Trigger Warning: This article contains sensitive topics, including physical assault and sexual abuse, which some readers may find distressing. Reader discretion is advised.
Meredith* (33) always knew she was different. What she never knew was that the journey toward understanding her sexuality would put her in danger more than once.
In this story, she reflects on the turning points that shaped her identity and the dangerous incidents that led her to embrace her sexuality.
This is Meredith’s story as told to Mofiyinfoluwa
It was a slow Saturday morning. My mother had gone to church, and my brothers were out. I was hungry but too tired to cook, so my mind went straight to Peace. We often cooked for each other. When I called and told her I was bored and hungry, she said I was lucky. She was at her aunty’s place near my house and had just made rice. If I didn’t want it to finish, I should come quickly. It was only a ten-minute walk, so I got dressed and left without thinking twice.
When I reached the spot she described, she came out with a tall, lanky man in a black hoodie, a red bandana pulled across his head. She introduced him as her cousin. I greeted them and noticed how her arm was looped tightly through his, and how her eyes kept darting around. I teased her about the 2go crush she’d been telling me about, but she quickly changed the topic. We walked together, talking about the universities we’d applied to, while the man stayed silent the entire time.
The road led us into a compound that looked nothing like the family house I’d imagined. It looked abandoned, like an old hotel. My steps slowed. I glanced around and realised there was no one nearby. I had barely begun to ask if this was really her aunty’s house when the man’s hand landed on my face.
My cheek stung. Before I could speak, he started shouting that I was the one spoiling girls in town, that I was a lesbian. I stared at him in confusion and turned to Peace. Tears streamed down her face. It took a few seconds to realise she had outed me.
He pulled a gun from his pocket and waved it in our direction. Any denial I had prepared died in my throat. He marched us inside the building that smelled of dust and old wood. Somewhere above us, screams echoed down the stairwell. My body began to shake. I stumbled through explanations, swearing I had never done more than hug a woman, grasping for anything that might save me.
***
As a child, I remember playing ‘daddy and mummy’ with the children on my street. Whenever the game needed a husband and a wife, and a boy chose me to be his wife, I would become upset and start to cry. But when it was only girls playing together, everything felt different. I loved the way we would cuddle and pretend to cook together. Those moments made me feel happy and safe in a way I couldn’t explain.
For a while, I assumed it was because I grew up with six brothers who were always trying to control me. I was closest to them, always borrowing their clothes and running around with them, so it made sense that being around girls felt refreshing. I thought that was all it was.
It took my first real kiss to make me realise it was deeper than that.
It happened in 2004, when I was twelve. I had just started secondary school and gone home for the holidays. That was when I met Vera. She was the daughter of a family friend, and because her parents had a program in the town we lived in, they left her to stay with us for two weeks.
One afternoon, we were playing hide and seek when she cornered me in a quiet part of the house and pressed her lips against mine. The kiss was brief but electric. I felt a tingling run through my body and stood there in shock, waiting to see her reaction. She simply continued the game as if nothing had happened. From that moment, it became a routine. She would kiss me whenever we were alone, and the moment she heard footsteps near the room, she would pull away and act normal.
I was too young to fully understand what was happening, but my body did. I started to develop a crush on her and look forward to the kisses. When the two weeks ended, and she left, it felt like a part of me was missing. I sulked around the house for days begging my mother to let me visit her, but she refused. I didn’t know how to explain the ache I felt.
Around that time, I also began to notice how people around me talked about same sex relationships. My brothers would make jokes about people being gay, and I’d watch them get offended. In church, the girls’ fellowship often prayed aggressively against “the spirit of lesbianism.”
I couldn’t connect any of this to myself until I was fourteen. I was running an errand when I saw a group of boys beating up a girl in the street. A small crowd stood by watching, not one person stepping in. I asked a passerby what she’d done, and he said she had tried to kiss another girl.
In that moment, I understood that whatever I felt for girls wasn’t just unusual where I came from — it was dangerous. So I tried to redirect myself toward boys, hoping it would fix whatever was wrong with me.
Later that year, I got close to Mike*, who liked walking with me around the area. I knew he had a crush on me, but our conversations felt like a chore. Still, I leaned into the friendship, desperate to prove to myself that I could be normal if I just tried hard enough. One evening, during one of our walks, I decided to test myself. I pushed him gently against a wall and kissed him. He kissed me back and started touching me. I let it happen for a moment, waiting to feel something. But there was nothing. It was flat compared to the tingling I’d felt with Vera. I pushed him away and walked home alone.
Around this period, I discovered 2go. It became my secret doorway to the world. I joined group chats about sexuality and found older people who spoke openly about liking the same sex. They answered my questions and shared their own stories of discovery. I realised that what I felt was not random or strange. They showed me that there were others like me.
I began to buy magazines and hide them under my clothes, searching for anything that explained what I was feeling. I snuck romance films that had same sex characters and read articles online. Over time, I accepted that I wanted more than harmless kisses. I wanted intimacy, closeness, a body that responded to mine. I couldn’t tell anyone in my physical life, so my online friends became the only people who knew the real me.
Through 2go, I met Peace in 2012. She was the only person in my town who felt anything like I did. Meeting her in person felt like breathing out after holding my lungs tight for years. By then, my brothers had already begun suspecting me. I behaved like a boy, had never dated one, and didn’t even bother pretending to like any they mentioned. Their questions came like accusations, and each time, I denied it fiercely. Being around Peace made me feel less alone. I even used her as an example when trying to convince my brothers that some girls were tomboys without any deeper meaning.
Over the year we spent as friends, Peace and I began to experiment with our curiosity. We kissed and cuddled, sometimes letting our hands wander. Each time it happened, my mind flashed back to a girl beaten in the street when I was fourteen, and I’d pull away in fear. I didn’t want that to become my story.
Eventually, we decided we were better off as friends. Peace leaned more into 2go and started talking to women from there. And a few months later, I found out what it meant to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
***
That Saturday morning, the man kicked Peace aside and signaled to one of the four rough-looking men in the room, who grabbed her and dragged her upstairs.
He turned back to me, ordered me to kneel, and snatched my phone from my hand. As he scrolled, he said he knew me from 2go. He called himself Snake* and claimed he’d messaged me before, but I’d ignored him. He called me proud and rude. I had no memory of ever seeing his name, but it didn’t matter. My life felt tied to whatever he decided, so I begged and lied that my brothers didn’t let me chat with men.
While Snake scrolled through my pictures, he paused on one, and his expression changed. He held up my phone and asked who I was with in the picture. When I told him it was my older brother, he burst into laughter and announced that I was Sparrow’s sister. Sparrow was my brother’s street name. Snake said he and my brother belonged to the same cult.
His attitude changed after that. He told me to stand up, walked me outside, and slung an arm around my shoulder like we were friends. He suddenly became an adviser, saying that I was too beautiful to like girls, and that men were the ones I was meant to enjoy. I nodded and played along, lying that a man had been asking me out and that I was tired of girls and ready to give him a chance.
After his little speech, he still liked me and wanted me as his girlfriend. We exchanged numbers. Then he said he would only let me go if he saw my naked body.
The request made my skin crawl, but I would have done anything to get out of there. He led me into a room and watched in silence as I undressed, his eyes following every movement. He told me to turn slowly, and I obeyed. When he was done, he pointed toward a smaller room and said I should dress up, then leave.
Peace was there, sitting on the floor in her underwear, rocking like a child. Her eyes went wide when she saw me. She started talking at once, saying they had caught her with another girl from 2go before I arrived and brought them here to be raped. When my call came in, they searched her chats and forced her to bring me too. Her words poured out in a rush, but I couldn’t absorb any of them. I wasn’t ready to feel pity for someone who had just led me into this.
When I ran out of the building, I could still hear screams coming from inside.
***
I blocked Snake and Peace and deleted 2go. The trauma felt like a heavy coat I couldn’t take off. Peace had been my only real-life friend, and now every memory of her was tied to the event I wanted to forget. For almost two years after that, I buried my sexuality and tried to pretend it didn’t exist.
Things changed when I met Chidera in 2014. She became my first real girlfriend, and to my surprise, the relationship was great. We still had to hide, but we were honest about our feelings and talked about our future together. But when she left for school in 2017, the distance pulled at us. Eventually, she told me she’d met a man and wanted to end things.
It shattered me in a way I didn’t expect. I started questioning everything again. Perhaps it was truly unnatural to like women, and social media had just influenced me. Those thoughts pushed me toward the idea of dating men, just to see if I could be “normal.”
There was an older man at the hotel where I worked as a waitress. He’d been showing interest in me, so I tried to let myself imagine being with him. We talked more and spent time together, but the day he asked me to be his girlfriend, I broke down crying. I told him I didn’t see him that way and confessed that I liked women but was terrified of what that meant for my life.
To my surprise, he handled it gently. He told me to stop forcing myself to like men and advised me to find happiness in a community where I felt understood. Around that time, Badoo was becoming popular, so I created an account.
One of my first matches was Anita*. We started talking regularly, and before long, I found myself falling for her. She posted pictures often, and I spent hours staring at them, thinking she looked so beautiful. We exchanged numbers and began talking on the phone. Anita was direct and confident in a way I had never encountered. She sent suggestive pictures, and I didn’t hesitate to send mine.
She wanted us to meet in person, but she lived in another town, and my job made it hard to travel. After about two months, I finally managed to get a day off. It was raining that morning, and she promised to make pepper soup. We spent the night before talking about how the day would go. I even bought her small gifts.
I told my mother I was going to see a friend and might sleep over if it got late. The town wasn’t far, so she agreed. When I arrived and called Anita, expecting her to be at the park like we’d planned, she said her mother had sent her on an errand. She said her brother would come to pick me up instead and described the junction where I should wait.
I called and texted for nearly two hours, but got no response. It was getting dark when a random man walked up and asked for my number. I snapped at him. I was cold, frustrated, and just wanted to meet Anita. When it started to drizzle, I gave up and began walking back toward the park.
While I was leaving, Anita finally called. She said her brother had been waiting at the junction and hadn’t seen me. Instead of going home as I should have, I turned back. She described him as wearing a black hoodie with a bandana on his forehead, and I spotted a man resting beside a tree. I waved at him.
But as he pushed off the tree and started walking toward me, every hair on my body rose.
The person coming toward me was Snake.
I could have run, but fear made my legs heavy. I remembered he had a gun that Saturday morning as he grabbed my arm. People were passing by, but it felt like the whole street had emptied, leaving just the two of us.
He grabbed my arm and said I hadn’t changed. He claimed he’d been using Anita all along, waiting for another chance to catch me, and that the way I reacted to the man he’d sent earlier proved everything. My tongue felt heavy. I just stared at him, unable to form a single word.
He held out his hand and demanded my phone, saying he wanted to delete his number since I’d ignored him. The moment I gave it to him, he turned and walked into a side street. I followed, begging him to return it. That was when he shoved me aside and ran. I screamed, and a few people joined me in chasing him, but he vanished into the streets. Eventually, I stopped. I was exhausted and shaking. All I could do was turn around and go home.
I cried the entire way home. When I got in, I told my mother and brothers that my phone had been stolen, leaving out everything else. By then, I was already shivering with fever from the shock. They believed I would not stop crying because I was ill, and ended up taking me to the hospital.
When I got a new SIM days later, I kept calling my old line. One afternoon, Snake finally picked up and said the phone had already been sold. I wanted to report him, but held back. If things escalated, my family could find out everything about my sexuality.
I cut my losses and moved on, but when I got a new phone and restored my WhatsApp, I was met with blackmail using the nude photos I’d shared with Anita. Snake demanded money if I didn’t want him to send the pictures to my brother.
First, I sent 40k, which was my entire salary. Later, he asked for 50k more, and I borrowed from my friends at work to send it. Still, he kept threatening to post the images. When he asked for 100k the third time, I told him to do whatever he wanted and blocked him.
For a long time after that, I held my breath, waiting for him to expose me, but he never did.
That second encounter with Snake became a turning point for me. After losing so much to secrecy and fear, I stopped caring as much about who knew I liked women. My family eventually found out a year later when the same brother went through my phone and saw messages between me and a woman. This time, I didn’t deny it. I told my brothers to accept me as I was.
As they pounced on me and my mother sobbed in a corner, I closed my eyes and thought of the girl I’d seen beaten in the street when I was fourteen. The difference was that, at that moment, I didn’t feel like the frightened child hiding in the crowd anymore.
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