With the seemingly growing number of Nigerians suffering from depression, Charly Boy touches on a very relevant topic in his new article.
***
It was like any other day.
I was in the studio listening to the
sound I tried to put together the previous night. The security personnel
came to announce the arrival of my cousin Jimmy (not his real name).
Jimmy was one bubbly guy who was always ready to have a party. Always
fun to be with; but on this very day, something was seriously amiss.
There was this faraway look in his eyes,
obviously troubled by something. I instructed my studio engineer to
excuse us so I could have a one on one with Jimmy. No sooner had he
left, Jimmy turned to me and said, “Charly, tonight am ending it all, I
can’t go on like this, am going to kill myself.”
Abegi stop talking nonsense, was all I could utter. I decided to probe further to figure out what was really troubling Jimmy.
He had lost a lot of money in the various business ventures he got
involved with, his woman had left him and that really devastated him;
but in my head that wasn’t enough justification for anybody to want to
kill himself! Of course, I didn’t take him serious, I just tried to talk
to him sharing my own problems with him in the hope of calming him
down.
Three days later, I received the sad news that Jimmy had hung himself from his ceiling fan in his sitting room.
My heart was broken with the news, above
all I felt so very guilty for a long long time. Perhaps I should have
spent more time listening to him that day, who knows I might have been
able to get him to see things differently.
Since then I’ve learnt to listen a lot more and counsel with a lot more sensitivity.
No one can ever truly phantom what goes on in one’s mind that will lead them to activate their own death.
Recently on the Internet, I came across the trending news about a 31
year old Danielle Saul who committed suicide because all her friends
were married and she wasn’t.
The increasing wave of suicide cases in
the country is taking a fearsome proportion and to say the least
worryingly disturbing especially when you consider the age bracket.
People commit suicide for various
reasons. Stress factors, like how they deal with their relationship
issues, or how broken their spirit feels, poverty, even their mental
state are the things that trigger suicide for some of us who can’t deal
with the reality of living. As a result, in an attempt to desperately
escape suffering or a troubling situation, they commit suicide.
Suicide is a growing trend in our
country but hardly anybody seems to be paying attention, perhaps because
of the stigma the society attaches to the challenge, largely associated
with mental health.” Suicide didn’t just start to happen today but it
is often considered a taboo for anyone to broadcast information about
it. The implication of this is that it is under-reported and even the
police do not get to hear about it because of the stigma attached to
it.”
We all go through varying degrees of
pain, of stress, disappointment, especially with the prevalent economic
situation in the country; how on earth do we survive such situations?
Sometimes I wonder how much despair one needs to feel to get to that state of mind.
Therefore before we start to get
judgmental, to say that people who go that route are cowards, let’s know
that we all don’t have the same kind of strength or the same inbuilt
shock absorber to deal with everyday issues that trouble us.
Let’s remember that some of us are dying in silence, depressed, perhaps already contemplating suicide.
Above all, let love lead in the way we
interact with other people in their time of despair, let us be more
concerned about the wellbeing of the next person. My advice however is
that no matter whatever you are going through, there is always a rainbow
after the storms. It will get better just as long as you hold on and
believe. I am a living testimony to that. Your life is too precious! Na
so I see de matter.
You Nko?
