At first, it seems harmless, a passing thought, a face that lingers a little longer than it should, a voice that echoes even after the conversation has ended. However, like slow rain on dry ground, it begins to seep in, and before long it is no longer just a thought but a presence, steady and persistent.

Then comes the imagination, which is both a gift and a trickster. It paints pictures where there are no canvases, writes stories where there are no scripts, and takes fragments of reality and stitches them into something whole, something beautiful, something convincing. Suddenly, what was once a simple admiration becomes layered with meaning, so that every glance feels intentional, every word feels weighted, and every silence feels like it holds secrets waiting to be discovered.

Reality, meanwhile, remains quietly unchanged.

You do not truly know them, not in the way that matters. You know the outline, the visible parts, the curated moments, what they present to the world rather than what they wrestle with in private. Your heart, still, insists on filling in the blanks, as though it has been given permission to complete a story that was never fully written.

You begin to stand at a distance, watching, wondering, hoping, and it becomes a delicate balance between desire and restraint. On one hand, there is the urge to step forward, to speak, to act, to turn possibility into something tangible. On the other hand, there is the quiet awareness that timing is not on your side, that readiness is not yet within your grasp, and that stepping forward may lead you into waters deeper than you are prepared to swim.

This is where the conflict lives, because the heart is bold and wants what it wants without negotiation. It does not care for timing or logic or preparedness; it simply reaches. The mind, meanwhile, stands firm with arms folded, reminding you of everything you have yet to resolve within yourself, asking whether you are ready for what follows, whether you can handle the weight of what may come, and whether you will remain grounded if things do not go as you hope.

These questions are not meant to discourage; they are meant to protect.

Protection, however, often feels like denial. It feels like holding back when everything within you wants to move forward, like silence when your chest is full of unspoken words, like watching something pass by, knowing you could have reached for it, yet choosing not to. That choice is not weakness but discipline.

There is a strength in restraint that is often misunderstood. The world celebrates bold declarations and grand gestures, yet it rarely speaks of the quiet victories, the moments where you choose yourself over impulse, where you honour your healing over your desires, where you recognise that not everything that feels good is good for you, at least not yet.

You sit with it. You sit with the feelings, not trying to erase them but refusing to be ruled by them, allowing yourself to feel deeply without acting recklessly. You acknowledge the attraction, the curiosity, the longing, but you also draw a line, firm and unshaken.

In time, something begins to shift, the intensity softens, and the thoughts become less frequent. The image you once held so tightly begins to blur, not because it was false, but because it was incomplete, and you begin to see things more clearly, not just who they are, but who you are becoming.

You realise that what you felt was not foolish but human, evidence of your capacity to admire, to desire, to hope. These are not things to be ashamed of; they are signs of a heart that is alive, a heart that has not grown cold or guarded beyond repair.

You also realise, all the same, that not every feeling is meant to become a reality. Some feelings are lessons, some are mirrors, some are reminders of what you value, what you are drawn to, what you may one day want in a fuller, more grounded way. They pass through your life not to stay but to reveal, and that alone is enough.

In the end, you do not lose anything real. You release what was never fully yours to begin with, letting go of the imagined so that you can make space for the authentic, choosing peace over confusion, clarity over chaos, self respect over temporary satisfaction.

It may not feel like victory in the moment. It may feel like silence, like absence, like a quiet kind of loss, though beneath that surface something stronger is forming: a deeper understanding, a steadier sense of self, a readiness that will one day meet the right person at the right time, without fear, without hesitation, without the need to hold back parts of yourself.

Until then, you carry on, growing, healing, becoming.

When the memory of them returns, as it sometimes will, you do not fight it. You simply acknowledge it, like a passing breeze, and let it go without attachment, for some stories are not meant to be lived. They are meant to be understood.

BABA KU, BABA KU

E GO BE

August really played its cards well, and I think I stayed on deck this time around. Here’s how:

1. I WENT OUT.

For someone who enjoys staying inside and being in my own little world, at first, the idea was uncomfortable and I started feeling anxious, but it was worth it. I didn’t just go out oo, I went to some of the finest places in Lagos and bought some of the finest pieces of adire that reminded me of why I started out to study History in the first place.

2. Mr Gboyega drove me around town.

He showed me all the places I had only read about in books and, through the night, he told me stories too. The stories that accompanied those places we now refer to as "History".

Some of the stories contradict each other, and I knew this because I’ve read quite a number of them to know that no retelling can be 100% accurate. Still, his version sounded authentic and even reaffirmed that I wasn’t alone on this journey of telling Africa’s story from an Insider’s perspective.

3. Lagos, away from the bustle and its "overtaking culture", is actually historical and breathtaking.

From the night lights to the toll gate, to the Lekki Bridge and even all the way to Epe and Ikoyi, the many stories the busy roads would tell you would be different from the still ones.

There is something about seeing Lagos move from inside a car at night that makes you realise that this city is carrying more history than its noise allows you to notice.

4. Mr Gboyega made me feel comfortable and commended my intelligence.

I didn’t know how to take this until he said, "I have a book to give you on Lagos History written by a Nigerian. I’ve had it for years and I think it would be useful for you now."

Immediately he said that, I felt like someone finally understood my language and just got it without me having to explain much to him.

5. I went to the Art Market with my Big Papa, and my inner child, who has been quiet with hurt lately, came alive.

And I felt it.

I recorded a lot of videos, took pictures, even met a beautiful woman who came to Nigeria for vacation and took a picture of her face because I needed a cover girl for an article I’ll be dropping soon. Her makeup is pretty, by the way, and she was sooo warm. Her mum was also kind.

Bro, the gist you would hear in a fitting room, you can’t hear it exactly somewhere else. Believe me.

I saw art at its purest and most vulnerable form. Oh, the joy of being soooooo defined.

6. I ATE.

Yeah, I actually ate with my Big Papa and Mr Gboyega.

My Big Papa reminded me that I meant the world to him and that he’d do anything just to make me happy, and I felt every moment of it.

We ate, shared gist and did other activities.

7. I was told more stories and even saw videos.

I learned new things and was basking in knowledge for the most part of the month.

I also learned convincingly that what you know cannot be taken away from you, but it can be replicated.

8. I went to Nike Art Gallery.

It was indeed one of the highlights of my year so far because I got to speak to Mama Nike.

She was so warm, and we even had a fruitful conversation.

More of that in later newsletters, yes?

Yes.

9. I made a friend.

Let’s call him Agbabiaka. I love the meaning of this name, by the way.

Agbabiaka is a visionary just like me, with a mind that has travelled many places and a heart that keeps telling stories. One of the people we would indeed be hearing more about as we grow.

Agbabiaka validated many of my thoughts in unspoken ways and affirmed my fears and doubts sometimes, but never shies away from the truth.

Agbabiaka also likes music and has a very wonderful understanding of common perceptions. He’s well read and meets me on a level that I appreciate so much.

I was able to share ideas with him, and he responded with a higher level of reciprocity.

Thank You, Jesus.

10. I regained someone’s contact, and we started talking.

It felt good to know that there are still people in this generation who can still do things in undiluted ways and with so much zeal and urgency at heart.

11. My heart felt many things, and I allowed it to wander when it got heavy.

I wrote heartfelt essays and never posted them.

I watched a documentary that changed my perspective of marketing, and I took down some notes because I know they will one day come in handy.

12. I wrote my heart out in and nearly lost my sanity.

Telling Africa’s story is not easy, but we don’t talk about this enough.

Research became hustle for me at the wrongest times because I actually love it. My field requires me to constantly stay atop of news and so much more information, and sometimes the line between loving what you do and being overwhelmed by what you do becomes very thin.

13. I spoke to my lecturers and asked them how they were really doing.

I usually do this, but most of the time I realise I don’t even wait to really hear them out because some part of me wants to believe they’re fine.

Academia comes with its own disadvantages too.

14. I bonded with my younger brother and played more with my dog.

I figured out a way to just stay afloat regardless of what my work life makes me feel.

15. I started my internship, but I stopped going.

There are too many things surrounding that story, and I hope to tell you about them in the future.

16. I fell in love with my Substackers.

After a long time of trying to find my break even point, I finally did it with the help of God.

I became deliberate about how I relate with my Substackers and how I present my thoughts to them because they’re also people moving through life with many stories to tell as they go.

I constantly want to remind them, in my own little ways, that they’re enough and that they matter, and I realised that one of the ways I could do this is by actually getting to know them beyond the words we exchange here.

Hence, my idea of hosting my Substackers on the WhatsApp Channel, where we can talk, gist, ask questions, unburden ourselves and simply get to know each other a little better.

17. I wrote joy letters to you, Olufunmilayo mi, and I sincerely hope you read them.

I couldn’t bring myself to call them Posthumous Letters, and I still do not know how to grieve.

Maybe I’m not supposed to, or maybe I’m doing it wrongly. I don’t even know.

I have many questions that would never get answered, but I hope you know that the decisions I made weren’t selfish and that life always comes with its own moments.

I hope you’re doing fine because the lines are starting to blur, but it gets better, they say.

Love you always.

18. I did Bible Plans, and I started paying attention to what works for me.

Comparison really steals your joy.

I took the complex Bible Study lessons and explained them in relatable ways to my subscribers, which somehow made me understand them better too.

19. Some of my faves graduated from Uni.

It felt nostalgic knowing they might never step foot on campus grounds anymore, but it was also fulfilling to know that each of them is somewhere controlling the narrative.

20. I restructured my brand and took more notes.

I have plans of hosting my Substackers on the WhatsApp Channel because I want to get to know my people better.

21. I heard and read a lot of stories of people who passed on.

It made me sit with myself many times without having the words for it.

I also learned that prayer is never enough to stop us from having to keep praying.

So, just keep at it.

22. Loving is hard.

The more I learn about it, the more questions I have because now it feels like the faults, the flaws and the imperfect nature of people get magnified in such a way that it demands grace from me every single time.

To love unconditionally is a lot and takes a lot of grace.

A grace that demands continuously choosing someone else regardless of how you feel, and a forgiveness that has no limits.

The agape type of love, not the romantic one.

23. I became a full time artist manager.

My artist, Yourdaddy, dropped his debut single, "Shoulder To Shoulder".

We created TikTok videos, and I started studying how to manage a faceless artist because school doesn’t teach you these things.

It’s more stressful than it sounds, but it’s been a fun experience so far.

24. I took pictures and started documenting my life on paper like before, but this time from a clearer and more honest perspective.

This made me work on the ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF SERIES, and I think it’s time my subscribers know my name and what I look like behind the words.

Shall we?

Sooooo, my name is Grayceiy, and this was my life in August.

Thinking about it as I write this, August might have been a lot, but it is still the highlight of my year so far.

There is actually so much more I could say that I feel like writing a Part 2, but I’ll stop here because if I start again, this thing will just go on and on.

Maybe that is the beauty of documenting life. You realise that there is always more to say because there is always more that happened between the things you remembered enough to write down.

Happy New Month to my amazing Substackers. 🤍

This month is filled with opportunities and joy, even in the little thingsss.

I hope September brings you beautiful moments, genuine connections, answered prayers, unexpected opportunities and enough little joys to remind you that life is still happening around you.

And as we step into another month, I hope you remember that you are enough, you matter, and your life is worth paying attention to.

See you in the next one, Confidants. 🤍

E GO BE

So, I have a WhatsApp Channel for My Words Unsaid, and I realised I may not have properly told you guys WHY it exists.

The main intention is for my Substack subscribers to actually talk to me. Reach me. Ask questions. Gist. Yap. Rant. Unburden themselves. Have those random, unfiltered, heart to heart conversations that we sometimes desperately need.

Because, honestly, for so many of us, there is barely enough time to just enjoy ourselves. Most parts of my day, my heart is with you guys, and I kept thinking, “How can I get closer to these people away from Substack, but also somewhere I am constantly using?”

And I thought, WhatsApp.

You use it too abi? I know. 😌

I sincerely want to check in with you guys and, more importantly, I want to hear from you.

Building DATIEMO is a lot for me sometimes, and I have realised that there are days when all you need to do is yap, rant, laugh about something silly and talk to someone. It does not have to be an intimate conversation. Sometimes, all you need is a community.

People who get you.

People who understand the joke.

People who will read your “I am tired abeg” and somehow know exactly what you mean.

You guys have been reading my thoughts for a while now, and I am always, always grateful for that. However, I want to read yours too.

So, I will be dropping a poll in the Notes.

Please look out for it and tell me what you actually want from this little community because I genuinely want this to be a space where we can talk, not just another place where I come to post things at you.

And if you would like to join the WhatsApp Channel, you can click the link attached to the My Words Unsaid Substack page.

I love you guys so, so much. 🥹🤍

Also...

We are kicking off the new month with a reintroduction of this writer and, finally, putting a face to the writings too.

Agreed? Alright then.

See you later this week. 🤭

PS: The cover picture is one of my favorite stickers and I thought you guys would love it too

“Your physical condition has a strong impact on your relationships.”

Morolake is an amazing roommate and we get along well, except on the days when she’s on her period.

As someone who’s new to this environment, on days like that, all I want to do is go home because sometimes ehn, I cannot handle the pressure of being there for her.

The first time I saw her with her belly flat on the floor was on a Tuesday after my 8am class. I was sooo tired and famished. I just wanted to get to my hostel, make something and eat before I started reading, but on getting to my hostel, plans changed.

When I first opened the door and saw her in that position, I wanted to turn back immediately because this is someone I genuinely do not know beyond three weeks and five days, and we’ve barely said anything other than “good morning” and “good night”. So how could I possibly know what was wrong with her?

God help me.

Because she was in so much pain and could barely move a muscle, I was the one who helped her get into her bed. I got my tab, enlarged my fonts so she could see what was written, and wrote these things for her to point to:

1. Period

2. Ulcer

3. PMS/PCOS

4. Others

After showing her, she picked 1, so I went into my wardrobe, brought out my hot water bottle and gave it to her. I helped her press it against her tummy, after which I switched the fan to the highest because she was already running a temperature.

No, this is not even the story o because Morolake used my eyes to see shege pro max.

The day of my last paper, after writing that trap of a test, I came back to my hostel to sleep and do absolutely nothing when Morolake started having maddening cramps.

I didn’t even know what to do because nothing was working, and me, I was getting crankier by the minute because kilode? What happened?

After a while of researching and trying to find solutions, this happened because:

“Things that are usually small issues become big problems.”

Morolake: Ah, the water is too cold.

Me: Mo, this is the same water temperature I use to massage your body every time, so please allow me.

Morolake: Wo, me I don’t like it o. It’s cold. Can you add a little warm water?

Me: Morolake, I’m tired, like super tired, and I’m only doing it for you. If not, I for don sleep.

Morolake: Ehn, go and sleep na, and leave me here.

Mtcheew.

Me: Ehen, okay.

“If you’re committed to becoming better at loving others, develop habits that refresh you physically.”

I left the room and went outside to cool off before words got exchanged because emotions were running high.

While I was outside with my jumbled-up emotions, I asked God for help because I genuinely didn’t know how to help Mo, and this verse came to mind:

Psalm 119:73 NIV

“Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.”

A few minutes later, I went back inside and asked Morolake what she wanted me to do, and she asked:

Morolake: Do you have Ibuprofen?

Me: Yes, I do. Should I bring it?

Morolake: Yes, please.

I hurried to get the Ibuprofen, and after she took it, I warmed up some food in the mini fridge in our room, but she said she wanted something light, so I made custard, and she fell asleep 15 minutes later.

When she woke up, mama no gree apologise o, but we hugged it out and called each other “big head”.

Apologies accepted.

That day, I learned something.

Never neglect yourself to take care of others. Take care of yourself too, because you cannot pour from an empty jar.

Morolake is a wonderful person and a solid babe, but she’s a very different person during her period, and I had to constantly choose her and look out for her every time.

Because even on days when we feel tired, we’ve got to learn how to love people, unconditionally and selflessly.

Not because we will always feel like it.

Not because they will always make it easy.

Not because we will always understand what they are going through.

Sometimes, love looks like staying when you would rather leave.

Sometimes, love looks like patience when you are already irritated.

Sometimes, love looks like asking God for understanding when you genuinely do not know what to do.

And sometimes, love looks like walking away for a few minutes, calming yourself down, and coming back before your frustration turns into words you cannot take back.

I hope you learned something today because these excerpts are from my Bible Study, and I wanted to share them with you in a relatable way without shifting the main focus of the conversation, which is love.

I hope you have a wonderful day. Happy New Week

E GO BE.

1. Ade was the kind of man I thought I would actually want at that point, but deep down, I knew something was missing, and even when I searched within me, I couldn't find what it was, so I let my head lead me regardless.

2. In all my planning and "liking", I never included God in prayer, and neither did I even gist Him about it, despite the time I spent in devotion. So when the whole thing happened, I wasn't even surprised, but I just felt like it exploded too soon.

3. Ade and I both wanted the same thing, even though I didn't get to say it, but he did. He was honest and straightforward. He didn't just want a relationship, but he wanted long term, and I knew deep down that right then, I couldn't even be anyone or stay committed because I'm busy 90% of my time in school, as I head several organisations, contribute in many other areas, including politics. So, the only other time I have left after God is academics, and because my department is already hard enough, I cannot afford to be extravagant in the way I spend my time.

4. Ade's energy was different, yet it felt familiar. Familiar in the way his name sounded in my head. Familiar in the way he carries himself with so much grace and humility (my head, God abeg). I also couldn't see beyond what he wanted me to see, and I don't want to enter something that would lead me to start asking questions and ruining it with my own hands.

5. Up until the moment he asked me those questions, I didn't realise I wasn't even ready for any form of intimacy whatsoever because what I wanted couldn't be given to me by anyone except God as at that time. So I went to Him much later, when the whole thing was still intense, and poured out my heart to Him because He cares.

6. I told my friend, who later said to pray for him and his future wife, and whatever emotions come after, I should allow myself to feel it but not wallow in it for too long. I did, but whenever it gets overwhelming, I just ask God for help.

You're probably wondering where I'm going with this. Well, it's simple, two things;

1. If the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable. (I wanted Ade so much at that time, but in my heart truly, there was no form of commitment whatsoever, or even as little as having the thoughts of "freeing" up time for him, and I couldn't even see a US for us (ouuuu, make sensee). The conversations were relieving, yes, but that's still not enough to go into anything.

2. You need to get God's perspective on what mature love is really like, because the world does not always understand deep, genuine, unselfish love the way God does. You gain God's perspective on mature love by getting into God's Word. I never did this, even though that was what I wanted to tell God about it, about the kind of love I want and all that, but at what cost?

I didn't tell God about it until the end. I tried to "handle" it by myself, but thank God for saving me from myself and for not wasting both of us time because I would have felt guilty and inconsiderate.

So yeah, this is it sha. I really don't know if I should post this here, but I don't know who needs this or needs to read their thoughts from another perspective like mine, or maybe it's me who needs to go back to this, acknowledge it and move.

I hope you guys had an amazing time reading it just as much as I enjoyed writing it. See you in the next newsletter.

E GO BE

A very, very special Good Morning to My Dearest Confidants (that's the name I call my subscribers, by the way, so if you're new to the family, then I've got one for you.

To the newly subscribed (I hope you know this song oooo)

🎵SONG🎵:

Roll it up

Roll it up

Roll it up and let it go

(then do the Milo clap 👏) or just clap 5 times and say,

YOU ARE A JAGOOOOOOOO (personalise this)

Love you all sooooooo muchh, my people, and thank you for subscribing and for joining my media family. It truly means a lot to meeeeeeee.

To the main gist nowwww. I've been thinking of you guys more often than usual these days, and maybe it's because God has increased our number, or maybe my mind was just restless due to the love in the comment section, or maybe I actually miss you guys? I haven't truly figured out which one exactly comes first, but I miss you guys, each one of you, so I say, thank you for being here.

This is not my first letter to you, as I have written a couple more but didn't know if I should send them so it wouldn't be too much, you know?

Today's conversation might be slightly different, but that's fine, as I have thought about it more than I should, which, again, is fine.

Some months ago, I felt this restlessness in my spirit 48 minutes to an exam that we all thought would be a walk in the park, but Osanobua (gist for another day oooo 🤣🤣)

So, as I was saying before, we were told to come upstairs to do something, but for the life of me, I cannot even remember right now. But I do remember going upstairs and seeing this man from another department. Fine and comported. I couldn't even get a proper look before I remembered that we had exams in 30 minutes from that time (18 minutes gone just like that, omo), and my head started doing that thing where it rearranges things to "escape the moment". I knew the reason, so I tried to find a place to just stay to cool off before going downstairs to line up for the exam.

After that exam, we all felt relieved and all of that, like I said, "a walk in the park". I didn't later see the man again oo (I think at some point, I was trying to look for him). Anyways, for the sake of this story, let's call him Ade.

I went about school and executive activities on campus without forgetting the man I had seen in school some weeks back, until that Sunday night in my hostel when I spotted him again from the laundry room, and I was ouuu, okay. So I stayed in the laundry room until my roommates came before I made an attempt to "leave" (God abeg).

Long story short, we met again through my roommate for an event we were planning on campus. Guess who was on my team, Ade.

Later that same day, my roommate came and texted me to come downstairs because she would still be heading back to school for a lesson, so I should help her bring some stuff downstairs, so I agreed. On getting downstairs, she was not aloneeeeee, and I didn't even know this until she called me to come out. I rushed downstairs because I was watching something, and that was how I saw Ade ooo (olololololooooooooo oooo). Of all the days to come to my hostel, it was that day. Ewo.

Anyways, I gave my roommate her kinikan and made a move to leave when he said, "Hi, I think I remember you from earlier today, team welfare, right?" (yeeeeeee, my heart started doing gbim gbim, but I looked normal)

Ade: Your face looks familiar.

Me: Yeah, from the welfare team.

Ade: You were the only one I didn't get to talk to on the team. My name is Ade.

Me: Nice to meet you, my name is ____ (I will tell you guys in the ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF newsletter).

Ade: Alright then, see you in the meeting later today. Have you been added to the group?

Me: I'd check (proceeds to check my phone while giving my roommate a side eye because I already know what she did, well played until she gets back) oh yes, I have.

Ade: Alright then.

My roommate: Bye (smiles weirdly).

Me: Ehn? Hmm hmm.

3 MONTHS LATER and TWO WEEKS TO THE EVENT

Ade and I had started talking, but these conversations mostly happen after team meetings. He also had some friends in the boys' hostel, so we walked there like twice because the hostels were beside each other.

One of those afternoons when we walked, he said he wanted to talk about something later that day, and I said, "Once it's so so so late, I do not come out of my hostel," and he said it wouldn't take my time, but if it was too late, he would text me. Me, I sha said, okay.

Later that night, he texted me, and you would not believe what this man had to ask me. I quote, "Where do you know where I can get Beloxxi biscuit?" (Jesusssssssss, ah, ah, ah, ewooooo, ahhhhhhhhh) of all the things to ask, na Beloxxi (it's all good, na wetin the eyes dey find, the eyes go see na, no be so?)

He later told me that (you know how that goes naaa, ehn, ehn 🤣🤣). On this day ehn, joy wear me agbada and Timberland because after the Beloxxi part, I just said, "Not this abeg," and I was about to turn off my phone (this was around 9:44pm / 9:46pm thereabout sha).

In that moment, after the saga, I realised that whatever it was I felt for that man that day could never have sustained something long term, so I didn't even tell him that I needed time to think about it because I believe in honesty when dealing with people. But ah, this one pain me because I genuinely thought this, whatever it was, would become something because that man called Ade is beauty personified, and just like that, I couldn't go to the event, couldn't even do anything as productively as I wanted to, and in that moment, I realised that in all my building, I never for once gave God the gist nor carried Him along.........

It's getting too long, guys, so let's continue it in another newsletter. Love youuu

E GO BE

That was me last week Sunday. I felt bubbly, giddy and uneasy at the same time mainly because I haven't been breathing fine. What caused it abi and how does that even correlate with what I quoted? I will tell you don't worry…..

I'm supposed to be interning and documenting each day so you guys can come along with me right? Yes I know because I told you guys I would be documenting it, anyways I have been documenting my days moving through my house and this week, I moved through the city of Lagos and for the very first time in a long time, I crashed out badly beyond what I thought I had inside of me.

Some weeks back, almost a month now, maybe a month sha, I came home for the long holiday and my parents told me about an artist, I was surprised they paid that much attention to me to even know that I wasn't managing anyone at that moment so my Dad played the artist's unreleased music for me and I was speechless. For someone who is very picky about what she listens to and analysis music, I've been told severally that I have good ears so I took my professional bias out and allowed myself enjoy the song, my God, this artist would go very very far if he continues to be himself through his music.

Long story short, I became his manager and they told me who he really is on my birthday last month, and I was filled with so much emotion to even cry so I held it in and continued listening to his music by myself during my quiet time until I was told that this artist was/Is a faceless artist. Mind you, I have never worked with a faceless artist before and I thought I was even too young for the music business hence the reason why I took it as a hubby but my parents believe in me too much, thank God for that.

As someone who has spent most of her life living in the shadows and existing only within the four corners of a move I knew that God had me cornered becuase sometime ago, this was my silent prayer (to manage an artist) but now, I am going to be the face of the artist, his manager and publicist. I'm not complaining, I'm just doubtful of my abilities because I'm building about three thing on the side too, not that I cannot manage it, it's just that I cannot see beyond the guilt, and pain of letting down myself and the people around me severally.

Last week, I had alot of work to put out to you people but as usual I stalled them and deleted them afterwards, all for what? Fear? Shame? Doubt? Failure? I dare ask myself what? Why?

As simple and introspective as this may read, it is very very complicated in its approach to telling me about myself right now.

I've been spending sometime reading alot of people's work out here most especially He's someone I admire from afar, from the way he write to how honest he is but the more I read his work, the more questions I have about mine. Vulnerability used to be something I could command in my writing so much so that my readers would tell me they could feel the energy and every emotion and I knew it too so I decided it was high time I spoke to God about it.

Yesterday morning, I felt a nudge in my spirit to write out everything rhe Holy Spirit would say and you would think I was prepared but I wasn't, I wasn't ready to hear what He would say if it wouldn't make me “feel” but maybe God had also had enough of my doubt, maybe He became concerned that He had to give me a piece of His mind because I got a full version of it yesterday that after writing it in my notepad, I went to bed immediately because the purging of my spirit was just too much.

I've pushed so many people away but it's never the same with God. Yesterday was one of the days He decided to scold me and call me out on my bullshit because even He had enough. All through the day I couldn't come out of my room until 4:47pm when my Dad told my sister to call me because he was worried and my artist had been trying to reach me but couldn't, that moment made me freeze and when he asked if I was fine because he could tell that something was wrong I simply said;

Dad: Are you fine?

Me: I'm fine na, I'm just tired

Dad: But you've been in your room all day and haven't even come to say hello to your Mum and I

Me: Daddy I apologise, I just feel tired

Dad: Oh really (looks away then smiles)

Me: I exit the room ASAP

This story has so many things underneath it but I'd pause here because I need a minute because the next time I write to you people I want to write to you vulnerable, I want to write like someone who knows that there are people who would read her thoughts and feel seen, I want to tell you about the many men I refused to let in because of someone else who doesn't know about her. I want to tell you about my relationship with God and how hard telling African stories and building a one of a kind band has been for me. I want to include you guys in every day or once a week where we come to talk, read each others thoughts and I get to tell each one of you how much I missed you and how much I've lived for the past week because whether I like it or not, you guys are a part of me, your likes, comments, restacks and messages make my day even on days when I forget to reply (I apologise life has just been rather too much lately) but I think about every single one of you all the time.

I want to share my playlist with you guys and tell you what I keep discovering about life, God, Society and even myself. Should incase you find this, could you let me know how you feel?

P.S: I want to avoid using pictures for my articles now. I want to focus more on talking to you guys and being here in the moment. Society from his works, I think he's an amazing human and I like his music too. Bye for now.

E GO BE

Subscribe

There is a peculiar kind of hunger that has nothing to do with food and everything to do with being witnessed, and it visits almost everyone at some point, usually in the quiet hours when the noise of the day has settled and all that remains is the honest question underneath everything else, which is simply this: who will hold me when I cannot hold myself. People go looking for love in the strangest and most familiar places, and rarely do they announce it plainly, since admitting the need out loud feels like handing someone a map to your softest parts.

Some people return to their mothers, even grown men who have built entire careers and reputations on appearing untouchable, because a mother's voice on the phone still has the power to undo years of performed strength in a matter of seconds. Some people go to old text threads, scrolling through conversations with someone who once made them feel chosen, searching for proof that they were once worthy of gentleness, as though evidence from the past could patch a wound in the present. Others go to strangers, to the warmth of a barber's chair or a hairdresser's hands or a bartender's practiced listening, finding in these transactional spaces a version of intimacy that asks nothing permanent of them in return.

Religion becomes a refuge for many, not always because faith itself is the answer, but because the language of surrender gives people permission to finally exhale, to say aloud in a room full of strangers that they are tired and afraid and still hoping, without being met with judgment. Music becomes another kind of shelter, since a song can hold what a person cannot yet say to another human being, and there is a particular relief in being understood by lyrics written by someone who will never know your name.

Food, too, becomes a language of love for people who grew up watching affection expressed through full plates rather than spoken words, and so when the ache for love arrives, some people find themselves standing in a kitchen at midnight, recreating a dish their grandmother once made, chasing a feeling rather than a flavor. Work becomes love's disguise for others, since productivity offers the illusion of worth, and a person can convince themselves that if they simply achieve enough, someone somewhere will finally notice and finally stay.

Honestly speaking, the truest answer is that people go inward long before they go anywhere else, sitting with a version of themselves they have often neglected, negotiating with old fears and older disappointments, trying to remember how to be gentle with the very person who has survived every version of their life so far. Real love, the kind that steadies rather than performs, usually begins in that private negotiation, long before another person ever enters the room.

E go be.

One of the very first things I was taught to do in Sunday School years because was to worship because no one can predict the power of worship and also because that's one of the most advantageous ways to reach God. I knew this very early in life but as I grew it became personal yet very painful on most days that to even utter a word became so tiring because I thought there was a formulary to worship and only on Sundays in the midst of other believers would you get it right but I was wrong, COMPLETELY.

Recently, I started a devotion centred around worship and at the beginning I told God to reveal Himself to me and help me to find the lessons that He would want me to hold on to, little did I know He would also take it seriously. For someone who finds it difficult to be still or follow things thoroughly, this is definitely an answered prayer because unlike Sunday School, the lessons I learned her allowed me to understand that worship is surrender, total surrender to God at all times whether it is easy or hard.

I learned that worship is your heart's posture and at all times you must give thanks even in the mundane things. When you wake up worship, when someone offends you, worship should be your first response NOT your last resort. When you have a character building day or you experience a heartbreaking situation, worship because honestly, worship is a lifestyle but it takes times because “those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth”

Worship now has a different definition to me and I hope it's the same for you. Your heart posture can never be the same as somebody else's meaning that my worship and your worship cannot be the same, ever.

Every single thing in your life should respond to worship because there are some situations that would test you beyond what you think you can handle but still, let worship be your FIRST response and as you do this, I pray that God will continue to strengthen you and teach you His ways the way He would want you to know it.

I love you and I'm always praying for you.

Cheers.

Let's talk about it, and before you fold your arms or start mentally drafting your defense, just know that I am not exempt from this conversation either. None of us are. That's the whole point. We have all, at some point, been the villain in a story we told ourselves we were the victim of. Sit with that.

You ghost your own goals but get offended when someone doesn't text you back. You made a promise to yourself last week and already forgot about it, but when someone else breaks their word to you, suddenly that's disrespect. The double standard is wild. You demand from others what you won't even give yourself, then wonder why self-respect feels like a foreign language.

But let's go deeper than that because that's just the surface.

We do this in ways we never even name. You want people to show up for you consistently, but you have been unreliable for yourself since January. You've missed your own deadlines, talked yourself out of your own dreams, cancelled on yourself more times than you can count, and then had the nerve to call someone else a flake. You want honesty from people but you've been lying to yourself about things you already know the truth of. You want patience but you give yourself none. You want grace extended to you but you are the first person to be ruthless about your own mistakes at 2am when there is nobody there to watch.

And here is the thing nobody says out loud: when we do not have a standard for ourselves, we outsource it. We start needing other people to hold up the version of us we refuse to build. We need them to text back so we can feel like we matter, because we stopped showing up to prove it to ourselves. We need them to keep their word because we have not kept ours to us in so long that we forgot what consistency even feels like coming from within. The resentment we feel toward other people is sometimes just the mirror talking. We are mad at them for doing to us what we quietly do to ourselves every single day.

Now this is not a guilt trip. This is not me standing on a stage with a pointing finger and a disappointed face. This is me sitting across from you with a straight face saying: I have done this. I have needed people to do for me what I would not do for myself and then called it abandonment when they didn't. I have held others to standards I was casually violating in private. And the moment I noticed it, really noticed it, something shifted. Not dramatically. Not in a montage. Just quietly and permanently.

The double standard exists because accountability to yourself is the hardest kind. When you let someone else down, there is a face. There is a consequence. There is an awkward conversation. When you let yourself down, you can just renegotiate in the silence of your own head and call it being flexible. Nobody is checking. Nobody is keeping score except the part of you that gets quieter and smaller every time you do it.

So you start exporting the standard outward. Hold other people to the version of integrity you are not practicing. Get offended by the things in others that you are slowly doing to yourself. It becomes a whole personality before you even notice. The person who is always talking about what people owe them while being deeply in debt to their own potential.

And look, we are all in this. This is not about one type of person or one kind of behavior. This is just what happens when we lose the thread back to ourselves. We start measuring from the outside because the inside has gone quiet.

The fix is boring, honestly. It is just starting to keep tiny promises to yourself. Not the big dramatic ones. The small quiet ones. The "I said I would do this today and I am going to do it" ones. Because self-respect is not a feeling you develop. It is evidence you collect. And once you start collecting it from yourself, you stop needing to demand it from everyone else to feel okay.

The double standard dissolves when you stop having two sets of rules. One for the world. One for you.

One standard. Applied everywhere. Starting with the inside.

E GO BE

There are mornings when the Third Mainland Bridge looks less like a bridge and more like a conveyor belt carrying millions of ambitions toward uncertain destinations. Every face beside me is a novel that nobody has time to read: the woman balancing oranges on her head, the conductor shouting until his voice becomes another casualty of survival, the graduate selling phone accessories, the musician who still believes tomorrow's listener will change everything, and the tailor whose hands stitch dreams she may never wear. Lagos is cruel enough to convince you that stopping is failure, so that even exhaustion is expected to clock in before sunrise. Yet this city is strangely honest, for it never promised fairness. It only promised opportunity, and the tragedy is that opportunity and success are distant relatives. One introduces you to the room, while the other decides whether you belong there.

I have celebrated victories that looked microscopic from the outside because I knew what they cost behind closed doors. I have smiled through breakthroughs while hiding the grief of everything that had to die for them to exist, because in Lagos, people congratulate your arrival without witnessing the thousands of departures that made it possible. Sometimes I wonder whether I belong to Lagos or whether Lagos belongs to me. The city has taken years from my life, yet somehow added years to my understanding. It has hardened my skin without completely reaching my heart, and it has taught me suspicion without successfully killing my kindness. That feels like a miracle.

The greatest paradox of Lagos is that it sells dreams while simultaneously manufacturing dreamers. Every day someone loses faith, and every day someone else arrives carrying enough hope to light an entire street during a power outage. The city consumes optimism with one hand and distributes it with the other, which is perhaps why nobody truly leaves. Even those who relocate continue speaking about Lagos as though discussing an old lover they cannot forgive because they never stopped loving them, and I understand this completely.

There are days I resent this city with every fibre of my being, yet sunset always arrives. The lagoon catches fire beneath an orange sky, the evening breeze briefly apologises for the afternoon heat, someone laughs from across the street, and a hawker cracks a joke. Life stubbornly refuses to surrender, so do I.

I have learned that Lagos does not simply ask what you want to become. It asks a far more terrifying question: what are you willing to become while trying to get there? Every day I answer differently, and every day the city replies with another test. Perhaps that is why they call it a concrete jungle, not because it lacks trees, but because survival here has roots deeper than cement, and because dreams are not merely pursued. They are bought, they are bargained for, they are earned, and they are sold.

E GO BE

There is a particular kind of person who has spent the majority of their life being perceived rather than seen, received rather than understood, defined rather than discovered. They walk into rooms and people construct versions of them on the spot, assembling identities from fragments: the way they dress, the way they speak, the company they keep, the titles they carry or do not yet carry. And the person standing inside all of that projection watches quietly, sometimes patiently, sometimes with a grief they cannot fully explain, as the world mistakes its reflection of them for the real thing.

This is the quiet crisis of identity in an age of surfaces. We have built entire civilizations around the external, around the visible and the verifiable, around what can be measured, photographed, applauded, and scrolled past in less than three seconds. And somewhere inside that architecture, the interior life of a person became a secondary concern, something to be performed outwardly rather than cultivated inwardly. Identity became something you wore rather than something you inhabited.

But there are those who know, with the quiet certainty of a person who has done the difficult and unglamorous work of self-acquaintance, that who they are cannot be located in any external inventory. Not in their achievements, though their achievements are real. Not in their relationships, though those relationships carry genuine weight. Not in the way any particular room receives them on any particular day. They know that the self is not a surface phenomenon. It is a depth. It is the accumulated truth of every private decision, every silent conviction, every moment of integrity exercised in the absence of witnesses, every value held not because it was rewarded but because it was real.

To say do not look for me in the eyes of many is not arrogance but precision. It is the statement of a person who has located themselves and therefore cannot be lost by the failure of an audience to find them. It is the declaration of someone who understands that identity confirmed only by external validation is identity that can be dismantled by external withdrawal, and that a self constructed entirely from other people's perceptions is a self that belongs to everyone except the person living inside it.

The interior country is the only sovereign territory any human being will ever truly own. No institution can legislate it. No opinion can colonize it without permission. No season of invisibility, however long, can erase what has been genuinely and honestly built within it. The person who knows who they are in the dark, who they are when no one is confirming it, who they are between the moments of recognition, that person carries something that the loudest room in the world cannot give and the quietest season cannot take.

So build inward with the same ferocity you have been taught to build outward. Know yourself the way you want to be known. Tend the interior country the way you tend everything that matters.

The recognition will find you or it will not. Either way, you remain.

E GO BE

I cannot for the life of me remember the first time i felt it but there was a day, a friday that his health was a hundred percent but he tried to be present, to be present for me but in that moment of "just us" i knew something was wrong so i asked:

Me: Are you good?

Him: Yes i am, why?

Me: (smiles a little then proceeds to hold his hand before leaving it again) I'm just concerned becuase i know you don't feel so good.

Him: What do you mean? (Gives a reassuring smile that didn't fit his mouth, that was when i became more sure that something was actually wrong)

Me: You're not fine and whatever it is you fell, I think you should go to the hospital, please? (Begins to look at him with concern and fear displayed across her face)

Him: (holds her hands in assurance, squeezes them a little, looked into her eyes then at her hands and says....) okay, I will go, sho gbo (I will go, okay?)

Me: Thank you (smiles with content even though she wasn't convinced but somehow she believed him in that moment)

I knew he wouldn't just agree outrightly that there was something going in on with him but I've learened to hear what is not being said, and see what he is not doing without judging him.

A week passed before he eventually went to the hospital and got treated for typhoid and malaria. He didn't tell me this, his brother did and I didn't take offense because what mattered to me most was that he got the necessary treatment early even though he delayed it for a week but it was worth it.

A lover's instinct when properly channelled really reveals so much that talking cannot explain even if you try but there's just this convinced "knowing" that comes with listening. Listening with your heart, your mind, and the Holy Spirit because with the Holy Spirit, you cannot go wrong.

E GO BE

I think that is the part nobody understands because everyone keeps asking me about ambition, success, milestones, and the next mountain I intend to climb, while all I can think about is how exhausted I am from carrying versions of myself that never had the chance to rest. I am so tired of confusing achievement for healing, so tired of pretending that another accomplishment will finally convince my heart that it is safe to unclench, and so terrified that I might spend my entire life building a future while forgetting to actually live inside it.

Sometimes I wonder whether I am asking for too little or perhaps asking for the only thing that has ever truly mattered, because I do not crave a perfect life nearly as much as I crave an ordinary one that feels warm enough to call home. I want laughter that arrives without forcing itself. I want love that does not feel like another exam I have to pass. I want the kind of happiness that exists in quiet moments no camera will ever capture, because somewhere beneath all the dreams I carry and all the battles I keep hidden behind a smile, there is still a frightened heart whispering, "Please let me make it home before I forget what home is supposed to feel like."

E GO BE

It's not even about the views or the subscriber count because I have thoughtfully evaluated it, it is me, yes me. My head feels like a circus mainly because I'm not allowing myself to properly feel and express my emotions the way I need to and now my body and emotions are at war but my spiritual life has been a balance only recently did I notice that with the way it's going I'd also slow down there too.

I have so many questions but I mask it up with E GO BE but it is killing me softly. I read many articles and find myself there but I cannot read mine and not look away because I've refused to let it be what it is without meaning something else. Some days I write in my diary and feel so small for feeling the slightest things because “a woman shouldn't feel such things”. In what world was that approved? Why should that statement apply to me? So wise to others but she's about to self destruct but God wouldn't let her.

For a while I have been thinking of the reason I creates MY WORDS UNSAID in the first place and one is to create a safe haven for me and many others yet unknown; the other is to let myself be. Holding on to weights that aren't mine to carry is really telling on my creativity and if you know me, you know I barely take time off from work.

I look out for others and now my inner child feels so trapped if she was physical she wouldn't even look me in the eye because of how hurt she is. Every single time I want to write something I makes sure that the title is “perfect” the cover art is “perfect “ and that the lines are “unique” haba. It's not MY PERFECT WORDS after all, IT'S “MY WORDS UNSAID".

I started so many things and didn't record nor go back to them because I thought “this doesn't really count sha”.

I have no idea what I would call this series, yes I wnat to turn it into series and yes I know I haven't been consistent with the previous ones, I apologise. I didn't show up for you guys and I certainly didn't show up for myself but that is not an excuse to have been totally absent and for that, I am sorry, truly.

I have no idea what I would be calling this series but I have a few ideas and I think I would go with what works, IN MY HEAD because in my head, there's a billion chatter and many more battles that I win and lose but I'm not alone because someone out there feels that too and they leave it as their words unsaid. I cannot say I'm sorry you feel this way but I can hold your hands through the expression of these thoughts. I also have no idea what the cover art will be but there might be one and their might be none, either way, bear with me.

I might go with the brown color because I love it so much and it has alot of effects on me. I'm sorry if I've ever been absent from my newsletters lately, I've just been so bottled up emotionally that everything around me started to make me feel numb.

Life moves so fast when you're just existing and I've performed for sooo long but if I live to write again, I'd tell you about my day.

Today we celebrate a woman whose name has become synonymous with excellence, creativity and unshakeable standards, Ayomide Olubunmi Janet, fondly and rightly known as Ayothemedia girl, because she truly is the media girl in every sense that title carries.

I met her in 2025 and she was the very first person in my university to give me a chance when I had nothing to show but potential. She taught me leadership faster than I thought possible and entrusted me with responsibilities I was certain I would fail at, yet she believed in me more than I believed in myself at some point, and that belief became a foundation I still stand on today. She will always be a reference point in my journey. She is real, she is honest, and she always looks out for people, celebrating my wins both big and small for a very very long time, and whenever I think about the women who have shaped my life, I cannot help but thank God for hers, because she's the type of person one must meet in their lifetime at least once, maybe not as a friend, but at least know her, because no matter how short a period you might have met or known her, she WILL IMPACT YOUR LIFE in one way or the other.

Ayothemedia girl showed me that a woman can make things happen, take her place and simply live, all while excelling at so many things at once. She is tough, very very tough, yet also deeply kind hearted, even though not everyone gets to see that side of her. In a few weeks she will graduate from Lagos State University as a first class student, and writing this makes me emotional, because she is leaving behind big shoes to fill, though I know that by the grace of God, whenever she hears of my own progress, she will be proud.

So many lives have been touched by her creativity and expertise across nearly every field she touches. She describes herself as existing at the intersection of communication and AI, but she is far more than that description allows, disgustingly intelligent, deeply aware, and a strategist who wears many hats and wears every single one of them well. Ever since I have known her, one thing has remained constant, originality. She would never compromise for anyone, her standards never drop, and hardworking is truly an understatement for who she is. She is also wonderfully sassy, yet always respectful, a creative's creative, and I love her so much.

I pray today brings her loads of love and every reason to smile, because she is so pretty and so accommodating too. May life work out entirely in her favour, may she continue to be a blessing to everyone around her, because she is what value looks like. I am proud to call her my mentor. As she always says, I'm in my prime and I will evolve till I die, and I pray God gives her the grace to keep evolving, keep shining, and finish strong.

Happy Birthday, my woman. God bless you ma. I love you now and forever.

You're breaking my heart

We're falling apart"

"You're hurting my feelings, you're breaking my heart, we're falling apart," I whispered into the quiet of a room that used to hold our laughter the way a jar holds fireflies, glowing and trapped and beautiful all at once, and I realised as the words left my mouth that they had been sitting there for months, waiting patiently like an unopened letter beneath a door.

There was a time when your name felt like a season I never wanted to end, when every glance you threw across a crowded room landed on me like sunlight finding a single leaf through a canopy of grey, deliberate and warm and impossibly precise. We built a world from glances and unfinished sentences, from the way you would trace circles on my palm as though you were drawing a map to somewhere only the two of us could go, and I believed, foolishly and completely, that maps like that could never be folded away and forgotten in a drawer.

But somewhere between the promises whispered at three in the morning and the silences that grew louder than any argument ever could, something shifted, quietly, the way a tide pulls back from the shore without announcement, leaving behind only the outline of what the water once covered. I kept waiting for the return of that warmth, convinced it was merely resting, the way a fire dims before it roars again, yet the embers never returned to flame, and I found myself standing in the wreckage of a love that had once felt like architecture and now felt like ash scattered by an indifferent wind.

There is a peculiar kind of suspense in loving someone who is slipping away, a breathless waiting for a sign, a word, a single flicker of the person who once looked at you as though you were the answer to a question they had been asking their whole life. I searched your eyes for that flicker long after it had gone out, the way one searches a night sky for a star that has already died, still sending its light forward though its source has long since vanished.

What was between us now lives only in the space between memory and imagination, in the ghost of a hand that no longer reaches for mine, in the echo of laughter that once filled rooms now heavy with things unsaid. I think often of what could have been, the versions of us that existed only in possibility, tender and unfinished, like a song we never got to write the final verse for.

And yet, in the quiet after everything, I have come to understand that some love does not end in ruin but simply changes shape, becoming something softer, sadder, and strangely sacred, a reminder that to have loved so fiercely at all was never a failure, but perhaps the bravest thing either of us ever did.

E GO BE

This is nostalgia, and it is far more complicated than we give it credit for.

We tend to speak of nostalgia the way we speak of an old photograph, something soft and sepia toned, something to be held carefully and smiled at before being tucked back into a drawer. We romanticize it. We make playlists out of it, we build aesthetics around it, we filter our Instagram posts to make the present moment look like a memory before it has even finished happening. There is an entire industry built on our desire to return to something, or at least to feel as though we could. And yet, underneath all of that longing, underneath the comfort and the sweetness, there is something that quietly frightens us about nostalgia, something we rarely have the vocabulary to name.

What frightens us is not the past itself. What frightens us is recognition.

Think about the last time a song pulled you somewhere you were not prepared to go. You were not sitting down to revisit an old wound or to sift through memories. You were simply in a room, going about your life, and then three notes played from somewhere, or someone hummed something familiar in passing, and suddenly your chest did something involuntary, something you could not immediately explain. That feeling was not just longing. It was the sudden, startling awareness that you have been here before, not just in a place, but in a feeling, and that this feeling knows you in a way that nothing in your present life currently does.

That is the fear of the familiar, and it unsettles people far more than the unfamiliar ever could.

The unfamiliar is, in many ways, easier to manage. When something is new, you have permission to be uncertain, permission to take your time, permission to not yet understand it. But when something is familiar, when your body responds before your mind has even caught up, when you feel the specific texture of a feeling you thought was buried, it confronts you with a version of yourself that you may have been quietly trying to move away from. Nostalgia does not ask you if you are ready. It simply opens a door, and behind that door is not just a memory but an entire self, an entire season of who you once were, standing there waiting, as alive and as detailed as the day you left it.

And the question that follows, the one that sits in the sternum and refuses to dissolve, is this: how much of that person are you still carrying?

Because that is the thing about familiarity that nobody talks about. It does not only remind you of what you loved. It reminds you of what you were capable of feeling, and sometimes that is the most disorienting part of all. You remember a time when something moved you completely, when music made you cry in a way that felt almost spiritual, when a friendship felt like the safest place in the world, when you believed so wholly in something that the belief itself felt like a home. And then you stand in the present, in the busyness and the performance and the sensible decisions of adult life, and you wonder quietly whether you have not become, in trying so hard to move forward, a slightly duller version of the person you used to be.

Nostalgia catches you in that wondering. It holds up a mirror made entirely of feeling, and it does not let you look away.

Perhaps this is why we both chase it and resist it in equal measure, why we seek out old songs and old places and old conversations, and then feel strangely unsettled once we find them. We are not just looking for a memory. We are looking for confirmation that the person who lived those moments was real, that the depth of feeling we once had was not an exaggeration, that we were, at some point in our lives, truly and completely alive to the world around us.

The fear of the familiar is really just the fear of meeting yourself again, and not being sure whether to stay.

E GO BE

Here is where the chapter slows down. Not because the energy changes but because some things deserve the weight of a slower pace.

Kemi and Tobi had been doing the thing they were not calling what it was for six weeks when it happened. The thing had a rhythm and a language and a set of unspoken agreements, the primary unspoken agreement being that they were both adults making choices that they were both responsible for, which is true and is also the kind of truth that becomes more complicated in retrospect. The night it happened there had been a party, then a room, then the specific momentum of two people who have been orbiting each other finally arriving at the centre of the orbit, and in that momentum certain conversations did not happen that should have happened, because momentum is the enemy of the conversations that protect you.

Three weeks later Kemi is sitting in a pharmacy on the edge of campus that is just far enough from the main gate that you can hope nobody recognises you, holding a result that is answering a question she spent two weeks desperately not asking, and the answer is not the answer she wanted, and the first thought in her head, before grief, before fear, before anything else, is what will people say.

What will people say.

Not what will I do. Not how do I feel. Not what does Tobi think, though Tobi's position in this situation is about to reveal his character in a way that no amount of time spent together would have revealed it as quickly or as completely. The first instinct is the social one, the external one, the one that campus has trained into her so thoroughly that it arrives before her own feelings do, which tells you something important about what campus has taught her to prioritise, and what it has taught all of us to prioritise, and how deeply the performance has embedded itself into the architecture of how we process our own experiences.

Tobi's response, when she tells him, will fall into one of three categories that have been consistent across Nigerian university campuses since before either of them was born.

The first category is the one who stays. Who is scared and shows it and stays anyway. Who does not have the money or the maturity or the answers but who sits in the discomfort of the situation with her instead of exiting through one of the several doors that campus masculinity has installed specifically for this moment. This category is smaller than it should be and the people in it deserve recognition they rarely receive because what they are doing is genuinely hard and genuinely rare.

The second category is the one who manages. Who is present enough to avoid being accused of abandonment but absent enough to force her into making the decision alone, who offers money in a way that is designed to close the conversation rather than open it, who communicates through the transaction that his primary interest is in returning to his life as it was before this information arrived, and who will, in two months, have largely succeeded in that return while she is still processing something that does not process quickly.

The third category is the one who disappears. Not dramatically. Gradually. The replies get slower. The availability decreases. The language shifts from the intimate register to something more careful, more distant, more legally unimplicatable. He does not end anything because ending something requires acknowledging that something existed. He simply reduces his presence until it becomes an absence that she has to acknowledge alone, which means she has to carry not just the situation but the social and emotional weight of him choosing not to carry it.

The decision she makes about the pregnancy is hers. It will be made in a context of limited options, social terror, financial constraint, and a cultural and sometimes religious framework that has strong opinions about what she should do and very little practical support for whichever direction she chooses. If she continues, she will navigate a campus pregnancy in a social environment that is considerably less kind to visible female consequence than it is to the male behaviour that produced it. If she does not continue, she will navigate the physical and psychological aftermath of that decision in a hostel room with inadequate privacy and in a community that does not have language for supporting her through it, which means she will mostly support herself through it, adding it to the folder of things she is carrying that nobody knows about, that gets heavier as the semester progresses, that she will not have properly dealt with by the time she graduates and that will surface later in ways she will not immediately connect to this moment.

What will people say.

What people will say is not the right question. The right question is what does she need and who is going to provide it and how does a campus culture that has so thoroughly outsourced female emotional support to the romantic relationships that are also the source of this crisis begin to build something better. But that is a question for a different kind of document. Here, in this chapter, the only thing to say is that Kemi is real, that her situation is ordinary in its frequency if not in its weight, and that she deserved the conversation that should have happened before the night that changed everything, and that the conversation did not happen, and that this is a pattern and not an accident.

THE ONE NOBODY SEES COMING: HIV, THE INNOCENT FACE, AND THE INFORMATION NOBODY IS SHARING

There is a girl on your campus right now who does not know. She is not who you think she is. She is not the girl your instincts would identify if someone asked you to point to the person most likely to be carrying a virus that she has not tested for. She is the girl who sits in the front row in your elective class. She is the one who leads the fellowship on Wednesdays, not performatively, genuinely, with the kind of faith that is real and personal and has been the backbone of her self understanding since secondary school. She is the one in your group who everyone describes as responsible, which is a word that people use to mean she is not doing what we think of when we think of people who get sick this way, which tells you more about the limitations of that thinking than about her actual life.

She had two partners in the last year. Two. Both of them people she trusted in the specific way that trust operates on campus, which is a combination of time, familiarity, emotional intimacy, and the particular lowering of guard that happens when someone has been present in your life consistently enough that the possibility of them carrying information they have not shared stops feeling like a realistic risk and starts feeling like a paranoid thought that you are embarrassed to entertain because entertaining it would mean admitting that you do not fully trust someone you have decided to trust.

She did not test before. Neither did they. The conversation about testing is the conversation that campus romance almost never has, not because people are unintelligent, because they are not unintelligent, but because the conversation requires the introduction of a possibility that disrupts the emotional narrative that the relationship is built on, and disrupting the narrative feels like a greater immediate threat than the thing the conversation is designed to protect against, because the thing the conversation is designed to protect against is invisible and future and the disruption is immediate and present and emotionally costly in ways that feel unacceptable in the specific moment when the conversation should be happening.

The boy who gave her the virus did not give it to her deliberately. He did not know. He also did not test. He also trusted in the same combination of time and familiarity and emotional narrative that made testing feel like an accusation rather than a precaution. He also had the conversation with himself that goes I am not the kind of person who has this to worry about, which is the most dangerous conversation a person can have because the virus is entirely uninterested in the kind of person you have decided you are.

The discovery, when it comes, will reorganise everything she knows about herself and about the period of her life she is currently in. It will ask her to revise the story she has been telling about who she is and what she does and what category of person she belongs to, and the revision will be painful not just because of the diagnosis but because of the confrontation with the gap between her self image and her actual exposure, a gap that exists in everyone but that most people never have to examine this directly or this completely.

And after the revision, after the initial devastation, which is real and should not be minimised, there is a life. A full life, in 2026, with treatment that works and a future that is not foreclosed. But the campus does not teach this. The campus teaches silence and assumption and the idea that certain things happen to certain kinds of people, and both of those lessons are wrong, and the wrongness of them is costing people in ways that are completely preventable if the conversation happens, if the testing becomes ordinary, if the idea of knowing is treated as more valuable than the comfort of not asking.

The innocent face is not innocent because she is secretly reckless. She is innocent because she is human, and humans trust, and trust without information is not morality, it is vulnerability, and vulnerability on a campus that does not equip you with the practical tools of sexual health is not a character flaw.

It is a gap in the education. A serious one. The kind that shows up in people's lives years after graduation and asks to be reckoned with whether they are ready or not.

FAITH ON FRIDAY, PARTY ON SATURDAY, GUILT ON SUNDAY, REPEAT

Chiamaka has not missed a Sunday service since she arrived on campus. This is true. It is also incomplete.

The complete picture includes Friday night, which is when Chiamaka, who sings in the choir with the kind of vocal sincerity that makes older women in the congregation close their eyes and nod, is getting ready for a party in a dress that the older women in the congregation would receive as information requiring urgent prayer. The complete picture includes Saturday, which contains events that the Sunday morning version of Chiamaka is already beginning to negotiate with, to explain to herself in language that is honest enough to acknowledge what happened and creative enough to preserve the self image that Sunday requires.

The Sunday service is not hypocrisy. This is the important thing to understand. It is not the performance of a faith she does not have. It is the expression of a faith she genuinely has that exists in unresolved tension with a life she is also genuinely living, and the tension is real and uncomfortable and she has not found a framework for holding both things simultaneously without one of them diminishing the other, and in the absence of that framework she is doing what most young people of faith on campus do, which is compartmentalise, which is to say she is living in chapters and hoping that God is reading the whole book rather than just the chapters that are hard to explain.

The crisis is not that she is going to parties. The crisis is that she was never given permission, within her faith community, to be a person who is genuinely uncertain, genuinely exploring, genuinely in the middle of figuring out who she is and what she believes and how her faith intersects with her desires and her campus life and the version of herself she is becoming, without that uncertainty being treated as failure rather than process. So the exploration happens in secret and the faith happens in public and the integration of the two, the actual spiritual work of becoming a whole person who is not divided against herself, never quite gets done because the space for it was never created.

The night Chiamaka compromised something she did not intend to compromise, it was not because she had abandoned her faith. It was because she had stepped into a situation that escalated faster than she could manage, and the tools she had been given by her faith community for situations like this were mostly rules rather than wisdom, prohibitions rather than understanding, and rules without understanding do not hold in the specific moment when the pressure is immediate and the room is warm and the decision is being made in real time by a person who is more complicated than any rule has ever fully accounted for.

She went to church on Sunday. She sang. The older women closed their eyes.

And Chiamaka stood at the microphone carrying something heavy that she did not know how to put down, in a space that would have helped her put it down if it had known how to ask the right questions, which it did not, which is a failure not of faith but of the community's capacity to love people through complexity rather than only through compliance.

PLANNING YOUR LIFE ON VIBES VERSUS PLANNING IT ON INTENTIONALITY

Sola and Deji have been together since their first week on campus. They met during the chaos of registration, bonded over the shared indignity of a queue that moved with the urgency of a geological formation, exchanged numbers, and within two weeks were spending enough time together that their respective social circles began to refer to them as a unit, which is the campus equivalent of a public declaration.

They are, by campus standards, goals. They are also, by any standard that requires examining what is underneath the aesthetic of coupledom, two people who have been so busy being in a relationship that they have not examined what they want the relationship to be, where they are going individually, whether the directions are compatible, or whether the primary reason they are together is that they found each other at the exact moment when campus was most overwhelming and the comfort of a specific person to belong to was most necessary, which is a real and valid reason to be close to someone and is not the same thing as a foundation.

Sola is studying architecture. She wants to work in urban planning eventually, in a city that is not Lagos, in a life that has a particular shape that she can see clearly when she lets herself look at it. Deji is studying law. He assumes, without having said this out loud, that they will be in the same city after graduation. He has assumed this because the relationship is good and the relationship is present and the future is abstract, and present good things have a way of filling in the abstractions without actually addressing them. Sola has a version of this assumption too but it is a softer version, less certain, held more loosely, and she has not examined the gap between her assumption and Deji's because examining it would require a conversation that might reveal an incompatibility that she is not ready to deal with while they are still in the middle of something that feels good.

This is planning on vibes. Planning on vibes is not stupidity. It is the completely understandable human preference for the warmth of the present over the discomfort of a future conversation that might cool things down. But the bill arrives eventually. The bill arrives at the end of campus when everyone has to go somewhere and somewhere is specific and the vibe that worked when everywhere was the same campus suddenly has to survive the geography of actual adult life, and sometimes it does and sometimes it does not, and the ones who planned on intentionality, who had the uncomfortable conversations early, who asked each other the actual questions about the actual future and sat in the discomfort of the actual answers, those are the ones who either build something real or part with enough clarity that the parting does not take years of their emotional life along with it.

The ones who planned on vibes are not doomed. Some of them will luck into alignment. Some of them will have the conversation eventually, later than ideal but not too late. Some of them will discover that what felt like a vibe was actually a foundation, that what they were building without blueprints had structural integrity, and the discovery will be a relief and a joy and a story they tell for the rest of their lives about how they just knew.

But some of them will not. Some of them will spend the best years of their twenties in a relationship that campus started and inertia continued and that neither of them would have chosen deliberately if they had been asked to choose deliberately, and the loss is not just the time but the alternative, the life that was not being built while this one was being maintained, the person they were not becoming because they were busy being someone's partner before they were fully their own person.

Build something real or end something honestly.

Those are the only two options that respect both people. Everything else is just a longer version of planning on vibes, and vibes, as it turns out, are not load bearing.

THE EXIT

My Man Syndrome does not end at graduation, It mutates. It finds new environments. It follows people into their first jobs and their first apartments and their first experiences of the real world where the social pressure of campus is replaced by a different social pressure that is older and more resourced but operating on the same essential frequency, which is the frequency that says your value is partly determined by who has chosen you, that being chosen is an achievement, that the absence of being chosen is a condition requiring remedy.

The students who leave campus having examined this, having looked at what they were calling love and asked honestly whether it was love or loneliness or performance or habit or fear or genuine human connection, those students take something into adulthood that is worth more than any grade they received. They take the ability to distinguish between a relationship and a story about a relationship. Between a person and the idea of a person. Between what they actually want and what campus convinced them they were supposed to want.

My Man Syndrome is curable. Not by being alone, not by swearing off connection, not by becoming the person who has decided that love is a trap and detachment is wisdom, because that person is also just performing, just in the opposite direction.

It is curable by the deeply unglamorous, genuinely difficult, completely necessary work of knowing yourself well enough that you can be with someone else without disappearing into them. By understanding that you are a complete thing and connection is an addition to completeness and not the source of it. By having the conversations before they become crises. By testing before you trust blindly. By planning with words and not just feelings. By letting your faith be complicated enough to hold your humanity without requiring you to split yourself in two. By understanding that the most important relationship you will build on this campus, the one that determines the quality of everything else, is the relationship you are building with yourself.

In the years of garri and midnight and budget funerals and emotional upheaval and identity reconstruction. In all of it, You are the main character.

Act like it.

E GO BE

Let us establish something immediately before this chapter goes anywhere.

Every single person who has ever spent more than two semesters on a Nigerian university campus has either had My Man Syndrome, loved someone who had it, watched it destroy a perfectly functional human being from a front row seat, or has been so aggressively avoiding it that the avoidance itself has become its own syndrome. There is no neutral position. There is no uninvolved observer. Campus romance is a full contact sport with no referee, no rulebook, and a medical team that consists entirely of your roommate eating garri and offering opinions at midnight.

Welcome to the most academically unaccredited course on campus. It has a one hundred percent enrollment rate and an unpredictable graduation ceremony.

THE TAXONOMY OF CAMPUS LOVE, OR WHAT WE ARE CALLING LOVE THIS SEMESTER

Before we meet the characters, because there are characters and they are all too real and some of them are reading this right now with a facial expression they need to examine privately, we need to understand that campus relationships do not come in one shape. They come in a whole ecosystem of shapes, each with its own internal logic, its own vocabulary, its own particular way of making otherwise intelligent people completely abandon their reasoning faculties in ways that will take years of post graduation reflection to fully understand.

There is the hostel relationship, which is the relationship that begins because proximity is a powerful force and humans are not as complicated as they think they are. Chisom and Dike met because his room was directly above hers in Zik Hall and he played music at eleven in the evening that was so specifically her taste that she knocked on the ceiling with a broom handle in protest and he came downstairs to apologise and stayed for three hours talking about nothing in particular and everything important and by the time he left they both knew something had shifted without either of them naming it because naming it would make it real and real things can end and neither of them was ready for the possibility of an ending before the beginning had even been officially declared.

By the following weekend Chisom had developed a complete internal architecture around Dike that she would have been embarrassed to admit to anyone including herself. She knew his class schedule. Not because she asked. Because she noticed. She knew which days he came back tired and which days he came back energised and what each version of his footstep on the ceiling above her meant about his mood. She knew his food preferences because she listened when he talked and filed things away in a mental folder labelled we that she had not given herself permission to create but had created anyway because the heart, as it turns out, does not wait for permission from the mind before it starts decorating.

Is this love? Is this the beginning of love? Is this the particular campus alchemy of proximity and loneliness and novelty producing an emotion that feels enormous because nothing in your life before now prepared you for the intensity of your own feelings in an environment with this much freedom and this much time and this many occasions to be alone with someone in a small room with the door closed and nowhere particularly urgent to be?

The answer is yes to all of the above and also the answer does not matter because Chisom is already in it and Dike, who has his own folder somewhere that he is also not examining too closely, is already in it too, and the only question now is what kind of in it they are, which neither of them will know until they are out of it and can see the shape of it from the outside.

THE WEEKEND GIRL AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MY MAN'S PLACE

Ada does not live in her hostel on weekends.

This is not a secret. It is not even a well kept secret. It is the kind of open secret that everyone around Ada knows and has processed and filed under none of my business because campus has enough going on without allocating energy to monitoring other people's sleeping arrangements, which is a surprisingly mature position that most people arrive at quickly because they are also doing things they would prefer not to be monitored.

Ada's man is Emeka and Emeka lives in an off campus apartment in a part of town that is sufficiently removed from the main campus to feel like a different world, which is exactly what it is. The apartment has a gas cooker that works, a bathroom with consistent water supply, a bed that is not a bunk, and a television that receives more than two channels. These are not small things. If you have spent a significant number of nights in a university hostel where the mattress has absorbed the collective experiences of everyone who slept on it before you and the bathroom situation requires a scheduling system and a level of personal diplomacy that should count toward a social science degree, then you understand that Emeka's apartment is not just a place. It is an aspiration. It is a preview of a life that feels more ordered, more adult, more like what was promised at the end of all this studying.

Ada arrives Friday evening with a bag that is just slightly too large for a weekend visit and just slightly too small to be called moving in, which is the precise size of the bag that every weekend girl has perfected because the bag is doing emotional work as well as logistical work. It is saying I am here but I have not assumed. It is saying I belong here enough to pack properly but I know better than to pack too much. It is saying there is a conversation neither of us has had about what this is and until we have it I will continue arriving with this specific bag that contains everything I need and nothing that would force the conversation before he is ready for it or before I am ready for what his answer might be.

What Ada gets at Emeka's: cooked meals, relative comfort, the sensation of being chosen, the particular intimacy of existing in someone's domestic space and learning the small details of how they live that you cannot learn anywhere else. What Ada gives: company, warmth, the labour of her presence which is not acknowledged as labour but is labour nonetheless, the cooking she does on Sunday because it feels natural and she does not examine whether it feels natural because it is what she wants or because the apartment and the relationship have created a gentle gravitational pull toward domesticity that she has not consciously agreed to.

What neither Ada nor Emeka is discussing: the fact that the relationship has a shape that neither of them designed intentionally, that the shape is more serious on her side than his or possibly equally serious but expressed differently, that the bag she brings every Friday has gotten incrementally larger over the past three months in a way that neither of them has mentioned, and that the conversation about what this is has been postponed so many times that postponement has become its own kind of answer.

Does Emeka love Ada? Possibly. Does Ada love Emeka? Deeply, in the way that people love things they have built their routine around before they realised the routine was the foundation and not the building. Is this a relationship? It depends enormously on who you ask and on which day you ask them and on whether the generator is on and the mood is good and the night is the kind of night where everything feels decided, or whether it is a Sunday afternoon and Ada is packing her bag that is slightly too large for a weekend and slightly too small to be called moving in, and the feeling in the room is not quite sad but is not quite not sad either.

This is My Man Syndrome in its most functional and most deceptive form. It works. Until it doesn't. And when it doesn't, Ada will be surprised in a way that she should not be surprised, and she will not be surprised because she is foolish, she is not foolish, she is someone who wanted something to be what she needed it to be and read the available evidence in the most generous possible interpretation, which is one of the most human things a person can do and also one of the most expensive.

THE ISLAND GIRL, THE PRIVATE APARTMENT, AND THE ECONOMY OF BEAUTY

Temi is not in a relationship.

Temi will tell you she is not in a relationship with the kind of calm, clear eyed confidence that makes you believe her immediately and also makes you understand that the absence of a relationship in Temi's life is not an absence of anything she considers important. Temi is in what she describes to her closest friends as situationships, plural, a word that does the work of describing arrangements that provide the material benefits of relationships without the emotional accountability that relationships require, and which Temi has organised with the precision of someone who has studied the market, understood her own value within it, and made decisions accordingly.

The men in Temi's arrangements are not on campus. This is the first thing and the most important thing. They exist in a different economic register entirely, one that Temi accessed through a party she attended in the second semester of her first year, through a friend who knew someone who knew someone, through the particular door that opens for girls who are beautiful and present and unbothered in a specific way that certain kinds of men in certain kinds of rooms find both attractive and legible. The party was in a private apartment in the kind of building that has a uniformed security guard and a functioning elevator and a view of the city that makes the campus feel like a different country, which is what it is.

Temi went home from that party with a phone number, a contact saved under a name that is not a name but a description, and an understanding of something about the world that she has not shared with her roommates because her roommates would have opinions and Temi is not interested in other people's opinions about a decision she has already examined from every angle and arrived at deliberately. She is not confused. She is not being exploited, or rather she does not experience herself as being exploited, which is a distinction that matters and also a distinction that gets more complicated the longer you sit with it.

What Temi receives from these arrangements: financial support that has paid for things her parents' allowance could not cover and that she has not explained the source of to anyone. Experiences, dinners, events, the kind of access to spaces and networks that campus life does not provide and that she is pragmatically aware will be useful beyond the immediate transaction. A certain kind of attention that feels like being seen, even when what is actually happening is closer to being appraised, and the difference between those two things is one that Temi is aware of intellectually and is choosing not to feel too deeply right now because feeling it too deeply would complicate a situation she needs to be uncomplicated for the moment.

What Temi is not talking about: the evenings that leave her feeling something she cannot name that is not quite shame but lives in the same neighbourhood. The way she has learned to leave parts of herself outside before she enters certain rooms because bringing all of herself would make the arrangement impossible. The question that arrives sometimes at three in the morning when the apartment is quiet and the man beside her is asleep and she is looking at the ceiling of a place that is very nice and absolutely not hers and wondering what she is building and whether what she is building is what she wants and whether what she wants is something she has actually examined or something she arrived at because the options she was presented with seemed to require her to choose between her dignity and her comfort and she chose her comfort and has been explaining that choice to herself in sophisticated language ever since.

This is not a judgment. This is an observation. The campus that contains Ada also contains Temi and also contains the girl who would be horrified by both of their situations and who is also navigating something complicated in a different direction, because that is what campus does: it presents everyone with a version of the same essential question, which is what are you willing to do with what you have in order to get what you need, and the answers vary enormously and are all, in their own way, perfectly understandable and also worth examining.

THE IT GUYS, THE FLEX, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF DESIRABILITY

Biodun is what campus calls an IT guy.

Not information technology, though he does own a laptop that he carries with the energy of someone who wants you to know he owns a laptop. IT in this context means the guy, the one, the person around whom a certain gravitational field has developed that pulls attention and generates a specific kind of social currency that is entirely campus specific and will not transfer to the real world in the way that Biodun currently believes it will, but that information is not available to him yet so let us not be unkind about it.

Biodun dresses in a particular way that requires financial investment and casual presentation simultaneously, the combination being the point, the effort being the thing that must not be visible, because visible effort is social death on a campus where the performance of effortlessness is the primary marker of status. He knows people. He is known. When he walks into certain spaces something shifts in the room that he is aware of and has organised his personality around, which is not entirely healthy but is also not entirely his fault because campus created the market and Biodun simply understood his position within it.

The girls who are interested in Biodun are interested in different things that they are calling by the same name. Some of them are genuinely attracted to him as a person, to the specific human that exists underneath the performance, though accessing that human requires getting past the performance first and most interactions do not go deep enough for that. Some of them are attracted to what proximity to him means socially, to the way being chosen by the IT guy functions as a kind of validation in a social ecosystem where certain kinds of visibility are currency. Some of them are attracted to the story, to the campus love story that has a recognisable shape and a satisfying beginning and the feeling, however temporary, of being the main character in something.

What Biodun offers: attention that feels significant because of how many people want it. Presence at the right places at the right times. The particular intoxication of being chosen by someone who appears to have options, which makes the choosing feel like a verdict about your worth rather than a preference, which is a very specific emotional experience that is extremely powerful and also extremely unreliable as a foundation for anything.

What Biodun does not offer, or does not consistently offer, or offers and then withdraws: consistency. Emotional availability. The version of him that exists when the performance is off and there is no audience and he is just a person with fears and confusion and needs that he has not learned to articulate because the IT guy identity does not have space for articulation, only for projection.

The girl who falls for Biodun is not falling for him. She is falling for what he represents in the language of campus desirability, and he is doing the same thing in reverse, choosing her partly for who she is and partly for what choosing her says about him, and they are both performing for an audience that is made up partly of other people and partly of their own internal narrative about who they are and what they deserve and what their life on this campus is supposed to look like.

This is not love. This is casting. And the problem is that the feelings are real even when the foundations are constructed, which makes the eventual collapse genuinely painful for people who were, in some important sense, always playing roles in a production that neither of them wrote.

THE ODD FEELING OF NOT HAVING A MAN, AND WHY IT IS LOUDER THAN IT SHOULD BE

Ngozi does not have a boyfriend.

This is not a tragedy. Ngozi knows it is not a tragedy. Ngozi has repeated this to herself with enough conviction that she mostly believes it, except for the specific times when she does not believe it at all, which are the times that campus seems specifically designed to produce.

The times are: Valentine's Day, which on a Nigerian campus is an event of extraordinary emotional violence for anyone without a defined situationship or relationship, because the campus transforms overnight into a landscape of red and pink and visible coupledom that makes singleness feel like a condition rather than a status. The times are: the parties where everyone seems to arrive with someone or leave with someone and she arrives and leaves with her friends which is genuinely fine and also somehow not entirely fine. The times are: the Sunday mornings in the hostel when some of her roommates are having quiet phone conversations in tones that are clearly intimate and the room has a texture to it that she cannot participate in no matter how unbothered she genuinely is.

The pressure to be in something on campus is not always explicit. Sometimes it is the question, every returning student's favourite conversational gambit, so how far, you and who, delivered with a smile that is friendly and also a social audit dressed as small talk. Sometimes it is the assumption, the default setting of campus culture that positions being paired as the natural state of a person and being single as a transitional phase between pairings rather than a legitimate place to be. Sometimes it is internal, the comparison that happens without permission when you see something that looks like what you want and your own life is suddenly lit from an angle that makes it look like it is missing something, even when ten minutes ago it felt complete.

What nobody tells Ngozi, or what people tell her but in a way that does not land because the medium is wrong and the timing is wrong and the feeling is louder than the advice, is that the relationship she is watching from the outside and measuring herself against is also a performance. That what Ada has with Emeka looks like something from the outside and is something more complicated from the inside. That the IT guy's girlfriend is not as securely chosen as she appears. That the campus couple who post about each other with the kind of caption that reads like they have already written their wedding vows are having a conversation in private that would significantly revise the public narrative.

The singleness is not the problem. The looking at everyone else's curated version of connection and comparing it to your unedited interior experience, that is the problem, and it is a problem that does not end at graduation, that follows you into every phase of life, that campus simply gives you your first concentrated exposure to. Learning to be a whole person in the middle of a culture that is constantly telling you that wholeness requires another person is the actual work. It is unglamorous work. It does not photograph well. But the people who do it, who learn genuinely and not just performatively to be complete in themselves while remaining open to connection, are the ones who will not spend the next decade of their life in a series of relationships they entered because the alternative felt like a verdict.

E GO BE