Dear Hummingbird,
There was a time I believed my cousin was my sister. Back then, I would never have believed my cousin could hurt me.
We grew up in the same compound, ate from the same pot, and even slept on the same mattress when NEPA took light and heat chased us out of our rooms. My cousin knew everything about me: my first crush, my fears, even how I once took money from Mummy’s purse and cried for a week from guilt.
Then NYSC came. I was posted to Niger State, but I worked my posting to Abuja because of my cousin. She even insisted I stay with her, saying “houses are too expensive in Abuja.” It made sense. So I moved in.
To avoid being a burden, I used the money my parents gave me, ₦1.5 million, to furnish her apartment. We agreed to split the annual rent for the next year. She told me it was ₦2.5 million. It seemed fair. It was a room and parlour after all.
I regret moving in with my cousin.
It started small. She’d borrow my clothes and never return them. Take money from my purse without asking. I became the cook, the cleaner, and the one who always bought foodstuff. On the rare occasion she bought anything, she’d lock the fridge and say it was “by mistake.” I wanted to leave, but my parents begged me to manage until the year ended.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
She told my parents I kept late nights. That I sometimes didn’t come home and never informed her. All lies.
Around that time, I met someone at work—an older man. Tall, Soft-spoken and Kind. It wasn’t romantic. He treated me like a younger colleague, and often gave me a lift home since our street was on his route. I told her about him. She insisted she wanted to meet him, so I invited her on one of our team outings.
She smiled. Gushed about how nice he was. I believed I could trust her. But then, she started saying things like I was following a married man and that I was encouraging him. I told her he gave lifts to many of us, especially corpers, but she wouldn’t stop. She made it her hobby to remind me, “Don’t let married men destroy your destiny.”
At first, I laughed it off.
Then everything changed.
The man stopped talking to me. No more lifts. No greetings. Cold shoulder. One day, I confronted him. His response?
He said my cousin told him I was a homewrecker. That I chased only married men and was only staying with her because my family had disowned me.
Lies. Pure wickedness.
When I asked her why she said such things, she looked me dead in the eye and said,
“You sef, are you not used to disappointment by now?”
That word ‘disappointment ‘ stuck with me. It echoed louder than any insult I’d ever heard. Like that’s all I was meant to be.
She didn’t stop there. She told our extended family that I came to Abuja to chase after big men. The gossip caused serious problems between me and my parents. When I explained everything to them, they asked me to leave her house. She never apologized. In her twisted mind, she believes she did nothing wrong. Now, whenever we see, she acts like none of it happened. Like she was my saviour. Like it’s all a figment of my imagination.
My parents keep saying I should “forgive and forget.” But sometimes, I feel like using koboko to wipe sense into her brain.
So tell me:
How do I forgive someone who isn’t sorry, and who may never be?
Because the disappointment still lives in me.
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