In your twenties, shame is a luxury item. And frankly? We just don’t have the budget for it.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the true secret to life isn’t talent, connections, or hard work. It is delusion. Raw, aggressive, unprovoked confidence.

The kind of crazy faith that makes you look at a wall, decide it’s a door, and just walk straight through it hoping the universe moves out of your way.

Think about Adekunle Gold in the early days. Before the polished vocals, and the global arenas, there was just a guy with Photoshop and a dream. Man was literally photoshopping himself into pictures with Rihanna and posting it for the world to see. People laughed. It was absurd. It was border-line delusional. But you know what? It worked. He edited himself into the narrative until the narrative became real life.

He simply refused to let embarrassment get in the way of his destiny.

Because here’s the thing about puting yourself out there: the window between “Who does this person think they are?” and “Wow, they really did it” is surprisingly short. But to cross that bridge, you have to survive the part where you look absolutely ridiculous.

Look at Nigerian skitmakers. These are people who will voluntarily put on a torn house dress, wear a neon yellow wig backwards, roll around in actual mud on a public street, and scream into a smartphone in front of confused bystanders. To anyone watching, it looks like a psychiatric emergency.

But three years later? That exact same mud-rolling is buying a duplex in Lekki.

They looked shame in the eye and traded two minutes of public embarrassment for lifelong freedom. Or think about the sheer audacity of upcoming tailors😂

They tailor will sew an outfit that looks like a tragic disagreement between fabric and thread. The left sleeve is longer than the right, the zipper is throwing hands, and the neckline is gasping for air. But when you put it on, this tailor will turn you toward the mirror, clasp their hands together, and shout: “Awww! Look at that fit! Fire! You bad, girl!” They will hype up a disaster with so much conviction that for a split second, you actually start believing you’re the problem, not the dress.

That level of shameless marketing is an Olympic-level skill. They don’t have time to be embarrassed by a bad seam they have a business to run.

Doing anything new in your twenties is basically like doing stand-up comedy for the very first time.

You walk onto a dark stage, pull the mic out of the stand, and stare into a crowd of strangers who are actively waiting for you to fail. You tell a joke. Silence. Crickets. Sweat starts rolling down your back. You tell another joke, and someone in the front row just sighs and checks their phone.

It’s the kind of mortifying experience that makes you want to pack your bags, change your name, and start a quiet new life farming yam in the village.

But the comedians who actually make it aren’t the ones who never bombed. They’re the ones who stood in that cold sweat, took the L, went home, ate a bowl of warmed eba, and came back the next Thursday to do it all over again. And somehow, two years later, they’re filling up theatres and people are paying thousands just to hear them breathe into a mic.

They didn’t win because they were perfect from day one. They won because they were too stubborn to stay embarrassed.

Being 20-something is inherently embarrassing. You don’t fully know what you’re doing, your life plan changes every three working days, and half the time you’re just guessing your way through adulthood. But if you’re waiting until you’re completely ready, completely polished, and 100% guaranteed not to look foolish... you’re going to be waiting a very long time.

Shoot the shot. Post the terrible first draft. Pitch the crazy idea. Sell the outfit with the crooked seam.

Honestly, the world is already loud and chaotic. Nobody is remembering that slightly embarrassing thing you did three Tuesdays ago anyway they’re too busy worrying about their own life.

So please, go out there and make a glorious fool of yourself. Post the draft. Shoot the shot. Wear the weird outfit.

Pack up your shame, put it in a box, and trade it for pure, unadulterated delusion. It never bought garri, it never paid rent, and it’s certainly not invited to your success story. 💜

There is a specific kind of modern secular sermon we love to preach to twenty-somethings, and it usually goes something like this: “You cannot love someone else until you love yourself.”

It’s a nice sentiment. It looks great on a pastel Instagram graphic. But when you are twenty-four, sitting on a slightly damp bathroom mat at 2:00 AM because a boy who uses a 3-in-1 shampoo just broke your heart, that phrase feels less like comfort and more like a performance review you just failed.

A few years ago, a well-meaning friend sat me down after a particularly disastrous romantic entanglement. She looked at my tear-stained face, sighed with the heavy authority of someone who had just completed three months of therapy, and said: “You’re in no position to be anyone’s girlfriend right now.”

It hit like a slap. It felt like being benched by the coach. Not fit for public consumption. Return to sender.

For a long time, I carried that phrase like a badge of shame. I thought it meant I was broken, that I was a house with bad plumbing and exposed wiring, unfit for guests. Because we are taught from the moment we learn to read fairy tales, watch kdramas that love is the ultimate destination. From the very beginning, the universe was spun out of affection. “For God so loved the world…” is how the story goes. When Adam looked at Eve, his ribs still aching, he didn’t think about his emotional readiness; he just saw her and knew. Love is the fabric of everything.

So to be told you are “in no position” to participate in the central theme of existence? It feels like being locked out of the party.

But then, the storm passes. The quiet comes. And you start to look at the phrase differently.

Shift the Position

What if being “in no position to be anyone’s girlfriend” isn’t a punishment? What if it’s a temporary exemption?

In your twenties, you are essentially a walking construction site. You are trying to figure out how you like your eggs, how to pay taxes without crying, why you keep buying houseplants just to watch them pass away, and how to navigate a world that expects you to be an adult while treating you like a child.

To take on the mantle of “girlfriend” to hold the weight of another person’s insecurities, their messy family dynamics, their weird habits, and their expectations requires a lot of emotional square footage. And right now? Your apartment is full of boxes you haven’t unpacked yet.

Being in “no position” to be a girlfriend doesn’t mean you are unlovable. It just means you are currently occupied with the sacred, hilarious, and sometimes exhausting task of becoming yourself.

True self-love in your twenties doesn’t look like a luxury spa day or buying yourself expensive flowers (though the flowers are nice). It looks like quiet boundary-setting. It looks like realizing that you have been offering five-star hospitality to people who treat you like a rest stop on the highway.

When you take yourself out of the “position” of being available for romantic consumption, a strange and beautiful thing happens: the room gets quiet.

• You start listening to the music you actually like, not the indie band the guy from Tinder recommended.

• You learn the specific geometry of your own joy.

• You lean heavily into girlhood, into queer spaces, into friendships that feel like warm blankets. You realize that romantic love is just one color in a massive, sweeping rainbow of affection.

You begin to realize that God didn’t just look at the universe and love it as a finished product; He loved the chaotic, formless void before the light even turned on. You are allowed to love your own formless void.

If you have recently been told or have realized yourself that you are in no position to be anyone’s girlfriend, take a deep breath. Let the armor drop.

It is not a life sentence. It is a rainy Sunday afternoon. It is the universe giving you permission to put your sweatpants on, make a cup of tea, and stop auditioning for the role of “The Perfect Partner.”

You are not a fixer-upper project. You are the artist, the canvas, and the gallery all at once. And right now, the gallery is closed for private viewing. That isn’t a tragedy ,it’s a luxury.

The funny thing about growing up Nigerian is that nobody says hello before they assess your body.

The conversation usually goes something like this.

“Ah, you’ve lost weight.” Or “You’ve added weight o.”

No “How are you?”

No “How’s work?”

Just straight to the performance review.

I used to laugh it off though I’m clearly irritated

What else was I supposed to do?

When I was slimmer, everyone had advice.“Eat more.”

“Take another piece of meat.”

“You’re too tiny. Hope breeze won’t carry you” “put stone in your pocket so breeze won’t carry you …” “You need hips for childbirth so eat .”

I remember standing at parties with a full plate, eating because I was hungry, then eating some more because Aunty Busayo insisted I wasn’t full .

Maybe if I gain a little weight, the comments would stop. They didn’t. They haven’t stopped. My body changed—as bodies do.

Not because I was trying to become someone else(maybe a little)

Because I was growing up. Because stress exists. Because hormones exist.Because apparently your twenties come with a second puberty that nobody warns you about.

One day your jeans fit.

The next day they’re just… optimistic.

Some mornings your face is fuller.

Other mornings your waist comes back like nothing happened.

Your body keeps introducing new versions of itself, and you’re expected to pretend none of it is happening.

Then the comments changed too. “Hope you’re not planning to finish that food ?” “You’re getting bigger o hmm ” “Be careful.”“Men like slim girls.”

What is my business?

Then I went home. I stood in front of my mirror. I turned sideways. I sucked in my stomach. I looked again.

And that’s how it starts.

Not with hatred.With curiosity.Then doubt. Then obsession.

After a while, I couldn’t tell if I actually thought I’d gained weight… or if someone had simply told me I had.

The comments followed me everywhere.

If I was lighter… “You’re looking pale you’re not yellow again o .” “Use this cream.”

If I got darker after spending time in the sun…

“Ah, try Caro White.”

There was always something to fix.

Always something to improve.

Always another version of me that would apparently be better than the one standing in front of them.

I started noticing things I had never cared about before.

My arms.My stomach.My thighs.My face.

Not because they suddenly changed.

But because people kept pointing at them.

It’s strange how easily someone else’s voice becomes your inner voice.

One day you’re eating cake.

The next you’re calculating calories you never cared about.

One day you’re taking pictures with your friends.The next you’re zooming into your stomach. One day you’re living. The next you’re examining yourself like you’re a project that needs constant editing.

I don’t think people realize how dangerous casual comments can be.

They think they’re just talking.They don’t know that some of us carry those words home. We carry them into fitting rooms. Into mirrors.Into dressing up for dates. Into choosing what to eat. Into every photo we almost post.

Body dysmorphia doesn’t always begin with the mirror.

Sometimes it begins with a room full of people who have something to say.

People who think they’re helping.

People who think one little comment doesn’t matter.

But comments add up.

One becomes ten.Ten become a hundred.

Until one day, you don’t know if you’re looking at yourself anymore.

You’re looking at every opinion you’ve ever received. That’s the hardest part of being twenty-something for me.

Not that my body is changing. I actually think it’s beautiful that it is.

It’s becoming softer. Stronger. Older.

More like a woman than a girl.

What’s hard is trying to meet this new version of myself while everyone else keeps interrupting the introduction.

I’m still learning to separate my voice from theirs. To ask myself,

“Do I actually dislike my body today… or did somebody just remind me that they do?”

Some days I know the answer.

Some days I don’t.

Maybe that’s what healing is.

Looking in the mirror and, little by little, learning to see yourself before you hear everybody else.

My body is still changing.

Maybe it always will.

Maybe that’s what living is.

I just hope that one day, when I stand in front of a mirror, the first voice I hear isn’t an auntie’s…

Or a stranger’s…

Or society’s…

I hope it’s my own.

And I hope she’s kinder.

The funny thing about losing a friend in your twenties is that nobody sends flowers.

Nobody checks in.

Nobody says, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Because technically… nobody died.

So you’re expected to move on like nothing happened.

But something did die.

A version of your life.

A version of you.

The hardest part wasn’t even losing Eniola.

It was realizing Eniola was the person I would’ve called to cry about losing Eniola.

Do you know how sick that is?

Life has a wicked sense of humour.

For weeks, I’d pick up my phone whenever something happened.

A funny tweet.

Office gossip.

Family drama.

A random memory.

I’d think, I have to tell Eniola.

Then I’d remember.

Oh.

Right.

We’re strangers now.

There’s a special kind of silence that follows that realization.

The kind where you stare at your phone for a few seconds before locking it again.

I don’t think people talk enough about friendship heartbreak.

Romantic heartbreak has an entire industry behind it.

Sad playlists.

Relationship podcasts.

Breakup quotes.

Ice cream.

Friends who say things like, “You’re too good for him.”

Friendship heartbreak?

You just continue praying rain doesn’t spoil your light 💔

Nobody even buys you shawarma.

What made mine worse was discovering that Tito had never really been in my corner.

You know those people who clap for you just loudly enough that nobody notices they’re hoping you fail?

Those ones.

Looking back, the signs were probably there.

I just mistook politeness for loyalty.

I’m not angry anymore. Mostly because anger requires energy, and adulthood has already borrowed all of mine.

I’m just… disappointed.Not even in Tito. In myself. How did I not see it?

But then again, maybe that’s the thing about people who pretend well.

If everyone could spot them immediately, they wouldn’t last very long.

What nobody prepares you for is the loneliness that comes after.

Especially when you work remotely.People hear “I work from home” and imagine soft life. Pajamas,Netflix during lunch. No traffic. No shouting conductor asking for your change.

And yes, those things are nice. But nobody tells you that some days the only voice you’ll hear is, “Can everyone see my screen?”

You close your laptop at 8p.m., and that’s it.

No colleague asking if you want to grab dinner. No “Let’s gist before we go home.”No accidental friendships forming over terrible office coffee.

Just you. Your room. And the thoughts you’ve been postponing all day.

It makes grief louder.

Because there isn’t enough noise to drown it.I think that’s what I’ve struggled with the most. Not that I don’t have people.

I do. But losing the friend who knew everything creates a vacancy nobody can immediately fill.

There’s nobody I can call without first explaining the backstory. Nobody who already knows why a particular date makes me sad. Nobody who understands why one song can ruin my entire evening. Sometimes I don’t even want advice.

I just want someone who remembers the previous episode.

Someone who doesn’t need the recap.

Growing up is strange.

You spend years collecting people.

Then one day you realize you’re collecting memories instead.

Some people leave because life happens.

Some leave because they were never meant to stay.

Some were never really for you in the first place.

I don’t know which one hurts more.

These days, I’m learning to sit with the silence.

To resist reaching for a phone that no longer feels like home.

To believe that losing one friendship doesn’t mean I’ll never find another.

I still miss having that one person.

The one who knew my stories before I told them.The one who understood my pauses.

The one who could hear “Are you busy?” and immediately know something was wrong.

Maybe that’s the real heartbreak of your twenties.Not that people leave.It’s that when they do, you suddenly realize how few places in the world still feel like home.And then you have to become one for yourself. I’m still learning how.

It’s my birthday today, and before you start typing “Happy birthday! God bless your new age 🎉🎂🎊🎈🎁🎉🥳”, thank you. I receive it. Amen.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…

Can we discuss how this year completely ignored every plan I had?

I entered the year like every other optimistic person.

I had plans.

I had backup plans.

I even had backup plans for the backup plans.

Life looked at all of them and said, “Cute.”

The funniest part is that if you had asked me in January how this year would go, I would’ve confidently lied to you.

Because absolutely nothing happened the way I imagined.

Some people left.

Some people stayed.

Some people appeared out of nowhere and somehow became important.

Life really likes introducing new characters when you’ve already memorized the old cast.

I also realised that God doesn’t explain Himself as much as I’d like.

There were days I wanted a meeting.

A PowerPoint presentation.

Maybe a PDF.

Just explain what’s going on.

Instead, He gave me, “Trust Me.”

Very stressful management style, if you ask me.

But somehow… He was right.

Again.

Annoyingly.

Looking back now, I can see things I couldn’t see while I was living them.

The disappointment that redirected me.

The delay that protected me.

The people I was crying over that, respectfully, needed to leave.

Imagine if I had gotten everything I wanted exactly when I wanted it.

Scary.

Also, can we talk about how memories work?

You’ll forget what you ate on a random Tuesday, but you’ll remember one tiny conversation from eight months ago because somebody said something that changed the way you think.

Our brains are so dramatic.

I spent part of this week scrolling through old pictures, and all I kept saying was, “Ah.”

Not because I looked different.

(Although… shout-out to Jesus for increasing my bumbum. We thank God.)

But because I realised I wasn’t the same person anymore.

I worry less now.

I laugh more.

I recover quicker.

I’m still dramatic, don’t get me wrong.

Just… with better emotional regulation.

And honestly, that’s growth.

Today’s my birthday, but I don’t think birthdays are really about getting older.

They’re about stopping long enough to say, “Wow.”

Wow, I survived that.

Wow, I actually made it through.

Wow, God has been ridiculously kind to me.

Because He has.

So thank You, Jesus.

For every prayer You answered.

For every prayer You ignored because You clearly knew better.

For every person You brought into my life.

For every lesson I swore I’d never need but somehow did.

And thank you for sticking around too.

Whether you’ve been reading these newsletters for months or you just stumbled in recently, I’m really glad you’re here.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have cake to eat, pictures to take, and birthday money to aggressively hint for.

See you in the next newsletter.

Hopefully with more gist and less character development.

“I say I no go pay! Which one be owo ile again?!” an old market woman screams, her voice piercing through the SUV’s tinted glass.

Kunle breaks the kiss instantly. The softness vanishes from his face. In one second, he goes from Dara’s lover to the ruthless King of Boys. He lets out a loud, frustrated hiss.

“Ehn? This old woman wants to try me today,” Kunle growls, his voice turning completely razz, Lagos street slang dripping from his tongue. “Wait here.”

Kunle throws the car door open and steps out into the dusty alley. He doesn’t hold back just because she’s a woman.

He storms up to her, puffing his chest, his arms wide, looking pure agbero.

“Hey! True to God, Mama Ngozi, if you don’t drop that money now, I will personally throw your market into the gutter!” Kunle roars, clapping his hands in her face, completely razz and aggressive.

“Who do you think you are? You think this motor park belongs to your father? Pack your load and get out if you won’t pay!”

Inside the car, Dara watches through the glass, totally intimidated. This is the real Kunle … loud, rough, and terrifying.

Dara shrinks back into the seat, his shy nature making him shudder at the raw violence in Kunle’s voice. He could never, ever be part of this world. He thought to himself .

Outside, the woman quickly cowers, counting out crumpled notes and handing them over with shaking hands. Kunle snatches the money, barks a final warning to his boys, and storms back into the SUV, slamming the door shut.

The moment the door clicks, Kunle tosses the money onto the dashboard, turns around, and pulls Dara straight back into his lap. He doesn’t even pause. He immediately covers Dara’s mouth with his, continuing the heavy, desperate kiss exactly where they left off.

Dara gasps, shocked by the sudden shift, but his body melts into Kunle’s heat anyway. Kunle kisses him harder now, fueled by the adrenaline of the street fight, his large hands gripping Dara’s waist like he’s anchoring himself back to reality.

But they can’t do much. The alley isn’t safe, and Shina is still pacing outside.

Kunle finally pulls away, both of them breathing heavily, their lips swollen.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a brand-new MTN SIM card pack, dropping it into Dara’s soft palm .

“Take this,” Kunle pants, his thumb rubbing Dara’s hot cheek. “Put it in your phone. Call me. Only me. Don’t let anyone see it.” He almost used his agbero cock voice .

Dara nods, his fingers tightening around the SIM card, his heart racing from the sheer secrecy of it all.

“I’m traveling to Ibadan tonight for a turf meeting,” Kunle whispers, looking deeply into Dara’s eyes, a rare look of longing crossing his face. “I won’t see you on Sunday. I’ll pick you up here on Tuesday next week. Same time.”

“Tuesday?” Dara’s voice is tiny, full of immediate sadness. Today is Saturday. That means two whole days without him. “That’s long.”

“I know. I’m going to miss you like crazy,” Kunle murmurs, leaning down to press one last, lingering kiss to Dara’s forehead. “But put the SIM inside. We will talk every night. Now go, before my boys start looking too close.”

Dara slowly climbs off his lap, gathering his nylon bag. He gives Kunle one final, shy look through his eyelashes. Dara grabs his bag but hesitates at the door. Turning back, he shyly takes Kunle’s massive, rough hand.

“Be careful in Ibadan,” Dara whispers. “Come back to me on Tuesday… baby”

The brutal agbero king melts completely. Smiling gently, Kunle lifts Dara’s hand and kisses his knuckles.

“I will,” Kunle whispers back. “Put the SIM in tonight. I’ll call you the second I get home .”

Dara nods, smiles sweetly, and slips out into the Lagos night, already counting down the hours until Tuesday.

We had Fela. We had King Sunny Ade. We had Osadebe. We had Oliver De Coque. The kind of people whose names floated around the house so often that they felt less like musicians and more like distant relatives.

And then there was Michael Jackson.

The Michael Jackson.

The man who could make an entire crowd scream before he even sang a note.

The man who somehow convinced the world that walking backwards was a supernatural ability even attracted illuminati allegations 🙄

The man responsible for millions of people(including me attempting) the moonwalk on tiled floors and nearly dislocating a hip.

I was one of those children and still one of those adults.

I would slide one foot back, drag the other awkwardly behind it, nearly fall into a chair and somehow conclude that Michael Jackson was definitely using powers the rest of us didn’t have access to. I knew he was a star. But I didn’t understand the hype...I didn’t understand why the adults adored him so much.

I remember when they announced his death. I remember my mum crying. Actually crying. And I remember thinking, Mummy, please be serious.

How can someone cry over a celebrity? At that big age 😏You didn’t know himHe didn’t know you.

I genuinely thought she was being dramatic.

Now look at me.

Life has a wicked sense of humour.

Because ever since I watched that movie, I have been completely stuck on Michael Jackson. And I mean stuck.The kind of stuck where you’re supposed to be working but somehow you’re watching rehearsal footage. The kind of stuck where one video becomes ten videos.

One song becomes twenty songs.

One interview becomes an entire evening.

The kind of stuck where you start missing somebody who left this earth before you even understood what he meant to people.

Now I owe my mother an apology.

Because I get it.

I finally get it.

Today marks the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s final rehearsal.

And every time I think about that day, it does something to me😔

Because he wasn’t saying goodbye.

He wasn’t preparing for an ending.

He was preparing for tomorrow.

He walked onto that stage ready to create.

Ready to perform.

Ready to give more.

Ready to dream bigger.

And that’s what keeps breaking my heart.

Because while the world now watches that rehearsal knowing what happened next, Michael didn’t.

To him, tomorrow was still coming.

To him, there was still more music.

More dancing.

More ideas.

More magic.

More Michael.

And maybe that’s what I’ve learned from him.

Not the moonwalk.

Lord knows my version still looks like somebody trying to escape a wet bathroom floor.

But the commitment.

The discipline.

The refusal to stop growing.

The more I learn about Michael Jackson, the more I realise that talent wasn’t enough for him.

He worked.

He studied.

He practised.

He pushed himself.

Then pushed himself again.

And again.

And again.

It’s made me look differently at my own life.

At my writing.

At every little gift hiding inside me.

At every talent I’ve neglected because I thought there would always be more time.

Michael makes me want to touch every gift God put in me.

Not just the obvious ones.

The hidden ones too.

The scary ones.

The ones I haven’t discovered yet.

The ones waiting quietly for me to be brave enough to uncover them.

He makes me want to write better.

Create better.

Dream bigger.

Try harder.

Become more.

Because if a man who had already conquered the world could still show up to rehearsals determined to improve, what excuse do the rest of us have?

And maybe that’s why I feel sad today.

Not because Michael Jackson was perfect.

Not because I knew him.

But because somewhere along the line, this man I once knew only as a celebrity became a source of inspiration.

A reminder.

A challenge.

A lesson.

And if I’m being honest, I’m afraid sometimes.

Afraid of wasting my gifts.

Afraid of leaving things undone.

Afraid of assuming I have more time than I actually do.

Michael’s last rehearsal reminds me that tomorrow is a privilege, not a promise.

So create today.

Love today.

Try today.

Dance today.

Even if your moonwalk looks ridiculous.

Especially if it looks ridiculous.

Because somewhere between laughing at my mother for crying in 2009 and sitting here missing Michael Jackson in 2026, I’ve learned something important:

Give your best while you can.

The people who leave the deepest marks on the world are often the people who spent their lives giving everything they had.

And Michael Jackson gave everything.

Today, I’m thinking about his last rehearsal.

But more than that, I’m thinking about the life behind it.

And somehow, all these years later, I still find myself wishing he had stayed a little longer.

I miss you MJ😔❤️

Before you leave, do me a favour: listen to Earth Song. Then come back and tell me how you’re feeling.

Not therapy.

Not motivational podcasts.

Proper rehabilitation.

Because nobody warns you that love can quietly rearrange your brain like furniture during house rent increase.

One minute you’re normal.

Next minute you’re staring at “typing…” like your destiny is loading.

Love is actually a mental illness if we’re being honest.

Not cute madness.

Not “I miss my baby” madness.

I mean real madness.

Because there’s no reason a human being should lose appetite because another human being replied with “ok.”

That’s not normal behavior. It’s madness 😔

And the funniest thing is, it never starts badly. If madness looked mad from the beginning, nobody would enter willingly.

It starts soft.

Bolu met Wura and everything was harmless at first. Just normal conversations. Nothing serious. She was funny, slightly rude, fine without trying too hard and she laughed like somebody that’s enjoying Tinubu’s money .

Very dangerous combination.

At first Bolu still had sense.

He replied messages normally.

Slept well.

Ate properly.

Focused at work.

Then one random Tuesday Wura called him because she was bored in traffic.

Finished.

That was it.

After that she entered his life quietly and started occupying space little by little.

Now he’s smiling at his phone.

Replying fast.

Reading chats twice.

Replaying voice notes for no reason.

Then attachment entered.

Terrible stage.

Because once you start expecting one particular person every day, your problem has started.

Wejim Ma 🎵

Now if Wura was sweet to him, his whole day felt good.

If she sounded distant, everything irritated him.

One “good morning ❤️” could carry him till night.

Already crazy behavior by the way.

A grown man finding happiness inside emoji.

But love never stops there. It keeps dragging people deeper.

Soon Bolu started overthinking.

Wura would reply:

“Okay.”

And this man would suddenly become quiet.

Okay?

Just okay?

No emoji?

No “baby”?

Now he’s scrolling through old chats trying to see if he offended her somehow.

That’s how people start running mad in love.

Slowly.

One day his friend told him:

“Guy this babe has finished you.”

Bolu laughed proudly.

Another sign of madness.

When people are warning you and you think it’s cute.

Soon he became shameless.

Checking her last seen.

Watching when she comes online.

Pretending not to care while caring too much.

One time Wura posted on her story and didn’t reply him for two hours.

Two hours.

This grown man opened and closed WhatsApp like somebody waiting for salary.

Now he’s zooming into her sunglasses trying to see who took the picture.

Madness.

Because why are you investigating somebody you’re not married to?

And Wura was not even wicked.

She was just living her life normally.

But once somebody loves you more than you love them, even normal things start looking suspicious.

That’s what happened to Bolu.

The deeper he fell, the more unstable he became.

Now he’s reading meanings into punctuation.

Now he’s saying things like:

“She’s typing differently these days.”

Brother please stand up.

Then Wura did the thing that finally destroys people.

She became inconsistent.

Very evil thing to become 😂

Today she’s loving.

Tomorrow she disappears.

Next tomorrow she comes back sweet again like nothing happened.

That kind of behavior can genuinely make somebody lose their mind.

Because now Bolu couldn’t relax anymore.

He didn’t know which version of Wura he was getting each day.

One version loved him loudly.

Another version replied him like customer care.

So he became anxious.

Typing long paragraphs and deleting them.

Practicing arguments inside his head while bathing.

Listening to heartbreak songs on purpose.

You know somebody is finished when they start hurting their own feelings willingly.

Then one evening Wura said:

“I think I need space.”

Simple sentence.

But Bolu reacted like she told him somebody died.

That night he didn’t sleep.

He checked her last seen till his phone almost hung.

Read old chats from last year.

Pretended he was okay meanwhile he looked like somebody fighting for his life spiritually.

And somehow the funniest thing about love is that dignity leaves quietly.

Nobody notices when it happens.

One day you’re saying:

“If anybody stresses me, I’m leaving.”

Next week you’re typing:

“I understand ❤️ take your time.”

Liar.l!

You don’t understand anything.

You’re just in love.

Eventually Wura left.

Not dramatically.

No shouting.

No big scene.

She just got tired.

And Bolu?

Hmm.

That boy did not run mad outside.

But inside?

Finished.

Every song sounded like Wura was laughing at me 😂😂😂

Every place reminded him of her.

Even silence started sounding personal somehow.

His friends kept saying:

“Move on.”

As if heartbreak disappears overnight.

One day they caught him smiling at old voice notes like somebody remembering better days.

That was when everybody realized something:

For love to really work, somebody has to lose their mind first.

Not completely.

Just enough to stop thinking straight.

Just enough to lose sleep, peace and shame over another human being.

And unfortunately for Bolu, he loved Wura exactly like that.

And I am not even going to lie and act humble about it. I can write. I have written things that made people stop scrolling like their phone suddenly remembered it has brain. Things that made somebody whisper “mad” like they had just witnessed something slightly illegal. In this generation that is basically a Grammy.

But the problem with doing something good is that it does not leave you alone afterwards. It follows you.

Like a stubborn ex that still thinks there is hope🙄

So now every time I open my notes app, it is not inspiration I see, it is pressure. Pressure to outdo myself. Pressure to not sound like yesterday’s version of me. Pressure to not wake up one day and realize I have become background noise in my own life.

And nothing is more personally disrespectful than your own past self being louder than your present self.

So I stopped writing.

Not in a deep cinematic way. No dramatic speech. Just quiet avoidance…Like someone dodging eye contact with their calling in life😏

If I open my notes and the first sentence is not immediately insulting my existence, I close it. Very respectfully. Like it is not my business.

Then I went to watch Michael

And I am not even exaggerating when I say my peace left my body before the popcorn finished.

Because how do you watch Michael Jackson and still feel normal about your own effort?

How are you that good and still acting like you are not done?Because me I write one strong paragraph and I am already mentally preparing my acceptance speech like I just won an award 🙈

But Micheal Jackson ? No

He was not performing like someone gifted. He was performing like someone who could not afford to be average.

Like excellence was not optional in his vocabulary. Like even breathing on stage had to have intention🥺. He was phenomenal.

And it annoyed me a little…wait not annoyed but … idk Because I have been negotiating with my own potential like it is electricity bill💔

“I will do it tomorrow”

“I am not feeling inspired yet”

“Let me just rest” Rest from what exactly?

From the thing I keep saying I want?Meanwhile this man was shy in real life, soft spoken, almost avoiding eye contact like confidence was something he had to earn every morning😔But the moment the music starts, something switches.He becomes precision.He becomes control.He becomes someone that does not leave any part of his gift untouched.

Not singing only.Not dancing only.

Everything at once like he refused to waste any corner of himself.And that is where it started getting uncomfortable for me

Because I realized I have been treating my own gift like something I can visit.Not something I live in🤌🏼 I can write, yes

But I have been acting like it is a mood, not a responsibility.

Like it is a hobby that should still love me even when I abandon it…And maybe that is where the problem is. Because greatness is not loud at first. It is repetitive. It is boring in a way that insults your ego. It is doing the same thing again when nobody is clapping. It is showing up when you are not impressed with yourself😤

It is staying when you want to leave.And that part is where most people disappear.

Including me sometimes

Because I like the beginning part… The spark, the flow. The moment it feels like yes this is it. But I do not like the middle

The repeating. The sitting down again .

The writing when it is not exciting

The part where nothing is proving anything yet.

That is where I usually exit.

But watching him made it hard to pretend I do not see it…He did not visit his talent. He lived inside it

Like every gift in him was a room and he refused to leave any of them locked .

And I think that is what stayed with me

Not the fame.

Not even the performances.

Just the refusal to be casual with what you can do.

So when I say what a man can do let him keep doing.

I do not mean when it is easy

I mean when it is dry

When it is repetitive

When it is not giving you anything back

When even you are bored of yourself

Because that is where the thing actually forms

So I wrote today

Not because I suddenly became disciplined.

Not because I feel ready. But because I am tired of being someone who can do something and keeps stepping away from it like it is optional.

This might not be my best work.

It might not beat anything I have written before.

It might not even get the same reaction.

But I am still here…Still doing it

Still showing up to the thing I keep trying to outgrow instead of just continuing🥺

And maybe that is it.

Maybe it was never about beating my own records. Maybe it was about refusing to stop writing them in the first place🤷🏽‍♀️

Thank you, Michael Jackson ❤️You didn’t just perform—you insisted. And I think that’s what stayed with me. I’ve been treating my own talent like something that waits for me, but what I saw doesn’t wait. It works. It stays. It repeats. And now I know I have to too.

I think I’ve said everything I can say.

The rest of it is not written. It’s this:

and this made me cry 😔❤️❤️

Rest in power MJ ❤️🕊️

It seeps.

Like water under a closed door.

Like a song you used to love but can’t bear to hear anymore.

I used to think my father was immortal.

Not in the dramatic way children imagine superheroes but in the way you believe certain people are too strong to disappear. Like you expect death to respect them .

The day they buried Baami didn’t feel like the first time I lost him

He began leaving in pieces. I watched him fade 😔💔.

First his voice.

Then his steps.

Then the way he filled a room.

And I stood there his “Angel” watching the strongest man I knew fade into a body that could no longer hold him.

“My Angel,” he used to say, stretching his arms wide like I was something heaven had lent him.

“Baba mi !” I’d run into his chest, the safest place on earth.

My mum would laugh, half jealous, half amused. “Hmm, omo daddy.”

“Yes o!” he’d answer proudly before dropping me to kiss his wife.

That was our love language. Loud. Playful. Certain.

For twenty-two years, I never doubted that my father was unbreakable.

Until the stroke.

Until the day his body betrayed him and silence moved into his mouth.

Everyone called him Baba Soldier. Army men saluted him with reverence, and he would wave them off shyly like they were exaggerating.

“They are performing,” he’d say.

Over fifty years in the military. Wars. Discipline. Survival. Yet he never believed he deserved applause.

He was iron wrapped in gentleness.

When a boy hit me in school and I came home crying, he didn’t pet my tears. He thundered:

“Fiyinfoluwa! If anyone hits you, hit them back! Twice! Don’t come home crying when you have hands!”

I went back the next day and slapped Deji so fast sand entered his mouth before his pride did. After that, all I had to do was raise my fist and he would retreat.

Baami gave me more than protection.

He gave me permission to be fierce.

Third child. Second daughter.

But his favorite.

I didn’t look like him (thankfully, honestly), but my mum would clean him up and still whisper about how handsome he was. Even as his body began negotiating with time.

The aging did not happen loudly.

It started with the newspaper.

He held it farther and farther from his face. Squinted. Pretended. Refused.

“How can a general be using glasses? How many generals have you seen wearing glasses?” he argued.

“Baba Iyi,” my mum warned, “you mistook the scented candle for your coffee cup.”

We laughed.

We always laughed.

Until laughter became something we were forcing.

I bought him stylish lenses so it would feel less like defeat. Slowly, I watched his eye color change. Slowly, I watched the light dim in one eye until it was gone.

I watched my father age the way sunsets happen, beautiful, but heartbreaking because you know what comes after🙂

He stopped bouncing out of chairs.

Started holding his back.

Started breathing heavier.

Then one day… he could not get up at all.

Feeding him broke something inside me.

This was the man who once sang me into swallowing rice. He would sing and tap my chin until I opened my mouth. Sometimes I pretended not to eat just so he would keep singing.

Now I sang to him.

Same melody. Softer voice.

And I watched his eyes gather tears he could not wipe.

Imagine watching your hero trapped inside a body that refuses to obey him. Imagine cleaning the man who once carried you on his shoulders like you weighed nothing.

Strength looks different when it is lying helpless in a bed.

I kept whispering, “You deserve this care. You deserve to rest. I love you.”

He couldn’t respond.

But his eyes spoke in rivers.

My brother Roju was his reflection, his mirror in stubbornness too lol . Same stubborn jaw. Same restless spirit. Same refusal to bow.

Baami used to joke that Roju was his punishment from God — “the one that came to test my patience.” But I saw it. The pride hiding behind the discipline.

One day Roju beat up a police officer who tried to harass him. Chaos followed. The house shook with tension.

And Baami did something that confused us all.

He made sure Roju slept in jail.

Not overnight o 😭

Four full weeks.

He signed the papers himself.

“Discipline,” he said, voice steady. “If you wear this name, you will respect the law.”

It looked like cruelty.

It was love sharpened into responsibility.

When Roju eventually joined the army, walking the same path his father once walked, I saw it — the quiet pride in Baami’s eyes. He stood straighter that day. His son had chosen the same fire, but this time with direction.

They were twins separated by a generation.

They fought. They clashed. They mirrored each other.

And when Roju massaged him in his final days, uniform crisp against fading skin, Baami patted his back.

That pat carried pride. Approval. Legacy.

I was jealous . Childishly jealous. “He got the first touch today.”

After the massage, Baami seemed better. Roju bragged about having healing hands.

But somewhere inside me, something cold settled.

He is leaving.

In his last days, I began grieving a man who was still breathing. I would sit beside him and ask questions in my head:

Did you want me to be a boy?

Were you proud the first time you saw me?

Will you be my father again if there is another life?

In my imagination, we cried together. We recorded videos. We took family photos.

But grief is cruel.

Reality did not give me those scenes.

He died in his sleep.

After that massage.

Quietly.

Like a soldier who did not want to disturb anyone on his way out.

I slept in his room that night because something in me missed him a little too much . I swear I heard him fight for one more breath. I swear I felt the air leave differently.

The strongest man I knew left without asking permission.

The burial felt like theatre.

Army officers everywhere. Salutes. Boots striking the ground. Guns firing into the sky.

He would have called it a performance. He’ll yimu “performance tueh” I giggle at the thought.

My mother wailed in a way that rearranged the air. I realized something that day — I lost my father.

She lost her lover. The love of her whole life 🥺

Sickness was closure for me. I had watched him fade. I had rehearsed goodbye in my head.

For her, sickness was hope. Every day she believed he would stand up again. That he would call her name again.

When they lowered his casket, something broke loose inside me.

“I can’t believe everyone is here and you’re not here! Why would you bring me into this world and leave me alone?!”

The elders tried to silence me.

But grief is loud. Grief does not respect decorum.

Roju placed his military hat on the casket and walked away stiffly. For once, he did not argue. For once, he did not fight. He walked away carrying a silence that looked too heavy for one man.

Maybe that was the moment he truly became his father’s son.

I begged the Orisa for a miracle even then. Even when it was too late.

But Esu had already delivered the news.

My sister Iyi held his photo. Makeup perfect. No tears. Trying to be strength for everyone else. But I knew she was collapsing inside.

We poured soil.

And that was it.

Fifty years of discipline. Twenty-two years of being my hero.

Reduced to earth.

On the drive home, I said, “I’m keeping his glasses.”

“I know,” Iyi replied softly.

Two months later, I wear them sometimes. Just to see how he saw… to see what he saw at the end… to see like Baami 🥺

I still cry when I see military uniforms.

Because grief is not dramatic every day.

Sometimes it is small.

It is in newspapers.

In songs.

In empty chairs.

In the way no one calls you “My Angel” anymore.

My father loved us until his very last breath.And somewhere between soldiers’ salutes and Afrobeat rhythms, between discipline and tenderness, between Esu’s crossroads and the Orisa’s silence i cursed the day Baami passed…💔

This article was born from a single painting by Anthony Azekwoh . In it, I saw love, pride, and loss and I had to try to tell its story.

Baami Painted by Anthony Azekwoh

Some people are born as proof that God takes risks.

Dozie was planned like architecture.

His parents didn’t “fall pregnant.” They fought pregnant. He was an IVF champ 🥺chosen in a laboratory and declared in a prayer room. When he arrived, his parents held each other like survivors of something sacred. He is a child his parents longed for, medically fought for, spiritually declared. His arrival stitched his parents closer together. He was wanted. Intentionally. Loudly.

I was the fifth girl in a family that had already “seen joy” four times.

My name is Motunrayo — I have seen joy again.

But when my mother tells the story, she laughs and says she was telling God, “Ah ah, I’ve seen joy already o… it’s okay now.”

They almost didn’t keep me. The running joke was, “What if she’ll be president one day?” That tiny possibility was my saving grace.

My birth made my father leave. He was tired of “girls” .

Dozie’s birth made his parents fall deeper in love.

We were born seven days apart. Same month. Same time. Both on a Wednesday.

Two children entering the world under the same sky, but with completely different welcomes.

And somehow, 26 years later, we found each other🥺❤️

“You’re an IVF baby?” I asked him the day he told me.

I wasn’t mocking him. I was in awe.

He laughed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Because I was trying to imagine what it feels like to be prayed for. To be anticipated. To be held like treasure before you even arrive. To know your existence was a decision people fought for.

He reached for my hand. His fingers wrapped around mine gently.

He is so handsome, I thought. This kind of face can only be made with love.

Meanwhile, 26 years after my birth, I’m clearly not moving like future president. More like chief noisemaker. Occasional overthinker. Full-time anxiety ambassador.

Sometimes my legs start shaking when my thoughts spiral. That familiar tightening in my chest. The quiet voice that says, You’ll never amount to anything.

And then Dozie strokes my knee.

Just like that.

Calm.

Dozie, to me, is the moment in the Bible when the disciples panicked in the storm and Jesus said, “Peace, be still.”

That silence after chaos?

That’s how I feel when he touches me.

Without Dozie , i am Fela without breath 😔not just without the saxophone — without the rebellion vibrating in his lungs, without the fire that made governments nervous.

Without him, I am Michael Jackson without rhythm - no moonwalk, no electricity, no stadium screaming my name.

With Dozie?

I am seen. I am loved. I am steady.

We are from different tribes. Different languages. Different emotional climates.

He loves with structure.

I love with drama.

He thinks in five-year plans.

I think in metaphors.

I show love in words. Metaphors. Cinema references.

One day I casually told him how much I love To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. I didn’t think he was listening.

The next week he bought me a shirt that said, “To Lara Jean Covey.”

To be known like that.

To be loved in the small details.

🥺

That’s the kind of love that softens you.

The first time he introduced me to his mother, he said:

“This is the moon of my world. The sun in my earth.”

His mother’s eyes filled with tears before I could even greet her properly.

She hugged me like she had been waiting.

“I’ve seen you in my dreams,” she said. “I thought you were from my imagination.”

Then she held my waist and whispered, “You’re my salt.”

I giggled 😂

And suddenly my name meant something different.

When my mother said “Motunrayo,” it carried exhaustion. God, it’s enough.

But when his mother said it?

It sounded like gratitude.

“Motunrayo,” she smiled, “I have found joy again.”

My name, for the first time, felt like celebration.

And I realized something that made my chest ache:

I was not born unwanted.

I was just born for the wrong room.💔

She told me she never tried for another child because Dozie made her feel complete.

I understood her.

That’s how he makes me feel too.

Complete. Not lacking. Not “almost.” Not “maybe.”

Complete.

The day he told me he was HIV positive, the air shifted.

“It’s undetectable,” he said gently and reassuring .

Calm. Responsible. Certain.

Undetectable means untransmittable.

Science says I am safe.

But love is not just science.

Love is standing in front of someone’s truth and not stepping back.

For a moment a wild, reckless, holy moment — I thought:

If loving you comes with scars, I will wear them.

Not because I am careless.

But because I love you beyond fear. And if I eventually contact this ? I’ll carry it with me cause it’s a piece of you …🥺

He is more careful than I am. He protects me fiercely. He keeps every appointment. Reads every report. Guards my future like it is his assignment from God.

But I look at him sometimes and think

If this is the man I leave this earth loving, I have lived correctly.

That is how dangerous my heart is.

It’s our wedding day.

Valentine’s Day. Because of course it is. The world is celebrating love, and we are celebrating ours.

When he began his vows, he didn’t even try to be calm.

“Ever since I set my eyes on you,” he said, voice shaking, “I couldn’t wait to start the rest of my life with you, my dear Motun.”

I sobbed 😔🥺

I had written a long, powerful paragraph. Dramatic. Theatrical. Very me😂

But when it was my turn, all the grammar disappeared.

I was sobbing.

“To know you,” I said, “is to know love. It’s to understand why Christ commanded us to love each other. Your love didn’t ask for permission. It just loved me. And because of you, I love myself more.”🥺🥺🥺

My voice cracked.

“And if I love you more than this?” I laughed through tears.

“I’m finished.”

And honestly , I don’t even mind

He didn’t even let me complete the sentence. He jumped into my arms.

And in that moment, I realized something.

He was born wanted.

I was born questioned.

But somehow, in loving each other, we both became chosen.

And that?

That is the kind of love that feels like destiny remembering your name.

I love you so much my Dozie ❤️ i love you more than ice cream 🥺❤️❤️❤️

Happy Love Day ❤️❤️❤️

Aunty Morenike never arrived quietly.

Even when she was sitting still, you could feel her before you saw her . Perfume first, then her dramatic gele , her laughter, then that accent that never agreed to live in one country😂

One sentence would begin in London and land fully in Nigeria.

“Don’t be silly, darling,” she’d say, rolling her eyes, then immediately follow with, “Ah ah, are you okay at all?” “Sho gba dun?!”

She had a nose piercing. A small silver stud. Such a tiny thing to cause so much offence.

My older relatives hated it.

“She’s too much.” “Who does she think she is ?”

“Why is she behaving like a young girl? Omo 56!!! . My dad will lament .

“At her age, no husband, no shame. Shiiorr “

They said it like marriage was an apology she refused to make.

She was everyone’s aunty and nobody’s fool.

The Oversabi aunty. The one adults warned children about don’t try nonsense because Morenike is there o but she’s the one children ran to when the world became too confusing to explain.

Her house always smelled like menthol, ground pepper, and something sweet burning on the stove. There was always food. Always noise. Always a couch that belonged more to visiting children than to her actual furniture.

She moved like someone who had lived elsewhere and come back changed. Like someone who had kissed people who were not approved and never apologised for enjoying it. Men. Women. Sometimes both in the same year. Sometimes neither.

She didn’t announce her queerness. She just lived it.

Once, she brought a woman home tall, soft-spoken, smelled like rainbows to me . Introduced her simply as, “This is someone I like.” Another time, it was a man with kind eyes and quiet hands. Nobody asked questions. They were too afraid of her answers.

Her house was freedom with curtains.

You could sit anyhow. Laugh too loud. Ask the wrong questions. She let us miss school on days when our spirits were clearly absent.

“Your body is in class but your spirit is tired,” she would say. “Stay. Go tomorrow.”

She taught us about good touch and bad touch like she was teaching us how to cross the road . You know calmly, clearly, without terror. She taught us before any assembly sermon ever dared.

She explained consent using words that made sense. She believed children were smarter than adults gave them credit for and she proved it by speaking honestly❤️.

“If your body says no,” she said, “listen. Your body is not stupid.”

I liked sitting near her. Even before i understood myself, my body did. I liked how she called me names that felt older than me

“Oko mi.”

“Ayo mi.”

“My strong one.”

She said it casually, like she was naming what already existed.

She was the first adult who didn’t rush me to be anything. The first who didn’t interrupt my silence with panic. So when the confusion began to feel unbearable … when liking boys felt like a secret that might suffocate me i found my way to her kitchen at midnight.

I cried without poetry. Ugly, frightened tears.

“I think something is wrong with me,” I said.

She didn’t gasp. Didn’t pray. Didn’t reach for scripture or fear.

She handed me a glass of orange juice .

“Drink first,” she said.

I drank .

“Now listen,” she continued, stirring stew like the world was not ending. “Nothing is wrong with you. You are not broken. You are just… not common. You’re rare Madè “

She turned to look at me then.

“The problem,” she said gently, with so much love in her eyes “is that the world likes common things. But uncommon things last longer. Like you …🥺”

She didn’t name me . She didn’t force a confession. She simply stayed.

She let us love openly, which was radical in a house like ours.

She let me kiss my best friend on her couch while her door was open . We laughed nervously , lips were unsure, hands kept shaking like we were doing something illegal.

He stayed the night. We stayed up discovering each other softly, clumsily…

There were sounds. Quiet ones. The kind you try to swallow.

At some point, she walked past the room, paused, and turned the TV volume up.

In the morning, she made tea.

No questions. No judgement.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, already buttering bread with a sweet smile on her face.

That was when I learnt love doesn’t always interrupt. Sometimes it just adjusts the volume.

Because 👇🏽

When I was nineteen , tired of pretending to be headed somewhere I didn’t want, she paid for my first tattoo.

My hands shook.

She laughed. “Why are you shaking like you’re committing fraud?”

“I might regret it,” I said.

She shrugged. “You will regret many things. So just start “

When I joked about piercing my balls, she smacked my head.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “

Years passed. I chose law because it sounded like safety. Because it pleased my father. Because disappointment was easier when delayed. Do you get ?

But art kept pulling me… quietly, stubbornly, like truth does

When i finally dropped out, my father’s reaction was swift and surgical.

“You are wasting my life and my money. My entire existence! “ the man said, voice flat. “You are not my son.”

He was like

My mother cried quietly, like she had been trained to do.

Aunty Morenike stood up from the plastic chair in the living room, adjusted her wrapper, and sighed.

“Ah,” she said. “So this is it?”

Everyone looked at her.

“Because if this is your final word,” she continued, “then let us thank God it came early. Some fathers wait until burial.”

The room froze.

She walked to me and took my hand, squeezed it once.

“Come,” she said. “Artists must eat too. Wa jeun oko mi “ .

She paid my rent when nobody else would.

Came to my first exhibition and clapped like she understood every piece.

She Introduces me to people who saw my work before my fear.

She never asked me to explain myself. She never asked me to be different.

Called me oko mi, Ayo mi, like she was reminding me I belonged somewhere.

I love her so much 🥺❤️

Now it’s my wedding day.

I’m standing in the groom’s room, looking at myself, holding too many truths in my chest . I am a gay man marrying a woman who doesn’t know I kissed a man last night 💔

They said bé bé fé like we were begging to marry her.

But standing there in agbada, smiling for pictures, it felt like I was the one being begged to let go.

I am ashamed. I am confused. I am just alive. “I don’t want to be here “… i sigh

Aunty Morenike walks in without knocking. like she always does .

She straightens my collar.

“Why are you breathing like that?” she asks.

“I’m scared,” I say.

She scoffs. “You? After all your drama?”

Then she softens.

“Ayo mi,” she says. “Life is not about being perfect. It is about being kind and brave. Sometimes to yourself.”

“My dad won’t come,” I say quietly. “Please sit beside my mum.”

She smiles like it was never a question.

At the ceremony, I find her beside my mother . She sits beside my mother like she’s always owned that seat. Nose ring catching the light. Accent moving freely between worlds. She’s solid, proud, clapping gently like she’s blessing something complicated but sacred.

She doesn’t flinch. She just existed like she always had.

Later, I leaned to thank her. She hugged me tight.

“My Ayo mi,” she whispered. “You are brave.”

And standing there, between love and compromise, between truth and survival, I understood something clearly:

Some people don’t save you by fixing your life.

They save you by making room inside it

for desire,

for mistakes,

for softness,

for becoming.

And sometimes, that is enough but Somewhere between laughter ,kisses, legworks and confetti, I noticed my bride’s scent on Auntie Morenike …

her purple lipstick had a little bit of red too …

My mouth opened.

This piece was born from a painting by Anthony Azekwoh

The Aunty💜

Aunty Morenike is the kind of woman people argue about after she has left the room.

In my eyes ; She is queer in the most unperformative way. She does not explain herself to anyone, and she refuses the language of shame. People call her stubborn, irresponsible, too free. She calls it living. She has no husband, no children, and too much joy for a woman society insists should be begging for structure.

They set their house on fire because they spoke a different language. Because they prayed in a different way. Because their surname tasted “wrong” in the mouths of men who carried guns like handbags and hatred like a second skin.

Ekene was my friend.

She was 13.

I was 13.

We were 13.

Our mothers always said we should have been twins. “If only you came out of the same womb,” my mother would laugh, tightening my braids as Ekene rolled her eyes and said, “I’m still older. Two days is two days, nne.”

She had to be first . First to answer questions in class, first to finish her food, first to run to the stream. I was laid back, the shadow behind her sunlight. I liked watching her more than I liked doing anything else.

She had princess mannerisms, that girl. Always lifting her long school uniform like it was a royal gown, socks folded neatly as if she was about to step onto a red carpet instead of the red dust road. When she laughed, she tilted her head slightly, like there was an invisible crown she didn’t want to fall.

She was the queen of my heart, and a queen in her own world.

The skies stopped shedding tears the day Ekene died.

Two days before, it rained as if heaven had a hole. The kind of rain that made roofs complain and trees bend. The kind of rain mothers use as an excuse to shout, “You’ll catch your death in that rain!” while secretly smiling at their children’s joy.

We ran out anyway, bare feet slapping the wet ground, uniforms already half soaked from the dash from school. The clouds were bruised and angry but we were not afraid. We spun in the rain, mouths open to catch droplets, hair sticking to our faces.

Our mothers’ anger melted into obvious care when we stumbled back in, shivering and breathless.

“Stubborn goats,” my mother muttered, wrapping us in wrappers, but her hands were gentle as she poured hot water into a small bowl, added Robb, and told us to inhale. She made tea, scolding us in between each sip we took.

“I told you I don’t want to be sick,” Ekene cried through her laughter, her teeth clattering.

That was when I noticed it.

“Ekeneeeee, your eyes are yellow!” I screamed.

She shrugged and shivered. “I’m coldddd,” she said in her slow, dramatic way, then started sneezing and coughing. Her mother arrived that evening, rain still muttering against the roof, to drag her home.

“She will be fine,” her mother said. But her eyes didn’t match her words. They were clouded, like the sky.

The next morning we heard she was ill. Really ill.

“She can’t go to school,” her younger brother told me at the path, clutching his exercise book to his chest.

After school, I went straight to their house. Their compound smelt of Dettol and worry. Ekene was asleep, wrapped in a faded blanket, her breathing shallow. I sat beside her, hugging my bag, watching her chest rise and fall as the lantern hissed in the corner.

“Time to go home,” her father finally said gently. “It’s getting late.”

I wanted to stay. I wanted to read “Oliver Twist” to her like we planned. Instead, I walked home under a sky that looked confused about whether to rain again or not.

The next morning, I walked to school alone. The road felt longer without her chatter, without her racing ahead. I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t eat my lunch, saving it for her. I imagined myself sitting by her bed again, book in my lap.

“I’ll read the part where Oliver asks for more,” I decided. “She’ll laugh at that.”

Our school was in town, but we lived in the village. The walk was long, but routine, a thin line between where life felt normal and where it always felt a bit heavier.

That day, on my way back, I decided to walk slower so I could “sit my thoughts,” as papa would say. I dragged my feet, tracing the shapes of puddles with my eyes.

But as soon as the village came into view, something was wrong.

It was too quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Heavy quiet. Suspicious quiet.

Then the sounds came in pieces …wailing from one compound, loud muttering from another, the crackle of something burning. The air was thick, rough, hot, smoky. It tasted of wood and fear. Smoke rose lazily above the roofs like it had all the time in the world.

I took slow steps, trying to arrange the puzzle pieces in my mind.

A woman ran past me barefoot, wrapper barely tied, crying. A little boy stood in the middle of the path, holding onto a charred pot, looking lost. Someone shouted a name I recognized, but the voice broke halfway.

My heart started pacing before my legs did.

Then my legs obeyed.

I ran.

“Ekene’s house,” my mind screamed. “Get to Ekene’s house.”

I turned into her compound and froze.

Her house ! The house with the blue door and the broken window we always argued about fixing was on fire. Orange and red licked the walls like hungry tongues. The zinc roof screamed softly as it caved, bits of wood collapsing with a hiss.

Ash danced in the air like wicked snowflakes.

“Ekeneeeeeeeee!” I wailed, the sound tearing from somewhere animal inside me.

No one answered.

I don’t remember much of what happened next. I remember being dragged back from the fire by strong hands. I remember the smell of burnt cloth and hair, of something more final than any smell I’d known. I remember my mother crying in a way I’d never heard before.

For days I beat myself up.

“If we hadn’t played in the rain that day, she wouldn’t have fallen sick.”

“If she had gone to school, maybe she wouldn’t have been home when they came.”

“If her parents had gone to work…”

If. If. If. The word scratched the inside of my skull.

Now she was gone.

They said strangers came when everyone thought the crisis was dying down. Men with dry skin from long journeys and heavy guns that looked too comfortable in their hands. They went compound to compound. Sniffing out names. Sniffing out accents. Sniffing out “difference.”

Ekene’s family spoke “their” language. Prayed “their” prayers. That was all.

Sometimes I still wonder about the rain that fell that day.

Was it the sky crying early at our loss?

Or were the heavens jealous of what we had, determined to claim her first?

One evening, standing alone outside our house, I looked up at the thick, gray clouds and spat.

“I hope it never rains again,” I whispered bitterly.

And for months, it didn’t. Dry season stretched her arms, and we lived under a sun that refused to blink.

Eight months after Ekene’s death, they came back.

This time, in daylight.

Trucks rolled in like a bad dream you recognize immediately. Men stood in the back, guns resting on their hips, faces set in that empty way violent men have 😡the kind of emptiness that makes them dangerous. Dust rose behind them, swallowing the footprints of anyone who dared run.

They went to our school first.

They took the girls.

They entered classrooms, assembly ground, toilets . Like just anywhere a girl could hide. They called out roll numbers as if taking attendance, then grabbed whoever answered. Some teachers tried to intervene. A slap. A gun pointed lazily in their direction. The teachers stepped back.

I was lucky.

Or cursed.

I was at home that day, taking care of papa. His cough had grown worse, the air forever stuck in his chest like a stubborn visitor. Mama had gone to the market to try to sell what was left of our harvest.

The village, already tense from old wounds, became a rumor factory. “They’re taking girls in town,” someone whispered in the compound. “They say they’re killing Christian families,” another voice added. “They say they’re looking for people who sound like us.”

Fear curled around our houses like smoke.

They didn’t stop at the town.

Months later, they visited the village.

No warning. No announcement.

Just the roar of engines and the tightness that grips your chest when you know something bad is about to start. Children dropped their play. Men told their families to get inside. Women clutched rosaries and Bibles and the edges of their wrappers.

They came with the confidence of people who believe no one will stop them.

They shot anyone that proved “stubborn”people who asked, “Why?” People who said, “This is our home.” People whose mouths formed protests instead of pleas.

They killed my father in front of me.

He stood between me and them, one arm stretched back to keep me behind him, the other raised in a strange surrender.

“Please,” he said. “She is just a child.”

One of the men laughed, a short, cruel bark.

“You Christians,” he sneered.

The first shot hit papa in the chest💔 no, the belly I don’t remember exactly. The world tilted. The second hit his head. His body jerked, then fell like a tree cut from the root. His eyes stayed open, staring at me, but seeing something else.

For a second, his fingers twitched as if reaching for me. Then nothing.

I watched his lifeless body fight for me even in the way it collapsed between me and them, like a final shield. Papaaa !!! I cried out .

The sound I made didn’t feel human.

They grabbed me before I could crawl to papa. A rough hand around my arm, a gun at my back. They dragged me to the truck where other girls were already sitting, eyes wide, faces stained with tears and dust.

“Move,” someone barked.

I didn’t move. My vision was blurry. My legs were jelly. So they threw me in like baggage.

They put us in their van along with other girls. Some from our village, some strangers. Some from schools in town. Some wearing uniforms. Some in wrappers. All of us shaking.

We drove for hours.

Through villages that pretended not to see us. Past checkpoints that suddenly went blind and deaf. Even the trees seemed to look away.

We arrived at their camp as the sky bruised into evening. It was a place that looked like it had been forced into existence … tents and shacks scattered without care, the smell of sweat and gunpowder thick in the air. Radios blared angry sermons and victory songs. Men laughed in that harsh way that never reached their eyes.

They dumped us in a large, windowless room, cement floor scraping the skin off our knees as we stumbled in. The door slammed with a finality that made my ears ring.

Inside, the air was humid and sour with fear.

I saw faces I recognized. Girls from school. Girls from church. Girls from the market. Girls from the next village.

“Neemah,” I whispered when I saw her. She had been the youngest in our class, always raising her hand too high, always drawing flowers in the margins of her notes. She was 11 the last time I saw her, arguing with our teacher about homework.

Now she was pregnant.

Her belly pushed against her faded dress, a terrible roundness that should have been celebrated somewhere else, under better circumstances. Here, it looked like a wound.

“Don’t look at me,” she said softly, turning away. Her voice was flat, like it had lost height.

I couldn’t feel anything. Or maybe I felt everything at once. My heart had too much inside it grief, terror, confusion, rage and so it shut down, like a power cut.

For the first time since Ekene died, I wasn’t sad for her.

I was jealous.

“I wish they killed me instead,” I thought. “I wish I burned with her house. I wish I died when papa fell.”

That night, I slept in a corner, my back against the wall, arms wrapped around my knees. Sob after sob shook the room. Girls whispered prayers in different languages. Some begged God to wake us up. Others begged Him to end the world.

When sleep finally dragged me under, Ekene was waiting.

We were back in the rain again, laughing, spinning. Her eyes were bright, not yellow. Her uniform was wet, socks crooked. She grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the village, away from the camp, away from everything.

“Come,” she said. “Don’t run away.”

Her fingers tightened on my wrist, nails biting into my skin.

“I can’t stay there,” I cried. “I’ll die.”

“That’s the point,” she whispered, her smile strange. “You’re already halfway gone.”

I panicked and shoved her. She stumbled backward into thick darkness and disappeared, her scream mixing with the roar of engines.

I woke up with my heart pounding.

The room was dark except for a dim bulb outside, light leaking through a crack near the roof. A shadow moved in the doorway. A man’s voice echoed.

“Who is free tonight?” he muttered, peering at the huddled bodies. “I need one.”

We all held our breath. Some pretended to sleep. Some squeezed their eyes shut, tears leaking out anyway. I lay still, counting my heartbeats, willing them to be silent.

His torchlight swept over us like a searching hand. It landed on Tabitha.

Tabitha, who used to sing solos in church, whose voice made our pastor close his eyes. Tabitha, whose father had once said she would be “a light in dark places.” He was right. Just not like this.

“You,” the man said, nodding at her.

She didn’t move.

He grabbed her ankle.

She started to beg.

The door closed behind them. The room swallowed her voice, but our minds filled in the rest. We listened to the silence that followed, which somehow sounded louder than any scream.

I thought of my mother.

Right then, maybe she was standing in our doorway, staring at papa’s body soaked in his own blood, hand covering her mouth to stop the world from hearing her break. Maybe she was running from house to house, asking, “Have you seen my daughter? Have you seen her? Please, have you seen her?”

What if I had followed her to the market that day? Would they have taken us both? Or would we have stayed late, missed the raid, and come home to… what? More corpses?

What if I had married that old man who was asking for my hand? Moved to town. Lived in a small house with a big gate and pretended the war was a rumor from far away. Would my family be safe, or would their deaths have just felt more… distant?

What if.

What if.

What if.

The questions were a second gun in my head.

Time does a strange thing in captivity. It stops being counted in days and starts being counted in losses. First time you’re slapped. First time you’re forced to cook for them. First time you’re dragged out at night. First time you bleed. First time you stop crying when you should.

The newspapers called them different names over the years. Militants. Terrorists. Insurgents. Freedom fighters. Sometimes they were described by their religion. Sometimes by their region. Sometimes not at all just “unknown gunmen,” like their bullets were accidents?!!

To us, they were simply “them.”

Them, who forbade us from praying the way we were taught.

Them, who forced us to recite words we didn’t believe under a burning sun.

Them, who said if we refused, we would join our “stubborn” fathers in the ground.

“Say it,” one of them barked at me once, gun pressed into my back, words of another faith forced onto my tongue.

My lips moved.

My heart stayed silent.

Years passed, even though the sun and moon gave no confirmation. Rumors came in with new girls, went out with those who tried to escape and never came back. Sometimes we heard of villages burned. Sometimes of churches attacked mid-service. Sometimes of mass graves discovered after “peace talks.”

Peace was always on TV. Never in our camp.

Somewhere in that stretch of stolen time, my body became a battleground. They married me off. Not with a ceremony, but with a sentence.

“You. You belong to him now.”

No bride price. No pastor. No hymns. Just a muttered prayer in a language I barely understood and a hand branded on my shoulder like ownership.

By the time I turned 28, I had eight children for my “husbands” for the gang men who claimed me in turns and joked that our babies would “carry both bloods and be strong.” Some were born in the same camp. Some in another, after they moved us because “the army is getting too close.” All were born into a world where lullabies were interrupted by gunshots.

I loved them. Of course I did. They came from my body, and my body remembered them even when my mind wished it didn’t. I loved the way they laughed, the gap-toothed smiles, the way they clung to my wrapper and called me “Mama.”

But sometimes, when one of them picked up a stick and pretended it was a gun, aiming at invisible enemies, my heart twisted.

“Who taught you that?” I would ask.

“Baba,” they’d say proudly.

Fifteen years after they dragged me away in a country that insisted loudly that the war was “over,” that “normalcy has returned,” that “these are isolated incidents” I left.

Not dramatically. Not like in films. There was no gun snatched from someone’s hand, no dashing into the forest with bullets flying behind me.

One morning, my ex-husband the main one, the one who beat his chest the loudest online. He is the head of content too💔 He left for an operation. He had become something of a star among their kind. He was always going live, recording videos, shouting into his cheap phone camera, justifying their raids, their kidnappings, their slaughter.

My ex-husband was a supplier. (Not of guns )that was for men higher up but of something else. Of fear. Of spectacle. Of propaganda. His face was everywhere. In the dark corners of the internet. In forwarded videos. On muted TVs in beer parlors.

That day, he forgot to lock the inner door.

My children were in the yard, throwing small stones into a line they’d drawn in the sand. Practicing a game. Practicing something else.

I told the oldest, “I’m going to fetch water.”

“No go far,” he said, parroting his father’s tone.

“I won’t,” I lied.

I took the empty container. Walked past the first tent. Past the second. Past the point where they usually shouted, “Where are you going?” No one stopped me. It was normal, everyday movement. Nothing special.

At the edge of the camp, I paused. My heart beat so loudly I thought someone would hear it and shoot it out of my chest.

I took one more step.

Then another.

I didn’t run. Not yet. Running is suspicious. I walked until the camp shrank behind me. Until their voices were swallowed by the rustling of the tall, dry grass. Until the path turned into a memory.

Then I dropped the container and ran.

I ran like I should’ve run that day I stood looking at Ekene’s burning house. Like I should’ve run to her, dragged her out, saved her. I ran with eight ghosts🥹 my children’s faces pulling at my heart.

I didn’t look back.

It took days, weeks . Like time I still can’t calculate to reach a place where the guns were more hidden and the violence more polite. A place where people shook their heads at the news and said, “God forbid it happens here,” as if “here” and “there” were different planets and not the same soil.

Now, I sit in a small room in a city that pretends it’s not touched by war, telling my story to people who write on big notepads. Human rights, advocacy groups, panels. They use words like “atrocity,” “systemic violence,” “ethnic cleansing,” “religious persecution.”

They say “Christian genocide” in low voices, like the phrase is too heavy to say loudly.

They say, “The war ended decades ago, but the country never learned how to bury its hate.”

I listen.

I nod.

Sometimes I open my mouth to speak and Ekene’s name is the only thing that comes out.

Ekene died, and I stopped breathing too. My lungs still move, but some part of me is buried with her, under the ash of that house, under papa’s blood-soaked shirt, under the silence of all the churches that rang bells while our screams were swallowed by forest and fire.

They ask me, “What do you want now?”

I don’t know how to answer.

Rain has started falling again in my life. Soft at first. In the way a stranger pressed small money into my hand the first time I told my story publicly. In the way a church woman hugged me without asking for details. In the way someone held my gaze and said, “We believe you.”

But each time thunder rumbles, I remember.

The girl in the rain.

The house in flames.

The village in smoke.

The school in chaos.

The camp in the forest.

The man going live to boast.

The country insisting it is “fine.”

They say, “If a child keeps throwing stones and never stops, then there is a supplier.”

I think of all the men like my ex-husband, their faces glowing on screens, their threats echoing in comment sections, their identities an open secret no one wants to touch.

There are many suppliers.

Of stones.

Of guns.

Of lies.

Of silence.

So I speak.

I say Ekene’s name like a prayer.

I list the names of other girls whose faces won’t leave my dreams.

I describe the rooms, the guns, the forced words, the unborn children who never got a chance to cry.

I speak because the dead are already buried.

And the living people like me are the ones suffocating under the soil of denial.

Maybe if I tell it enough times, someone will finally look at this land and admit the truth:

The war did not end.

It simply changed uniforms.

This is a work of fiction inspired by real events and ongoing violence in Nigeria. Dedicated to all the lives lost and the survivors still breathing.

It’s not just background music — it’s how the story feels.

Read slow. Let the song breathe through the words .

https://spotify.link/gTavSq7mxXb

They said “bé bé fé” asin we are begging to marry her.

But that day, I swear it felt like I was the one being begged to let go.

Olumide stood there in white agbada, glowing like Lagos sun, dimples deep enough to drown common sense. The crowd was shouting “iyawooo!” “Oko ati iyawo” and spraying money like it was raining naira, but my body? My body was vibrating in guilt and heartbreak.

I wore wine agbada. The irony wasn’t lost on me because truly, wine had started this nonsense.

💔💔💔

The first time it happened, I blamed the wine.

The second time, I blamed loneliness.

By the third time, I stopped blaming anything because abeg, how many times will you lie to yourself before the devil starts laughing at you?

Olumide wasn’t supposed to happen to me.

He was the type of man that made women reconsider their marriages and made men rethink their sexuality… or maybe it’s just me 🙈 He’s tall, bearded, Yoruba fine-boy with the audacity of the governor’s only son .

He smelled like confidence and imported cologne; the kind of man that didn’t walk he entered rooms.

I mean 🌝🥺

And me? I was just Chike.

Shy. Igbo. Thick Igbo accent infact 😭Gentle to a fault. The kind of person that says “sorry” when someone steps on him.

My friends used to call me Mr. Oye because I pronounced oil like Oye😔

We met at a birthday party in one of those Lagos clubs where everyone is pretending not to be broke.

He was across the room, laughing like he owned the city .

Our eyes met once, and that was enough.

Next thing, he was beside me saying, “Guy, you look like trouble.”

I said, “You look like someone who causes it.” Softly… longer stares and he laughed .The kind of laugh that unlocks trouble. And that was it.

One drink turned to three, and three drinks turned to “let’s share a Bolt.”

Somehow, that Bolt ended in my compound.

Let’s just say that night, Lagos heat wasn’t the only thing making me sweat.

After that, Olumide became a bad habit.

He’d show up randomly shirtless, smiling, smelling like sin and cocoa butter.

He’d say, “Light no dey my side,” or “my Wi-Fi is down “

Next thing, he’d be in my kitchen, my couch, my bed…

Before I knew it, the man had toothbrush in my bathroom and slippers under my bed.

Oluuu 🥺❤️ the love of my life.

He had a key to my fridge before I even admitted I liked him.

Sometimes we’d sit watching TV 🌝well, pretending to. His thigh would brush mine and my soul would leave my body.

We called it friendship, because Nigerians fear the truth more than demons.

But that friendship was burning.

It was slow fire 🔥 brushing hands, lingering eyes, those silent breaths that said everything words couldn’t.

Then came the guilt.

He’d say, “Guy, this thing no pure.” And try to push me away.

I’d just look at him and say, “Na you wey pure pass? Nobody is pure in this life “

He’d laugh, pull me close, and all our guilt would disappear into sweat.

Until one day, he said it—“I think I found the one.”

I thought he meant another man. I was ready to be jealous in peace.

Then he said, “Her name’s Tola.”

I swear, my body froze like NEPA took light inside my chest.

I said, “Marriage is good oh,” pretending I meant it.

He smiled, said, “You go be my best man. Right beside me, Chike.”

And so here I was—standing beside him at his traditional wedding the best man in wine agbada, clapping for another man’s happiness.

He looked like joy. I looked like heartbreak with swag 😔

When he caught my eye, he winked. That stupid, sexy wink.

And right there, in front of his bride, his family, and Yoruba ancestors, I felt my throat close up.

I laughed to hide it. Because what else can you do when the man you love is begging to marry someone else?

The alaga asked us “shé be be fe” and we chorused “á be be feè “ begging to marry her ?

The wedding scattered my brain.

People were dancing like rent wasn’t due next week. The MC was shouting, “Spray the couple, spray love!” And I, Chike, the best man, was just there smiling in pain in the agbada.

My wine agbada, by the way, was choking me or maybe I was dying?

Every bead on that cloth felt like judgment.

The camera guy kept saying, “Smile, best man!”

And I was like?!

To be honest all I could think of was how I had Olumide’s lips in my mouth a week ago. Same lips now saying “I do.”

At one point, Tola, the bride, hugged me and said, “Thank you for being there for him.”

I almost said, ‘Sis, you have no idea how there I’ve been.’

But I just smiled and said, “Na God.”

Later, when the oriki woman was chanting his praise, my chest was doing backflip.

“Olumide omo Adewale… oko Tola!” she shouted.

And all I could think was, “She forgot to add ‘the man that ruined my life.’”

By evening, everyone was drunk on palm wine and happiness.

Me, I was drunk on guilt and memories.

Because love, ehn… love is wicked. It doesn’t leave quietly . It drags its leg, breaks plates, and whispers your name when you’re trying to forget.

When the party finally died, I went home.

Removed my agbada like it insulted me personally.

Sat on my bed, opened one cheap red wine from Shoprite, and stared at my ceiling in heartbreak .

Then my phone buzzed. It was Olu

Olumide: “You home?”

I stared at the text for few seconds .

Then another message:

“Don’t lock your door.”

You see that moment? That’s when stupidity entered me fully.

Because what sane person leaves their door open for a married man ?his own groom, fresh from honeymoon rehearsals

He came around midnight.

Still in his wedding jacket. Tie hanging loose. Eyes red, maybe from drink, maybe from guilt, maybe both.

He looked like a man who had just signed a lifelong contract with regret.

I said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

He said, “I know.”

But he was already inside.

He dropped his jacket on my chair like he owned the place.

My room smelled of him Dior, sweat, wine and trouble… Olumide .

He stood there, staring.

Then said quietly, “You know I didn’t plan this.”

I laughed. “Olu, you planned everything 😂even the mistake.”💔

He didn’t argue.

He just stepped closer. That same stupid smirk on his face.

And in that moment, I hated him for how beautiful he looked.

😔

He touched my chin gently, like I was glass.

And I swear, every cell in my body stood at attention.

Before I could think, he kissed me.

It wasn’t a deep kiss, no. It was the kind of kiss that says, ‘Sorry, I chose wrong.’

Soft. Guilty. Heavy.

His ring grazed my jaw, and my whole chest just… broke.

💔💔💔

We stumbled to the bed, slow and rough at the same time.

His breath was hot against my ear. His hands were sure, like he’d memorized my body.

But somewhere between his heartbeat and mine, he stopped.

Just froze.

“I can’t,” he said. Voice cracked.

And I, stupidly, said, “Then don’t.”

He pulled back, breathing like someone chased him.

His eyes were red, his were red hot . He looked like sin in human form.

“I’ll go,” he said.

And for once, I didn’t stop him.

He touched my arm before leaving 😔light, almost like prayer.

Then he was gone.

I sat there for a long time, staring at the door he walked through.

The house felt empty, like air forgot how to breathe.

Now, every night when I close my eyes, I still see him in that jacket, still hear his laugh, still smell that nasty cologne.

💔😔

And every time I lie down with someone else I still think about him.

Because that’s the thing about Olumide.

Even when he leaves, he stays.

This piece was born from a painting by Anthony Azekwoh

A man dressed like joy, looking like heartbreak in agbada . His eyes heavy with something between love and regret. I saw him, and I saw Chike.

Thank you for reading 💜💍

Me? My exits were gentle and soft. Almost sweet. Like switching off a standing fan that has been blowing nothing but hot air since morning.

I'd die, rest small, then return. Back and forth.

Like danfo shuttling between Obalende and CMS : familiar, slightly annoying, entirely expected. Big on expected.

But my poor mother? God bless her theatrical soul. That woman suffered. She did not take my softness well. She performed grief the way Lagos people perform everything: loudly and with extras.

She would wail like she was auditioning for Fuji House of Commotion every time I

"logged out." She'll roll on the floor, scatter wrapper, threaten God , curse the air. By the fourth resurrection, she marked me, she just said,

"Enough is enough." Literally. A charcoal smudge behind my ear, a tiny cross on my wrist as proof, not prophecy. She would press that mark in public, palm it out to the market women like a receipt: “See? This one came back again.” The mark was mercy and accusation bundled together 😔a permanent reminder that I was the child who did not always stay. “

Truth is, I just got bored with life. Life was noisy. Market people always shouting, NEPA playing with my feelings, church people binding me every Sunday like I was their part-time job🙄

Sometimes I'd just tap out. Die small. Rest. Stretch leg. It’s needed .

Then return like nothing happened💛.

One evening I landed in that gray space that’s not life and not death but where the streetlights leak secrets. He wasn’t a ghost, wasn’t strictly alive … he was the kind of thing language borrows when it runs out. Blurred but steady. His eyes were guilty of memory; like he’d seen me in other streets, other lifetimes, other faulty power cuts.

I called him My NASA. Because he was distant and beautiful and made me want to look up at the sky and feel less useless. Also, calling someone “NIGERIA ELECTRICITY SUPPLY COMPANY” would not go viral on TikTok for romance. NASA had that hush 🙈the kind you can only whisper when you’re both afraid and hopeful.

I fell. Not the dramatic, story time on TikTok kind of fall(cries in Bukkolary😔)

It was soft, safe like when amala and gbegiri finally align and your throat blesses you. The kind of fall where you don’t text your entire contact list about destiny; you simply keep checking if the same playlist plays when you think of them.

Back in life I hunted for him in faces at Ojuelegba, in the drone of generators on Victoria Island, in church choirs and market noise 🙃Nothing.

Meanwhile, in his world 🥺which was not life, not death, but some third option. He was searching too. A man with a wife, a child, and ordinary responsibilities like school fees and gas bills. Yet he carried a hidden ache, a yearning shaped like me.

Omggg men >>>

The human species never stops to be funny.

But chill . This wasn’t a tragedy dressed in black. This wasn’t Romeo-and-Juliet rat poison stuff . This love was… still. Still like lagoon water at dawn, before it remembers how to flood Lekki. Still like laughter that doesn’t need permission.

We simply longed. Quietly, dangerously, stubbornly. The kind of longing that makes you open your notes app at 3 a.m., write something terrible but true, then delete it in the morning because, God forbid, someone should find it.

One evening I lingered in-between longer than usual. I refused to “log out.” And then the truth landed like a soft footstep:

My NASA wasn’t waiting in life. He wasn’t waiting in death. He was waiting in longing itself. In the pause between breaths. In the almost-touch. In the map of things you keep on your phone under “notes” and label “never send.”

I laughed(or almost ran mad). Of course I laughed again 😭.

Sometimes understanding why you ache is the cure. It unpacks the heavy, hands you a cup of whatever tea will warm you, and says, “There. Hold this.”

And then something ridiculous happened: when I finally chose to stop running — when I fully decided to stay — he was there. Not smudged, not fogged. Solid. Like a generator that actually works for once. He took my hand like someone who had learned how to hold things carefully: because he held a household by day and a secret universe by night, he had practice.

He looked at me like you do when you meet a friend you’ve been texting but never dared video-call. Tender and slightly surprised. He smiled the sort of smile that had been saving itself for a long time.

“Exciting,” I said — the word felt small and enormous at once. “Knowing we’ll meet in every lifetime.”

He laughed; it sounded like someone collapsing into relief. Then he said, “We are the same stubborn story.” And I believed him. Not because of thunder. Not because of drama. Because sometimes the deepest promises are those made without noise. Made with a hand finding another hand. Made with tea shared in secret moments, nacho crumbs accidentally exchanged at midnight, poems saved in drafts.

We lived like Lagos — loud in small ways, tender in quieter ones. Our love did not demand wars or waterfall scenes. It came as a stillness that healed. It came with cupboard jokes and shared errands and, once, him bringing me akara in the in-between just because I had said, months earlier, that no one ever brings akara where I float.

My mother, when I told her, auditioned shock again — but this time for joy. She pointed at the charcoal mark and said, “See?” like she had always known. The market women nodded like a jury convened in favor of miracles. Even NEPA seemed to cooperate that week; our lights stayed mercifully intact for a full day. I took that as a blessing or as coincidence; I chose blessing. I am a sentimental liar when it comes to light.

We didn’t need thunder. We didn’t need goats to cry. We had laughter. We had softness. We had the sort of love that fits into pockets and survives PTA schedules. We had the kind of belonging that needs no pyrotechnics to prove itself — only two people showing up across different worlds, the same stubborn heart making the rounds.

And when I thought of dying now — not as a habit but as a possibility I smiled. If I go, it would not be for show. If I stay, it would be for warmth. If I return, it would be because someone somewhere still looks up to the sky and whispers, “There she is.” And that would be enough.

So if you ask me about being an Abiku, I will tell you: dying can be boring. Returning can be softer. But the best part is when, across all the almosts and maybes, you find someone waiting with tea, with jokes, and with a hand you can finally keep❤️

My corset strangled me. Each breath was a negotiation. Tears slid silently down my cheeks, warm, stubborn, exposing me🥹💔.

The congregation thought I was weeping out of joy. “Ah, see how close they are” “she’ll miss her “ “She’s so happy for her friend.” If only they knew. It wasn’t joy. It was grief, raw and ugly, choking me in God’s house.

And then you looked at me🥺

My Flora. Flora my lover 🙈My muse. My sin and my salvation🥺🥺🥺❤️

My noisy neighbour in my head. My safe place. The way you gripped your bouquet like it was me you were holding... Lord have mercy.

I loved you before I even knew what the syllabus of love was. I loved you before I knew how to spell the word. Choice or void, form or formless, you were it. You filled me up like beans inside moimoi leaf.

I loved you before my body understood why it leaned towards you like sunflowers growing towards sunlight. You were my first gospel. You made my chest understand warmth.

And my body remembered 😔oh, it remembered everything🥺

The way you used to slip into my bed after midnight, feet cold, body warm, sliding against me like you belonged there. The weight of your head on my chest, your hair tickling my chin as you whispered stories in the dark. How your lips found mine without searching, as if they had the map memorised.

I remembered the taste of you. Salt, sweat, laughter. The way you would kiss me with full hunger one second, then giggle the next like you’d stolen meat from the pot🥺.

I remembered your back arched against me, your breath fast, the soft whimper when my hand found the curve of your hip. We made promises with our mouths, with our bodies. Promises I thought were unbreakable.

To hold you was to return home after a long market day . To kiss you was to drink water after hauling buckets from the stream. To be inside your laughter was to survive another day.

Simple things brushing your hair aside, tracing the line of your neck, hearing you say “Debola” convinced me forever was ours.

Now here you are, dressed in white, vowing to belong to a man who was supposed to be a cover story💔

Segun. A “distraction." A PR stunt for your parents. I mean... the man was meant to be a prop in our Nollywood film. But now the prop has collected script and taken lead role.

“He is just a background extra Debola” That was how you described him. But background extras don't wear suits and rings and stand beside priests🙂

I remembered the night you told me he proposed. I almost fainted. "I can't believe you're leaving me for a man," I spat, voice shaking. You only laughed, kissed my forehead like Judas preparing his betrayal, and whispered: "It's just a ring.

Everything is for the plot. Relax."

Relax? You kissed my forehead and told me to relax, when what I needed was for you to hold my waist and promise me the plot would end with me. Foolish me, I believed you.

And yet, six months later, here we are.

💔💔💔

Even this morning, I tried one last time. I found you in the dressing room, veil pinned, face glowing like a secret sunrise. I asked: “What happens to us now, Flora?”

You turned, eyes wet. You held me like you always did🥺 full, desperate, as though letting go would kill you. Then you whispered: “Debola… I tried to write my vows last night. But all I wrote… was about you.”

My knees nearly buckled. I took your hands, kissed them. “Then don’t do this. Don’t marry him. Run with me. We’ll fetch water together, pound yam together, plant cassava, hide from the world. Just don’t leave me🥺🥺🥺”

I kissed your fingers like they were holy, desperate to remind you where you belonged🥺. You let me. For one brief moment, I thought you would say yes. But then you pulled back. Your face hardened. “It’s enough. You know why we are doing this. Stop.”

That stop broke me. Not the word but the way your body turned away from mine, like it was easier to let go than to hold on.

And now, in this church, I sit and listen as you recite vows that sound like my ghost echoing out of your mouth. “Love doesn’t make sense without you… my pen would write about you and you alone, whenever wherever…”

I froze. My chest screamed. Because those were mine. My words. The same ones I whispered into your mouth just last night when I begged you to marry me instead. And here you were, repackaging my love letter as your vow to Segun.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I broke 💔 I let out a loud, ugly sob that echoed through the cathedral.. I wept. Loud, ugly, shaking sobs. The congregation clapped at your vows, but my body convulsed. Ushers rushed to me, thinking Holy Spirit had struck. One aunty pressed a handkerchief into my hand, whispering: “Take heart, my sister. It is well.”

But it wasn’t well. It was never well.

I stood and ran out, gown dragging like broken wings, heart split open like kola nut. Outside, I waited, stupidly, hoping you would follow. Hoping you’d throw the bouquet aside, sprint into my arms, and choose me instead. But you didn’t.

Instead, it was Phebe.

Sweet, quiet Phebe. The one who had been watching all along, seeing me drown. She came and gathered me like fragile clay. She gathered me like something precious, let me soak her shoulder with mascara and snot.

“I see it too,” she said softly. “And maybe… maybe it’s time we start choosing ourselves.”

She said 🥺

I lifted my head, met her gaze. She kissed me. Once, soft and trembling, like a question. Then again, firmer, like an answer.

And for the first time in months, my body loosened. My chest unclenched. I took a deep breath 🥺

And for the first time since this whole story began, I felt something that resembled peace.

After all, the one I love chose her groom. Perhaps it’s only fair that I go and find another bride❤️

So I walk away, chest still heavy but lips trembling with a new possibility… and in the background, I’m listening to Falling Behind by Laufey

This piece was born from a painting by Anthony Azekwoh

.

But Desmond? Desmond carried it too far. Like, toooo far. The kind of far that if his mum told him to jump inside Third Mainland Lagoon, he would first ask, “Mummy, should I remove my slippers or just dive like that?”

I get it . It’s love 🙌🏽

Sandra, his babe, thought she had found husband material. Fine boy, beard connect, EFCC connect , tall enough to pick coconut from tree, he even prayed before eating at Chicken Republic.

She told her friends, “Girls, my search is over.” But she didn’t know she had entered polygamy 😭and the second wife was in Ibadan, tying wrapper, drinking Lipton, and answering to the name Mummy Desmond.

From day one it was “Mummy this, Mummy that.” If Sandra cooked, Desmond would lick his spoon and go, “Nice, but mummy adds crayfish.”

If she washed his white shirt, he’d hold it to the light like customs officer and say, “Hmm, mummy usually soaks it overnight in Ariel.”

Omo, Sandra started wondering if she was dating Desmond or applying for the post of housemaid in Mummy Desmond’s compound.

But she was like

The thing is paining Sandra more because she was trying😂😂😂which is even funnier 😂😭.

Because you can just go

One day she even watched YouTube video on how to fold towels “like hotel.” Desmond looked at it and said, “Not bad… but mummy folds it into swan shape.” My sister, Sandra nearly turned him into the swan that day.

The disrespect didn’t end at home. They went to Shoprite one Sunday. Sandra picked Kellogg’s, Desmond shook his head. “Mummy doesn’t like this brand.”

She picked duvet, he hissed. “Mummy prefers cotton.” Sandra stood there in the aisle holding Milo, just calculating whether to throw it on his head right there in front of security.

And the calls? Omo. If Sandra called, Desmond would say, “Busy, I’ll call you back.” Because he is listening to music 🙂

If mummy called? First ring, immediate answer, military salute. Even 3am. Babe said one day, romance was heating up, kissing, touching, the atmosphere was sweet , almost on cloud 9…phone rang. This man paused, pushed her hand away, and said: “Wait, it’s my mum.”

Sandra just froze there like statue while he whispered: “Yes mummy, I locked the door. Yes mummy, I wore my singlet. Yes mummy, I already drank water.”

At this point, even neighbors noticed. One aunty in their compound once asked Sandra, “Ah, is that your husband or your brother? Because the way that boy and him mummy dey gist like honeymoon couple, I dey confuse.”

she just smiled and smirked 😏.

The final straw came one Saturday. Sandra cooked egusi with correct orishirishi — goat meat, pomo, stockfish, the whole United Nations of protein.

Desmond ate, smiled, and said: “Wow, this is good… but mummy’s egusi has more… spirit.”

Spirit?? Is she Pentecostal chef??

Sandra dropped the spoon and asked him point blank: “Desmond, are you dating me or your mother?”

My people, this boy looked her dead in the eye and said with boldness: “Don’t compare yourself to her. You can’t compete. She’s my first love.”

FIRST LOVE?? Is she Juliet??

That was the day Sandra packed her bag. Because if she stayed one more week, the wedding invitation would have read:

“You are cordially invited to the holy matrimony of Desmond & Mummy Desmond. Reception follows immediately at antenatal clinic.”

And honestly? That’s the problem. Desmond doesn’t want a wife. He wants to marry his mother. Until then, every girlfriend is just… stepmother-in-law.

Sandra’s final words? “Ladies, take this from me 😭dating a mummy’s boy is like downloading app with too many ads. You’ll never enjoy the main thing. So please, if you notice he’s in love with his mother, don’t argue, don’t fight… just return him to sender. Let mummy keep her husband. Me, I don log out.”

Not because of turbulence or flight wahala - no😭

I’m afraid because, after 21 days in NYSC camp, I’ve lost my British accent, my peace of mind… and maybe even my common sense😔😔😔

Because explain to me 😔how did a Lagos babe like me end up soft-blushing over a Warri man who once hailed a soldier just so I wouldn’t be punished for “catwalking instead of doubling up ”?

Let’s rewind. Stay with me 😘Take popcorn 🍿 😘😘

Day One

Platoon 6 meeting. Sun was frying us like plantain, and I was just trying to write my name down, minding my moisturized business, when I felt a tap.

Then I heard:

“Adjust na. Water dey drop for your body from that place. You no dey feel am ?”

But the way he said it? Fast. Warri speed. With Igbo delivery.

All my Lagos ears heard was:

“Ajuwannnhhh. Wadadeydriponyuhh…”

I turned around, blinking like I’d just received prophecy.

He pointed at the ceiling, hissed, shook his head and muttered “See this aje.” Asin ajebutter…? Me ?

I moved. He smiled. I did not smile back because Lagos babes don’t move to the beat of every noise. And his noise? E loud.

Ten minutes later, outside mammy market, I heard again:

“Ayyyeee! Na you again?? See as you dey waka. Fine girl !”

He paid for my food without asking. Bought me Fab, Nutri Choco, and Mentos. I was still forming soft when he said:

“No look me like that. No be sugar daddy tins. Na national investment.”

Sir, I just wanted small jollof and peace.

That night, he texted me:

“You go chop fufu tomorrow. I wan carry you go mammy. Make we ball ”

By Day 2, he had unofficially appointed himself my camp husband. Not emotionally, o. Physically. Bodyguard with running mouth.

He carried my bucket of water one evening 😂close to my hostel, not all the way.

“Make dem no say I dey fall. But this your pink bucket? E no even get weight. Na decoration?”

Please. I giggled. He hissed.

I was blushing every 3 to 4 business minutes.

He’d say stuff like:

“You dey stress me, but you fresh.” and he’ll pull my cheek 😂🙈

And somehow… it sounded like love.

Am I damaged?

At night, he’d call me to come outside hostel gate just to gist.

“You know say I no dey sleep if I never see your stubborn forehead.” He’ll proceed to kiss my forehead 🙈

One day, I told him I liked quality time. He said:

“Omo I dey always dey with you nau. Na only Jesus remain make we invite.”

His love language was presence. Not in a deep, poetic way but in a “he go show, he go shout, he go buy dey for you ” type of way.

I’d post an aesthetic picture on my story, expecting him to choke on my beauty. He’d reply:

“You fine like person wey fit scatter mammy market if you start to dey sell correct egg roll.”

Sir, just say “You look nice.”

But over time, I got used to his rizz . His sharp mouth. His jokes.

He’d randomly buy me food. Anytime I entered mammy, he’d appear. Pay. Sit. Watch me eat like it was cinema.

He hailed soldiers like they were his boys. Made friends with every kitchen mama. Helped me dodge parade . He let me sit on his lap when my legs were hurting 🙈He taught me how to survive camp, not just exist in it.

He never once said “I miss you.” Instead, he’d text:

“You dey do like say you wan disappear. If I no hear your voice today, I go vex. Dey come downstairs”

Translation: You live in my head.

One time I said, “I feel like sometimes you’re emotionally distant.”

He said:

“You dey find who go hug you for phone? Oga dey come downstairs. Wetin you Dey talk .”

How do you argue with that?

Then came HIV test day.

I was just there, standing under the sun, waiting my turn when I heard it — again, from across the crowd:

“AYYYEEE! NA MY WIFE BE THIS O!”

He runs to hug me from behind 🌝

Everybody turned. Including the nurse.

I froze. Blushed. Denied him like Peter

But he just walked up, grinning like a mad man with GPS to my heart.

“You too dey fine for this kind camp.

I no want mosquito to touch you sef ehn Achalugo .”

And that was it.

That loud, fast-talking, emotionally reckless but somehow incredibly sweet human being? He got under my skin. In a good way.

We still don’t know what we’re doing. NYSC proper has started . We’re in different states. But he still texts every morning. Sometimes voice notes:

“I no even sabi wetin you do me. But I dey carry you for mind like say na because of my mama born me ”

And the way he says it? I believe him.

He never gave me flowers. But he carried my bucket of water every night 🥺

He never quoted poetry. But he bought me suya and said “ chop am with bread you go like am .”

And I'd melt.

Because his love wasn't curated or soft.

It was chaotic, loud, and sometimes came with roasted corn and “you sabi chop am with coconut? Take “

it was real.

He never said “I love you.” But he always showed up.

And now, I’m in Warri.

Yes, I actually flew from Lagos 🌝(don’t judge me) let’s pretend I’m exploring this city and it wasn’t love that booked my flight.

Thirty days of missing his noise.

Thirty days of pretending I didn’t smile at “aunty you don chop ?”text messages.

Thirty days of convincing myself I was over it and it was just camp

Because the moment I saw him at the airport, shouting like he was at a campaign rally:

😭😭😭

“CORPAAAASHUNNN! Achalugo! Asampete! ASA! My fine baby don land o!”

I knew …

He hugged me like he missed oxygen.

Called me “Princess” like it was my government name.

Looked into my eyes like I was white soup with correct goat meat.

And somehow…

Just like that…

I see myself here again in his arms🥺

Blushing like a teenager.

Laughing like he’s the funniest thing God ever created.

Falling into a kind of love that doesn’t sound like poetry…

But sounds a whole lot like home.

And honestly?

I think I like it here.

Thank youuuuuuuuu so much for reading, sharing, and laughing with me through all this madness. Honestly, you could be minding your business or eating puff-puff, or pricing a new wig but you chose to read my gist 🥺and for that, I’m grateful from the bottom of my soft heart🙈❤️God bless you, uplift you, and may no boy or girl ever use you to catch cruise (unless you’re into that sha) 🌝❤️ thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Yeah. That's where I am right now .

No light. Mosquito whining motivational quotes in my ear, and I just clapped once. Not because I killed anything, but because I remembered him again.

Banji.

Yes. The Benjamin you know. But we call him Banji now because why are we even protecting a man that was created specifically to stress daughters of God?

Anyway, let me start from the beginning before you miss your stop on this gist ride.

I’m currently serving my fatherland. NYSC babe. Khaki. Jungle boots. White shirt that has seen things. I’m doing my part.

Ouuuu😍😍😍🙈

But it was in the middle of this patriotic service that I got recruited into another form of service: emotional warfare.

I met Banji during one of those random Lagos weekends. In church 🌝The sun was hot. My spirit was soft. He was cute, tallish (not tall o, just… manageable), darkish 🥹and his first line to me was, “I had a dream about you. You were wearing white like an Angel”

You already know I should’ve entered bike and run fast and farrr because anybody that starts with spiritual wooing? Potential Danger ‼️ . But me? I smiled. Giggled. Even called him “Man of God” on his contact name.

From there? It was fire for fire.

Bible study. Voice notes. Late night calls.

He gifted me a pink journal to “document our journey.”

Me. Ada. A whole NYSC corper, writing “Day 1 of God-ordained love.”

I even told God thank you😂

I said, “Father, you’re not even waiting for NYSC to end before blessing me with husband?”

Omo.

It wasn’t husband o. It was hurricane in human form. Werey gidi 😭(thick and strong mad man)

Banji was fine sha. And that’s how they catch you. He had that type of smile that makes you ignore common sense. He would send me scriptures every morning.

“Isaiah 43:2 babe. No matter the fire, you won’t be burnt.”

Meanwhile, I was in the fire and he was the one holding the matchstick.

Soon, the red flags started tumbling in like NYSC parade.

But did I leave?

No now. I was too busy defending him like it was inter-platoon tug of war. I’m not even joking 😭

He started talking about his ex. A lot. Like, a lot.

Everytime , everydayyy .

Lulu, Kenny , Taiwo, Anita , Chelsea, Ifunaya 😂

One time he sent a picture and said “She had the cutest dimples. But I like yours better sha.”

Another time: “Her voice was soft but you’re more articulate.”

One morning, he sent me a random photo. I opened it thinking it was a meme.

It was HER.

No caption. Just her face and her dimples

I said, “Sorry, why are you sending me her picture?”

He said, “I’m just saying… you’re different. She was stubborn but sweet.”

Okay??

He was collecting women like Infinity Stones and comparing traits like he was doing Nigerian idol auditions.

Can you imagine ??? A grown man with beards o 😭

Still, I stayed. Like a Mumu . Because one of the worst things you can do to a Nigerian woman with feelings is give her the illusion of potential. I thought I was the final bus stop. The chosen one.

I didn’t know I was on transfer duty.

Then came “Rita Bible Study.”

He said they were just friends. Said they pray together.

But something in my chest was just saying check that phone o, Ada.

I checked.

First off, the name on Truecaller wasn’t just “Rita .” It was a government name.

Guess who?

His ex. Yes that Kennedy 😂😭

She was talking about her “white dress” . Maybe they were even planning their wedding sef 🥲

The same girl he had been crying about.

The one he said showed him Shege

And wants to fake trap him with a baby 🙃

So I’d basically been texting, calling, and comparing myself to a woman he renamed and repurposed like leftover jollof.

He was cheating on me with rebranded sorrow.

💔💔

And I didn’t even know yet that the madness hadn’t peaked😭😭😭

Banji took my phone one night like the Spirit led him.

Checked messages, scrolled through chats.

Saw nothing.

And somehow, got angry.

Yes. You read that right.

He found nothing 😍no cheating, no flirting, not even one "wyd" at 11pm and still said:

"So you're not talking to anybody? Why are you so clean? It's suspicious."

Banji was mad.

Legitimately mad.

How do you cheat and then be upset that I don't cheat too ?

He said, “Maybe you’re deleting chats.”

LORD. I was losing my mind in High Definition.

And just when I thought I’d seen it all, this boy said, “Ada, I will marry you.”

Marry who?

The way he said it? It was not romantic.

It was not loving.

It was threatening.

As in, “Don’t misbehave o. I’m going to marry you.”

My sister, that’s when my spirit said RUN.

It was after that that he ghosted me for three days. When he came back, he said he needed to “clear his head.”

Clear your head with who?

Hookup babes.

Yes. Banji sleeps with hook-up girls.

And how do I know? Because he told me. Proudly. Like someone confessing gym attendance.

“I don’t even enjoy it like that. I just do it to pass time. You know those girls are not my spec “

Imagine being a side hustle to somebody’s lack of discipline ??!

Shame wear me mosquito net 😭😔

Omo. I cried. But only once. Because when I wiped my tears I saw my NYSC allowee has dropped I quickly ordered shawarma 😍

And do you know what saved me? Shame . I can’t walk on the road with such person 🙏🏼

Cause how can someone finish morning devotion with you at 6AM and be in a hotel room with a hookup babe by 2PM.

Best in duality.

😂😂😂

He was literally living in a constant episode of Mount Zion Meets PornHub.

And somehow, in the middle of all this madness, this man was still quoting Bible verses to me.

"He who finds a wife finds a good thing."

Yes sir, but the good thing is not sleeping with strangers for "vibes."

But now? I’m free.

No Banji. Or Benji 😂

No stress.

No unexpected pregnancy

My period flows in peace.

My data is mine again.

My khaki still buttons.

And I’m in love now. Real love.

No more “God said you’re my wife” type of love.

This one is peaceful, real, and hookup-babe-free.

But let me be honest . This Banji taught me something.

He taught me that not every spiritual man is spirit-filled.

Some are just high.

And I’m also grateful. Because if not for that nonsense, what would I be writing about today? I’ll probably be waiting for the man to call me back while he is busy begging Kennedy to let him put just the ‘tip’

So Banji, thank you for your service.

You didn’t give me love, but you gave me headache 😭and trauma

Thankfully didn’t leave me with a ring or a baby, but you left me with sweet gist 😘.

And that, my dear people, is how I’m serving Nigeria🙈❤️

God bless NYSC.

God bless heartbreak.

And God bless the block button.

Let me know if I look good in my khaki 🙈🙈🙈❤️

Oh yeah his babe told me happy birthday😂 I stared at the message for two whole minutes.

Because what kind of divine peace does it take to greet the new tenant in your ex's life?

She was like

While we are here please God I’ve forgiven him . But don’t forgive him yet . Let’s revenge 😭

please pray with me 🙏🏼😭thank you 💜💜💜

It’s my birthday.

Again.

Yes, the earth has completed another orbit around my anointed self and I didn’t die, run mad or end up in one man’s “it’s not you, it’s me” group chat.

What a win.

So, to celebrate, I thought I’d write a little something 🙈not just because I’m cute and poetic, but because my life is now so soft, spicy and occasionally unserious, it deserves public documentation.

If I had ₦1,000 for every time someone told me, “You’re still young, enjoy life,” I’d have bought a plot of land in Banana Island and built a mansion strictly for throwing shade and eating sweet soft bread in peace.

I’ve spent over two decades on this chaotic earth, and here’s what I’ve learned: life is not balanced, Nigerian landlords are wicked, and sometimes love will humble you like NEPA bill.

Let’s Start with the Obvious: My Life Is Not Normal🤷🏽‍♀️

I don’t mean that in a “life is hard, pray for me” kind of way.

No.

I mean God is obsessed with me and shows it loudly🥺❤️

Small discomfort? Next thing, angels are moving things around like set designers on a Netflix show.

I miss a bus?

Somebody offers me a ride with AC, WiFi and biscuit.

My landlord threatens me?

Next week, he’s the one begging me to renew.

And yes all of this is real🙈❤️

Not skit. Not fiction. Just me, existing with main character favour.

🚩 But Let’s Talk About the Love Life Since You’re Here😔

So there’s this person.

I love him, unfortunately.

He?

He’s… you know… “figuring himself out.”

As in he still magnetically attracted to girls “link in bio” babes and he still accidentally falls into his ex’s bed every third Thursday😊

Me? I’m sending Bible verses and calling him “love.”

He? He’s sending “wyd” texts at 11:58pm like God didn’t warn him about judgment.

And somehow, I still love him.

(But also? I’ve quietly handed him over to Jesus and blocked him on one platform. Balance.)

Because one thing about me?

I will be delusional AND favoured.

I’m not stressed sha.

Because if he goes, better will come.

If he stays, he’ll eventually join midweek service and delete his ex’s number.

Either way, I win.

Anywayyyyy🎂 This Birthday, I’m Not Just Growing 😊I’m Glowing Dangerously

With all this madness?

I'm still fine.

Still funny.

Still serving looks with my broken screen and unshakable faith in Master Jesus .

The world is burning, but I've learned to dance around the fire.

Because one thing about me?

I go chop life, even if it's by stress.

So yes, stuff dey gwan.

But guess what? I'm gwan-ing too. With small sense, big yansh, and one functional power bank that I’ve used cello-tape to wrap 🙈

Sooo as we all know 🙈

My bumbum is bigger.

My skin is brighter.

My edges are growing faster than my bank account.

I don’t chase.

I attract.

I sit, and favour locates me like Eve located the apple 😘❤️

People keep asking,

“How are you so calm?”

I’m not calm, darling. I’m carried.

This birthday? I didn’t even plan much.

I just woke up, looked in the mirror and whispered:

“Soft life has entered my bone marrow.”

📌 A Few Things I’ve Learned Since Last Year:

1. Never beg a man to behave. You’re not his pastor. Even his pastor is tired.

2. When you feel down, just sleep. Half of your problems are tiredness and bad WiFi.

3. Don’t compete. The grace on your life is not sold in bulk.

4. If God shows you favour, don’t ask Him to make it subtle. Shine. Blind people.

5. Be the kind of babe your village people avoid out of respect. That’s me.

💌 Final Birthday Note to All My Readers:

To those watching me silently 💜

I love you. But I’m not slowing down.

Keep watching.

To those who envy me

Join me in prayer. There’s space in God’s Close Friends.

To those who think I’m doing too much —

Come and carry the grace. Let’s see how you’ll behave.

And to the man I may or may not be in love with:

Keep playing with fire. If thunder doesn’t get you, my angels will send small malaria as a warning.

To myself?

Babe, you’ve survived madness.

You’ve glowed through nonsense.

You’ve laughed at Lagos wahala and turned it into content.

You’re not just growing older.

You’re becoming dangerously fine, disturbingly favoured, and spiritually untouchable.

So happy birthday to me , Jola baby 😍😘

Heaven’s favourite babe,

Earth’s softest problem,

And your fave Substack girl with God on speed dial.

🧁 If you read this and smiled, share it. If you read this and hissed, rest. This is not your season. My own is active.

Love,

Your Birthday Babe Who Can’t Suffer Even If She Tries™ 💅🏾