I Paid a Man in Port Harcourt to Break My Nose. I Still Do Not Regret It.

This was back in 2022. I was 27, working as a receptionist at a hotel in Port Harcourt, and I had hated my face since secondary school. Not my face , my nose. Flat, wide, the kind my mother said was our family nose, the kind boys called village nose. I had saved for two years, 180,000 naira, for a rhinoplasty. But the doctor I found was not a real doctor.

He called himself Dr. Tony. Small clinic behind Mile One. No license, no nurses, just him and a rusty table. I lay down, he injected something into my nose , I don't know what , then he took a metal rod and pushed. I heard the crack. Blood poured like someone opened a tap. He packed my nostrils with cotton, told me to come back in a week. The swelling was so bad I told my mother I had fallen down stairs. She believed me because I had always been clumsy.

Omo, the shape came out wrong. One side higher than the other, a bump in the middle. I looked worse than before. I spent another 80,000 naira on a proper doctor in Lagos who fixed it the best he could. Now my nose is straight but stiff. If I touch it, it feels like plastic. I cannot breathe through my left nostril properly during harmattan.

I am not telling this story for sympathy. I am telling it because we do not talk about what we do to ourselves to feel acceptable. That man took my money and my cartilage. But he also took the voice in my head that said I was not beautiful. Now when I look in the mirror, I see a nose that cost me pain, money, and a piece of my breathing. And I still think: worth it. The world treats you differently when your nose is small. That is the real sickness.