What makes life worth living? What is happiness? Aside from momentary and fleeting stuff like biting into a slice of BBQ chicken pizza or hanging out with people/someone you love or sitting by the ocean, is there a grand plan to your happiness?

I had been dealing with these thoughts, suicidal thoughts for a while now. I kid. I had been dealing with them since I was 8. I grew up in a dysfunctional family. It was scarring. I had the regular average Nigerian childhood, well the average female one; the neighbour who tries to catch you for corner, the nightmares that haunt you, the one with the witch with bloodshot eyes or the man in the hat with a really long fingernail that tries to stick it somewhere he shouldn’t, and you wonder if it was just a recurring dream or something traumatic that happened but my brain tried to forget.. I used to think it was a spiritual dream though..I was pretty rooted in the supernatural, still am.

I have had the honor of being the black sheep. I was always alone and I had imaginary friends. Real ones. And we talked and played and laughed and did role plays and acted dramas. I liked to be a damsel in distress. And I had my first kiss with my imaginary real lover (now that I think about it, that is just messed up). And because my siblings were way older, we just never got along. I was too young to understand what they were understanding. And my mum would compare me to everything and everyone, even the TV. And every night, after conversing with my ‘friends’, I would pray for God to take me away, I even had a knife under my pillow sometimes.

I proceeded to have a crappier teen age. Everything a woman should pass through by age 50, I was done experiencing them between ages 15-18. Except for marriage of course. Just name it! To make things worse I had to stop studying law in year 3, thanks to Nigerian politics. I had no clue what I wanted to do and I just had to finish with a degree I had no idea what I was going to do with. I still don’t. I battle these feelings of confusion, unhappiness, worthlessness.

I constantly ask

“Why did God make me”

“I’m too young to know so much pain”

“I’m too young to be so unhappy, why?”

“Why is God making me go through all these? To be a psychiatrist?”

What can I do to make it stop?”

“Why can’t I just die?”

I don’t know what makes me happy. Maybe a stable love life, maybe if I was where I planned to be 4 years ago, maybe achievements, but these are fleeting, for me at least. I can’t get whatever I want, I can’t seem to get “shit” right. Is it just me, or is life meant to weigh you down? I want to know, I cannot be the only one battling these feelings right? This is just a preamble to the thoughts in my head.

For the pro-life people out there, what do you say to people like me who wished their mum used postinor 2? Who never asked for this life? Who was never given the option? I was just, born, and now I HAVE TO live. And society even expects me to make the best of “it”. And that is not even working! Can’t I be unborn? I know it’s all God, I have learned to not question or try to understand the way He works or reasons. But, He is so complicated…