Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain

John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

This won’t feel complete, and is unlikely to even feel coherent. I’ll write it in one pass: no edits, zero polish, no take-backs. This isn’t a “cry for help”; I’d be insulted to receive DMs like “I’m here for you” (you aren’t) or “you just have to find the beauty in life” (okay… and then?) or “suicide is not the answer” (this isn’t a suicide note).
I’m not signing out. All I want at this time is to document this state.

I do think that Dax very accurately describes my life in his The Abyss (check it out). In fact, I’m resolved to offload parts of this Herculean task of analysing the state of my emotions to that track. Why reinvent the wheel?

My days

Being a workaholic, I’m thankful for the “functional” half of my depression. Because what would I have if I didn’t have the comfort of routine? My days typically begin at 11am. Because I often go to bed some time between 4am and 9am, I have 28 alarms that go off from 7:20am until 11:10am every weekday. They progressively wake me up a little at a time, and ensure I’m a thinking, yawning zombie at 11am. Whenever I think of my alarms, the picture of a whale slowly rising to the surface comes to mind. Standup typically lasts until 11:06am on blessed days or until about 11:15am on this-will-be-a-long-day days. Immediately after, I’ll jump into the day’s work. A couple of cigarettes later and I’ll be fully awake and in the zone. I rarely get intrusive thoughts at this time of the morning.

By 2pm, my energy starts to wane and my mind begins to wander – and flutter. 2pm is when I’m reminded how much I hate myself. 2pm is when I begin my daily descent into my personal abyss. But I power through and keep working.

By 4pm, every keystroke is a lash of horsehide on my back. 4pm is when my longing to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” (see the poem by John Keats: Ode to a Nightingale) begins to threaten to derail me from my work. It’s when playful words like defenestration flit across the expanding blackhole of my anhedonic mind. And, I won’t lie, I grasp at these words. Not because I’m suicidal. No. I just think there’s an element of playfulness to certain words. Words like defenestration or hara-kiri. And also words like verisimilitude and disenfranchisement. At 4pm I need that playfulness. The alternative is gut-wrenching heartache.

I often play pool from mid-evening to sometime around 8pm-9pm. It helps quiet my mind. Sometimes I’ll continue working between matches. Not necessarily because I have so much to do that I can’t spare 3 hours to play exclusively. No. I juggle work and pool because, at 5pm, I can focus on neither long enough to keep my mind from wandering. And a wandering mind loves nothing better than words like defenestration and “just end it all”.

By 10pm I’ll resume working (usually on Lucien) and I’ll be working until at least 4am.

On inner strength

I do consider myself a strong person, in all the ways that matter. I’ve battled bouts of severe depression every year for as long as I remember. Since I was 8, at least. As Dax says in The Abyss:

Everything I did I always gave it my best
I don’t know if anyone relates but the feeling that I get is like a truck sitting on my chest

I think being strong is well and fine, but only until you aren’t. How far can you bend before you break? So I’m beginning to consider a different view to strength: maybe just let yourself break and see if you can patch yourself up? And if you can’t, then sign out with a bow? Utilising your preferred tool and retaining your personal dignity that way? Open window? Deliberately crashing your car? Overdosing? What greater honour might one accord to oneself than choosing the time, place and manner of one’s own passing? If you live life on your terms like I do, you deserve to leave life still on your own terms.

Mental health professionals will tell you differently, but maybe what people need isn’t strength. Maybe its objectivity.

On objectivity vs strength

My left forearm is covered with a composite tattoo that means “strength”, so I do think I know what I’m saying.

I think the key problem with “strength” is it lets you pretend you actually have a say in the matter. You’re already depressed, lethargic, robotically waddling through the emotional quagmire you call your life. You’re already infected.

What exactly can you hope to accomplish with “strength”? To successfully stave off hopelessness during the day? What about the antecedent heartache of night? What can strength do for you when, at 4am, you’re curled on the sofa with a runny nose and a tear-streaked face? When your heart physically aches? When you realise you haven’t eaten a morsel in 30 hours because you simply forgot to. What use is strength when you hurtle towards the bottom of your personal abyss at 6 in the morning, knowing you did this yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that?

“Strength” is a delusion. It lets you think you’re like the uninfected. You even begin to use the word just like they do. When the uninfected say “you’re a strong person”, what they really mean is “you’re that person who always looks like they have it all figured out; you’re always around when you’re needed; you never need help”. And we both know that’s not true. You’re not strong. You need help. The only thing you’ve figured out is that life is a video game you’re playing on Impossible mode and you’re possibly one late-night sob away from permanently switching off the console.

Objectivity, as I see it, means realising – and accepting – that you probably won’t make it far. The cycle will simply never end. Until your end. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. Objectivity means rejecting the “suicide is never an option” bull-crap for what it is: a lie the uninfected tell you because they overestimate how good you are at playing hero. Who’s going to listen to their own problems and support their dreams when you’re gone? Who’s going to gift them just because? Who will call them at random, ask how they are and say “I just thought of you and wanted you to know I’m here for you”? They need us! If strength was a desirable quality, why do they never have it? I choose objectivity: there’s dignity in giving up. That’s the objective truth.

On loneliness and being moderately money-ed

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel completely alone. But I do remember I feel so much lonelier now, and I attribute some of this change to the natural isolation one experiences when one’s finances escape life-threatening and begin to assume stability. In a country as poor as this one, that loneliness becomes a ravine – you’re right in the centre; on your right are people your age who make in a month what you make per hour; and on your left are people twice your age who earn in your tax bracket. You can’t truly mix up with either because you don’t really fit in anywhere.

When you go out with friends, you quickly realise how different your lives are. They complain about the rising cost of petrol but you filled up your two cars last weekend and didn’t glance at the bill. You haven’t noticed a bill in 5 years. They tell you they bought 10 litres for their small, yellow Firman generator at the earth-shattering cost of N12900 and you remember the cigarette lighter in your breast pocket (one of 6 you bought this year) costs N35k. You casually gifted four of those lighters and somehow misplaced one. They say their commute costs N10k a week and you shrink a little – only inwardly, you hope – because the packet of Marlboro in your left trouser pocket costs N10k and you bought 10 of them on Monday. (You can no longer tolerate the harshness of Rothmans.) And as they chatter about their life, you realise (for the 1000th time) that you’ve lost the ability to truly understand what they mean. You live in a bubble. You know it. They know it. You’re all just pretending. Your friendship survives only on shared experiences from 7 years ago.

Money pushes people away. We like to pretend it doesn’t, but we know the truth. How many times have people – strangers and friends alike – said to me “I don’t want you to feel like I’m only around you for your money”?

Money isolates. Period.

The flip side of being money-ed (even if only moderately, like me) is people look at you and think – no, believe – you have no problems. And then they hear your problems and those problems don’t sound like their problems so they don’t register as problems at all. In 2024 I told a friend about a loan I’d taken out in USD to fund a business. Although I won’t mention specific figures, I think it suffices to say that it’s around the figure most frequently celebrated in startup pre-seed rounds. I was going to be paying back around half my salary for more than a year. At the time I told her I’d just paid the second installment. Her only response? “You will pay it off na. Is it not you again?” Then a few days later she asked for money to buy two pairs of Crocs sandals for her dental internship.

On mental health professionals

I think an MHP’s job has to be one of the most difficult around. I mean a real MHP, not quacks like the one who tried to fleece me a few years ago. Sometimes I compare that job to a nanny’s. But maybe I’m wrong?

Anyway, this country does have a really absurd relationship with the concept of mental health. We vilify it in private and become self-acclaimed activists on social media. It’s simply the kind of performative nonsense that grounds culture across this country.

In 2019 (I think) a young girl, heartbroken by unrequited love, bought two bottles of Sniper and downed them in her flat near Uniport. Without giving too much information away (mostly to protect her family, but also because her family background isn’t the focus of this paragraph), her family was firmly upper middleclass. The response of her fellow students? “If I had that kind of money, nothing would make me commit suicide. I would just book a flight to Lagos with my babes. By the time I have finished shopping, depression would have left me. Me? Kill myself because of a man? Never!”

Insufferable idiots!

In 2024 a friend of mine helped me contact a “therapist”. I spoke to this woman on the phone and she forwarded a Google Form link for registration. After answering the usual questions (“are you suicidal?”, “are you married?”, “are you this or that?”), I scrolled to the bottom of the page to meet “How much do you earn per month?”. I found that question odd (but maybe it’s par for the course? I haven’t filled a lot of these questionnaires in my life; still, what does my income have to do with seeking and receiving professional help? I never said I wouldn’t pay you!)

I entered N100,000. I figured it was a safe bet. A lot of people earn around N100k. I hit “Submit”.

She called back a few minutes later to acknowledge she’d received my submission and could I confirm my income is N100k and not N1M? I looked at my phone like it had bit my ear. Then I asked, “why is my income important?”

“We just need to know.”

“But why?”

“It’s just part of our fact-gathering process.”

“You want to know how much I make so you can bill me accordingly? Am I sicker, just because I earn more?”

Silence.

I dropped the call.

On happiness

I abhor the concept of happiness. It’s a mirage. A sadistic flash in the pan of one’s life. The devil I know is better than the angel I don’t, and I don’t know this Happiness.

Happiness lifts you up, only to dash you back down. It’s like the witch’s bread-and-sugar house from Hansel and Gretel. It leads you to think you’ve shaken off your infection, then brutally reminds you you haven’t.

The lows are better than the highs. He that is down needs fear no fall.

The end

This will feel neither complete not coherent, as I said in the beginning, but it is enough that I wrote.