The Thing with Discouragement

An over due letter to Nnemdi...

Midnight Musings is a safe space for the wandering young adults who are still figuring this “adulting’ thing out and won’t mind company along the way. If this piece has brought you joy or entertainment you can show your support with a paid subscription or make a one-time donation on my Buy-Me-A-Cookie page.

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Dear Nnemdi, 

What is up? How are you? And what’s the point of asking that if you don’t reply? Anyway, there’s this thing with discouragement that makes you lose bits and pieces of yourself. You find the light in your eyes dim, slowly but surely in the most mundane ways.

It sometimes starts with boredom. 

Your mind becomes a vast ocean of nothingness, dark, cold, and empty. That’s when you find cobwebs on your ceiling, the water jug is just a glass away from empty, your glasses are misty and you haven’t had breakfast at 6:00 pm. The boredom stretches its branches round your chest into restlessness. 

You realise that, maybe you need to change the day-old sheets you’ve got on your bed, that the windows need some more wiping despite the rains, it’s a good day to avoid the little errands you have and try out that new recipe for butter bread. 

The restlessness eases into numbness. Because what is the point? Why bother trying again? You close all your texts and post just enough so your friends don’t find it suspicious. You avoid all human interactions like a plague. ‘I’ve got nothing to wear’ you tell them, ‘I’ve got to water my garden’(you don’t have one), ‘I have to wash my shoes’. It's easy to slip into this one and get comfy because it's familiar. The reading slumps, the lack of interest in any of the million hobbies you’ve managed to acquire all these years, the sudden interest in moving just enough so your family knows you’re alive, the smiling at jokes you no longer find funny because your mind has wandered so far away and it took your sense of humour with it leaving you with the muscle memory of the appropriate response to things. 

It's easy because you tell yourself to count your blessings, not to give in to comparing yourself, and to focus on the positives but optimism feels like it laughs in your face ten times harder than you’d ever imagined. You don’t tell anyone because what would they do? What can they do but tell ‘keep trying’, ‘we move’, ‘las las we go dey alright, and  ‘it is well’. You keep quiet because there’s no need to be the party pooper; because there is a sense of shame that comes with just giving up and accepting the current situation, of just letting the tides push and pull you here and there;  because even the few seeds that have sprouted may not grow, you look at them with doubt like it's a figment of your imagination, like its not real until they bear fruits and hold water.

I have no tangible way of concluding this one, so I’ll just end it here.

Fighting!

Janoma 

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Author’s Note:

It's not my happiest work, I know, but it’s been sitting in my drafts for a couple of months now and I thought, why not? Anyway, how are you all holding up? I was at an open mic recently and you can find my performance on my TikTok here

Song of the Week: 

Check out the lyrics of Otukare by BTS (Suga and J-hope), let me use that one to hold myself. And I found this gem, How to be Human by Oston and Jordy and its been on repeat since!