Going Through Changes: Inside My Valleys

Originally published on "Inside The Minds". Volume 02/ Issue 03 07/11/2020

Creative Team

Creative director: @blaise_1523

Designer/photographer: @oof.kam

Editor/Interviewer: @Ikechukwusharpe

Writer: @debbieope

Preface

I’ve put off writing so long much of the past year, partly because of my procrastination and inconsistency but mainly because it has been tough. It’s kind of paradoxical in itself because it’s the one thing that holds me together, gives me tranquillity, understanding and most importantly, freedom. I try not to label or fit myself into the box of writer, journalist or blogger because I’m yet to feel that level of achievement that grants me the audacity to call myself such. I am only so far just aspiring to become great, but one day I saw a clip from a Masterclass by Shonda Rhimes and she explained how she hates the term “aspiring writer” because its either you do write or you don’t and if you do, you’re a writer. Those words have stuck with me a little and given me a bit of courage to work and produce more content. Someone once important to me called writing my superpower and I shouldn’t feel vulnerable to express it. I’m working on being fearless enough to lay out vulnerability. In some ways I’m glad that when Ike asked me to write for Inside The Mind, that I took a full year before getting back to him with a finished draft. I would write a short paragraph every now and then but then find myself incapable finishing it, because I was still deep in the middle of my experience; my story. It was not possible to write about a huge transitional period until I felt that I had reached a point where I had found balance. It’s been a year now and I’ll be a forthcoming as I can, in expressing that things still get tough, intense and deeply emotional however I’m finding my ground and I have gained better stamina in handling whatever comes my way.

Not so new beginnings

The beginning of last year, I moved to England for law school and I can definitely say that it has brought a tremendous amount of change in my life. We kept hearing that 2019 would be the year of growth, no kidding. If I were being honest, I’d say my move to England came as a result of wanting some change in my life after graduation, and by change, I mean not moving back to Nigeria to live with my parents where they controlled my every move. I had applied to a number of Law Schools in America with the intention to stay in the East Coast, but I didn’t get into any that I wanted, or my parents were willing to pay for. It was looking like I was getting cornered into the position many people like me have before, ‘the forced move back to Lagos’. I was determined to let that not be the case and with the postgrad depression hitting me real hard, I applied to Law School in England on my parents’ recommendation.

I had my reservations about moving, based on what I’d heard from people who had gone there before; quiet, empty town, easily depressing but great for focusing. I figured it was a two-year program and only a 30-minute train ride from London. I would use those two years to map out either working in America or Nigeria by then. However, it’s reputation preceded itself, a small village north of London with a demographic of townies other than the students from the University that came from elsewhere. The culture and people are very different and although I had vacationed in London numerous times during my childhood, it was nothing like I was prepared for to undertake. I was uneasy with that kind of change partly because I was more familiar with the city life and also because when experience culture shock, the change is more forceful when the culture you’ve dipped into was not your first or second choice.

I struggled to make friends the first couple months as going to school all over again was a completely different experience in England. I mostly kept to myself, not engaging in many social interactions and often wondering if that’s what it was going to be like for the next two years. Eventually, I began to put myself out there a little bit and explore different parts of myself as I formed new relationships with people. I made friends and found some form of an unconventional partner, all the while focusing on my law classes. However, my greatest difficulty was feeling out of place with myself as I would frequently get sad for no explanatory or controllable reason, every relationship felt temporal and I often felt that because I wasn’t feeling for good whole year, no one knew the real me.

Since graduating Loyola in 2018, my mental health had taken a huge decline and it became more evident than ever, last year. I’ve known myself to struggle with states of feeling anxious but all of it seemed to rise three-fold with intense feelings of sinking sadness and alienation. There came a time, and it might sound foolish, but I wanted to delete my Instagram because in my mind I couldn’t remember a time I was genuinely happy, not even in any of the photos I had posted. Of course, that was not true because I wasn’t sad every day for over a year. If you’ve ever seen that quote that says, ‘you didn’t have a bad day, you just had a bad couple hours’, and that's how I chose to treat it in that I had a bad couple day, months even, but there were some good days despite the whole year feeling distressing.

Enlightenment period

Last August, I sought out counselling and began to see a therapist on weekly basis because I had gotten to a point where I, nor my friends could help to solve all my problems. I’ve always been a good advocate for mental health, but I personally had never seen a therapist before this period, partially because I didn’t have the resource available to me and I wasn’t sure at what point to go. In the only way I can explain it, for me it was a gut feeling and realization that I genuinely needed professional help because I could no longer hold the weights on my shoulders and my mind was exhausted. I would say therapy helped in many ways in that it shined the light on my shadows, and I reached newfound epiphanies on my life and past experiences. It was difficult in that it was definitely one of those “it gets worse before it gets better” situations, because it made me re-experience some of my problems and unfold matters which felt mentally exhausting but I learned how to cope and rationalize moving forward. I feel it’s important to note that you can’t expect therapy to fix you, I certainly do not feel fixed as mental health illness and issues do not just evaporate. I see it as nothing can ever be perfect, it’s all a work-in-progress, the same way that your life is a work-in-progress because you’re constantly developing so its about learning to manage things as a process.

In order to work on my myself and my mental health, I’ve worked on different methods to introduce positive energy and calmness into my life, many of which was experimental in finding what works for me. I tried sticky notes with words of affirmations, reading new books with some about finding happiness and attending yoga and Pilates classes. I attributed a long of what I was going through with my environment, so to deal with that I took frequent trips to London over the weekend to stay with my cousin and hang out with friends. I believe some of these methods worked in the beginning until eventually they no longer felt effective as it felt like a failed placebo. So far, yoga and Pilates has worked in relieving my stress and calming my anxiety. I’ve always gone for long or brisk walks while listening to music, just to clear my mind and calm my anxiousness and I’ve found that to be really helpful. My hope with sharing this, is that with anyone going through anything either emotional or mentally, it takes time to figure what gets you into a better place. In my experience, it's a slow process and you don't always have to actively work on yourself, sometimes it’s okay to just ‘be’ and allow yourself to feel everything. What I’ve taken away from it especially with the help of my support group, my friends and family, is to allow myself to feel however I feel at the given movement, realizing that it might not be rational later. It's important to always see your feelings has important and valid even if they end up being only temporary visitors and to never let allow anyone to invalidate them.

I coined 2019 as the year of growth for myself because I learned so much about myself from my experiences and relationships, with everything presenting itself as a learning curve. I don’t regret any of my experiences because they have gotten me in tune with who I am today, and I am even grateful for the relationship I was able to experience. Not saying that I would be willing to relive the pain, but if you take away all the hardship and pain from all my experiences, I don’t know how much the lessons would have solidified. I feel as though, when the time comes and I’m able to find happiness, whether it be in my career, relationships or my environment, that I would be so much more grateful for It.

Present Day

This year showed me, like it showed many others, that nothing truly ends or starts out the way you want it to. There’s the saying that ‘When man makes plans, God laughs’ and that’s one that is definitely as true as the day is long. I thought 2020 would be the year of healing and transformation for myself and others and well the irony isn’t lost on me.

I think there is this unrealistic custom during the start of the new year to build so much expectations and hope for how the year would be moving forward and I tried my best to not be a part of that statistic. I don’t particularly believe in new year’s resolutions, but I promised myself that the one thing I was going to work on was making myself happy, not happy every day, but sufficiently happy. This was going to be accomplished by working to establish my boundaries that I had learned from the previous year and focusing on only positive energies which ergo would lead to healing and transformation. I don’t think it’s too late to accomplish this, but I definitely underestimated how much of an adjustment and work it would take. We often assume ‘new year, new me’ and forget that some things from the year before would roll over to the next and although I warned myself about this from the beginning, it didn't make it any less hard. I still struggled with anxiety and unbalanced moods from time to time and it was difficult processing the transition that took place from last year to the beginning of this year. One of the major difficulties was going home for a month and returning to an environment, the small town, that I dreaded for the past year as it had played a powerful contribution to my mental health. Fortunately, I moved to a new apartment building at the start of the year and that was very helpful in giving me the fresh start that I needed.

I have gotten to a somewhat better place in my life and focusing on school and my future career. I’m in my final year so I am taking my concentration classes and I’m finally interested in what I’m learning. I’ve always been interested in social justice issues so to be learning about Sex, Gender and Minorities in the Legal process is definitely one of the highlights of my days. With enough willpower, I plan to change the trajectory of my blog at some point, to address the social issues and the climate people are experiencing in our global community. In addition to that, I’m starting to network and see what possible job opportunities may be available to me if and when I move back to the United States.

The Covid-19 pandemic has definitely brought about a huge change in everyone’s lives whether it be financially, spiritually, physically or mentally. In respect to me, I think I’ve been handling it rather rationally as I tend to force myself to do with situations beyond my control. During this period of isolation and quarantine, I live alone, with my roommate going back to her parents, I’ve enjoyed having my own space but there’s certainly a degree of loneliness I feel, especially having to practice social distancing, As someone who prefers to keep my friendship to a limited small group of people, and with losing a friendship right before the lockdown things have been less bearable, having to sit alone with my thoughts. With this lockdown I’m unable to use the methods that I found to help with my anxiety such as going away to London, taking my frequent walks or attending yoga and Pilates classes.

Like many others around the globe, my university has switched to online courses which has affected my motivation to do anything. I push myself into having a routine by going for daily runs while I spend the rest of the day either repeatedly re-watching shows I had already seen on Netflix (Big Bang Theory), in order not to think or focus, for fear that I may not be able to handle anything too real or deep. When I’m not doing that, I’m either attempting schoolwork, eating or napping. It’s been very hard to accomplish anything on the creative end, but I’ve got it in my mind that I don't’ have to work on everything about myself during this time. There’s so much uncertainty in the world and the only thing I can do is take it day by day. Hopefully with time and all the precautionary actions in place, this too shall pass.

Writer’s note: We’re in a time where we have to care more than ever for our global community and the best way to do that is by staying at home safe, following the rules of social distancing and continuing to be kind to one another. Continue to stay safe.