By Akinsola Ayomide
Chidi sat at his desk, his eyes blurring over a photocopied handout on advanced macroeconomics. The irony wasn’t lost on him: he was studying macroeconomics while his microeconomics were in a state of absolute depression.
Outside, the corridor was alive with the chaotic symphony of a Sunday evening; someone was blasting Burna Boy from a Bluetooth speaker, while down the hall, a heated debate about the World Cup was escalating into shouting.
Then, the trifecta of his impending collapse arrived in a series of digital pings.
First, his phone buzzed on the wooden desk. MUM calling. He swiped up and pressed the phone to his ear, stepping out onto the balcony to escape the room’s noise. “Chidi, good evening,” his mother’s voice came through, thin and laced with a familiarity of sorrow that Chidi had learned to decode over the past year. “The doctor came by this afternoon. We had to buy the new prescription. Your father is resting now, but… Chidi, the money your uncle promised hasn’t come. And your sister’s WAEC fees are due by Friday.”
Chidi felt a sudden, sharp tightness in his chest. “I hear you, Ma. Don’t worry. I will look for something. I’ll call a few people.” “Thank you, my son,” she sighed. “You know how things are since your father fell ill. You are the man of the house now, Chidi. Everyone is looking up to you.”
Following that the line went dead, leaving the phrase “man of the house” hanging in the air like a death sentence. He was twenty-one years old. He wore a faded UI t-shirt, his slippers were taped at the sole, and he was currently skipping lunch to afford dinner. Yet, he was a pillar for a house? Okay.
Before he could even process the weight, a second notification popped up. It was from Tolani, his department mate and the lead designer for a tech agency off-campus. “Chidi, where is the copy for the fintech client? The deadline was 5:00 PM. If you mess this up, the client pulls out, and I can’t pay you the 20k retainer for this month. Fix up, bro.”
At that moment, Chidi’s stomach did a sickening flip. The 20k retainer was his feeding money. It was his sister’s exam money. He had stayed up until 3:00 AM working on it, but his laptop battery had died because the hostel hadn’t had light for thirty-six hours. He was literally running out of power, emotionally and electrically.
Then came the third blow: a WhatsApp message from Tolani (not the designer, but his Tolani, his girlfriend of two years).
“Chidi, I’m at the Love Garden. You said we’d talk tonight. You’ve been emotionally distant for weeks. If you’re tired of us, just tell me. Don’t keep me in the dark.”
He was caught in a brutal game of emotional tetris, trying to fit pieces of himself into slots that were shrinking by the minute. He had to be the Saviour for his mother, the Professional for his client, and the Lover for his girlfriend. All the while trying to provide, perform, and protect, while being completely hollowed out.
He rushed down the stairs, his mind a furious calculator. X plus Y minus rent equals survival. Input effort, output stability. But what happens when the system overloads? He found Tolani sitting on a concrete bench near Trenchard Hall, the evening sun casting long, golden shadows through the mahogany trees. She looked beautiful, but her expression was guarded, her arms crossed like a barrier.
“You’re late,” she said softly as he sat down.
“I’m sorry. I was… I had a lot on my mind.”
“You always have a lot on your mind, Chidi. But you never let me in. It’s like I’m dating a statue. You laugh when your friends are around, but when it’s just us, you’re a ghost. You’re physically here, but you’re emotionally absent. I can’t love a man who treats his vulnerability like a crime.”
Chidi looked at his hands, blistered from carrying buckets of water up three floors of the hostel. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to say: My father is dying, my mother is breaking, my laptop is dead, and I am twenty thousand Naira away from watching my sister’s future stall.
But the conditioning was too deep. Man up. Men don’t dump their trash on the women they love; men build a landfill in their own hearts and bury it.
“I’m just stressed with school, Tolani. We move. It’s fine.”
“Stop saying ‘we move’!” she snapped, her voice cracking. “Where are we moving to?
You’re drowning, Chidi, and you’re acting like it’s just a splash. I don’t need you to be a superhero. I just need you to be human.” Right then, his phone vibrated violently in his pocket. It was a call from the fintech client. At the same moment, a text from his mother flashed on his lock screen: “Any update, my son?”
The synchronisation of the demands was the final straw. The circus act was over. The juggler had dropped the chainsaws.
A sound escaped Chidi’s throat, not a sob, but a raw, broken laugh that morphed into a gasp for air. The sheer velocity of the pressure collapsed his lungs. He stood up abruptly, backing away from Tolani.
“Chidi?” Her anger instantly melted into alarm.
“I can’t,” he choked out, his chest heaving violently. “I can’t fix the house. I can’t fix the copy. I can’t fix us. I am trying to hold up the sky, Tolani, but I don’t even have a floor to stand on!”
The tears came then, not as a gentle stream, but as a violent, ugly dam break. He literally collapsed to his knees on the grass, his hands clutching his head as the panic attack tore through him. The hyper-ventilation made the UI campus spin into a blur of green and grey. For months, he had been bottling the storm, and now, the glass had shattered.
Tolani dropped to the grass beside him, wrapping her arms around his shaking shoulders, pulling his heavy head onto her lap. “I’m sorry,” he wept, the words tasting like shame. “I’m sorry. I’m not man enough for all of this. I can’t do it.”
“Shh,” she whispered, her own tears wetting his hair. “You don’t have to be the man of the house right now. Just breathe.”
He lay there on the damp earth, his body spent, the armour entirely gone. The problems hadn’t vanished, the WAEC fees were still due, the client was still waiting, and his father was still sick. But as his breathing slowly stabilised, he realised something profound.
The phrase “man up” was a trap. It didn’t mean being made of stone; it meant being a monument to your own suffering. True strength wasn’t about carrying the weight until your bones broke in silence; it was about having the courage to drop the burden, look at the people who loved you, and admit that it was too heavy to carry alone.
The script of masculinity, written long before he was born, overrode his tongue. He swallowed, smoothed the expression on his face until it was as blank and unreadable as Trenchard Hall’s stone walls, and forced a casual shrug.
A sudden, sharp breeze swept through the courtyard, rustling the mahogany leaves overhead.
Chidi blinked.
The damp earth beneath his knees vanished. The warmth of Tolani’s arms around his shoulders evaporated into thin air. He was still sitting on the concrete bench, his spine rigid, his fingers clamped so tightly around his phone that his knuckles were stark white.
The grass in front of him was untouched. His chest was heavy, but his breathing was flat. The entire breakdown, the confession, her embrace, it had all occurred within the frantic, claustrophobic theatre of his own mind. A five-second simulation of absolute ruin that he could never allow to see the light of day.
“Chidi?” Tolani’s voice broke through the silence, sharp and demanding an answer. “Are you even listening to me? I said I just need you to be human.”
He looked up at her. The script of masculinity, written long before he was born, overrode his tongue. He swallowed, smoothed the expression on his face until it was as blank and unreadable as Trenchard Hall’s stone walls, and forced a casual shrug.
“I’m listening,” Chidi said. His voice was terrifyingly steady, a masterpiece of emotional forgery. “As I said, I’m just stressed with school, Tolani. We move. It’s fine.”
She stared at him, her eyes tracing the flawless mask he wore. She looked for a crack, a leak, a solitary tear, anything she could hold onto. But there was nothing. The concrete structure of the “man of the house” held firm.
Tolani let out a long, exhausted breath, the finality of it cutting deeper than any argument. She stood up, pulling her bag over her shoulder.
“Okay, Chidi. ‘We move.’ Let me know when you finally arrive where you’re going.”
He watched her walk away, her figure shrinking against the backdrop of the Love Garden until she disappeared. He didn’t call after her. He didn’t move an inch to stop her. To pull her back would mean explaining why she was leaving, and explanation required vulnerability; a currency he could not afford to spend.
The phone vibrated in his palm again, a relentless, aggressive rhythm. The fintech client was calling back. Below the incoming call, his mother’s unanswered text message still glowed on the lock screen. Chidi adjusted the collar of his faded UI t-shirt, cleared the tightness from his throat, and swiped up to answer the call. “Good evening, sir,” Chidi said, his voice instantly bright, offering a practised, professional smile to the empty shadows beneath the trees. “Yes, I’m so sorry about the delay. Network issues. The copy is ready, I am sending it to your email right now.”
Editor Note: This is part of the UCJ series on creative pieces for Men Mental Health Month
