MY LAST FULL STOP. To the Honourable Court....

MY LAST FULL STOP. CHAPTER ONE By Divine 18th July, 2023. To the Honourable Court, If these pages have finally found their way into your hands, then I am no longer here to explain myself. Perhaps by now, my name has already been dragged through the mud. Perhaps people have called me a criminal, a disgrace, a stubborn child, a notorious student, and every other terrible name they could find. Perhaps they have already decided that I deserved what happened to me. But before you believe the story they told about me, please listen to the story I never got the chance to tell. I am writing this letter because I know there may come a day when my voice will no longer be available to defend me. Today, I am putting everything in my heart onto these pages. Not because I want pity. Not because I want revenge. I only want the truth to have somewhere to live after I am gone. Yes, I was stubborn. Yes, I made mistakes. Yes, there were times when I made people angry. I was the notorious student. I was the troublesome child. I was the girl people warned others about. But I was never the monster they made me look like. I was simply a girl who learned very early that sometimes you can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone. And if this letter is ever read after my death, then please remember this one sentence above everything else: I was killed for something I did not do. The people who knew me best were the same people who believed the worst about me. That is the part that hurts the most. My mother got married when I was still young. Everyone called it a new beginning. They smiled, celebrated, and told her that she deserved happiness. Maybe she did. I never blamed her for wanting a better life. I only wish someone had explained to me that sometimes, when adults begin a new life, a child can quietly become a piece of the old one. She moved forward. She built another home. She found another life. And slowly, without anyone announcing it, I became someone who belonged somewhere behind her. My grandmother was there, but being there was not always the same as caring. She did what she could, or at least that was what everyone told me whenever I complained. She was always careful about pleasing her son-in-law. She wanted him to see her as a good mother, a good woman, someone who could never be blamed for anything. But while she was busy proving herself to him, nobody seemed to notice the child standing quietly in the corner. Nobody asked why I became so quiet. Nobody asked why I stopped talking about my feelings. Nobody asked why I could stare at my mother's pictures for hours without saying a word. Sometimes I wanted someone to hold me and say, “You are still my child. You still matter.” But those words never came. So I learned to stop waiting for them. That was how the anger started. That was how the stubbornness started. Not because I hated everyone, but because I had spent too long feeling like nobody cared enough to understand me. At school, people saw the version of me that I allowed them to see. I was loud. I argued. I talked back. Sometimes I fought. I could get angry over the smallest things, and I carried an attitude that made people think I believed I was better than everyone else. The truth was much uglier. I did not know how to explain pain. When you grow up without knowing where to put your sadness, sometimes it comes out as anger. When nobody listens to your tears, you eventually learn to shout. When nobody stays when you are gentle, you start believing that being hard is the only way to survive. So I became hard. Whenever someone hurt me, I laughed. Whenever someone insulted me, I acted like it meant nothing. Whenever someone walked away, I pretended I was the one who wanted them gone. People thought I was proud. They never knew I was scared. At home, my name became almost synonymous with trouble. Whenever something happened, someone would say, “It must be her.” Whenever there was an argument, my name appeared in the middle of it. I became the girl everyone had already judged. And perhaps that was why, when the terrible accusation finally came, nobody stopped to question it. They had already decided who I was. My reputation became evidence. My silence became guilt. And my attempts to defend myself sounded like excuses to people who had already made up their minds. I still remember the night everything changed. I remember the voices. I remember the way people looked at me. I remember my heart pounding while I kept asking the same question: “What did I do?” Something terrible had happened, and somehow, my name had been placed beside it. I said I didn't do it. Nobody believed me. I said it again. Still nobody believed me. The more I tried to explain, the more people looked at me as if my words were proof that I was lying. Someone had already told a story, and everyone had chosen their side before I was even given a chance to speak. I looked around for the people I thought would save me. My mother. My grandmother. Someone. Anyone. But the faces I saw were filled with disappointment, anger, fear, and pity. Not belief. That was the moment something inside me broke. I finally understood that innocence does not always speak loudly enough to be heard. Sometimes the truth can stand directly in front of people, crying and begging to be seen, while a lie sits comfortably in the same room and everyone chooses to believe it. I knew I was innocent. God knew I was innocent. But the people who mattered had already judged me. If these pages are ever found, I wonder what people will say about them. Some may laugh. Some may say I was only trying to save myself. Some may call this the final desperate story of a guilty girl. But I am not writing this for them. I am writing for the one person who may someday wonder why nobody protected me. I am writing for the person who may look at my picture and ask, “Was she really capable of doing it?” I want that person to know that behind the stubborn girl was a frightened child. Behind the rude student was someone desperately searching for a place to belong. Behind the girl everyone called troublesome was someone who only wanted to hear, “I believe you.” I am not saying I was perfect. I wasn't. I made mistakes. I hurt people. I said things I regretted. But making mistakes does not make someone guilty of a crime they did not commit. I don't want revenge against anyone. I don't want another family to experience the pain my family will experience when I am gone. I only want my name back. If I cannot have my life back, then let me at least have the truth. Let the court know that the girl they buried under rumours was still a human being. I had dreams. I had fears. I had people I loved. I had a future I was supposed to live. But someone decided that my story should end before I could finish writing it. There is something I have been afraid to say. Before everything happened, I knew something was wrong. There were conversations that stopped whenever I entered a room. There were strange looks. Hidden messages. People who suddenly became distant. People who once smiled at me began looking at me as though they already knew something I didn't. At first, I told myself I was imagining it. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I was overthinking. Maybe I was simply becoming paranoid. But now I understand that the warning signs were there. I just didn't know how to read them. Someone knew that nobody would easily believe me. Someone knew my reputation. Someone knew that if my name was connected to the accusation, people would not bother searching for another explanation. And perhaps that was the plan all along. I don't know who did it. I don't know why I was chosen. But somewhere in this world, there is a person who knows exactly what happened. A person who knows that I was innocent. A person who knows that my death was built on a lie. And if these pages ever reach the hands of that person, I hope they understand something: You may have taken my life, but you did not take the truth. The truth is still here. It is written in these pages. And one day, someone will read it. So, Honourable Court, this is my last request. Do not judge me only by the person everyone said I was. Do not judge me by my anger. Do not judge me by my mistakes. Do not judge me by the rumours that followed me through school and home. Look beyond all of that. Investigate what happened. Find the person who did what I was accused of doing. Look at the evidence again. Ask the questions nobody wanted to ask while I was still alive. Listen to the people who were ignored. And if you discover that I was telling the truth, please clear my name. I may not be alive to hear it. I may never know that justice finally came. But somewhere beyond this life, perhaps my heart will finally rest knowing that someone believed me. My entire life, I waited for someone to say, “I know you didn't do it.” Maybe those words will come too late. Maybe they will come after everyone has forgotten my face. Maybe all that will remain of me will be these pages and a name people once whispered with shame. But if these pages are all I can leave behind, then let them become my final voice. Let the truth survive me. Let my name be remembered for what I truly was: a daughter, a student, a friend, a girl who made mistakes, a girl who was misunderstood, and a human being who deserved to be heard. And if this really is the end of my story, then let this be My Last Full Stop. MY LAST FULL STOP. CHAPTER TWO By Divine K.N There are some memories that do not fade, no matter how many years you spend pretending they never happened. They stay somewhere deep inside you, quietly waiting for the day you become brave enough to look at them again. Sometimes I wonder if the beginning of a person's story is really the beginning at all, or if we are simply born into the middle of something that started long before we understood what was happening. I was named Special by my father on the 7th of July, the day I came into this crucial world. He said the name suited me because, to him, I was not supposed to be an ordinary child. I was supposed to be something different, something worth fighting for. I was too young to understand what those words meant then. Perhaps I was even too young to understand what a father meant when he looked at his child with hope in his eyes. But sometimes, when I remember the little I was told about him, I wonder whether he knew something about my life that I would only understand much later. My father and my mother divorced only a few months after I was born. I was too young to know what divorce meant, so all I knew was that one day there were two people who were supposed to be my parents, and somehow, they stopped being one family. My father asked the Honourable High Court for my custody, but his request was denied. I have often wondered what he felt when the court decided that he could not take his own daughter with him. I wonder if he cried when he left. I wonder if he looked back at the door hoping someone would call him back. Nobody ever told me. Maybe nobody wanted me to know. Fourteen months after the divorce, my father died from cancer. Even now, there are parts of that story that do not sit properly in my mind. My aunt told me that he knew about his illness and had told my mother. But my mother, according to what I was told, did not want to remain married to someone who had been diagnosed with cancer. She once said something about a dying chicken—that it was better to kill and eat it than allow it to die inside your house and leave a smell behind. I did not understand what she meant when I first heard it. I was only a child. But as I grew older, those words began to sound less like a strange saying and more like something I was never supposed to understand. Exactly thirty-two months after the divorce, my mother married Mr. Davis. Their wedding took place in the white church downtown, surrounded by only a few close relatives. Everyone seemed happy that day. At least, that was what I saw. Nobody told me what had happened before the smiles, before the photographs, before the prayers. I only knew that my mother had a new husband and I had a new home. What I did not know was that Mr. Davis already had three children—Sebastine, Nora, and Zackile—and all three of them were much older than me. Perhaps that was where everything truly became complicated. Not because they were unkind to me at first, but because the house had rules nobody had bothered to explain. Certain rooms were not for me. Certain cupboards were never to be opened. Certain conversations stopped whenever I walked into the room. Sometimes I would enter and the silence would come so suddenly that I could almost hear it. My grandmother would visit and tell me not to ask too many questions. Whenever I asked why nobody talked about my father, she would simply say, “Some stories are better left in the past.” Then she would smile and change the subject. But the more they told me not to ask questions, the more questions began growing inside me. One night, I heard my mother and Mr. Davis talking about me. I could not hear everything, only pieces—my name, a lowered voice, then silence. Before I could understand what they were saying, Zackile appeared behind me. He looked at me for a few seconds and said quietly, “You shouldn't listen to things that concern you.” Before I could answer, my mother opened the door. She stared at me in a way I had never seen before. Later that night, she hugged me for longer than usual. I wanted to ask her why, but something inside me told me to remain quiet. The next morning, I found an old envelope beneath my pillow. My name was written across it in my father's handwriting. I have not opened it. But beneath my father's name, someone had written another sentence in handwriting I did not recognize: “If she reads this, everything changes.” And suddenly, for the first time, I began to wonder whether the things I had been told about my family were really the truth—or simply the version of the truth they wanted me to believe. I don't know what is coming. I don't know whom I can trust. And as I write this, I can hear footsteps moving slowly towards my room again. MY LAST FULL STOP .CHAPTER THREE BY DIVINE There are moments when a child stops asking why nobody loves them the way they should. Not because the questions have been answered, but because asking begins to hurt more than the silence. I think that was what happened to me. I did not wake up one morning and decide that I would become strong. Strength came to me slowly, through empty pockets, long walks, cold nights and the quiet realization that nobody was coming to rescue me. I was still a child, but somehow I was already learning the things adults spend years trying to understand. I was learning that a house could shelter you without protecting you, that a family could feed everyone except the person sitting quietly at the edge of the table, and that sometimes the person you call Mother can look directly at your suffering and still choose not to see it. I did not know it then, but every little humiliation was teaching me something. It was teaching me to survive. Life with my stepfather was never easy. During the school term, my mornings belonged to school, but my afternoons were rarely mine. I would leave school with my books in my arms and whatever little transport money I had been given. Some days, it was not enough to get me home, so I walked. I walked past cars, shops and children being picked up from school, pretending that the distance did not bother me. By the time I reached home, I was often exhausted, but there was rarely anyone waiting to ask why I looked tired. As time passed, I began working after school whenever I could find small jobs. At first, it was only one job here and there because I still had classes and assignments to complete. Later, as the pressure at home increased, I took on more work. Eventually, I was juggling three different jobs around my school schedule just to have some money of my own. I was going to school in the daytime, working whenever school ended, and returning home with the strange feeling that I was growing older much faster than everyone around me. Then I discovered something that made all those walks home feel different. My father had been paying child support. His lawyer was the person delivering the money, and the amount I later heard about was around two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars. Money that was supposed to help take care of me. Money that should have meant food, school needs, clothing, transportation and the ordinary things a child should not have to beg for. But I had never seen it. Not once. Nobody had ever sat me down and explained where it went. I remember staring at the information I had found and feeling something colder than anger. It was confusion. If my father had been sending money for me, then why had I been walking home because I could not afford transportation? Why was I working after school to buy things I needed? Why did I have to count every dollar while money meant for my care was apparently being received somewhere? For the first time, I began to understand that perhaps I had not simply been forgotten. Perhaps something had been taken from me without my knowledge. While I struggled to afford the smallest things, my mother and grandmother made sure the other children had opportunities I could only imagine. My step-siblings were sent to some of the best schools in London, while I attended a community college. I tried not to compare us, but comparison became impossible when the difference was placed in front of me every single day. They had the best uniforms, better school supplies and every advantage money could provide. I had to think carefully before spending money on lunch. They were being prepared for a comfortable future; I was being taught how to manage without comfort. One evening, the difference became impossible to ignore. We were having dinner when my stepsister looked at me and asked me to stop eating at the dining table because my presence was not pleasing to her. I waited for someone to correct her. Nobody did. I simply stood up and left. That was the moment I understood that even a seat at the family table could be something I had to earn in that house. Not long after that, I was moved into the basement. The place became my room, and I learned to make it feel like somewhere I belonged. I worked around my school timetable, taking whatever jobs I could manage, sometimes going from school straight to work and returning late. I was tired, but being tired was easier than being helpless. My step-siblings were given seven hundred dollars every week, while I received fifty. Fifty dollars that could disappear before I had even bought everything I needed for school. Sometimes I would hold the money in my hand and wonder what made my life so different from theirs. I did not want their money. I wanted to understand why I was treated as though I deserved less. Why did they receive enough to spend freely while I had to calculate whether I could afford lunch? Why was I working three jobs while they were being given everything? I kept those questions to myself because by then I had learned that questions were dangerous in that house. My father's sister had already moved away from the city, and I could no longer reach her. She was one of the few people who knew pieces of the story I had never been told, but every attempt to contact her ended in silence. Then there was my father's lawyer. I knew he existed. I knew he had handled the money. I knew he had been involved in things concerning my father, but I knew almost nothing about him. I did not have his number. I did not know where his office was. I did not know whether he was still handling my father's affairs or whether someone else had taken over. The more I thought about it, the stranger everything became. There was money. There were properties. There were documents. There was a lawyer. There was a father who had once fought for custody of me. Yet somehow, the one person who was supposed to benefit from all of it was the person who knew the least. I began keeping every little piece of information I found, even when I did not understand what it meant. And then there was eighteen. I held on to that number like it was the last door left open to me. I had been told that when I turned eighteen, I would finally have the right to handle the money and properties my father had left for me. So I started counting. I counted the years, the months and the distance between where I was and the life I believed was waiting for me. I imagined finding the lawyer. I imagined seeing the documents. I imagined finally asking the questions nobody had answered. Most of all, I imagined standing in front of my family with the truth in my hands. But one evening, while searching through some old things, I found a piece of paper that made my hands go cold. It was not a document about the money. It was not a letter from my father. It was something much smaller—and yet, somehow, it felt more frightening. There was a date written on it. My eighteenth birthday was circled in dark ink. Beneath it were four words I could not understand: “She must never know.” I read it again. And again. Then I heard footsteps stop outside my basement door. The handle began to turn. I quickly folded the paper and hid it beneath my clothes. Whoever was standing outside did not knock. They simply stood there, as if they already knew exactly what I had found. MY LAST FULL STOP CHAPTER FOUR BY DIVINE There are days you remember because they changed your life, and then there are days you remember because, even years later, you still cannot understand why they happened. I remember that day because everything around me suddenly felt like a story someone else had written, and somehow I was the only person who had not been given the script. People were shouting my name, strangers were staring, and my mother stood there watching as though she had already accepted a truth I was still desperately trying to understand. I kept looking at her, waiting for her to say something—anything—that would make sense of what was happening. She did not. And that silence frightened me more than the accusation itself. I remember thinking that perhaps the most painful thing about being accused of something you did not do is not the accusation. It is watching the people who know you remain silent while everyone else decides who you are. I was arrested for allegedly stealing three hundred thousand dollars from our neighbour. The amount itself sounded impossible to me. I did not understand how my name had even entered the story because I had never entered that house, never taken anything from it, and, until that day, I did not even know the owners personally. I kept saying the same thing over and over again: I did not do it. But every time I tried to explain, my words seemed to disappear before they reached anyone's heart. Then, during the confusion surrounding my arrest, I discovered something that made the whole situation even stranger. The house I was accused of stealing from belonged to my stepfather's sister. I remember staring at the house and wondering how I could possibly have been accused of entering a place when I had never even had a reason to go there. Yet somehow, the story had already been decided before anyone asked me what happened. Perhaps the accusation would have been easier to face if people had been willing to listen. But in that neighbourhood, my name already carried a reputation I could never seem to escape. People called me notorious because I rarely greeted them. They called me proud because I kept to myself. They called me rude because I did not smile at everyone I passed. Nobody seemed interested in asking why I had become so withdrawn. They did not know how many times I had tried to be friendly only to feel unwelcome, or how often I had returned home carrying pain I could not explain. Most of them were my mother's friends, and I had begun to suspect that whatever my mother said about me eventually became the story they repeated. By the time the accusation came, they already had a version of me in their minds. I could deny the crime a hundred times, but they had already decided what kind of girl I was. During the confusion that followed, I was taken to a hospital. People told me I had been under the influence of something and therefore might not remember what had happened. I listened to them with a growing sense of disbelief. I could not understand what they were talking about. I did not remember doing anything that could explain the accusation, and nobody seemed willing to explain why they had reached that conclusion. I kept asking questions, but the answers only made me more confused. How had a theft accusation suddenly become a question about my condition? Why did everyone speak as though they knew something about me that I did not know about myself? I felt frightened and exhausted. I wanted someone to sit beside me and explain what was happening, but every conversation seemed to end before I could understand it. I was left with questions, suspicion and the terrible feeling that my own words no longer belonged to me. I remained in the hospital for five days. Five days of wondering what was happening outside, five days of waiting for someone in my family to come and tell me that they believed me. I watched other people receive visitors and wondered whether anyone had even noticed how long I had been there. I replayed the events in my mind, searching for something I might have missed, some explanation that would make the accusation less impossible. But I could not find one. I had not stolen the money. I had not entered the house. I did not understand why I was being treated as though the matter had already been settled. Every passing hour made me feel smaller. I began to wonder whether being innocent meant anything if nobody was willing to defend you. I was still hoping my mother would come. No matter how many times she had disappointed me, a part of me still believed that when the world turned against me, she would remember that I was her child. When my mother finally came, I thought perhaps she had arrived to take me home and ask what had happened. Instead, she spoke as though I had deliberately embarrassed her. She told me I had disgraced her in front of her new family. She did not ask whether I was frightened. She did not ask me to explain my side of the story. She was angry that my name had brought attention to the family, and her words made it clear that she cared more about how people saw her than about what I had experienced. Then she told me to try my best not to be visible in the family. I stood there, trying to understand how a mother could look at her own daughter, who had spent five days waiting for her, and speak as though the daughter was a problem she wanted hidden. I couldn't believe that she would care less about her very own child she carried for nine months over kids she got from her new found family.