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Twelve months ago, I was in a terrible place! Now read the previous sentence again and jump this before going to the next. The days leading to my birthday were dark. I was sad, I was angry, felt every possible negative emotion. Anyone who has gone through or is going through that evil thing called depression may tell me how close I was to it. Despite that, I tried to keep smiling. I tried like Lagbaja advised not to carry my problems around on my face.

Now, folks who know me personally would understand that I mostly don’t dwell on negatives. Even when I am surrounded by obvious negatives, I still find ONE positive that trumps them all. However, as much as I was trying to wriggle out of the ‘hole’, I was sinking deeper. I got into so much reflection about how the years had gone and I saw reasons to be angrier. I threw up a lot of ‘if it had not been’ and ‘what if I’ situations.

Those days, I would wake up and manage a smile for those around me before going on to where I worked at the time. I had the unhelpful situation of having to drive down to my workplace all by myself which was a fertile ground for those heartbreaking and annoying thoughts. No one really knew, not even my wife! In the middle of it, I still gave myself time to cheer my guys up while I retired to my pain.

You may be excused for trying to wrap your head around what the problem might have been then. The main reason was best known to me. Things around me got a lift in the mid-2010s and I was gradually hitting the spot with the motive to break through in different aspects. Much to my dismay, a few unpalatable events happened that took me from going up and sent me back to the level beyond zero.

I retreated and had to find a way to start again, but there was no way. You know how it feels when you are in the middle of nowhere with no escape route. That was how it was but thank God for support systems. If you noticed that I suddenly withdrew, that was it. If I was no longer communicating, it was because I was fighting to get out of ‘jail’.

So back to where we were coming from. My birthday in 2023 was approaching and I was almost seeing no reason to be cheerful or happy. Some folks around me who were not even as ‘good’ were having it good. It felt like the whole world had left me behind. It did not look as if my ideas made sense or if I could even contribute anything meaningful around me. I felt like a failure, a struggling failure.

One of my birthday mates was asking me questions on the day and my response was me not holding back. I could see that she felt like throwing a pity party for me but I was past caring. I opened up to some of my friends who also were on hand to rub minds with me. Not like they had solutions to my feelings but they made themselves available, and I remain eternally grateful for this.

Thank God I was able to snap out after a while. There is a ‘person who speaks to me that no one sees. I hear him audibly when it’s time to converse and he was my saving grace. My person spoke to me many times and I began to see things from a different perspective. I started getting bullish about things. It gave birth to my new mantra which was to “never worry about what you have no control over”.

These days, I have become a different person. I only bother about what is within my control and leave the rest. After all, my worrying is not the solution. With this mindset, I realized that things eventually evened out.

That taught me to reduce my worry or anxiety no matter the situation. It made me bolder that I would even start anticipating the next challenge so I can emerge victorious. It is no longer a ‘the-whole-world-is-against-me’, it is now me against the world. It is now a Declan Rice versus five Liverpool counter-attackers (apologies to non-football lovers).

Take a cue from me, leave the whole page blank. Don’t give it a title so it doesn’t scare you. Then come back and let us share success stories and tales of victory. And if it did not work out as planned, try again and again and again. You will win.