The Last Year of my Life
This is an attempt to exorcise myself of everything I have felt in the past year. Every emotion that has consumed me, every voice that has screamed in my head, every pain that has pierced from my inside out.
This is just an attempt, just a try. Maybe I’ll succeed, maybe I wouldn’t but I’ll try.
It started last year…actually the year before. A chain of events ticked off a trigger and in Falz voice my worxt fear was confirmed…I was truly undeserving of romantic love! I had said it to myself in different combinations of words over the years. But nothing prepared me for how I felt when life seemed to affirm it.
The voices were loud, a gaping black hole opened up and stared at me. Trying to understand my emotions and how I felt, I read up and psychoanalysed myself and all the trauma I had faced in my life. I gave it a name, the name it was called by many- DEPRESSION….and it was downhill from there. Putting a name to it didn’t make me feel better, it gave me an excuse to continue to feel the way I felt. The darkness became familiar.
But Faith!
The thing about having faith is that it can save you from anything. Clinging unto something or someone bigger than you will always help you win. So I won, that time.
Funny how I saw the source of my first trigger and thought yeah, build a life around here. Stupid. But I did it, started to build my life around that place. Called it Love. It felt good for a few months and then it wasn’t. Love wasn’t supposed to make me cry, make me question my relevance, throw me into despair without remorse. Most importantly, love was not supposed to be absent.
One day I had had enough and decided to move camps. The blocks were not coming together. This isn’t love, I told myself.
Then began the last year of my life.
The saddest year of my life.
All the big wins that came into my life couldn’t wipe away all that I felt I had lost. Despair became my home. Remember that gaping open hole? I went into it. First, the darkness was uncomfortable; not picking calls made me feel guilty, ignoring messages felt bad. Crying hot tears out of nowhere felt strange. Staying days deep in bad thoughts felt unfamiliar. But I stayed there anyways and it all became familiar darkness. Life became negative, that was the only lens I could look through. It wasn’t about what I had any more, it was what I didn’t have.
I didn’t have romantic love
I didn’t have a comfortable life
I didn’t have faith in God
I didn’t have the words to tell my friends the depth of what I felt
I didn’t have life as I wanted it
Oh but I had a family that loved me
I had a good job as far as that goes
I had a God who loves me
I had friends who were ready to listen for hours on end
I still had life
But I didn’t see it.
It is hard to see past the hurt, the pain, the emptiness. These days it is no longer strange the way I feel, it is familiar. Ignoring calls is now okay because my mind I just not there, dreading human interactions is fine because I feel like a fluke every time I give myself the chance to laugh.
I want out but I don’t want it too. Because it will mean hoping again, it will mean trusting again, it will mean believing again.
Those things are expensive and I am drained out from clinging to them
That has been the last year of my life and I think my attempt failed.
