Emeka learned early that vulnerability was weakness. His father was a retired army colonel who ruled the house like a barracks. "If you ever cry, I will give you something to cry about," he'd thunder. The words weren't threats. They were laws. And Emeka obeyed. He buried his emotions deep, locking them away where no one could find them—not even himself.
His father believed discipline was the measure of manhood. If Emeka fell and scraped his knee, he was told to walk it off. If he expressed fear, he was told to grow up. Any form of softness was shamed, not corrected. He never learned the language of emotional expression; he only learned suppression.
By adolescence, Emeka had already built an impenetrable fortress inside himself—a place where sadness, fear, and confusion were exiled. He became stoic, even robotic. Friends admired his cool demeanor during stressful moments, unaware that beneath it lay a chasm of unexpressed grief.
At work, he was known as dependable and composed. Even when deadlines piled and clients lashed out, he kept his calm. People praised his resilience, but no one saw the toll it took. His mental muscles were exhausted from the constant performance of indifference.
He avoided friendships. Brotherhood, he had learned, was performative—about football, women, money. Never about pain. Men only talked about "real" things when drunk, and even then, only as jokes. No one ever said, "I'm hurting." They said, "Na so life be." No one cried. They drank.
The cost of emotional silence was heavy. Emeka began to feel like an intruder in his own life, detached and floating. The more he kept quiet, the more invisible he became—even to himself. Conversations felt shallow. Achievements felt hollow. He had become a ghost wearing the skin of a successful man.