: The Journey Back
552 Words
Part VIII: The Journey Back
The decision to leave Lagos did not come with celebration. It came quietly, like most important things in Christiana’s life had begun.
That night, she couldn’t sleep.
She sat outside the stall longer than usual, watching the city move without caring who was leaving or staying. Lagos did not hold anyone back. It only replaced one story with another.
Inside her small bag was everything she owned.
It wasn’t much but it felt heavier than anything she had ever carried.
The woman who had given her work sat beside her before dawn.
“So you’re really going?” she asked.
Christiana nodded slowly. “I have to.”
The woman didn’t argue. She only looked at her for a moment, as if trying to remember her face.
“Many don’t get the chance to go back,” she said quietly. “Don’t waste yours.”
Those words stayed with Christiana as she boarded the bus that would take her away from Lagos.
The city did not look different as she left it. The noise was still there. The movement. The indifference. But for the first time, she was not being swallowed by it.
She was moving through it.
The journey home felt longer than the journey that brought her here. Not because of distance but because of everything she was now carrying inside her.
Memories she had avoided.
Choices she had made.
Versions of herself she was still trying to understand.
At some point during the trip, she pressed her forehead against the window. The world outside blurred into shapes and colors, but her thoughts stayed sharp.
What would home look like now?
Would they look at her differently?
Would they ask questions she couldn’t answer?
Or worse… would they say nothing at all?
When the bus finally stopped in her hometown, Christiana did not move immediately.
People got off around her, voices filled the air, but she remained seated for a few seconds longer just breathing.
Then she stepped down.
The ground felt familiar.
But she did not feel like the same girl who once stood here dreaming of escape.
She walked slowly through the streets she once knew too well. Some things had changed. Some had not. The world she left behind had continued without her but not without consequences.
When she finally reached her street, her steps slowed even more.
The house was still there.
Smaller than she remembered… or maybe she had just grown in ways she didn’t realize.
Her hand trembled before she even reached the gate.
And then it opened.
Her mother stood there.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
No words. No sound. Just the weight of everything that had happened between them standing in the space where distance used to live.
Then her mother stepped forward and pulled her into an embrace.
It was not dramatic. It was not perfect.
It was real.
Christiana broke down not loudly, not fully but enough for years of silence to finally start leaving her body.
Her mother held her tighter.
“You’re home,” she whispered.
And for the first time since this story began, Christiana believed it.
Not because everything was fixed.
But because she had returned.
And sometimes, returning is the hardest kind of survival.
Next page: part IX
- Writer
