Yomi was a childhood friend, now a licensed psychologist. They hadn't spoken in years until a chance meeting at a supermarket rekindled their connection. When Emeka finally visited Yomi's office, it wasn't with the intention of opening up. He just needed "advice."
Yomi didn't push. He just listened.
And slowly, Emeka began to speak.
At first, it was surface-level complaints—stress at work, parenting challenges. But the way Yomi nodded and never interrupted created a crack in Emeka's fortress. Then, in a fragile whisper, the truth came out.
"I think... I think I'm not okay, Yomi."
The silence that followed was different. Not the cold silence of Ijeoma's punishment, but a warm, open space. Yomi said, "You don't have to carry everything alone, Emeka."
Something inside Emeka quivered at those words. Carrying things alone had become second nature. Who else could he lean on? His father? Impossible. His male colleagues? They'd laugh. The church? They'd pray it away.
"I can't breathe sometimes," Emeka said. His voice cracked. "At night, I just... stare at the ceiling. I feel like I'm failing at being a man."
Yomi leaned forward. "What does being a man mean to you?"
Emeka paused. He had never been asked that. All his life, manhood had been defined for him. It meant enduring. It meant not crying. It meant putting others first. It meant dying in silence if you had to. But now, that definition felt like a shackle.
"I don't know," Emeka replied. "Maybe... maybe not this. Maybe not dying inside and calling it strength."
That day, for the first time, Emeka wept without shame. The tears weren't loud, but they were honest. They washed away a layer of pretense, revealing a rawness he didn't recognize—but needed to meet.
Yomi gave him tissues but not pity. They talked for an hour. Then two. Yomi explained trauma, emotional abuse, and generational silence. He helped Emeka name his pain—and that naming became a kind of power.
Before leaving, Yomi said something that would stick with Emeka for days: "Softness is not the absence of strength. It's the courage to feel when the world says don't."
That night, Emeka didn't sleep peacefully. But he didn't stare at the ceiling either. He wrote in a journal. He wrote pages. And for the first time in a long time, he began to feel real.