I'm Just Trying to Talk About It

From disappearing on you out of the blue to writing two newsletters in one week is just peak Itohan, honestly. It’s hot today and cold tomorrow. We don’t do lukewarm over here, we do pain and suffering. We do up and down, we no dey hang for middle. On that note, today’s newsletter is going to be hard. It is full of sadness, pain and is my way of trying to “talk about it”. I think one of the reasons I had to come back to writing this newsletter is the fact that I bottle it all in and this is one place where my emotions have felt safe. It was where I could see myself and make sense of things wrong with me. It is a diary I share with you, so, let's talk.

I don’t remember where I was when they told me my dad had cysts in his kidney. They said it was noncancerous and that it was just one of those things. What I do remember is the feeling of dread that I attached to it. There was a feeling I could not quite shake off but everyone was calm so I was calm too or at least I tried to be.

I don’t remember where I was when my mum told me he was having issues with his liver. When the hospital trips started and the never ending tests. When he started losing weight and my mum started praying. They said the liver was failing? Collapsing? It sha was not doing what it was supposed to do. When everyone said it was treatable and curable and to have faith, that nasty feeling was still there, but I prayed and had faith.

I remember the night my mum told me he had cancer. She had come to my grandma’s house after they had just gotten the results from the hospital. Pancreatic cancer. I remember my brain pausing, I remember laughing in my room to myself. I didn’t cry that day.

I remember when I called her to ask how bad it was. She refused to tell me but I coaxed it out of her. I remember her saying “4” when I asked her what stage. I remember ending the call and crying. I remember crying on the phone to T and to my best friend. I remember the emptiness I felt. It’s been about a month? I don’t really have a concept of time anymore, but he’s only gotten worse. My dad is thin and small. When he talks, you can barely hear him even though you’re in the same room with him. Hilarious because my dad was a shouter and I always told him he didn’t need to shout so much because I could hear him, but now? I’ll take that shouting over struggling to hear him.

My mum cries a lot. She tries to hide it and be strong for him and maybe me too, but she’s sad all the time. She’s losing a lot of weight and she barely eats. They do all these midnight prayers and various programs and the family keeps telling me that he can survive it. They say that it’s not a death sentence, but I’ve read the sentence over and over and all I see is death. I miss my daddy. He’s still here, but I miss him so much. He’s calmer these days. I wish he was calmer all of the days. I wish we had a better relationship. I wish there was never this strain. It’s so hard to reconcile the person that caused me so many sleepless nights, the person who I cried to my therapist about multiple times with this man. It’s hard to reconcile all of the versions I have of my father and I am tired.

My family members are telling me to be strong for my mum and dad but who is being strong for me? I have known my father all of my life and now what? They keep telling me to pray and I tell them I am. I tell them I have faith. I tell them I believe, but the truth? I haven’t said a word of prayer since they told me. I don’t know how it is to talk to God anymore. I don’t know what it is to even talk to myself anymore. My father is vanishing before my eyes and you are telling me to be strong? I want to ram my head into a wall. I avoid spending time with them because I can’t see my dad like this. My mum breaks down in front of me but I can’t do the same to her. I try to be joyful and spend time with them, but my parents are still the people that have hurt me the most in this life but I love them and they’re suffering. One would say I am suffering too, but I don’t even know if I can call it that.

I hate cigarettes. I’ve never smoked one a day in my life, not even by mistake. Today, I found myself craving a cigarette. I am pursuing every vice known to mankind and I am gathering new peaks of mental illness like infinity stones. I want to throw myself into work but I find it hard to work. The people in my life who know ask me if I am okay, but I just laugh. I am not okay. I am mourning my father who is alive and I know all the ways I am trying to cope is bad. I know they might kill me, but I don’t know what else to do. T asked me what I want recently and I told them I want to sleep. The truth is that I want to forget. I want to get my hair and nails done, wear a short dress and make eye contact with someone sexy. I want to be taken somewhere and shown a good time. I want to eat Indian food with my best friend in the restaurant that we like. I want to get ice cream and do karaoke and go to a strip club with my friends. I want to jump off a building I am surrounded by so much death, I want to live which is hilarious because all I've been trying to do is die.

I am behaving erratically now and I know it. I do things now because I need to feel something. My partner and I broke up recently and I told them I am unhappy. They love me so well and they treat me so nice but I am 2 seconds from jumping off of a bridge. I want to stop driving because I do not trust myself behind a wheel. I space out sometimes and have moments where im jerked back into reality while my foot is on the accelerator. I cry a lot now, but I know I have a lot more tears to give. It hurts watching someone you love lose themself when there’s nothing you can do about it. My friends are watching me become a shadow of myself. I am chasing highs and distractions as much as I can. I know one day I will have to sit down and talk to a therapist, but right now, I just want to have fun. I want to laugh and forget and just feel things that are good. I am in pain but I am trying to be stable for my mum and my dad.

There is a tiredness in my eyes that doesn’t leave no matter how much I sleep. Honestly, it is not like I even sleep. I am awake till I pass out because to rest, you need some sort of peace and there is no peace for me in this moment. My life is turbulent and I am making so many accommodations. There is a grief that hangs in the air in my household and it sickens me. It makes me unable to sit still but I want to spend time with my dad because I may never get a chance to. I am tired, extremely so. I can’t think or eat or I eat too much or I just don’t know. All I know is that I am running after something and it feels I may not get it. I am tired, and by the end of this, I feel like you are too. So right now, I will drink my little drinks and chase my highs and cry myself to sleep. I will try because I promised to.

So yeah, this is not the bulk of my feelings or the end of my thoughts, but this is me trying to talk about it because right now, if I don’t I will take my own life. Right now, I need to scream. Loudly too, but I can’t. I may never bring it up again, and I will probably go back to distracting myself as much as I can, but I don’t know what else I can do. Everyone says to hope, but I would rather prepare for the worst and get the best than to hope and watch it all die.