It's sunny Friday afternoon and I'm sitting in my office waiting for my two o'clock appointment. The air conditioning in my office keeps me cool because the temperature is at an all time high. Thank goodness it's Friday because I can't handle another day of being here. Don't get me wrong, I love running my company but sometimes I just need a break from the stress that comes with running it. I grab a bottle of water and spin myself around in my office chair so I can face the window that overlooks the city.

It's lunch hour so there's a buzz in the streets. From various food and ice cream trucks, to people sitting on the benches in the park and people crossing the busy street. One particular scene catches my eye and it's a little brown skinned girl and someone I assume is her father. He throws her in the air and she giggles when he does so. It's beautiful to watch this interaction but I can't help but feel a slight pang of jealously because I wish my father and I could have had a relationship like that. With no intent of revisiting my childhood, my mind betrays me by involuntarily going back to that time.

I grew up in the poorest parts of Harare, Zimbabwe in Africa. My parents are of Ghanaian origin and they moved when my father got a job offer. Growing up in poverty was one of the most challenging things I have ever experienced but I thank the most high for giving me the strength to get through it. We weren't always poor but my father made some poor life choices.

He was addicted to gambling and that resulted in him losing most of his money to that addiction. While most kids my age worried about how they would beat the next level on their favorite game or what they would get for Christmas, I worried about where my next meal was coming from. Sometimes all I had for dinner was sleep.

My father left when I was seven years old and even at twenty nine, I still feel the same pain, resentment, heartache and hatred towards him as I did back then. He wasn't man enough to say goodbye so he ran away like a little bitch and to this day, I don't know where he is. My mother had come home early the night she caught him in bed with the woman that she called her best friend. Here's a life lesson; be careful who you call your friends because some 'friends' are wolves in sheep's clothing.

After being caught, his pathetic, cowardly self left us the next day with a measly letter explaining his sudden departure. I still remember that fateful evening like it was yesterday because my life was never the same after that day. As I'm sitting in my office, I find myself aging backwards and becoming that seven year old kid that was neglected by his father.

"Kofi my boy, is your mother back from work?" he asks as soon as he walks into to the living room.

"No" is all I say.

He retreats to their bedroom and ten minutes later he walks out with his hairy chest on display, a black pair of shorts and blue slippers. He goes outside and a few minutes later he comes back with a woman I recognize as Ms Charlene, my mother's best friend. She greets me and I don't respond because I'm confused as to what she wants from my father.

As if in my head, my father answers this question when he tells me that she has come to find out how much it would cost to fix her boyfriends car since my father is a well known mechanic in the area. They go to his bedroom and I continue watching some cartoons. Fifteen minutes later, I start hearing unusual sounds coming from their room and as a kid I don't know what is happening.

A few moments later, my mother walks into the house yelling my fathers name. She walks up to me, stands in front of the tv before asking me where my father is. I tell her that he is in the room with Ms Charlene. The moment I say that, she raises her eyebrows and she charges towards their room like an angry bull. All I hear is her yelling at my dad and asking,

"How could you do this to me Gerald?"and I remember Ms Charlene scrambling out the door without any clothes on.

That night my mom took me to her sisters house only twenty minutes away from ours and we spent the night there. The next morning we went home and found a letter from my father explaining how he was done with their marriage and how he was moving to another city. My parents were not legally married, so all it took was a note and he was no longer 'tied' to her.

My life became a disaster from that day onward. My mother tried to be strong for us but anyone could see that she was crumbling. She was a receptionist at a hair salon and that paycheck was not enough to support the two of us so she turned to selling drugs and her body to provide for us.

I know she had to make some sacrifices for us but those sacrifices nearly destroyed me. Before she started doing drugs, my mother was a beautiful brown skinned queen that was full of love and joy but that was stripped away due to doing drugs and associating with the wrong crowd. Every fortnight she introduced me to a different boyfriend and it was painful to watch them abuse her both physically and verbally.

There are times they would beat me up if they were frustrated with my mother. Although the beatings were brutal at times, I didn't mind because it meant my mother wouldn't be left bruised up and unrecognizable. I still have some of the scars from the beatings and they give me horrific flashbacks but they also remind me that I am a warrior.

I loved my mother and I would have done anything to protect her even though she wasn't taking the best care of me. At thirteen, I had to 'man up' and start hustling for us so we wouldn't go to bed on empty stomachs. Some people probably thought I was homeless because I spent most of my time on the streets. What they didn't know is that being on the streets was my escape from what I was experiencing back home.

The pressure of having to provide for my mother and I, accompanied with the abuse I was experiencing was enough to send me into depression. I ended up turning to drugs to help numb the pain I felt and to help suppress the suicidal thoughts I had. I did every drug known to man and I'm not proud of it but it seemed like the best way to cope with the events occurring in my life at the time.

At fifteen years old, I had no business doing drugs but once my friend introduced me to coke and other narcotics, I was hooked. This addiction almost cost me my life but I somehow managed to survive that ordeal. My math teacher noticed I would go to school with bruises and she knew that something was amiss at home but I lied that it was all okay. I should have accepted her help but I couldn't risk losing my mother if the authorities knew how I was being treated. Ms Thando, my math teacher saw my potential and constantly reminded me that I could live a completely different life from the one I was living if I worked hard. I listened to her and put my focus on my schoolwork because I knew it was my ticket from that hell hole. To this day, I thank Ms Thando because without her push, I probably would have turned to the streets.

I ended up getting an academic scholarship and I graduated with a degree in business management but it wasn't a happy moment because I had no one to celebrate that achievement with. Unfortunately, this loneliness made me relapse. I would drink to drown the thoughts I had and I indulged in flings with multiple women. I'm not proud of it when I look back at it but at the time, it seemed like the best resolve. It lasted for a couple of months and after that, I had to remind myself that with or without my parents, I was going to be great. I moved into my first apartment at twenty two, just after graduating and I had to work as a valet, a gardener, a cleaner at a successful restaurant near my apartment and any other piece jobs I could find so I could keep up with my bills, which I could barely do.

A year later, after being unhappy with where I was financially, I decided to start my cleaning and detergents company. It took two years of my detergents being rejected before I met Obi Okonkwo. He was a Nigerian man that decided to invest in my business and he helped me develop the products I already had. I will forever be grateful for Obi Okonkwo because he is only man that believed in my business ideas and he is the reason why I am where I am.

Now four years later, I have hundreds of thousands to my name and I'm working towards becoming a millionaire. My company has grown tremendously and I have over three hundred people working for me. People often ask me what gave me the ambition I have today and I tell them that growing up in poverty gave me the drive to work hard and be successful so I could never return to living the way I did. There's this stereotype that young, black men that grew up or are growing up like me typically turn to the streets to support themselves and I wanted to prove that we are better than that stereotype.

Over the years, I have partnered up with many organizations that help kids that are from poor backgrounds or those who have been abused. I know what it feels like to sleep on an empty stomach or be abused so I try my hardest to ensure that other children don't experience the same thing. I got a tattoo of a phoenix on my right side, to remind myself that I was able to rise from the bottom and make my way to the top despite the fact that the odds were against me.

I may have a lot of money in my bank account but there's one thing I wish I could buy with that money and that is love. After many failed attempts at dating, I decided to take a step back and allow whatever is meant for me to come naturally. Even though I have a hard demeanor from the heartbreak my parents and my ex girlfriend caused, I'm a hopeless romantic and I still believe that the woman that was made for me is out there.

My thoughts are interrupted by my assistant knocking on my office door. I tell her to come in and she lets me know that my two o'clock appointment has arrived. The meeting begins and we spend an hour discussing ways in which we can take my brand global. The meeting is successful and when it adjourns, I decide to leave work because I've spent most of my nights here this week and I need a break. I stop by the gym so I can release some built up tension. I connect my phone to my headphones and I start working on my biceps. I get a few lustful looks from women as I flex my arms with the weights but it doesn't faze me at all. Once I have completed my workout, I head upstairs to my apartment.

When I get back to my apartment, I decide to take a shower. I let the hot water run down my body and I instantly relax. After my shower, I go to the kitchen so I can make myself something to eat. I have been eating takeaway for the last couple of nights so I decide to make skillet chicken with a mushroom and wine sauce and some basmati rice. Watching a lot of cooking shows and living alone has taught me how to cook and I cannot wait till I'm able to show my future girlfriend my cooking skills. I'm not like Gordon Ramsay but I'm confident that my cooking skills will one day impress my woman.

I sit on a stool by the kitchen counter and I indulge in the food while scrolling through Instagram. I check my dm's and it's mostly women sending me naked pictures and very inappropriate videos of themselves. I get a lot of attention from women because of how successful I have become plus I am a good looking man. I sigh because this is not what I'm looking for. I am at a point in my life where I want a real relationship not just meaningless hookups.

Trust me, the Kofi from a few years ago would have jumped at the prospect of hooking up with these women in my dm's but I have outgrown that version of my self. I spent most of twenties having entanglements and now I'm looking for something a bit more stable. Once I finish dinner, I load the dishes in the dishwasher and I clean up the kitchen. I strip to my boxers and I slip under the covers where I lay restless until the early hours of the morning.