She wanted my child, after birth, to carry her last name and the first name she had already chosen. What’s more – the child was never supposed to know that I was his mother. For him, I was only meant to be “a relative who raised him.” In his mind, my late great-aunt was to remain the true mother.
She herself had never been able to build a family or have children – after her, there had to be an heir, her “own child through me.”
And it was precisely this child – not me – who was meant to inherit everything after my death. I sat there with the letter in my hands, barely able to breathe. Two paths lay before me, both filled with pain.
To accept her conditions meant giving up the right to be called mother by my own child, voluntarily surrendering a part of myself, hiding the truth, living in constant lies. For him, I would remain just a distant aunt, a stranger who cared for him, but without carrying the most sacred title – that of mother. But refusing the inheritance also meant refusing the child, whom I had already decided not to bring into the world because poverty had extinguished all hope.
Then he would never be born. I would save myself from the pain of living a lie, but I would destroy a life that had already begun to grow inside me. I stood in the yard with that letter in my hand, and my heart was torn apart.
What should I choose?
