Title: UNSAID
Subtitle: A Story of Youth, Christ, and the Love We Don't Talk About
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Chapter One – The Mask
3. Chapter Two – The Breaking Point (Coming Soon)
4. Chapter Three – The Running
5. Chapter Four – The Encounter
6. Chapter Five – The Return
7. Chapter Six – The Light
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Introduction
They say youth is the best time of your life. But no one tells you how hard it gets.
No one tells you what it means to carry silent battles behind a perfect smile. Or how it feels to believe in God on Sunday, but still feel lost on Monday. No one warns you that the journey from girlhood to womanhood can come with trauma, confusion, guilt, and pain.
This story is for every young person who thought they had to have it all figured out.
For the girl who carries her family on her back. For the boy who feels forgotten. For the woman who grew up too fast. For the man who lost his way.
This is Jasmine's story.
But maybe, it's yours too.
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Chapter One
The Mask
At twenty, Jasmine knew how to wear silence like perfume. Not too loud. Not too obvious. Just enough to make people believe she was okay.
She smiled. Not because she was happy, but because people needed her to be. The world had enough brokenness — she didn't want to add hers to the pile.
She had become the definition of "strong," not because she wanted to be, but because she had no choice. Too many people were watching. Two, especially—her younger siblings.
Daniel, seventeen, was quiet but angry. His way of grieving was by pushing the world away. Peace, twelve, was still soft. Still hopeful. Still asking questions Jasmine didn't know how to answer.
Jasmine had seen too much to be soft anymore.
She lived with her mother and siblings in Paragon Estate, Abuja. Their flat wasn't big, but it was where survival happened. Two rooms. A kitchen that always smelled like pepper. And memories in the walls. The kind of memories that don't age — they haunt.
Their father was no longer in the picture. Not since that day, six years ago, when everything shattered. Jasmine didn't even remember what the fight started over. But she remembered how it ended.
She was fourteen. The shouting turned into throwing. Her father — a man who once preached like thunder on Sunday mornings — now shouted obscenities that echoed into her chest like broken glass.
That night, something in her snapped. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She just stood still, like a statue sculpted by pain.
After he left, things didn't get better. They got quieter — and silence, sometimes, is the loudest grief.
Her mother filled her days with work. Selling. Hustling. She didn't talk about what happened. Maybe she didn't know how. Maybe she thought surviving was enough.
Jasmine tried to fill in the gaps — cooking, cleaning, looking after Peace's schoolwork, talking Daniel out of fights. She played adult so well, some people thought she was one.
But at night, she curled into herself. Crying without sound. Screaming without voice. Begging a God she wasn't even sure still listened.
By fifteen, she had anxiety she couldn't name. Her chest tightened at random moments. Her thoughts spiraled into impossible fears. No one noticed.
At sixteen, she got good at pretending. Laughed at jokes that weren't funny. Nodded when people said, "You're such an inspiration."
She smiled. That was her superpower. Her curse.
Then came seventeen. The year her innocence died quietly.
He wasn't a bad guy. Just older. Just charming. Just… there.
Jasmine didn't fall in love. She fell into attention. Into comfort. Into warmth that looked like healing but tasted like shame.
She didn't tell anyone about the pregnancy. She didn't even tell herself. She walked around like nothing changed. Until it did.
The miscarriage was silent. Like most of her pain.
She sat on her bathroom floor, knees to chest, bleeding and breathing like a ghost of herself. She didn't call for help. She just stared at the tiled wall and waited to feel something.
But she didn't. Not anger. Not sadness. Just… emptiness.
And after that day, Jasmine built a wall.
She didn't let anyone in. Not even God.
She still went to church. Still sat in the fourth row. Still avoided eye contact during altar calls.
She didn't serve. Didn't volunteer. Didn't pray out loud.
She didn't hate God — she just didn't know if He remembered her.
That Sunday's sermon was about grace. The pastor's voice was passionate, but Jasmine's mind was elsewhere.
Grace? For who? For people like her?
When she got home, the house was still. Her mother at market. Peace at a friend's. Daniel probably avoiding reality with bad company.
She tossed her bag on the chair, kicked off her shoes, and collapsed on her bed. Her body sank into the mattress like a confession.
Her phone buzzed. Podcast notification:
"Grace Doesn't Quit — Apostle Jare."
She wasn't in the mood. But something in her — something bruised but breathing — clicked play.
"You are not disqualified. You are not forgotten. You are just tired. And even in your tiredness, God sees you."
Tears spilled before she realized they had started.
She had spent so long being the strong one. So long hiding her weakness. Her pain. Her confusion.
She wasn't broken because she sinned. She sinned because she was already broken.
She looked around her small, quiet room. The same room where she had prayed as a child. Where she had bled as a teenager. Where she now sat, twenty and terrified of herself.
Her voice cracked through the silence:
"God, if You're still here… I don't know what to do."
There was no flash of light. No divine hug. N
o sudden peace.
But the room didn't feel as heavy. And maybe, just maybe…
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Written by
Celine Ephraim