I Watched My Best Friend Open Her Boutique While I Was Still Stuck in My Father's House. I Could Not Clap.

This was last year, during harmattan. I am 31, living with my father in Warri, still waiting for life to start. My best friend since secondary school, Bola, opened a boutique in Effurun. Big grand opening, red carpet, tiffany chairs, the whole works. I was there. I wore my best Ankara. I smiled for pictures. But inside? Omo, I was rotting.

Bola and I started together after university. Same struggle, same prayer points. But her mother sold her shop to raise capital for her. My mother died when I was 17, so no mother to sell shop for me. Bola's uncle connected her to a supplier in Cotonou. My father tells me to pray and wait on God. Bola's boyfriend helped her get a POS business that grew into this. I have no boyfriend, just a married man who sends me 10k every two weeks and calls it love.

On the day of the opening, I stood by the rack of lace blouses and I felt something I cannot even describe. It was not happiness. It was not sadness. It was this heavy thing in my chest that made my hands shake. I hugged her and said, "I am so proud of you." But my mouth was lying. My heart was asking, "Why her? Why not me?"

That night, I lay on my foam in my father's parlour and I cried. Not because I was happy for her. Because I realised I had been measuring my life against hers for years. And I was losing. The worst part? She has no idea. She still calls me her sister. She still tells me her business secrets. And I still smile and listen, while inside I am counting all the ways God forgot me.

I am not proud of this. But I am tired of pretending. Envy is real. It lives in the same house as love. Sometimes you do not know which one is winning until someone else's blessing becomes your burden.