I was nine years old when I first told God exactly what I wanted.
I wasn't in church, nor was it any prayer meeting. It was just me and the silent desires of my heart, let out to God in quiet solitude in the backyard of our family house in Enugu.
I remember mouthing the words. I want a better life. A big one. Outside all of this.
I was young and naive, yet I knew what I meant. I had seen enough of the suffering and struggling from my parents to know that the life I had around me had limits. So, even at that tender age, I craved better, with or without them.
I told nobody of my wish. I just carried it within me like that quiet burden you're not sure anyone else will understand.
Years later, after university I was lucky to land a job offer in Lagos. I was genuinely happy. I strongly believed that was it. The answer to my prayers I had been waiting long enough for. The beginning of a better life I had asked God for.
Honestly, my first few weeks in Lagos felt exactly like it. Like a dream come true. A huge amount hit my account in the name of salary, I had my own apartment - my own peace and safe space. My own keys, my own life, my own rules. I remember calling my mother that first weekend feeling like I had cracked something open. Like the life I wanted was finally within arm's reach.
Then gradually Lagos showed me its claws. It had a friendly face but with thorns set in your path to make you break.
If it wasn't me praying not to suffocate in the long traffic that swallowed hours of my day without apology. It would be my boss treating my weekends like an extension of the work week. Extra time upon extra time. The paperwork never got smaller no matter how early I arrived. The bills that were more faithful than every ex I've ever had. Then it crowned it all with tiredness that followed me home every day. It felt like I was working like an elephant but eating like an ant.
It dawned on me that that wasn't the life I had wished for as a kid. Even if it was - because of the pay, it was exhausting me. My dream life wasn't supposed to be with doubt
Slowly, quietly, I stopped believing the wishes were real. I believed they were something kids were made to believe to keep hope alive.
One dark evening I came back from work heavier than I had left in the morning. It was the accumulation of the weight of everything I had been carrying inside. A promotion that went to someone less qualified, an unexpected rent increase notice slipped under my door, and the constant phone call from home asking for money that I didn't have.
I slumped into my couch and beside me was this particular kind of hopelessness that doesn't announce itself loudly. It just sat there beside me in the silence.
I don't know how long I sat there. I could swear I slept off when a knock at my door woke me up.
I opened it to find Mama Chinedu holding a small bowl. The aroma smelled like pepper soup. She had made pepper soup. She said she had made too much and didn't want it to go to waste. I knew she lied. The excuse was too thin and the smile on her face confirmed it. She had intentionally added my share but just wanted to be modest about it. Also, I could sense she knew something was wrong with me. I hadn't knocked on her door when I came in. She just had a way of knowing things without being told.
She pushed me aside and stepped in, set the bowl down, and looked me in the face without saying anything for a while. I locked the door and stood beside her with my hands crossed.
"Zee sit," she said finally. Like it was her apartment.
I sat obediently. She walked to my kitchen, came back with two tiny bowls, and served the pepper soup into the bowls and handed one to me. I took a sip, it was as always, delicious like I had known her cooking to be. Its warmth and spiciness alone gave me some comfort and soothing to my chest. I was really hungry.
"Talk or don't talk," she said, settling into the chair across from me. A bowl in her hands. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Talk what?" I feigned ignorance.
She paused and gave me a no-nonsense look.
I didn't plan to say anything. But something about the way she sat there, not hurrying, demanding but just completely present made my mouth release the words
"I'm tired Ma. Not the body kind of tired. The kind where you start to wonder if any of it is going anywhere. If you're going anywhere."
She listened. Nodding as each spoon of pepper soup entered her mouth. She didn't try to counter me with talks of her own problems. She just listened till I was done. Then she spoke.
"You know, when I was younger, I used to watch the buses that went to Lagos from my village. Each one that passed, I would say to myself one day I will be on one of those, going somewhere better." She paused. "I was dreaming too big for a little girl. But in life to dream big is allowed. It's not a crime against God, the universe, or mankind." She looked at me steadily. "I am in Lagos. I have my husband, I have my home, I have my business, I have my children, although most of them are not with me, but I have my Chinedu, and I have you and my life. It didn't look the way I imagined it at first. But I got somewhere. Because I didn't let myself or anybody talk me out of my own story." She pointed her spoon gently in my direction. Swallowed hard "Don't let life's noise make you forget what you wanted when everything was still quiet enough to want things."
I looked down at my pepper soup. My throat was tight. Mama Chinedu was at it again. A master at everything. I wondered why she didn't become a guidance counsellor.
We had the rest of the soup in silence. Watching 'Friends' a TV series we've come to fall in love with.
Three months later I got my admission letter to study abroad.
I remember sitting with it in my hands for a long time before it felt real. This was it. The outside I had been praying and wishing about at nine years old.
Maybe it isn't perfect yet. Maybe I was still going to deal with that cold stinging my bones. Maybe there are still going to be hard days and lonely evenings and moments where the distance from everyone I love feels very wide and makes me question myself. But when I think about the hectic Lagos I was leaving behind, the jumping on danfo buses, the endless exhaustion, the job that was consuming me faster than I was earning.
It might not be everything I dreamed of. But it is more than what I had. And sometimes more than what I had might be exactly where my dream begins and my wish comes to pass.
