Category: depression

I Feel Nothing

“It is all about finding the calm before the chaos”- unknown

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Has someone ever asked you ‘how are you today?’ and you have no answer for them? You cannot tell them whether you are fantastic, coping or sad because you have no clue as well. And so you just say ‘I am okay, thank you’ and move on…

You see over the past year I have come to find myself searching for the real meaning of ‘I am okay’. Dictionary wise, okay means satisfactory but not especially good. Not elaborative enough for one to fully comprehend, I asked two of my closest friends to define their understanding of what one means when they say that they are ‘okay’. The first friend said it to be ‘I am not hundred, nor am I zero. I am not happy, nor am I sad. I am just thankful to be alive and that is all’, that is an intense yet comprehendable definition, is it not? I then asked my second friend, who herself suffers from her own chronic illness known as Fibromyalgia, she said “To some people they would just not understand it… If I asked you how you were feeling and you said ‘okay’, to me in means ‘well I could possibly have a better day. It doesn’t hurt so much but I still want to pull out my uterus, yet I am coping better than other days”, she described to me how her roommate who suffers from endometriosis would paint out her okay as being alive, able to pee properly with bearable pain, fatigued yet able to do some house chores -and to her that is the okay she can relate to despite the fact of having a different condition.

So what has my ‘okay’ come to be? I mean from the responses I have gathered; the most common thing is that you are just scrapping by. You have accepted where life is, you have accepted what you cannot change. You are wishing for some light at the end of the tunnel yet you are ‘okay’ with it never shining through… actually being okay sounds like one has given up. It sounds like one has accepted the fact that they are still breathing without so much a desire to be doing so. Being okay is the same as being numb. You feel nothing. You have accepted defeat.

Therefore, here I am asking myself this question again, why is it that I keep saying I am okay whenever I am asked how I feel? I am numb. I am angry. I am fatigued. I am stressed. I smile while being seconds from crying. I feel myself crumbling under the pressure. The pressure of school, the pressure of succeeding, the pressure of being happy when I am not, the pressure of keeping it together when it is falling apart, the constant pressure I put on myself to be perfect. I feel the lump in my throat when I think about my future. I feel the ache in my heart when I think about my health and the infertility. I feel the disappointment within me whenever I have failed. I feel the weight on my chest when no one around me is happy and I know I played a role in it. The constant pressure of life… I FEEL IT- I feel it all. I notice how I am triggered by the smallest of things. I cry to Disney movies more often than before, I am angered easily, I get emotional over things that make me happy, I am isolating myself even within a crowd. I feel everything and all those things that I feel keep pointing out to the fact that I am not okay… I am not okay because I do not feel okay. Hence the next time you ask me how I am, just be prepared for the answer…

I am not okay.

published by Faith Ngwenya

A letter to Endometriosis (Part One)

“The kind of letters I write are the ones you read in your bed, curled up under the sheets with tears running down your face” – Mbali Ngwenya

(not own property)

Endo. What a beautiful name you have. It sounds like a young-lady’s nickname, one who is filled with nothing but joy and happiness. But that’s not the case is it? She is filled with nothing. That’s it. Nothing. Is it because you aren’t happy with yourself and so you choose to victimize 1 in 10 women just so they can feel what you going through? 1 in 10! That is a lot, don’t you think? But I guess it’s true when they say “hurt people, hurt people”. The agony and shame that you put them through, that’s what gives your life and keeps you thriving. You refuse to be cured, you refuse to let go of your puppets and so you slowly pull them down into a comforting emptiness. ‘It’s okay not to be okay. I am your new normal’ ,and that’s true it is okay to not be okay but that should not be ones everyday normal life and I guess that’s where the problem is, you want lifelong misery to be ‘normal’ .

You’re really sneaky at first though, not as loud and treacherous as you are now. I mean pain during menstruation is unquestioned. Nausea, headaches, mood swings, fatigue and some, they are all acknowledged and so just because you share these qualities with what is the norm you go on unnoticed. Yet this angers you, does is not? You want to be heard, you seek to be known and so you take the ordinary and use it to aggrandize your presence. I know those who are hankering to know your story don’t know you at all but still consider themselves doctors and yet I as a patient can tell your fairy-tale story from beginning to… Well there is no end.

My dear friend, you remember how you snuck up on me when I was still only in my childhood. No? Well I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 11 years ago though, I was just 10 years old when you came to pay me a visit which I never knew would turn into a permanent stay. I was in the kitchen helping my grandmother cook and suddenly my vision went blurry, my temperature shot up and I couldn’t even think clearly no more. Thought I was just dizzy and went to the bathroom and there it was, that little drop of blood on my underwear that said “You are now a woman”- oh how exciting! You were quiet at first, a little sleeping beauty who had nothing much but a little baby kick to her. The years went by and you grew and so did I but I guess you wanted us to grow as one and how dare I not notice that. You grew anxious and irritable and so you began to demand attention. Considering that your time to be noticed was only once a month, you used everything in your power to dim my light so that you may shine with every cycle that I had. When I tried to ignore you, you would stab me in the guts until I was curled up on the floor. You didn’t like the idea of me trying to silent you with painkillers and so you would go from poking me with a toothpick to motor-racing around my whole pelvic floor with cars that had hacksaws for wheels.

I presume you must have gotten lonely and because you knew what was going on at home, you used that as an opportunity to introduce me to one of your many friends, Depression. Or should I say Depro? That is what you called her to make her sound so cheerful, I thought that was cute. I recall how sad she was but not the kind of sadness that washes away after having chocolate and a good cry. No. She was the kind that was compassionate. It was aggravating yet freeing at the same time- somewhat silent but sure-as-hell deadly. I wanted to help her, save her from drowning but instead she convinced me to jump in and said that if I can’t teach her how to swim then we will comfortably float. I craved for the shore (joy) yet whenever I tried to swim towards it she would softly whisper “Breathe. Keep your head above the water and let the waves pull you back to nothing”. Did I mention that they want to take her away from me by making me see a doctor who is going to tell me how she’s not ‘good’ for me.  Can you imagine trying to take the element to one’s personality? The lump in my throat gives me a voice to speak up, the ache in heart taught me how to love others so hard that they never feel the same aching numbness and the flood of thoughts in my mind are the birth of my art, so what am I without the pain? Yes maybe she hurt me by allowing me to take a razor to my skin in hope that the dysphoria would ooze out those cuts, but Endo is that not what you wanted? You wanted me to see what is it you were doing to me internally and so I did. But how is it that when those self-inflicted wounds healed you chose not to heal with them?

I know this is a lot to take in and so I will leave it here for now. You did say you were chronic so that means you are ceaseless, right? You are so deeply-rooted within me that I will not be in a hurry to write to you again but just know that I will not cry on your next flare-up as I now have ink for tears.