Hello Dear Reader,
If you were here with me you'll probably realise that I'm not always such cheerful company. Especially now that I'm writing to you. I can feel myself free falling into the familiar valley of sadness. Is that what this will be?
A letter I put out only when I'm chained by sadness? Surely this is not a way to live (or communicate.)
But it is the truth that I am beginning to grasp. Or is writing a thing we can only do in deep melancholy?
How is life treating you?
Since the last time I wrote to you, it has been busy. I'm still having a hard time sectioning my day. On some days anxiety cripples me and I manage to get one or two things done and on better days I achieve a lot. I hate how anxiety can manifest physically. How It can tie you down for a whole day or even weeks and you won't be able to tell anyone about it. Part of the reason I'm always anxious is that I'm an overachiever. I can't bear being idle. So I might complain about being too busy or taking on too much but I can't live without stretching my limits. I can't work without deadlines. I wonder, should I be worried?
While I can complain to the whole world that anxiety is shredding me, someone I care about can't. In one of our conversations, he told me to write his eulogy.
I called him and I learnt that he has been in hospital for weeks. During our conversation, he asked me to write him something.
"A poem? " I asked.
"I don't know," he said "anything, anything I can read now. Maybe write my eulogy so I can read it before I die."
I blinked back tears and sucked in air through my mouth. I told him he was not going to die. But he ignored me and pressed on. I refused and two days after our conversation, he sent me a piece of writing.
In it, he told me about hearing whispers and urged me to tell his story.
I cried.
Stories are such powerful things. Growing up I wanted to tell stories that broke people's hearts. I was not interested in happily ever after. In the good old days when I still wrote essays, I wrote this essay about therapy and music and sadness and how combining the three worked for me. I called writing the place I went for therapy and I wrote about how I pull so much from lyrics, especially sad ones. I have searched all my devices for that essay and I can't find it. It was published on my blog but I lost the blog and all the writings in it. It was a stupid loss because knowing what I know now, I would have gotten it back swiftly but I was still a toddler in the tech world, learning how to run before I even walked.
I wonder if it's nostalgia?
I find myself going back to those days. Everything was easier. Writing too; I felt sad, wrote the feelings down, forced everyone to read them and called myself a writer. It felt good. Then I began to realise that the world was a cold place for boys who carried their sadness around. I began to leave them in little pockets; in my friends; In my sister and most of it in myself.
It worked for a while until everything started to bubble to the surface. They started as little poetry verses. It felt like volcanic eruptions. Like I'd burst open if I didn't write them down.
One day I was in the bathroom and they came. I tried to force myself to shower but I couldn't. When I finished writing them down, it was a poem about glass and concrete ground, in it, I described myself as a wine glass in the hands of a clumsy waiter and anytime hope could push the waiter and I would crash onto the concrete, and my redness will spill everywhere.
Most times, they made sense but they were always dark, and if you read them together you will realise they all pointed to a shadow. The verses gave this shadow different names—Depression, death, hope, life, past—it depends on the context really but they were always referring to one thing.
Do you have a shadow your mind subconsciously refers to?
I like to think we all do. Sometimes it could be a dream. A future you want to drag to the present. The source of your strength. Shadows are not always bad. Nothing is always bad. I like to think we all need little shadows in the corners of our minds. Something to keep the mind busy and in pursuit. My only hope is that your own shadow keeps you grounded and alive. I hope it forces you to be better. To pursue happiness as the single most important thing about life.
I hope my next letter will come from a place of happiness or laughter. Or at least a place of less sadness. Until then.
With Love,
Emeka.
Anxiety cripples me daily and procrastination too. I have shadows mainly my future, it follows me daily. I hope the next newsletter will be happier as well as you! xoxo
I can relate to the anxiety of overachievement. Love how writing places you in the moment