They say stop looking for love in other men. They say it like it is easy. They say it like I was supposed to know what love looks like.
But how could I know when the first man who was supposed to love me was the first man who broke my heart.
The hollowness that spread through generations finally reached my feet. It stands beside me like a shadow I never asked for. A shadow that whispers that love is sex and money. That if you do not have both, you are the same as a homeless soul with no doorway, no shelter, no place where your name is safe.
So I kept searching.
Changing beds as if I was changing panties.
Hoping the sound of someone's heartbeat would bring a flicker of light into a loveless, hopeless life.
Trying to stitch my wounds with moments that were not meant to heal me.
I am my father's daughter.
A girl who never knew what it felt like to be taken out on a date by her dad.
A girl who never heard him say how are you, my child.
A girl who did her homework alone while he chased skirts like his survival depended on it.
A man who thought a beating could straighten a child better than love ever could.
So tell me.
How was I supposed to learn what love is when the man who prayed loudest in church never prayed for me.
When he sang praises to God but never asked me how I was surviving the storms beneath my skin.
Sometimes I envy daughters who sit between their mothers and fathers like they are held between two warm hands. I envy the ones with full houses and full hearts.
Meanwhile I am here wondering what I will eat tomorrow.
Poverty clenching my stomach like a fist.
Reminding me that in this world, a girl who has nothing is seen as a toy a man can play with.
Two hundred rands.
That is all it took for some men to think they owned me.
Four seconds of their pleasure became years of my shame.
Four seconds that left forever scars on my spirit.
Three-letter words that stole my youth.
All while I was still looking for a father's love in the wrong places, in the wrong hands, in the wrong eyes.
So ask me again.
How am I?
Because the truth is, I am a girl who is still trying to fill a father-shaped hole with things that were never love.