Do you know what happens in that instant? The heart stops for a millisecond. A scream tears out — raw, helpless, full of horror. The body plummets, and then comes the sound I can never forget: the sickening crack of skull against concrete. Darkness follows, swallowing everything.
I can't stop thinking about it. The push, the fall, the scream, the silence.
"Why don't you start from the beginning, ma'am? It's always the easiest."
I sighed deeply. "Alright… I'll start at the beginning."
I grew up in Jos — the Tin City, as some call it. My mother raised me alone. I never knew my father, and Mama refused to speak a word about him. Somehow, I still missed a man whose face I had never seen.
By January, I had already been in Lagos for two and a half years. The first six months were unbearably lonely — until I met Raymond. He was charming, attentive, and gentle at first. For a while, I thought I had found safety.
We shared everything: brushing our teeth together at night, changing clothes in each other's presence, long conversations about nothing, lazy massages after work. It felt easy, natural. I loved him. I thought he loved me too.
I worked as a tailor — not for dresses, but for curtains, duvets, bedsheets. Raymond was an engineer, proud of his work, proud of me, or so I believed. He would drop me at my shop each morning, then rush back just to steal one last hug before heading to the office. Small things like that made me fall deeper.
But the good didn't last. What began as love turned sour — slowly, then all at once.
It started when his company planned an end-of-year dinner. That was the first time he said it outright: "I can't take you with me, Timi. I don't want to be embarrassed." His words cut deeper than any knife. He looked me in the eye and called my body — the same body he once touched with tenderness — a source of shame. He went to that party without me.
I'm a plus size, a little bit of adipose here and there but not in a way that I couldn't differentiate my tummy from my behind and that was a problem for him.
From then on, Raymond's love became conditional. He told me to jog every morning, forced me to the gym on weekends, dictated what I ate, even demanded I snap photos of my meals to prove my obedience. Nothing pleased him. Insults became my daily bread. His only tenderness was when he wanted sex — and even then, he cared little if I was satisfied.
The first time he hit me was the night I told him I was pregnant. I thought he would rejoice. Instead, his eyes burned with fury. His slap stung across my cheek; his fist drove into my stomach. I can still smell the blood that followed.
That was the moment I should have left. But I didn't. I clung to him like chewing gum stuck under a desk — unwanted, stubborn, refusing to let go. I told myself I loved him. I told myself he could change. I told myself those three empty words — "I love you" — still meant something.
But in truth, what I felt wasn't love. It was fear. It was hope twisted into a noose. It was the beginning of my undoing.