My mother d!ed after I completed my high school, and my siblings and I were left in the cold hands of my father.
He didn’t care about us.
He would look us in the eyes, those same eyes we inherited from him, and he would say,
“I despised your mother.”
He meant it.
No warmth. No grief. Just deep, choking hatred.
Sometimes I wonder how he carried so much bitterness for her, yet they still made us.
How do you create life with someone you despise?
Maybe that’s why we never truly felt alive in that house.
The day he walked out on us emotionally, I felt something crack in me. But I told myself: Be strong. For your future kids. For the version of you that still believes in joy.
Four years later, I got admission into the university. It felt like my big break but not until he sold my mother’s shop and used all the money that was meant to be shared among us on himself… just to frustrate me and send me off.
And once again after spending the money, he left.
No school fees. No support. No care.
Just abandonment wearing a familiar face.
I layed down my beautiful and I hawked, sold things and even did sales girl and (oso ahia as we call it), worked odd jobs, did everything positive just to keep my dreams breathing. I dropped my pride, but I never dropped my determination.
Then, something I never planned for happened, I started dating someone.
Not because I wanted to.
But because I thought maybe, just maybe, he would offer the kind of support I’d never had.
But the question remains: Did he?
No.
Instead, I found myself becoming his backbone.
I met him when he had nothing. I stayed when he was broke, broken, and uncertain.
With my help, he left his bad friends.
With my help, he got a job.
With my help, he bought a camera.
With my help, he opened a shop.
All while I looked like life had been punching me repeatedly in the face.
But I didn’t care.
I believed in building with someone.
I believed in loyalty.
I believed that love meant standing in the fire, together.
But as soon as money began to show up in his wallet, his respect for me vanished.
He started mocking me behind my back.
He became cold. Distant. Familiar.
Sometimes I wonder…
Is this how my life would be? Or maybe I’m just in the hands of the wrong man?
Because I didn’t experience love from my father,
And now the man I chose to stick with through thick and thin is giving me my father’s vibes.
Why is my life like this?
After seven years of loyalty, of sacrifices no one saw, I discovered he had been hiding something.
I visited him one day, and while I snapped pictures with his phone, A message popped up on his phone from his late cousin, reminding him to “let me finish school before telling me.”
“Telling me what?” I panicked, I couldn’t hide this, so I asked him. He never really wanted to open up, but I pressed further and he yielded.
“My prophetess said I should not marry you, she said you’re not my wife.” He replied coldly.
After all the pain. After all the loyalty. After all the love.
A prophetess?
I asked him to take me to the woman.
We went., but on arrival, she was already giving someone who sat with her a fake prophetic word.
As she gave her “prophecy,” her next-door neighbor was shouting from the back, “This woman is using marine spirit power to destroy people’s lives!”
But my seven-years boyfriend refuse to hear her.
Or maybe he didn’t want to.
He took her prophetess word like the word of God.
I walked away from that shrine and went back to school with a heart full of cracks, wondering which way to go again.
My mind was not yet made up to leave the bagga, I was just calculating how my seven years will just go like that. It was in the midst of thinking what next to do that I received a call.
It was a woman who was living close to my boyfriend that was very nice to me.
“There’s another girl. She visits him when you’re not around, come back so that you can catch him red handed.”
This would have been the moment that I would have just forgotten about this relationship, yet I took my hard earn money and took the next bus in the morning ,just to come catch a born cheater.
I arrived on time, Used the spare key.
The first thing I saw was a picture of the girl, hanging exactly where mine used to be.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t faint.
I boiled rice. Ate jollof. And waited.
When he walked in, he saw me. He panicked.
He begged me to follow him out, but I declined. He then step out to call will I say his main babe, since his prophetess has already declared that I was not his wife.
He called the girl and lied, saying, “Wait for me at the my shop, don’t come home again, I will just meet you there.” What he didn’t know was that I was at his back eavesdropping.
Immediately he turned and saw me, he was shocked.
I just went in as I sat down, calculating when I will find a new guy… How long it will take me to get to know him and him know me…
My guy was out of sight, I don’t know where he went to, but his cousin brother came around, I guess the guy realized this girl don go far, so he sat next to me and advised me,
“Nzube… I know it’s hard, I know seven years is not moimoi… But you’re a good person, so I advise you to go where you’re celebrated, not where you’ll be managed.”
I thanked him and took my handbag and left.
I also dropped the spare keys, because I know I was not coming back again.
While I was walking to the nearest bus stop to take me to my school, my phone rang like almost three times, I picked the last one and i was shocked to know it was my man’s mother,
“Please leave my son for me, the prophetess has already said you’re not his wife, why do you keep coming back like a monitoring spirit, did they send you to his life? Leave my son biko!” she yelled over the phone before hanging up.
I was too weak to reply her, so I allowed her vent her frustration till she was done and hung the phone.
This was how I left.
No closure. No loud goodbye. Just a silent walk away from seven years of pain.
When I left and my Ex nigga started experiencing hard times in his business, he realized I was the lucky charm he had, he asked me to come back and I declined.
He began calling everyone, trying to paint me as mean.
But I didn’t care.
What people he was gossiping to didn’t know was that…
I had felt the urge to leave.
And when a woman feels it, nothing can hold her back.
I closed that chapter of my life with super glue.
Then over to My father, he remained the same, until life humbled him.
A woman drained him dry, left him empty.
Suddenly, he remembered he had children.
He started asking me for help.
And despite everything… I helped.
Because I’ve learned that sometimes, the best revenge is kindness.
It unsettles wickedness more than hatred ever could.
I graduated from school in flying colours, the same was my siblings.
After that heartbreak season, and also my graduation, I went back to my hometown during our masquerade festival.
Just to breathe.
Just to feel joy again.
There, I met someone.
He loved me from day one.
He proposed on our first date.
I paused. Watched. Waited.
Because this heart had seen war.
But he stayed.
He chose me.
He cherished me.
Today, we are married.
We have three beautiful children.
And for the first time in my life, I know what peace tastes like… what it means to be held, not hurt… to be chosen without conditions.
Sometimes, we look at the years we’ve wasted, and we still choose to stay more, hoping love will grow where it has clearly d!ed.
Even when our spirit is tired, we convince ourselves to endure just a little longer.
But the truth is, the sweetest and most painful decision you’ll ever make is walking away when your stay is overdue.
Why stay for an extra year in a house that leaks pain, when you can start again in a garden that pours peace?
Why sip from a rusty cup when new wine awaits you and it’s fresh, healing, and true?
Sometimes, the ball is in our court…
We see the signs. We feel the emptiness.
But we freeze… afraid to start over, afraid to be alone, afraid to let go of familiar pain.
But let me tell you this:
Leaving isn’t failure.
Starting again isn’t shameful.
Choosing yourself is never a mistake.
Because when you finally do,
When you finally say, it’s enough, it’s time to leave
Life meets you on the other side with a love that doesn’t hurt, a joy that doesn’t ask you to shrink, and a peace that feels like home.
You are not too broken.
You are not too late.
And you are not asking for too much.
You were just in the wrong story.
Courtesy: Egbuchunam Okerulu Winifred, Chiamaka Favour Christian
