A Nigerian's Story of "Madness" and Evolution

Written April 9^th, 2013

                                    

            When shaken with trauma, different people handle the situation in several ways. There are two ways to deal with adversity that I have come to understand. Some people prefer to carry on with their lives, without a reminder of what hardship they have faced. Others, like me, like to carry on living too, but also appreciate an occasional reminder of what we have been through. In my case, I believe that no experience is ever wasted. Personally, I actively remold my identity based on significant life events. A while ago, I had an experience I would never have imagined would be part of my life’s journey. It seemed as though my destiny had been changed- and suddenly! Now, how this will affect me is yet unknown, as the events have been ongoing for the last three years, but what I can say is that it has not been without significant pain. However, being the second type of person I previously mentioned, I have learned a great deal from this series of affairs.

            Among many things, I now believe that humility is a state that some of us can only reach with lots of hard work. More importantly, I believe that humility and patience are the first requirements if one is to experience real growth. With humility and patience, a person is able to respond sympathetically and with concern—in other words, compassionately and constructively—to whatever hinders them, in form of a flaw. It all started one night. The night I was taken away to hospital. After three months on admission, receiving psychiatric treatment, the doctors convened my family and I, confirming all the symptoms I manifested as being those of a schizophrenic. The most notable feedback I will always recall from that meeting is that the nature of the mental illness—schizophrenia—makes it a life long disorder. I was shaken by that awareness. My father, till date believes it to be a condition I can subdue, if I thoroughly apply myself.

            The night I went into a characteristic mental breakdown, I was sure the world had just ended. Engulfed in an odd reality, pushed deep into a world of fear: In this place, my most crippling fears and my greatest passions took shape in many forms. I would have constant hallucinations: hear voices in the wind, voices from the radio and the television. Many were threatening voices, but overtime the voices of loved ones—long gone— replaced them. Reunited, we created a formidable team and played around in the world by contributing to major world events. I was always in the news. Yes, all news channels, including the radio! Basically, the world became my oyster, and I found this to be the most amazing feeling in the world. As I engaged in mischief and play, I passed time by resurrecting the dead, and I was quite certain this was happening. One becomes larger than life while having these mental episodes. All around me were people who appeared very skeletal, and smelled not like dust, but like they themselves were dust. I saw dead people. They were cleaners, kitchen staff, some of them even patients at the nurses’ station, who came in for their vital signs. Once, a group of almost twelve people came into my room to pray over me. All around me, I looked into eyes sitting loosely in their sockets, smelled dust, and found them to behave old and new all at once. I thought we were all living in strange times. Or at least, this is what imbalanced brain chemistry caused me to experience.

            For three months, such a world was where I existed, walking in a hologram of my internal affairs: my greatest fears and my greatest passions. The future and the past amalgamated in this place, lain out before me with an intensity of emotion that has been etched in my essence forever. My sisters, brother, my entire family thought they had lost me, also forever. I was being seduced by a future that in fact brought me hope, but was tormented by a present and a past that brought me fear and great discomfort. Why was I imprisoned for a mass murder on almost the entire humanity? This is a story of my past that had furnished my new world. My sanity was gone; I knew it but could not find an end to it. This other life was really all that I could understand during those times. Actually, I had lost memories of the true world in my battle to survive. Every night I entered into the depths of my unconscious and awakened its most heightened fears. At these hours I came to know that I lived alone in battle, within an alternate world I really could never understand. In this place my subconscious flawlessly architected, I had no hope of an end. Sleep did nothing to release me and the days never stopped. Once a year, for three years these episodes took place, and each time, to my delight, they did in fact end. Life continued.

            Each time these schizophrenic episodes occur, there is a relatively long psychiatric visit, then the long winding recovery process, which includes a struggle to recall normalcy. This struggle lasts anywhere from five months to a year, and alas! Recovery kicks in. Since my most recent episode, or relapse, I am still struggling: this struggle is for mental and emotional fluidity. Unlike other relapses, this time around it seems as though everything has been taken away from me. The rug has been pulled from under me, and I need to start over. I have lost the self I used to know, and a lot of my old abilities gone with that. I have become awkward in many ways: in my outlook, my thought process and my behavior; this is not me, the one who used to be so free spirited, positive minded and quick on her feet. But now, finding herself to be overly critical of oneself and others, unappreciative of the positives and slow to think. It has been a struggle in many ways, but a blessing when I see that I have to be my own healing. In thinking about my situation, I have observed a multitude of characteristics about myself.

            One of these characteristics I take much interest in is the extent of pride I have cultivated over the years. I became so comfortable in my effortless way of being that I expected the same of others. With this turn of events I have begun to struggle for those same qualities that I thought to be my way of life, my natural mode of being. It hasn’t taken me too long to realize they are altogether my driving force of living. I depend on them immensely. Each and every day I see more and more how this understated pride has hindered me from living with a truly open mind and with genuine compassion. In effect, I find how it impedes my growth. This lack of compassion reflects in my impatience with myself. And if anything is needed at a time like this, where I am trying to rebuild myself, it is patience. Going by my logic on how each trait depends on the other, this same patience first requires humility and then compassion. I am learning that pride often goes unnoticed within us, and it is a journey worth embarking on to achieve the humility we so often hear of.  It takes hard work. In my fresh need to live through each moment merciful upon myself, I am learning that I need to show this mercy to others sometimes even before myself.

            It has been almost a year since my last relapse and I am still very well invested in recovering. For me this is the longest recovery has ever taken. I grow impatient at times, but at other times I am blessed with great insight regarding my situation. It is true what they say, that everything happens for a reason; but I believe that the people who truly live by this credence are the ones who proactively go out in search of that reason. I say this because during my times of frustration and hopelessness, faith has always been my anchor — though shaken at times — but not faith alone. For me, the sign of hope is often revealed as a deep-seated insight into what I am here to learn from the situation or what I am being built for by my experience. As a result of this, I spend my days immersed in hours of never ending introspection and metacognition; metacognition of which has in fact become my greatest tool. A product of the aforementioned activities is what is now a constant awareness of the degree of pride that sits, hidden within me. I know now that pride works silently, and is often contained in a camouflage. To seek humility, is a work of a lifetime; this is a notion now thoroughly engrained in me.

Wrote this one a year ago. My journey begins now: I have a dream to alleviate this brain illness for generations down. Books on Science, Fact and Fiction soon come.