Vincent has this habit of sharing wonderful content that he finds on the internet with me and trust me, he finds a lot. I don’t know how he finds them but he does. So he says “I can’t not share this with you” and sends me the link to an Instagram post plus a wonderful song: Pavaris Das – Home&Cloud 9 and some more messages.

I click on the link and find the most wholesome and relatable post about dissociation. You can check it out here. This motivated me to finish this piece that I started few days ago. In the post, Alokvmenon said “Dissociation both saved my life and made me lose it.” This makes sense to me.

My life has been a series of vacillating between extremes. Extremely sad. Extremely happy. Extremely motivated. Extremely unmotivated. The fact that I can’t find a balance is probably my major problem in life. I used to believe I’m a temperamental person. I said “used” like I don’t believe it anymore. Lol. I don’t know what I believe but I know that I have fluctuated between melancholy and sanguine enough to say it’s a pattern in my life. A pattern that has been around for as long as I can remember. (Or maybe my brain is a traveler and the different weather of the places it travels to is what messes up my disposition? Wisdom right? Sense kuku won’t kill me.)

The happy-go-lucky phase is the phase where I don’t have a care in the world because I lack the ability to care. I’m just living. Ignoring my problems and focusing on things that make me happy like money, new clothes and what not. It’s the too-shallow phase. The melancholic phase is the “depressive” phase. Unprovoked anger. Irritability. Intense craving of solitude. Fake smiles. Loud jokes and a whole lot of shrugs and I don’t knows. People want to know what is wrong with me but what can I say when I don’t know what is wrong with me? It’s the too-deep phase. (Too-deep, too-shallow when I’m not a well fgs.)

As much as I’m learning and coming to terms with undiscovered stories about myself. I’m curious about their sources and what birthed them. I want to know how and why? Maybe even when and where?

Growing up, I got into a lot of trouble for expressing myself. When I expressed love, they said I was too much and too extra. When I expressed anger, they said it was rebellious and disrespectful. When I cried, they said I was too soft. When I laughed, they said I was too loud. I grew up feeling like I needed to be fixed. That I was abnormal somehow. Eventually, I got tired of trying to be “normal” so I withdrew into myself. I started living in my head. (This post is starting to feel like fiction because I be like ehn ehn, so I went through this? And I’m still this amazing? Omo? Leave it for me please. I bad gan.)

Time went on and I became worse. Anxiety and an element of paranoia joined the group chat. I began to lose myself too. I surrounded myself with books and words. I was always writing. If I wasn’t writing, I was reading or talking to myself. I was trying really hard to grapple at the bits and pieces of myself that I had left. At some point, It felt as though I was someone in myself telling the story of my life. Like I wasn’t really living.

I learned to separate myself from the things I do and the things I say. I learned to remove myself from my feelings. I learned to shrug and move on. I believed that something was wrong with my feelings and how I expressed them. Lol. I learned to hide and manipulate my emotions according to the demands of the occasion.

I know better now but I don’t know how to stop. I’ve gotten so used to barely surviving that now, that I genuinely want to live, I don’t know how to.

I’m writing this because for the first time in my life, I don’t want to shrug off this melancholic phase. I want to put an end to it. I want to live in the moment. I want to scatter the emotions my body has been conditioned to feel based on factors that are deeply entrenched in my subconscious mind. I want to shift my brain and mind from survival mode to living mode. I don’t want to hide anymore, at least not from myself. I want to see and feel me.

I know this is the phase where it gets better because unlike my previous attempts, God is doing this with me. He’s right here amidst my detached selves and while I find my selves, he’s piecing me together with his love. I’m sorry if you think Christians shouldn’t be dealing with issues like these but MY God doesn’t sweep issues under the rug. He equips his children to deal with them because the whole essence of grace and this overwhelming love of God is for us to be whole, in him.

I needed to dig deep to complete this post and I was skeptical about sharing some parts so I removed them. Lol. I’d probably have to go over this again and again and again just to be sure. Sure of what? Lol. I don’t know. Anyhoo, do you know that this is actually fiction. Yes. Take a minute to think about and appreciate my creative prowess. Now, erase the part where I said it’s fiction from your mind because it isn’t. I just wanted you to laugh ugh. This post is too serious. Lol. Cheers though.