Tension should not be the umbrella word for that jolt that reverberates through your bones and skin when you brush a live wire on a day IKEDC forgets to flick the switch off in your zone because it does more than reverberate; it constricts, twists, flings, kills if there’s no one around with a plank to whack you free of the copper. 

Countless other tensions—unseen but ever-present—coil around our necks like floats as we struggle to float. The worry lines stretching on Mum’s brows, each furrow a map to a different concern; scraping together school fees, putting food on the table, beating Iju Road’s daily traffic, balancing this tilted scale.

For Brother Mark, it’s the pressure he feels to succeed in a fiercely competitive job market; forcing him to change the 0 in his 1990 YOB to 8 and swear affidavits outside the High Court in Ikeja. Sister Franca doesn’t talk about hers, but I know it. She feels it in the questioning eyes that gaze at every educated but unmarried Nigerian young lady.

These tensions, unlike the electric shock—if  you survive—that fades with time, become a chronic state of being, like the refrigerator hum that persists even when the power goes out. It’s something I know kall too well, but, perhaps, not well enough. It’s like feeling both overdressed and underdressed at the same time.

Sometimes, it surfaces as a nagging voice that questions if this path—this career—that I have envisioned, along with the thousand other lawyers that are called to the Nigerian bar each year, is what I truly want. The problem is, this tension—this nagging voice—stays tucked away in a quiet corner of my mind until moments that truly matter.

Moments like when I’m about to stand before a sea of black-and-white-wearing gents and have my five minutes of fame. Or shame. But my mind fixates on the latter. Suddenly, I start to think of who is smiling at me, who isn’t, and why. Then, the thoughts drift to whether they are staring at my figure and judging whether it fills out my tight black skirt, wondering why my figure is the number 5 rather than the number 8. I’m cursing myself for choosing to wear the skirt today of all days, instead of the loose, pleated one that earns me a warm “Sister Amaka” from Sanisa whenever I walk into the faculty.

I manage to regain a semblance of control and wrestle my attention back to the present. The next thought that pops up is which one of the stern-faced men in black suits—the panel—will throw a question at me—a question that will throw me off the balance I’m managing to cling to, out the window, with the burglary proof flying out with me.

The absurdity of wondering why I’m the second person called when my surname starts with O makes a bitter laugh rise in my throat. My shaky legs carry me to the front of the hall, a silent plea escaping my lips for my worn-out soles to hold strong, to not give, to not have the last laugh. Not right now. At least. 

Every thought except the one I should be focusing on—my internship defence, which I spent all night rehearsing in front of the mirror, the wall, and even the mirror with my bedspread draped over it—floods my mind. But here I am, my mouth already blurting out where I interned and the fact that the experience was “more observational than participatory.” I see some heads nodding in agreement, but their faces remain a blur. Still, this tiny acknowledgement fuels a surge of confidence, and my feet feel a little more grounded on the linoleum.

But a new anxiety creeps in: the fear of my tongue twisting and betraying me with a grammatical blunder. This time, not before a handful of classmates, but the entire faculty, junior colleagues included. Relief washes over me as the words start flowing effortlessly, like a waterfall. I even manage to sprinkle in a few jokes, and, to my surprise, they laugh. 

As I conclude, I’m met with thunderous applause. I bow, attempting a discreet exit. But the Dean calls me back and asks a few more questions like, “Who was your assistant in the crowd that prompted you at some point when you forgot a word to use?”, and everyone is laughing because no one comes forward when he says he has a prize for the person. I start to wonder why he has a prize for the person, but not me. Then he asks everyone to give me another round of applause and I return to my seat, amid cheers. 

The weight is finally off my chest, the nagging voice silenced. But in its place is something more sinister: a  rewind-and-replay voice that compartmentalises every bit of my performance, though this one runs in the background like those data-draining apps on my phone.

I sit back and watch the others go out one by one, oozing every bit of tension I and the predecessor must have manifested, and I’m smiling, grateful for how quickly the cup passed from me to them. Then, I realise it’s the word I’ve been searching for:  the cup. The phrase, rather. It’s a bigger umbrella term  than tension. Tension is the wine bottle umbrella I carry around in my tote bag, but ‘the cup’ is the bigger umbrella; the type those POS operators you meet at every five-minute walking distance sit under, come rain or shine.

Blessing Obiahu is a literary enthusiast and law student at Alex Ekwueme Federal University in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Her work has been featured in the 2021 Nigerian Students’ Poetry Prize anthology, Black but Famous (now Kaassa), Loana Press, Challenging the Writers, and forthcoming in Anarchist Fictions Journal. She is also the founder of D’LitReview, a literary website, and works as an SEO content writer.