Everyone has two sides, the side that lives quietly as a prisoner in the shadow of others, and the side that remains optimistic in a negative world. Living as a mere illusion, she turned her struggle into strength and her fears into dreams.
Hope lay on her mat near the fireplace with a heavy heart full of anxiety. Nothing seemed to make sense at all. In the past few years she had found it difficult to distinguish reality from the fragments of her memory. It was almost midnight yet her thoughts would not let her rest. She could already see herself as a lawyer . All her suffering began at birth when her biological father denied her as he only wanted a son to inherit his property. Both Hope and her mother were poverty stricken and survived on a mere house help cheque. As if things could not get worse ,Hope had to drop out of school at age seven ,just so she could help her mother who had fallen gravely ill after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Since she was just a child with absolutely no job qualifications ,she tried reaching out to her relatives for assistance, but none of them were willing to help her and her mother. Months passed by and soon her mother died, and now she knew no one would give her the affection her mother used to give. She had no option but to go and beg her father to take her in, although she was certain he would make her life a living nightmare.
She was taken in as the family slave. Her wicked stepmother laid down some ground rules that made her wish had died instead of her mother. She would wake up two hours before sunrise to sweep the yard, clean the house and make breakfast for her step siblings, Michael and Emily, who saw her as nothing but a poor orphan. Hope usually completed her chores an hour after her siblings had left for school. She would not even have time to bath, so she would just throw on her hand-me-down uniform which had faded in colour, and work hard to get good grades in school. Every time she failed to complete a task on time she would get a severe punishment that made her realize she was living in hell on earth.
Years passed by and Hope was now nineteen years old when her father raped her and impregnated her. She had been offered a scholarship to the University of Zimbabwe as a law student, but she could not see her bright future anymore with the burden of carrying her father’s child. After giving birth to a bouncing baby boy, she ran away from home to pursue her dreams leaving her child, who was just two months of age, behind. None of this was easy for her but she did not have any other choice. She lived on campus for four years, surviving merely on the scholarship benefits.
At the age of twenty five she graduated and became a lawyer. Her life had made a big turn for the best and she was now living the life she had always prayed for. When she went back to Masvingo to take her son away from the clutches of evil, she found out Michael was serving a life sentence for murdering his mother after he came home high on drugs. Emily, who was taking care of Hope’s son against her will, had become the fourth wife in a polygamous household and was now living in poverty, whilst her father had become mentally retarded after his family fell apart. In the end Hope’s determination to change her life for the best pulled through. She stopped worrying about the shadow life she was living and remained firm in her virtuous desire for a better future. She tackled every obstacle that life threw at her and she never gave up.
When her time to shine came, Hope seized the opportunity and no longer existed as a shadow woman but rather lived as a lady of elegance and integrity.
