Mobola Johnson
I broke down in the bathroom stall at work.
Silent, shaky, careful not to make a sound. That morning, Bako had humiliated me again—this time in front of a new client. He’d flipped the script mid-presentation, told the client I’d “misunderstood the brief,” and offered to “clean it up later.”
I felt like furniture. Present but voiceless.
I went through the motions the rest of the day, smiled when I needed to, nodded when expected. But by 6:00 p.m., I was drained.
I didn’t cry in the Uber home. Not until I walked into Obi’s apartment.
He looked up from his laptop, and the moment he saw my face, he shut it. “Talk to me,” he said.
And I did. For the first time, I let it all out—about Bako, the theft, the comments, the constant shrinking of who I was.
“I feel like I’m disappearing,” I said.
Obi pulled me close. “You’re not. He’s threatened. You’re brilliant, and he knows it. But if you keep shrinking to fit, you’ll forget how big you actually are.”
His words stayed with me all weekend.
Obi wasn’t just a boyfriend—he was my reset button. He reminded me who I was, before the office politics, before the fake smiles.
Sunday night, as we sat watching an old comedy and I laughed for the first time in days, he looked at me and said, “Whatever you decide, don’t let them change you. Outshine, but don’t out-hate.”
It didn’t fix everything. But it gave me the strength to walk into Brandfair Monday morning with my head up.
They hadn’t broken me.
Not yet.
Mobola Johnson is a creative writer and a master storyteller