Its been two months since you dropped out of college, and your Father doesnt know because he is currently in Ibadan for his Masters degree. Everyday you sit in-front of your laptop writing a story, a story going nowhere. Some times you go on for days without a shower. You constantly forget to brush, and your room is in disarray. You are online. You are always online. You are looking to find something motivational, some article to make you feel good about yourself. The title of your story is Titanic Secret. Such a cheesy title now that you look back. Everyday you play sad songs to get you in the zone of this story youre working on: About a woman who abandons her children, cheats with her husbands brother, and runs to the village to hang herself: Suicide. Are you writing a story about suicide because youre thinking of it yourself? Every night you take long walks through the main road. You sit on the pavements and watch the cars speed under the street lamps like shades of light. The cars make a distinct sound, a sound like effervescence, like the rustling, popping powdry sounds of andrew liver salt in water-- Ssssshhhhh. The cars are saying Be Quiet. One day you come across a travel blog. It is about this melancholic Nigerian writer who journeys through different states in Nigeria. He writes about his mother: who she was before she died, and how everything she ever taught him started to make sense when he started to. travel. He paints pictures that kinda describes where you are at the moment-- Hollow. Your girlfriend is worried about you. Everyday she sends you text messages because she knows you wont pick if she calls. David, we had test tday. Please, youre missing a lot. Come back to school. You send this Nigerian writer an email. You tell him you enjoy reading his stories because they kinda make you feel good on the inside. You tell him that lately youve been considering suicide, and youre scared youre going to do something irrational, something bad to yourself. Two days pass and there is not a single reply from this writer. You are staring at the bleach in the laundry. You want to drink it, youre thinking hard about drinking it, but you decide you wont do it, because itd burn your blood for a while before you die. You are looking for instant death. There are many reasons why you want to kill yourself. One mainly is because you are not allowed to be depressed, Nigerians dont get depressed, the feeling is alien, and the fact that youre depressed means that youre one of those useless boys who has had it too easy in life. Youre depressed because youre not allowed to feel this way, only poor people are, and even they arent trying to kill themselves, you dont see them been all depressed and sh*t. You know that if you die, then nobody would question why you were depressed. Theyd just mourn, cry, and move on. Case closed. The end of your chapter. You get to your laptop to focus this time. You delete a lot of what youve written and decide to start afresh your story. Tell the story more subtly and not rush it. You hear PING. Somethings in your mail. Its the Nigerian writer. He says hi. He says he read your message and that your story sounds similar to his. He tells you that he used to be a pianist a long time ago. He tells you that he worked in a church and got paid a 100pounds every sunday to play the sunday service piano. He says he did it, not out of love for God, but just as a means to getting by as the pay was good. I was depressed. And then one day, I went to the drug store and I bought sleeping pills. When I got home, I finished an entire bottle of sleeping pills-- overdose. I wanted to die. I slept, and when I woke up I was still alive. Why didnt I die? I realized God had better plans for me. I was an atheist, I had my many reasons on why God did not exist. But you see, how I made it through those sleeping pills alive? I cannot explain. I will not say I am totally cured of my depression. I still experience heavy bouts of melancholy, but its getting better. Im loving God, and I am the happiest I have ever been. I guess what Im trying to say is Dont kill yourself. God has a bright future in stall for you, and he wants you to trust that his plans for you are of good. You are crying. You cannot believe that a Nigerian, too, has tried to kill himself. A man for that matter. For the very first time since you were 8, when Funkeye told you she could not love you, you cry. And ever since that day, you learn to cry in secret. You weaken yourself of all those ailing tears, and you come out refreshed, cleansed from the ailing thoughts. You go back to school. Because, in truth, no one knows where we go when we die, and all you have is the light of life. So, you choose to live it up, live it up like speeding cars with their different shades of light. Michael Ogah.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 06:49:29 +0000