The Fall

The morning sun streamed through the windows of the dining hall, casting pale yellow light across the long wooden tables. After breakfast, we went to our classes as we always did

the same routine, the same walls, the same hollow existence that had become my life.

That whole day, I was not myself. No, that would be too kind a description. I was a ghost wearing my own skin, a stranger inhabiting a body that felt increasingly foreign with each passing hour. My mind wandered through dark corridors of thought, and the urge that insatiable, gnawing hunger grew stronger with every tick of the clock. It whispered to me during mathematics, during literature, during the silent moments between lectures. Just a little more. Just one more time. You need it. You can't survive without it.

I sat in my classes, staring at the chalkboard without seeing a single equation. My teachers' voices faded into meaningless murmurs, like distant radio static. All I could think about was the next hit, the next escape, the next moment when the weight on my chest would temporarily lift.

How would I stop it?

The question echoed in my mind, but I already knew the answer. I couldn't. I had lost my salvation that precious, fleeting peace I had found when I gave my life to Christ. I remembered feeling the warmth of forgiveness wash over me like a gentle rain. Now that rain had turned to ash, and I was parched in a desert of my own making.

I've lost myself.

The thought was crushing. Where was the boy who used to laugh? Where was the child who brought joy to his mother's face? Where was Simonthe real Simon before the drugs, before the lies, before the slow unraveling of everything good?

My grades had plummeted. I used to be among the top students in my class, but now my report card read like a tragedy. Failure after failure, disappointment after disappointment. Each red mark on that paper was a scar I couldn't show anyone.

So what exactly was the use of taking those substances?

I saw a thousand reasons to stop a thousand threads of logic pulling me toward sanity. My health, my future, my mother's trust, my friends' concern, my relationship with God. But none of them were strong enough to break the chains. The urge wouldn't let me go. It wrapped itself around my throat and squeezed harder with each passing moment.

It kept getting stronger and stronger.

---

That night, after prep, I still went with the gang. The familiar path to the abandoned building behind the dormitories felt like a gravitational pull, one I had no power to resist. My feet carried me there even as my heart screamed in protest.

I took everything again.

The needle. The smoke. The chemical oblivion that promised relief but delivered only more emptiness.

With guilt in my heart it was very heavy I watched myself from somewhere far away. It was like watching a stranger destroy himself, powerless to intervene. The part of me that knew better had been silenced long ago. Now there was only the hunger, the craving, the desperate need to feel anything other than the suffocating weight of my own existence.

I just couldn't stop. I couldn't restrain myself.

Each time I injected or inhaled, I promised myself it would be the last. And each time, I broke that promise within hours. The cycle was relentless, and I was trapped in its grip like a fly in a spider's web.

I continued like that, day after day, week after week. I avoided Bethel and Ayomide as usual. Every time I saw them coming, I would duck into a classroom or take a different path. Their kindness was a mirror that reflected my shame, and I couldn't bear to look at my own reflection.

Bethel would try to catch my eye during chapel, her expression a mixture of confusion and hurt. Ayomide would linger near my desk after classes, waiting for me to speak. I always pretended I didn't see them.

The guilt was suffocating, but it was easier than facing their disappointment.

---

The term ended. Finally. Time seemed to stretch and contract in strange ways these days, but somehow the weeks had passed.

My mother didn't come to pick me up herself. She sent someone—a driver I had never met before, a middle-aged man with tired eyes who said nothing as he loaded my bags into the trunk of the car.

She didn't come.

The thought stung more than I wanted to admit. She was always working, always busy. It was easier for her to send someone, to delegate the task of retrieving her troubled son.

When we got home, Mum was there. She was eager to see me her face lit up the moment I walked through the door, and she rushed forward to embrace me. I let her hold me, but my arms hung limp at my sides, too heavy to lift.

"I've missed you so much, Simon," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "Let me look at you."

She pulled back and studied my face, searching for the son she remembered. But I had become a master of hiding, of wearing masks. I smiled the right smile, the practiced smile and she seemed satisfied.

She was too happy to see me. She didn't notice I was different.

Or maybe she did notice, and she simply didn't want to see the truth. Maybe the deception was mutual.

Maybe I was the only one who knew.

The man who brought me went back, and I was left alone with Mum. The house felt smaller than I remembered, the walls pressing in from all sides. Everything looked the same

 the same furniture, the same photographs, the same carefully curated illusion of normalcy. But everything had changed.

She told me to take a bath and settle in, and that we would eat together. I did as I was told, moving through the motions like a puppet on strings. The hot water didn't wash away the dirt I felt deep inside my soul. The clean clothes didn't hide the stains that no one else could see.

At the table, my mother kept asking questions, her voice bright with forced cheerfulness. "How was school? Are you studying hard? Is Mr. Alex watching you well?"

"Yes, Ma," I said. "Fine. Okay. Yes."

I gave her the answers she wanted, the ones that would make her stop asking. But they came out flat, lifeless words stripped of any meaning.

"Simon, what is going on?" she asked finally, her brow furrowed with concern. "You're so withdrawn."

"It's nothing. I'm just tired," I said. The excuse was flimsy, but I clung to it like a shield.

She paused, and I could feel her eyes boring into me. For a moment, I thought she would push further. But then she sighed and said, "We should eat, and you should go to your room to rest."

I nodded and picked up my fork, forcing myself to eat. The food tasted like cardboard.

---

On my bed, in the silence of my room, the weight of everything I had done came crashing down on me.

I'm just eleven. I'll be twelve next week.

The thought was staggering. I wasn't even a teenager yet, and I was already deep into drugs. What twelve-year-old should know what heroin felt like? What eleven-year-old should be able to identify the difference between a good high and a bad one?

I thought of Bethel and Ayomide how they were always bubbly, always happy. They laughed freely, their joy untainted by the darkness that had consumed me. I used to be like that. I used to see the world through bright eyes, full of hope and possibility.

Now all I saw was gray.

I remembered the peace I had felt when I got born again—that overwhelming sense of forgiveness, of being washed clean, of starting over. It had been so real, so tangible. I had felt God's presence like a warm embrace, had known without a doubt that I was loved and accepted.

And I've lost everything.

The tears came then, silent and hot against my cheeks. I pressed my face into my pillow to muffle the sound, to hide the evidence of my brokenness. No one could know. No one could see the wreckage I had become.

How did I get here? I asked myself, but the answer was already there. One bad choice. Then another. Then another. A slow slide that had felt like a free fall.

I don't remember falling asleep. I only remember waking up with dried tears on my face and the weight of despair still pressing on my chest.

---

During the holiday, Mum gave me an allowance. She was barely homealways at work, always on the phone, always too busy to notice what was happening right in front of her. She would come home late, collapse into bed, and leave early the next morning. Sometimes I wondered if she even remembered I was there.

She barely paid attention.

So I used the money to get drugs from those guys Tanko had introduced me to. 

The money didn't last long. It never did.

I told myself I would stop when the holiday was over. I told myself I would go back to school and be different, be better. But the holiday ended faster than I imagined, and I was still the same broken boy clutching the same broken habits.

Mum took me back to school, kissed my forehead, and drove away without a backward glance.

---

The circle continued.

It got worse.

My garden—the place inside me where goodness used to grow—became very, very bad. Weeds overtook everything: lies, secrets, shame, guilt. The flowers of hope and faith withered and died.

I was no longer me. I had lost myself completely.

I started running from activities in school. I would miss chapel because I couldn't bear the hypocrite's seat. I would skip classes because sitting still made me antsy, made the cravings scream louder. I avoided everything that required participation, everything that demanded that I show up as myself.

When Mr. Alex found out I was hanging around with the seniors, I didn't care. He looked at me with disappointment in his eyes, but he never did anything. He seemed afraid of them, and I used that fear as a shield.

If he won't save me, why should I save myself?

Ayomide and Bethel never ceased to talk to me about my behavior. Every chance they got, they would approach me with concerned eyes and gentle voices, trying to pull me back from the edge.

"Simon, we're worried about you," Bethel said one afternoon, touching my arm.

"Come to chapel tomorrow. Please," Ayomide pleaded. "It'll be different. Just try."

Out of guilt—crushing, unbearable guilt—I asked for my room to be switched. I thought if I could get away from Ayomide, I could escape his constant preachings. I could sink into my misery without anyone trying to rescue me.

But Ayomide never backed down. He found me in the corridors, in the dining hall, even in the bathroom. "God loves you, Simon," he would whisper. "He hasn't given up on you. You can still come back."

His words burrowed under my skin like splinters, causing pain I couldn't ignore.

Each time I went home for holidays with my results, Mum got more and more disappointed. The numbers were worse than ever—the marks, the comments, the teachers' notes about my behavior. She would sigh, shake her head, and say, "Simon, what's happening to you?"

I would shrug and offer excuses. "It's hard. I'm trying."

But we both knew I was lying.

---

I continued like that until I got to SS1.

The seniors who had introduced me to the other substances graduated and left me behind. I was alone in my habit now, no more mentors to guide my destruction. But I was already used to it. The addiction had become a part of me, woven into my DNA, inseparable from who I had become.

I forgot to mention—I went there on visiting days too. Not because I had anyone to see, but because Mum never came. She just sent money to Mr. Alex to buy what I needed. She showed up in checks and transfers, in letters and packages, but never in person.

So I didn't bother going to the visiting ground.

Instead, I hid in my usual spot—the abandoned building behind the dormitories, the place where I had taken my first hit, the place where I had lost everything that mattered.

---

Then, on one of those visiting days, everything changed.

I sat in my usual corner, the familiar smoke curling around my face. The drug hit my system, and I felt the familiar numbness spread through my limbs. My eyes were half-closed, my mind drifting in that hazy space between consciousness and oblivion.

Then I raised my head.

The first person I saw was my mother.

Mum.

Her face was frozen in shock, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide with disbelief. For a moment, we just stared at each other—mother and son, connected by blood and separated by so much more.

"SIMON!!!!!" she screamed.

My heart pounded heavily in my chest, a trapped bird beating against its cage. The world seemed to tilt, the walls closing in. I scrambled to hide the evidence, to cover my tracks, but it was too late.

She was with a teacher and Ayomide.

Of course. Of course Ayomide was there.

It turned out my mother had come to visit me that day. She had actually come—for the first time in years, she had shown up in person. And when she couldn't find me, when everyone looked for me and couldn't find me, the teacher had approached Ayomide.

"Since he's your classmate," the teacher had said, "do you have any idea where he might be?"

Ayomide had hesitated, his expression conflicted. He knew the truth. He knew my hiding spots, my secrets, my shame. And in that moment, he had made a choice.

"I might know," he had said.

And he had brought them straight to me.

---

Everything happened fast after that.

I was in the principal's office, trembling like a leaf in a storm. Mr. Alex was fired—I could hear him shouting in the hallway, protesting his innocence, demanding to know how this could happen to him. But no one listened.

I was expelled.

My things were packed into bags, my school life reduced to a few boxes of belongings. The principal's face was cold, his words final. "We cannot have this kind of behavior in our institution," he said. "You are a danger to yourself and to others."

The drive home was silent.

Mum didn't say a word all through the drive. The car hummed with mechanical emptiness, the only sound the wind rushing past the windows. She stared straight ahead, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

I couldn't talk either. What was there to say? How could I explain something I didn't understand myself?

How had I let it get this far?

The question echoed in my mind, unanswered and unanswerable. My mother's silence was louder than any accusation. Her disappointment was a physical presence in the car, suffocating and heavy.

I looked out the window, watching the familiar landmarks pass by. The school, the town, the road that led home.

Home.

I wasn't sure I deserved to call it that anymore.

---

To be continued...