A JOURNEY TO SUICIDE

3 days ago

I don't know how hive learners do it, but they seem to just bring out that story in me. Life is private that a lot of people do not know that I attempted suicide because I was sick of living. At a point, it became so intusticating that for about 12 hours the only thing that made sense was to stop living. When everyone around me heard about it, they couldn't believe it, not in their wildest imagination would it ever cross their mind that I would ever want to give up on life. I guess that's just how it is when you've been a pillar for too long, people just seem to think you're okay because you are keeping everyone in check when in fact you're dying slowly trying to make others live. This is how private life can be and till this day I can still feel everything I felt when I was tired of fighting.

Talking about this is really hard you know, I literally lost every sense of smell, taste, and reasoning. I had hit the last brick wall and couldn't muster up the strength to keep moving. I felt alone, I still feel alone even though there are people around, that is simply because everyone around me is leaning on me, with me not having anyone to lean on. Three years before that day I took out a loan in desperation, because my final year exams were approaching and I needed to do a lot of things starting with paying my school fees, writing my project defense, buying textbooks, and sorting out fees that would not allow me to graduate. Now I remember sharing this story some time ago, and a lot of people could relate. When I told my mum I was thinking about taking a loan, she told me not to, she literally begged me not to, but then, if you have been in school for eight years watching your mates graduate while you are unable to because of money you might probably understand why I became desperate.

To date I do not regret taking the loan, it was for a cause that was fulfilled. What I regret is not looking out for myself half the way I looked out for others. I had bills to pay at home, and took a chunk of the family's load because I just happened to be the first born. At first I was paying off the loan little by little, but then it became hard, and it became addictive. I started borrowing to pay back loans because I was always spending money on everyone else. I borrowed until it went out of hand and paying back became difficult. Even after paying over 5 million in three years, I was still left with debts of over two million. I remember the day before I was thinking about how to pay the next day's loan.

Before that day I would wake up every day to a message of one or two loans I needed to pay. At one point I had borrowed to pay so much that I now owe over 20 different loan apps, and there was almost no day I was at the edge of the game trying to meet up with the payments. The day before I was having just 100,000 naira, but had a loan of about 700,000 to pay the next day. What I even had was 200,000 naira I had kept aside for my NYSC clearance but then I saw a group advertisement that was into gambling. Well you can guess what happened next, I paid off some of the loans with 100,000, and gambled with the remaining 100,000 because I saw people were winning. But then I lost it all. Every single bit of the money I had was gone. But then that was not why I attempted suicide.

When I lost everything I asked myself a simple question, what do I do next, where do I go from here, and for the first time in a long time, I couldn't come up with anything. I was just there empty. It was there and then I figured that I really had nobody, it was then I realized that I had given so much and gotten almost nothing in turn. At least that was how I felt, I still feel that way, but not as before. I was planning on just going to work, dropping my laptop, writing a note to my family and friends, then jumping into a lagoon somewhere where no one would ever find me so they didn't have to worry about burying my body. But then the things I was saying didn't make sense and that was how my partner read in between the lines and didn't allow me to leave the house.

My sister joined in and it was a tug of war because I really wanted to end it all. When I saw I couldn't leave the house, I wanted to find a knife, but I never saw any until a male friend of mine came and took me to his house. I was surprised later that day when my MD called my phone and my partner picked the call, he came visiting and as much as I wanted to speak, I just ended up crying like a baby. The only thing I got was a whole lot of advice, everyone told me about a hard time in their life and how they navigated through it, I saw some who genuinely would have helped but didn't have the means to. Now I have to pick myself up, brush myself off, and keep moving to a place unknown.