I started 2014 on a high, as I told you earlier. Then I took big risks, faced failure, kept going in the direction of what I believed, and somehow, I ended the year on a high.
So how was it that after all of this, despite all of this, all I felt was emptiness? Not happiness or excitement or sadness or even fear – just hollowness. How was it that achieving all my goals for the year led to the first real fight I had with my girlfriend?
She had said yes to me a year before. I had crushed on her for years prior, but I said nothing because I was certain she could not say yes. I didn’t consider myself attractive enough, and she was stunning, lighting up every room she walked into. I couldn’t imagine it happening, and so I didn’t even try.
And then, one day, she chatted me up and asked me out to lunch.
A few months later, after a trip out of Nigeria, we became a couple. I had fallen hopelessly in love with her before the trip. She also had, but she didn’t realise it until our dramatic flight back. I had suddenly fallen into a panic attack on the plane, struggling to breathe, heaving into a plastic bag, the air hostesses frenetic about me. As she would tell me later, it was while she ran around the plane coordinating help and then sat and held me to herself that she realised it – she was in love and she could not afford to lose me. It was a dream come true.
A week before the TEDx Euston talk, a friend, who is now one of Nigeria’s top film directors, had come to my house to help work on the script for The Future Awards Africa. As she watched my girlfriend and me in the throes of affection, deliriously happy with each other, she couldn’t help blurting, “Wow, you guys are really happy o.” Our love was that palpable.
But what my friend couldn’t have known was that, that evening, and every time my girlfriend was to leave for her house, I would feel a deep, overwhelming sadness. Textbook separation anxiety. I couldn’t bear to be alone. Scared stiff, I would beg her to stay. The light in my life stayed only as long as I was on the TEDx stage on a high, in front of a microphone on a high, on the presidential stage on a high and in the arms of my lover on a high. But as soon as I climbed off the highs, the darkness threatened to engulf me.
I was happy in the way you are happy when you have the things you want in life. When you possess the things you are supposed to want. When you get the things you thought you would never get. Those things that paint a compelling picture of success and achievement. Yes, it is real happiness. But it’s the kind that always wears off too soon. Like the high you get after a bar of chocolate. And then you need another bar. And then another.
And so when the high of that glorious weekend wore off, I sank to a depth that matched the high in steepness. I wasn’t just physically tired; I was emotionally exhausted. Hollow.
So I told my girlfriend I couldn’t go on our scheduled Christmas trip. I couldn’t bear to walk on another tarmac. All I wanted was for us to check into a hotel, switch off our phones, close the blinds, turn off the lights, and be alone. Nothing in the world could give me joy at that time. I wanted to be away from everything.
It was in that hotel room – I eventually checked into it alone – that I made the decision that changed my life. I wrote down in my diary: I want to begin a journey to joy.
We broke up a few weeks after, just after my presidential candidate had won a historic election. A professional high, an emotional low.
Solely because of her, fights were rare in our relationship, but we had another one after the Christmas fight that was particularly tough and didn’t make any sense to me at the time. In that moment, I told myself that this fight was irreconcilable and, amongst other things, it meant we were not compatible. But years later, I now know I was looking for an excuse to leave. I felt, foolishly and selfishly, that there was something even better out there. This relationship was not the one.
But the hollowness remained. In fact, on the morning of my birthday, just after we had broken up, I had spent time in the hotel begging someone else to love me and be with me.
And after the interlude of my birthday, I was back where my heart felt like it ached deeply, where I needed to be busy to feel connected to life and living. I was back to a familiar place where I didn’t feel complete, despite all the love and care that I was logically aware of in my life, from my family and from my friends, and all the success that surrounded me.
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How Depression Saved My Life is written by Chude Jideonwo and published by Narrative Landscape.
