Dami was the only man I had ever fucked since I became a woman.
I don't say that with pride, or shame—just a quiet knowing. Like remembering where a scar came from. It wasn't about the sex, not really. It was about what he awakened in me. How he touched parts of me no one else even knew existed.
With Dami, I wasn't just a body. I was fire. I was softness. I was ache and light, all at once. He made me feel like I wasn't made to be used or discarded. I was made to be wanted.
The first time we touched, I trembled. Not from fear, but from being seen. Fully. His hands moved with a reverence that almost felt holy. And when we finally made love, it wasn't just an act. It was a reclaiming. Of my body. My pleasure. My right to feel whole.
He was the first. And for a long time, I thought he'd be the last.
I met Dami in 2017, just after secondary school. I was working at a small boutique downtown—my first job, still figuring out who I was without a school uniform and a rigid timetable. Dami walked in like a breeze—tall, dark-skinned, wearing a black hoodie and jeans, his confidence stitched into every step.
He wasn't even there to shop. He said he was looking for his friend, the store owner. But when our eyes met, something shifted. I looked away first. That never happened.
He came back the next day.
"You're the quiet type, huh?" he asked, leaning on the glass counter like we'd known each other forever.
"Only around strangers," I replied.
"Then I guess I'll just have to stop being one."
We talked every day after that. Throughout 2018. Messages. Late-night calls. I wasn't ready for a relationship then, and he said he understood. He never pressured me. Not at first.
In 2019, he asked me out officially. By then, I was already in deep. He had become the voice I searched for in a crowd, the name that lit up my phone and made my heart skip. I gave love a chance.
I was a virgin when I met him. He knew. He told me I was the kind of woman he wanted to marry. "You're not like the others," he whispered. "You're the kind you build a home with." I believed him.
And then we had sex.
Everything changed after that.
The gentle teasing turned to harsh tones. The patience to suspicion. He raised his voice more. First during arguments. Then over little things—me replying late, wearing certain clothes, laughing too loud on a call.
But I stayed.
Because I'd fallen in love with the version of him I met first. And when you love someone before the monster shows, it becomes harder to leave.
That night, in my campus room, he slapped me.
I hadn't seen it coming. One minute, we were arguing over a harmless message from a classmate asking about an assignment. The next, I was holding my cheek, blinking back shock more than pain.
Dami paced the room, muttering under his breath. "You think I don't see the way guys look at you?" he spat. "Do you think I'm stupid?"
I didn't answer.
Not because I didn't have words. But because I had learned that silence was safer than truth.
"I do everything for you," he continued. "I help with your school stuff, make sure no guy messes with you, and this is how you repay me?"
I stared at my cracked phone screen. The message from my classmate was still there. Simple. Harmless. "Did you understand question three?"
I used to be the girl who never tolerated disrespect. Who valued peace over love. Who would've walked away the moment someone made her feel small.
But Dami stripped that girl away from me—slowly. Softly. Like peeling away petals until nothing was left but the stem.
Later that night, after he stormed out, I curled up on the bed and hugged my pillow. I didn't cry. I didn't rage.
I just felt empty.
Because the slap wasn't the beginning. It was the final confirmation of what I had been denying for too long. That he'd been hurting me in ways I couldn't see—emotional lashes that left no bruises but deep, aching wounds.
I had made excuses for his anger. Told myself he was just stressed. That he was afraid to lose me. That his jealousy meant he cared.
I wore silence like armor, thinking it made me strong. But all it did was make me invisible.
I was scared.
Scared to start over. Scared that maybe this was the best I'd ever get. That no one else would want a girl like me—bruised by love, stained by loyalty.
So I stayed.
Even when the slap turned to a shove.
Even when the apologies stopped sounding like regret and started sounding like obligations.
Even when I no longer recognized myself in the mirror.
People think abuse is loud. That it looks like broken glass and screaming matches. But it's the silence that cuts deeper—the way your voice disappears, how your laughter turns cautious, how you flinch when the phone rings.
I stopped replying to male classmates. Stopped wearing anything that showed too much skin. I stopped laughing too freely, just in case he thought I was enjoying something without him.
I stopped being me.
And every time I tried to breathe, he reminded me—he was the only one who would love me like this. The only one who could handle me. The only one who truly cared.
And I believed him.
That night, I didn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling, counting regrets like stars. I thought about the girl I used to be. The one who dreamed of soft love. Of safety. Of joy.
She wouldn't recognize me now.
But maybe… she didn't have to stay gone.
Maybe love wasn't supposed to feel like walking on glass.
Maybe I could still leave.
I didn't know how. Or when.
But something inside me shifted.
And once the heart starts asking questions, it can never go back to silence.