My ex turned my life into a non-stop deliverance service

By Peju Akande

The air inside the house always smelled of burnt onions and bleach, a sterile, sharp mixture he used to clean the floors every Saturday morning until the terrazzo gleamed like the surface of a fresh grave.

We live in a culture that treats endurance as a spiritual currency, especially for women, telling us that a man’s volatility is just a landscape we must learn to navigate with prayers and softer tones.

But there is a specific kind of emotional starvation that happens in modern relationships, the sort that doesn’t advertise itself with bruises but with the quiet, structural dismantling of your own sanity.

They do not tell you about the ledger. They do not tell you how a person can turn your entire existence into a debt you must constantly pay with apologies for things you never even thought of doing.

I decided to write this because yesterday, while making rice in my own kitchen, a grain slipped from the spoon and fell onto the clean floor. My shoulder blades instantly tightened, my lungs locking up as my brain braced for the explosion that never came.

When I was seven, my mother lost her wedding ring. It was a modest band, thin yellow gold that had grown dull from years of washing clothes with bar soap. She didn’t scream at us; instead, she sat on the edge of the iron bedstead and made my sister and me kneel on the cold cement for three hours, praying for the Holy Spirit to reveal the thief. I remember the exact texture of that floor against my kneecaps and the terrifying logic that formed in my young mind: if I prayed hard enough and confessed to taking it, even though I hadn’t, the pain would stop and my mother would love me again. I eventually told her I had dropped it down the pit latrine. She whipped me with a fan belt, but the kneeling was over. I learned early that a false confession buys you a predictable kind of peace.

Post-engagement

When I met him, he was an accountant for an engineering firm, meticulous and soft-spoken, the kind of man my aunties called “responsible”. But three months into our engagement, the perimeter began to shrink. The first time the ledger appeared, it was over a phone call. I had fallen asleep at 9pm after a 14-hour shift at the bank. I woke up to 42 missed calls.

When I reached his flat the next morning, he was sitting in the dark, the curtains drawn tight against the Lagos sun.

“I am sorry for sleeping early,” I said, the phrase tasting like iron in my mouth.

He didn’t look up from his laptop. “If you valued this family we are building, your body wouldn’t find rest while I am calling you.”

Within a year, the apology loop became my oxygen. It was a daily liturgy of submission. I found myself saying “I am sorry for not calling you back within three minutes”. “I am sorry for eating the leftovers you said I could have”. “I am sorry for not having an appetite when you cooked”. It was a psychological enclosure where every domestic action was a potential act of treason.

One evening, my younger sister came to visit and stayed in the guest room. She overheard him lecturing me until 3am because I had bought the wrong brand of washing powder. The next morning, by the well, she pulled my sleeve.

“Sister, this is not how people live,” she whispered, her eyes wide with the raw honesty only a younger sibling can manage. “He is breaking you.”

I pulled my arm away, my skin hot with shame. “You don’t understand him. He just cares about order. It’s my fault, I should have checked the receipt.”

Choosing tyrant

I chose the tyrant over my own blood because to admit she was right meant admitting I had built my temple on a swamp.

The final confrontation happened over a bowl of fried plantain. He claimed I had cut the pieces too thick, an intentional act of disrespect meant to mock his preference for thin, crispy rounds. He threw the plate against the wall. The grease left a dark, weeping stain on the white emulsion paint.

“Look at what you made me do,” he said, his voice entirely flat, devoid of anger, which made it infinitely worse.

I looked at the oil dripping down the wall, then down at my hands. They were shaking, but for the first time, the child inside me who wanted to confess to get off her knees stayed quiet.

“I didn’t make you throw the plate,” I said.

He stepped closer, his shadow blocking the kitchen light. “You are becoming stubborn. The spirit of rebellion is entering you.”

“I am leaving,” I said.

There were no tears, no dramatic packing of bags while music swelled. I walked out with my handbag and the shoes on my feet, leaving three years of furniture, a diamond-chip ring, and my dignity behind in that kitchen.

Three months after

I saw him three months ago at a wedding in Victoria Island. He looked smaller, his hair thinning at the crown, holding a plate of small chops while talking to a man in a native attire. He didn’t see me, or perhaps he chose not to. My heart didn’t race; my stomach didn’t drop. I felt a profound, hollow emptiness where my hatred used to live.

I do not forgive him. Forgiveness requires a mutual understanding of the injury, and he still believes he was simply a righteous man trying to correct an imperfect woman. But I no longer carry his ledger. My flat now is untidy sometimes. The onions burn occasionally. The silence is absolute, and I do not have to apologise to the walls for taking up space.

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