My Story Part Eleven

At that point I lost most of my will to live. I was trapped again in my relationship with Johan and just thinking about Lili made me cry. I shut myself off completely and I was chatting alot on my phone, I tried not to think.

Then the most unexpected thing happened.

It was late one night, early morning. I was just going through the online list on a mobile chat site where I had been for a couple of weeks. I recognized the last name on the list...it was Andy. My heart skipped a beat, but I immediately remembered our break-up earlier that year and I wasn't sure if I should sent him a message, but I decided to anyway.

What I didn't know at that stage was that Andy had been looking for me for weeks. He had gone to all the mobile sites I used to chat on. A mutual friend told him where I was and he came looking for me. We spent that whole night just chatting and joking and I smiled again for the first time in months, but I was also scared. I still felt hurt by the way he had treated me after our break-up and I could never really understand why he had left me.

Then he explained it to me.

I remembered then how we did at some point make peace, but we both disappeared from chat. I used to keep track of his life by reading his blog entries. This was September 2007 and he told me that he had written a blog entry about us a while after we broke up. Here it is.

He told me that neither of us were ready for our relationship back then, and in a way it made sense. I gave him another chance, but I never expected my dream of being with him one day to come true.

Andy never left me again after that and he supported me through every day. He was always there and he was patient, loving, and understanding.

Lili came to visit me at the end of September and that was also the last time I'd seen her. I stayed with her at my parents' house for that week and I held her little body close to me every night as she fell asleep.

The social worker who handled the case in Pretoria on my part came to 'check up' while Lili was there. She did one interesting thing with Lili that day. She asked her to draw a moon and then she had to say who she wanted to take with her to the moon and place them on the moon. As expected, she said the names of me, her dad, stepmother, all her grandparents, her stepbrother and Xaynee. The social worker then asked her if there was anyone she didn't want on the moon with her and Lili said 'no'.

All of us looked at each other and knew what it meant.

According to the assessment that was performed on her before the Form 4 to take her out of my care was issued, she showed an intense fear of Johan. Yet, she didn't say that she didn't want Johan on the moon.

Then the social worker asked her to draw pictures of everyone. Another strange thing she noted was that only the drawing of herself had hands and feet. I can't remember the drawing of Dolf, but I remember that the social worker pointed out that neither me, nor her stepmother had hands. The social worker took the pictures and said she was going to get them analyzed by a psychologist, but that never happened and this social worker is not working at that organisation any longer.

Another strange thing happened. Lili and I were waiting in the car for my parents when Johan phoned. I spoke to him over the car kit and Lili kept asking me if she could say hello to him, I told her no. Then she said: "Well, I'm going to" and she spoke to Johan, no fear.

Make no mistake, I don't think that Johan was innocent. At that point I started getting suspicious though. Something just didn't seem right. So I asked Lili straight whether she ever said that she was afraid of Johan and she denied it. I explained to her what had happened, but I don't know how much she could really understand. She was only 7 years old.

During that week we did as much as we could together and she followed me around everywhere. She even came to get me out of the toilet in a restaurant when she felt I was taking too long, more than once. I took her ice-skating and I saw so much of myself in my little girl. She, just like me at that same age, almost immediately got it right, so I took her again. It made me happy to see her smile.

She also spent time with Xaynee. It was beautiful to see her help her baby sister while they were playing on a jungle gym and how she protected her so that she wouldn't get hurt by the other children. They looked like two little angels, I couldn't be happier.

I cried with her one night, she told me that she misses us and that she didn't want to go back. I felt helpless, it broke my heart. There was nothing I could do.

The day we went back to Kuruman, we spent the night there. I had to take Lili back the next day. Dolf phoned and when he heard that we were in Kuruman, he demanded that I take her back. We rushed out from the restaurant, afraid that he might turn up.

That night I lay next to her, just stroking her hair. I couldn't sleep.

When Lili saw her dad the next morning she excitedly told him that I took her ice-skating. His words? "That's dangerous."

I hated him more then ever before. Lili just came and sat on my lap, she had her arms around me and I had to fight to hold back my tears.

That was the last time I saw my little girl.

P.S I know I've posted this video before, but I am uploading it again at this point of my story.