Her day starts at 5 am and the early hours are filled with the rush of preparing herself for work and her daughter for school; once she leaves work at 4 pm, she bolts home to help her daughter with homework before rushing off to her night job from 6 pm to 2.30 am.
But it takes about an hour to get home in the company’s bus so its sometime after 3.30 am that she finally drops into her bed for what is in effect a nap, because she has to be back on her feet in less than an hour and a half.
That has been the routine of 30-year-old Michelle (not her real name) for the past four months and while she agrees that she is doing her body harm by not getting enough sleep, she needs to work two jobs to make ends meet.
At the end of the month, her combined salary is just around $125,000 and since she does not have to pay rent some may feel that Michelle is much better off than many of her peers, but for this determined single parent that is of little consolation since every day is a battle to make ends meet.
Having grown up in a depressed community, where she still lives since the house belongs to her mother, Michelle is determined to give her daughter a better opportunity than what she had and has started with her schooling. Michelle sends her daughter to one of the top private schools in Guyana and while each term it becomes more difficult to pay the fees, her child’s report card gives her the impetus to scrape the required amount together to keep her at the school.
Michelle sat down with the Sunday Stabroek recently to share her story as she believes it could help others, and while she was adamant that she wanted her real name to be published this newspaper took the decision to carry her story anonymously.
“I did not have an easy life. I grew up in a single parent home too. I want better, not just for my daughter but for myself and that is why I keep going,” the young mother shared.
It is not as if she does it on her own because her mother is a tower of strength. Her mother takes care of her daughter when her school breaks at 12 until it is time for them to go home and she cares for the child when Michelle is away at night, toiling at her second job.
She has the weekend off from her day job and Sundays and Tuesdays from her night job. However, on Tuesday evenings she attends a class as she is determined to further her studies. Saturdays are spent shuttling her daughter from dancing to swimming and then choir practice. But Michelle would have it no other way as she wants her daughter to “have what I did not have.”
Single parent home
Michelle is the first of two children for her single parent mother who she said, “struggled tremendously to raise us.” And even though she was struggling, her mother opened her door to relatives and friends who were worse off, until one family friend took advantage of the situation and damaged her older daughter, who even though she is an adult still gets nightmares from the experience.
Michelle does not go into details; she tears up as soon as she begins to speak on the issue, but she shared that she was about eight years old when a male family friend who was staying in their home started to sexually molest her. Her mother had a job but she also prepared snacks for various restaurants and when she left in the evenings to make her deliveries, the monster struck.
“I can’t tell you now why I never told my mother, but it was horrible…,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Then one day there was an incident which roused her mother’s suspicions and her mother asked her whether anyone had touched her.
Michelle told her mother what was happening to her and she immediately contacted their pastor and the man was put out of the house but the matter was never reported.
“I did not want to go to the police and I don’t know if my mom was trying to shield me but she did not take me to the police. I was counselled through the church but it was not effective because I have been struggling to deal with abuse all my life,” she said.
Torment
All through her teenage years, Michelle said, she was tormented by that horrid experience; she would have frequent outbursts and she also developed a habit of wandering the streets.
“I would run away, like leave to go to school and never go to school and most times I would be sitting on the seawalls and my mom and other people would be looking for me. Sometimes they would find me and other times I would just go home. But I would do it again.”
Michelle said she was labelled as one of the “late starters” in school which meant she struggled through her studies but with grit, she managed to make it to fifth form and was successful in some Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate subjects.
During those years also she developed a passion for designing and the arts and after secondary school she attended the Burrowes School of Arts where she majored in ceramics and minored in textiles. She got job with a designer and Michelle said “things seemed to be looking up” but still there was a “void” in her life. Her father had left her mother while she was still pregnant with Michelle and while she finally met him he was never really her father because he was never around when she needed him. Looking back, she knows the void was created by her absentee father, but she began to “look for love and attention in all the wrong places.” She did not elaborate.
When she was 21, Michelle and her family lost their home and everything they owned.
“At that very moment I questioned God because I could not understand that he saw how much we were struggling and then for that to happen to us. And the sad thing is that my passion for designing died with that fire too.”
Since then Michelle has had several jobs. She has been at her current day job for just about two years, while her night job started in October last year.
“As a young woman you should not always want things handed to you because it can easily be taken from you. I don’t want to get into trouble, so I am doing it the right way especially since I have a daughter to provide for.”
She revealed that she was forced to take the night job after certain privileges that were afforded to her at her day job were abruptly taken away without any explanation.
Michelle will remain at her jobs—especially the day job—since she wants to start attending the University of Guyana come September to read for a degree in International Relations.
Her ultimate goal is to become a family lawyer and she is determined that one day she will be that individual who can provide assistance to children who are in need of legal services.
Same mistake
Pregnant at 25, Michelle gave birth to a baby girl and about two years later she became a single parent when she ended the relationship with her child’s father. In hindsight, Michelle acknowledges that she has repeated one of the mistakes made by her mother—having a child out of wedlock—and that maybe she should have been wiser in the light of the struggles she experienced as a child.
She recalled at that time she was not thinking about family planning and even though she was matured, that “little girl inside of me just wanted to party, dress up and have a nice time not taking life seriously.”
But she believes that she has an advantage because while as a child her mother had no one to leave them with when she went out to make a dollar, she has her mother to take care of her daughter while toiling. She remembered that she was just four years old when she was left to care for her baby brother while her mother ran errands.
“I do not resent my mother for what I went through she worked hard and tried to provide for us. My mother is a woman of faith and for that I am thankful. She is my rock now and she helps me with my daughter and I wouldn’t disappoint her.”
Michelle is also doing things differently because while her mother was a single parent without a secondary education she will complete her tertiary education. “Many times I saw my mom crying because she could not provide simple rice and sugar for us. I work two jobs because I want my daughter to at least get enough to eat.
“And mom always tells me ‘You could never say you are better than me until you have done better than me.’ I am working to do better than her not to show off but to make her proud and even now she is not complacent she is pressing every day to do better for herself as well.”
Eventually Michelle hopes to establish a foundation to help young women in difficult situations. “I have been there and I am still there but I have been lucky to have many persons in my life who helped me I want to be that source of help to others.”
