Failure And Living Alone

Don’t open if you’re in a good mood please.

Something I can’t stand? My thoughts being interrupted.

Credit: Behance

Interrupt my speech all you want but when you see me sitting on my own and staring into nothingness, just leave me be. Unfortunately, the opposite was my family’s favourite pastime.

Let me try to explain.

Imagine being in a quiet place. Your place of safety and serenity. A place where you could close your eyes and disappear into your head, knowing nobody could ever find you here. The only way to come back into the real world was if you opened a door but you’re not ready for that so you just sit still in that silence. After a while, you walk up to the stillest shallow pond you’ve ever seen. You stare into the water and it holds your gaze. You watch it glint and shimmer in the sun. Suddenly, a hand appears out of nowhere and muddies up the water.

You blink and you’re in the middle of Ikoyi link bridge. Cars honking, drivers cursing, tyres skidding, people asking you to get out of the way. Chaos.

That’s exactly how I felt my entire life. Nobody let me finish my thoughts. Just as I start weaving webs of stories in my head, here my mother comes with a giant pair of scissors of “Hauwa, what are you thinking about?”

“Well, if you’d let me finish, I’d be able to tell you”

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So growing up, I’d always known my escape was to live alone because I was never alone with my family. If my aunt was not in my face, my mum was asking me to wash plates or my dad was demanding to know why I was failing biology. And my younger brothers? Always coming up with the dumbest questions to ask me. It was like a competition of Who-Could-Ask-Hauwa-A-Question-Dumb-Enough-To-Kill-Her.

When I went off to university, I was not one of the rich kids who could afford apartments outside of campus, so I shared a room with a professional yapper. I loved her but God, could she talk! When I was done with uni, I moved back home and again, everyone was in my face. It was the perfect excuse to apply for a masters degree, but yet again, I had flatmates.

The universe smiled on me in 2022 and I got my own place. I was ecstatic. I basked in the silence. It was finally me and my thoughts.

But nobody tells you that’s the biggest trap. Your thoughts.

You see when things are fine, living alone is truly the best. Especially when you’re a little mentally unstable. You can talk to yourself without anyone asking you if you’re mad. Act out your stories. Let the voices in your head come out to play. Crawl into your bed knowing nobody is going to ask you why you’re smiling like a deranged cat.

But when things are going wrong? Heiw. When you get back home after a long day of failing. When you’ve heard more ‘Nos’ in one day than you’ve heard in a month. When that thing you’ve been looking forward to for months crumbles right in front of your face. And through everything, you’re still required to show up and adult because nobody really cares that your life is falling apart.

L.M.A.O

Credit: HealthLine

Those thoughts you love so much and don’t want interrupted are now on a roll. You can’t keep your brain quiet. You start to sleep in more because waking up means facing reality and you’re simply not ready. But at some point you have to wake up because you have a headache from sleeping too much. You want to leave your house so your thoughts can stop torturing you so you check the price of a ride but the guys at Uber, Bolt and inDrive are asking you to bring your right kidney.

The reality of being a struggling adult in Nigeria hits you and you realise it’s really you and your thoughts.

You walk into the kitchen you used to love to dance in, grab bread & butter from your fridge and crawl back into bed.

After eating one slice, you disappear under the covers and by the time you wake up, it’s dark outside already. Before you know what is going on, it hits you that this is your 5th day in bed. You can’t go on like this.

You start to miss having the family that interrupted your thoughts or regret not having roommates but the only person that could’ve been your roommate isn’t on earth anymore and that makes you ever sadder.

So you stay in bed and hope the cloud passes.

I guess maybe what I’m trying to say is appreciate what you have now. The family that frustrates you, the lover that turns everything into a joke, the friend that is always late. They bring something into your life. Something you may find yourself missing when they’re gone.

I hope this letter has not dampened your mood but to be fair, I did warn you. So you can’t blame me.

To close off - Here is some sad music for you. I listened to it while writing and you should listen too. ❤️