. I’m not going to lie. Getting to 40 with no parents, no siblings, no spouse, and no kids was scary. Add to that the fact that I was not where I felt I should be financially. Was I a fool at 40? I began to question the decisions I had made. I wondered whether I wouldn’t be better off with just any man than alone. And then I went back to a decision I had made as my mother drew her last breath at the hospital. I told myself, ” Go have that baby, Eby”.

And so I did. Just as the whispers and name-calling were fading, I gave them something far more substantial to talk about. I had a baby as a single mother. “This is what she resorted to? Was this her plan all along?“

The reactions split into camps. A few were like, “Oh, she’s got some guts.” Others felt I deserved to be shamed publicly. “She’s not even ashamed. Flaunting the evidence of her whoring before us.” And just like that, I became an outcast in certain circles.

And then there was the group that softened their judgment. Not because I had been brave. Not because I had made a deliberate and considered choice about my own life. It was because, as they put it, “At least, she’s preserving her father’s lineage.”

My son’s existence, in their eyes, was redeemed by his usefulness to my father‘s name.

One of my senior cousins was bold enough to say it to my face. “You can’t imagine the kind of battle you and I would’ve fought if not that you gave us a boy.”

For those who don’t understand why that statement carries so much weight, let me give you some context. I am an only child. A girl child. In my culture, that means I am expected to one day marry into another family, bear children for another name and leave my father’s lineage to die with me. There is, however, a recognised practice in some Igbo cultures where a woman can choose to have a child as a single woman in her father’s name. That child is automatically acknowledged as her father’s, entitled to his name and his inheritance. The woman must remain unmarried while doing this, so that the child’s biological father cannot come to claim them in the future. It is an accepted custom. 

But that is not what I did. I did not have my child to preserve my father’s lineage. I had him as a companion, a family of my own, someone that belongs to me and I to him.

It just happens that we both share the same surname, which happens to be my father’s surname too. So by their logic, the lineage box was ticked anyway. 

A friend once asked about my child’s surname and went berserk when I told her. For her, the child should bear HIS father’s name, not mine. You see? It is never about me. Neither is it even about my child, come to think of it. It is about preserving a lineage, a name. 

But whether the name aligned or not was the point for me. The point is that I did not make this decision for my father’s lineage. I made it for myself. And the fact that they could not see the difference, that they did not consider my why, tells you everything about what society truly believes and how it views women. That my choices were never really mine to make.

Let me be plain. I had this child for entirely selfish reasons. For myself. My decision came from a place of needing to have my own person. A decision I arrived at after losing my mum, the last member of my nuclear family. I did not go through pregnancy, childbirth, and the daily, unglamorous reality of raising a child alone so that society could find a narrow reason to partially forgive me.

My life is not a service. My choices are not a transaction. And I refuse to let anyone reduce the most personal and powerful decision I have ever made into a footnote in someone else’s story about a name.

For too long, women have been handed a script. Marry at the right time. Have children for the right reasons. Live in a way that pleases everyone but yourself. What happens when you step off that path? When you choose a life that isn’t defined by marriage or tradition?

This story isn’t only mine. It belongs to every woman who has been made to feel like a failure for choosing differently. We are not failures. We are just living. Fully, on our own terms, with or without anyone’s permission.