The Day My Abuser Became a Bride...and I Became Brave.

Eyo Jedidiah Precious
@preciouseyo450605
17 days ago

‎THE APOLOGY I WANTED BUT NEVER GOT
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‎Nollywood has a way of lying gently to you.
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‎It teaches you that life comes with background music, that pain announces itself with thunder, and healing arrives with a perfect close-up. It makes you believe that if Chidinma got her justice on screen, maybe—just maybe—you will get yours too.
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‎But here I am… and for the first time in ten years, I finally understand what it means to feel numb.
‎Not sad. Not angry. Just… suspended. Like a soul pacing on the edge of its own body.
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‎Before now, everything felt like a prank life was playing on me.
‎A prank I hoped I’d wake up from.
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‎It started with a random man walking into our house with calm confidence—asking for a bride price list like he came to pick a parcel. I stared at him, waiting for the “Cut!” that never came.
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‎Then came the traditional wedding.
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‎Last month, someone took my measurements. Today, I am wrapped in the fabric the bride’s family sent—beautiful, expensive, yet sitting on my skin like guilt I never asked to carry. The house is loud with joy… smells of stew, jollof, and fresh palm wine filling every corner, reminding even a dead man why life is sweet.
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‎The community women are dancing.
‎Dad is smiling like God just refunded all the years he lost. This was his late brother’s last wish—that his only daughter, Shade, would live well, school well, marry well. He has waited a long time to walk her down the aisle. To finally whisper into the sky,
‎"Brother mi, I fulfilled your wish".
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‎Mummy?
‎She is floating.
‎Her daughter becomes a woman today. Her joy has no brake.
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‎And me?
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‎I’m sitting here like the stain on a white cloth.
‎The bad egg.
‎The misplaced child.
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‎Part of me expects Mum to tap me and say,
‎“Junior, wake up. You’re oversleeping.”
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‎Because this has to be a dream.
‎Or a joke.
‎Or a mistake.
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‎Shade walks down the aisle slowly, the lace clinging to her body like innocence she no longer owns.
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‎I wonder—would this man still vow “in sickness and in health” if he knew?
‎If he knew the sickness wasn’t in her body, but in what she did?
‎If he knew the health she destroyed wasn’t hers, but mine?
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‎My mind wanders…
‎What if—just what if—I stand up when the priest says:
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‎“If anyone knows any reason why these two should not be lawfully joined…”
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‎What if I raise my hand?
‎What if I let my truth scatter her joy the way she scattered my childhood?
‎What if I let her feel even a tiny piece of the humiliation she taught me to swallow?
‎The stigma of self-pleasure she taught me over and over again.
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‎But I won’t.
‎Because Shade also taught me the code.
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‎“If you tell anyone, they won’t believe you…
‎They’ll say you enjoyed it…
‎Who believes boys get abused?
‎Swear that you didn't enjoy it.”
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‎I carried those lines like commandments.
‎I obeyed them like scripture.
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‎So I sit.
‎And my silence sits with me.
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‎They cheer her.
‎They celebrate her.
‎They paint her story with bright colors and call it destiny.
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‎And in that moment, I understand something Nollywood never tells you:
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‎Life does not always give you justice.
‎Life does not always reward the wounded.
‎Life does not always expose the wrongdoer.
‎Life does not always send apologies wrapped in tears.
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‎Sometimes the villain gets a perfect wedding.
‎Sometimes the survivor sits in the crowd wearing trauma like a tight shirt.
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‎But this—this is where my story stops acting like a movie…
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‎Because silence is not healing.
‎Silence is not strength.
‎Silence is not survival.
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‎Silence is a slow poison.
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‎And I am done drinking it.
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‎So I step outside.
‎I breathe.
‎I let the truth rise in my chest without choking it down.
‎And for the first time, I whisper to myself:
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‎“You deserved protection.
‎You deserved safety.
‎What happened to you was real.”
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‎I don’t forgive Shade—not today.
‎But I choose to fight for myself.
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‎And that is where HEALING IS WÁR begins.
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‎Not when the offender apologizes.
‎Not when the world acknowledges your pain.
‎Not when justice finds a microphone.
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‎Healing begins the day you choose to stop obeying silence.
‎The day you start gathering courage like broken pieces and carrying them home.
‎The day you say, “My story is not over because someone else refused to be accountable.”
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‎HEALING IS WAR is the battle for your own wholeness, even when the world celebrates the one who wounded you.
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‎It is not easy.
‎It is not pretty.
‎But it is possible.
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‎And today, standing outside that noisy hall,
‎I begin mine.
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#Dpoeticstoryteller
#Healingiswar
#NircleStories

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