I Ran Away from The Mirror
This is gonna be an aimless attempt to search my mind and understand why I stopped writing.
A couple of months ago, my dad was pressuring me again. You see, I love Him. It’s fair to say, I love my dad more than any other human being in this life.
It is also very fair to say that because I love him, his words pierce every protection that I have, every wall, every algorithm.
So when my dad sits me down virtually and asks me what is going on. I know in my soul that it is unwise to spill my guys, but I also desire and long for that rich emotional, personal father relationship that he is incapable of … I fall for it everytime.
So let’s begin, my friend Subomi, his once best friend’s son committed suicide.
And somehow, I was proud of him. It triggered a feeling in me that I couldn’t escape. I saw him as a hero. One who looked at the sum of his future and had the mental clarity to accept it not worth living.
But I also loved the courage to pass a deep message to those that need the guilt for the rest of their lives.
I ain’t gonna tell Subby’s business but I will say that there is a kind of problem that money doesn’t solve.
For me for instance, I tell people I know in Nigeria that want to leave and get to a first world country. And I often advise them not to. For one simple reason, there is a depression that comes from lack of access. When you have ideas and dreams and have people and things to blame it on. Then there is a depression that thrives IN access. When you have opportunity, and access to all that the rest of the world can only dream of, yet you cannot find peace within.
Peace in this sense is the quiet fuel that wakes you up before the rest of the world and draws you into the assignment of the day.
Living without a reason to wake up is very depressing. It’s even more so when the blame for the lack is within, not without.
I haven’t been so close to Subby. So I cannot seriously say that I know why he ended it. But what I can say is that it triggered my own infatuation with the idea.
All I could think of was what it will feel like to deliver a message to my dad without saying much.
I know for a fact that he will cry. It might be the first time he would cry over me. And that in itself is what I long for. I have seen him cry a handful of times, okay maybe once.
I saw him cry when I visited his once best friend with him and broke the facade and started talking about his son. Before then, I had only heard of my dad cry when my brother went to boarding school for the first time.
So the feeling is, if he can cry over someone else’s son; surely he would cry over me.
The more I thought about it, the more I was reminded of the fact that I am starved of his love.
Now, I get it. I am supposed to not blame him. Because that is how he was raised and I ought to saddle up, identify it and move on.
But the truth is, I don’t think there is a healthy way of living oneself enough to replace the love of a father.
Maybe the love of a mother should compensate but so far, everyone that could maybe step in and love me. They all seem to be at a deficit of Mr. Olisa’s love.
I wanna whine about just wanting my dad to show emotions about me or to me. When in fact, my mom has been married to him since she was 18, I think. And the man cannot say I love you. He can barely kiss her.
So when I turn to my mom to get loved by her. I realize that she can pour into me what she is lacking. I end up trying to become the husband she doesn’t have even though my dad is not dead.
It is so cute to tell my mom that I love you and to see her light up like a teenage girl that has butterflies flapping wings that Daenerys rode. It’s even more cute that she tries to hide it. She tries to hide the fact that she needed to hear it every time. She tries to hide the fact that I look like my dad did when he was young and she is attracted to me.
I started a new paragraph because I needed to let that statement sink in. It’s not a sexual attraction but it’s a romantic one. My mom is in a relationship with me because I am the man she thought she married that had not returned from the honeymoon or the altar.
Unfortunately, my brother is the man my mom married but a lot more spiritual. I know what you are thinking; no, she is not attracted to both. She loves us equally and soaks in the love that is lacking.
Moral of the story is that
I am in desperate need of my dad’s validation; and the future only gets emptier of it.
The thought of suicide felt like a mad rush of getting my dad to feel the hole that I have filled, all at once, for once.
But the more I thought about it. The more I remembered that the root cause of my dad’s lack of emotional display is his greatest loss — his dad.
He is uniquely equipped to process loss but also to live with it. He is military trained to be never too high or too low. To retain absolutely control of his emotional faculties.
My death would not change that. And even if it did, it would not be an emotion that I can experience because I would be dead.
Suicide is a word that triggers so many people. The idea that I am thinking of suicide feels like I am a black sheep now that must be quarantined. It feels like I have been bitten by the mental rabies and slowly I am transforming into a weredog. Except no one knows when my midnight will be ripe.
Yes, I have gone from random thoughts to some ideation. I am yet to find a good reason to die. But my good reason for living has died too.
I feel stuck in between peacelessness and hopelessness. Jesus held it all together for me. He was my reason, my toughness, my passion.
But ever since I lost my trust in my medium of connecting with him. Life has taken a nose dive. I keep looking for my earthly father to be my purpose but all he seems equipped to do is remind me that I am not enough.
I am not married enough
I am not groomed enough
I am not housed enough
I am not jobbed enough
I am not kids enough
I am not wifed enough
These never bothered me before because Jesus was enough. I could take my shortcomings to Him and find hood in His timing to respond or let it melt away.
But these days, after the pandemic, I have had a hard time communing without him.
I read my prayers in the morning, I listen to sermon about desiring God, I read daddy GO’s Open Heavens, and the youVersion’s verse of the day devotional.
In all of these places, I do not find him. I find intellect, maybe wisdom but not Him.
He is not a feeling, an idea, a task, a purpose.
He is love.
He is the energy that powers my feelings of gratitude.
He is the flame that my purpose originates from.
He is the essence of what I will never be but the object of all I strive to become.
He is the owner of all that I have but doesn’t claim just because.
He is the meaning behind the breath that I breathe that gives a perspective to my existence.
He is the calm in the chaos of lack and abundance.
He is the fire in my bossom that I equated to simply a key to my desires.
Now that fire has gone, and all the places that it filled up in my life with it.
This is why I wanna be gone too. So that others might feel what I feel.
People think suiciders need to look a certain way or talk a certain way or sound a certain way. But we are sexy, smart, godly people too. We can even be normal and blend in.
Imagine if this was a suicide note. Imagine if you woke up to the news that I was gone.
Would you love my absence more than now when I am hurting and lonely and you don’t care to stop by and grab my face?
Would you suspect that I have been your co worker for 10 years and you have always seen me smile and being the nerd cool vibe?
Would you regret being sexually attracted to me but never taking the time to see me and inquire even if for sex?
I am not writing these because I want your love, but I do want you to look again at your past and present community because
There is a suicide close to you. You can be grace in time.