How I Encountered Sanity Stop

What Will my life Look Like Without Work?        

The same question I have tried to ask a friend -a workaholic friend is the same question I asked myself three years ago. What will my life look like without work?

I started working as a child. I was around 12 years old. I was hawking snacks. In my first year of Junior Secondary School, I remember that every day after school and lessons, I would quickly rush to work with this Madam. I helped sell recharge cards. My salary was three thousand naira, and I returned home at 11:00 PM. My sister and I wanted to go to the best school, but obviously, our mum could not afford that. So, working was a way of complementing our mum’s effort to get us into a private school. I am often tired when I get back home at night. Ma would have cooked, sometimes even washed our clothes. We’ll eat, go to sleep, wake up, go to school, go to work, go to sleep, wake up, and that was it. I didn't by any chance manage to have a social life. My sister was a wonder to me. Whenever I see her pictures of us growing up, laughing hard with her arms around a friend’s shoulder, I always wonder how she did it. I do not have any of those memories. I sincerely cannot remember how I spent my time aside from work. I cannot remember; I cannot try to remember.?

That was the life I knew.

At the university, I was crashing two courses together, making cakes in different dorm rooms while listening to an audiobook, climbing the ladder to a hall for event decorations, taking tutorials, attending fellowships, or making doughnuts. No, I didn't stop. That was the one life. That was the only life. My worst seasons were doing long ASUU strikes.?It would mean I needed a part-time job, or I would fall ill - terribly ill. So, I could safely say that since I was hardly a teenager, I have never had to stay off work for like two months, at least until very recently.

As I was leaving home to camp during my service year, I had so many plans to work. Even though we had two weeks to go back home and prepare, I took everything with me from home to my state of posting already. I started work the next day after camp, and I did not stop until I was leaving service.

As I was rounding up my service year, things started happening to me really fast. I became anxious about what to do next. I started losing many things. Relationships. Things I have built my life on for those 25 years of my life were leaving me. It was getting hard. I lost a 6-year long relationship too. But I didn't stop. I had projects to complete community service to lead, and these were all my pain killers. The Nigerian navy, the organisation I served with, gave me a break from work a month before service ended. At the same time, I had to hand over my position and all my duties as a community service leader to the incoming person.

For the first time in my life, I had to face my pains and bitterness.?For the first time in my life, I woke up one night, took a look at the Snipper under my bed and contemplated ending it. There was so much pain. On days like that, I had places to run to if I was at home; I had places I could lose my concentration for a while and come back to myself. But that was not home, and there was no one. I felt so much pain that I couldn't breathe.

?When I finally went home, I had so many questions to answer; It didn't help. You know, I fell ill. I fell sick, so all the pounded yam I had invested my service allowance on in Benue state that had helped me grow only chubby cheeks to which was my showoff whenever I had video calls with my family was all gone. I looked gunky. I got pity stairs. I was advised to stay indoors for a while to recover. Body shamed. I had so much pressure that I was going to burst.

I knew I had to stop...

I had taken so much in that I really could not bear remembering so much. They were not good memories, so I learnt to stiffen them and pour all my energy into giving. Serving. Working.

My Journey Starts Here
        

This is supposed to be a book of my journey to healing and a balanced, emotionally healthy life. But because I do not have the promise from myself yet, that I can be vulnerable or that I have healed. (No one really gets healed while still living and experiencing life every day), I am writing this as it comes and as I journey through finding the diamonds in my rough part.

I have been on the Sanity Stop Journey for three years, and if you know me in some way different from what I had described earlier in this article, then I owe it to this experience. I am learning to live beyond survival and have a go at a very balanced life. Here, I do not make attempts to teach morals or be strong. What I seek is relief through the art of telling. What I seek is healing and having power over my past. What I seek is making a note of grief during the darkest nights of my soul. And what I seek is the unstiffening of my emotions.

I hope that one day when you read sanity stop, you will be able to find your journey in mine and mine in yours.

Again, I forgive myself for all the time I was a mere spectator in this journey

Sincerely,

A wayfarer.

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