My parents brought up my brother and me with traditional values. I was taught that a woman’s role was to become a dutiful wife. Recently I learned that my brother would inherit everything and I get nothing.
I was in complete shock but my mother said it was only fair. ‘You’ll marry a good man. He’ll take care of you,’ she told me, as if it was that simple.
I stared at her, blinking, wondering if I had misunderstood. But her face was calm. Certain.
As though this had always been the plan. I wasn’t angry at first. Just confused.
We had both grown up in the same house, shared the same chores, sat at the same dinner table. Why did he deserve the farm, the house, the savings? Just because he was a man?
My brother, Daniel, didn’t even seem surprised. He shrugged when I asked him if he knew. “It’s how things are done,” he said, looking down at his phone.
That sentence stuck in my mind for days. How things are done. But done by whom?
And why was I just hearing about this now? I tried to reason with my father. He didn’t look at me while he explained that it wasn’t personal.
That men were providers and women were meant to be protected. “Your husband will give you a good life,” he added, pouring himself coffee like we were talking about the weather. But there was no husband.
Not yet. And even if there was, what kind of message were they sending? That my worth depended on someone else choosing to take care of me?
That night, I lay in bed thinking about all the little ways I’d been conditioned to accept less. The smaller slice of meat at dinner. The more chores.
The silence when Daniel got praised for mowing the lawn, while I folded laundry without a word. I didn’t sleep much. The next morning, I packed a bag.
I didn’t have a plan, but I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t look at the walls of a house where love came with conditions and inheritance had a gender. I moved to the city and crashed on a friend’s couch.
I worked as a waitress during the day and did data entry at night. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was mine. Over time, I saved enough to rent a small apartment.
Then, a one-bedroom. I started taking classes online. I liked numbers.
Patterns. Predictability. Accounting came naturally to me.
Within three years, I had a steady job at a mid-sized firm. My boss, Mona, was the first person who told me I was smart in a way that mattered. She didn’t care where I came from or what I looked like.
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