Whatever I set out to write about today just got dumped onto the dung hills of inconsequential insignificant unimportant stuff. (yes! I'm allowed to say that. I'm miffed.)
I don't even remember who or what I was gonna write about before I logged on to tweet some random bullshit and heard some chick killed herself. Hung herself.
Now I've heard two stories.
Story 1: she was engaged to be married to some dude, she had a condition that entailed her having surgery which led to her losing the ability to have children EVER. (I got this via a DM)
Story 2: she was having an affair with a married dude. Wife found out and raised hell. Hubby scampers. She got dumped. (Read on a blog. The blog post has been removed though.)
Both stories ended with "...then she hung herself..."
First of all, Nobody knows how their life was concocted. Nobody has the right to take that which they can not give. Nobody has the right to take another life: self or another. NOBODY. If this view is myopic, so be it.
Secondly, I think anyone who takes their life is not just a coward but a selfish coward. I think anyone who's "courageous" enough to take their life should kindly plan for it, financially and otherwise. How dare anyone cause a turmoil in other people's lives because they couldn't handle their business? If any of those stories are true, she was very unfair to those who now mourn.
That said, it is everyone's duty to look out for everyone because unfortunately, the Nigerian society isn't into counseling and therefore a grave number of mental issues go unnoticed and untreated.
Madonna was a chick I used to know growing up. Her older brother was my friend. I only saw her on holiday. She was a cool girl. Certainly didn't strike me as one who'd kill herself. That was all I remembered of her when I heard 4 years ago that she hung herself after popping an overdose of sleeping pills. She had suffered "Postpartum Psychosis" after birthing a blue baby. No one noticed because NO ONE was watching. The hubby didn't take it seriously till she killed herself.
This case is very obvious: something snapped in her head and nobody took her seriously.
My worry is that these things do not just happen out of the blue. People don't just up and kill self. They usually protest one way or another. The signs are almost always there. I think we should be very aware of the things going on with the people around us. This is what God meant when he said to be our brother's keeper.
Like @Makxxy said, "We were put on this earth to commune with & help each other. If you lose sm1 on YOUR watch then its on you. What contribution have u made?"
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XOXO
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
4 comments:
Wow
i agree with u about it being selfish
This post is amazing. i agree with every thing you have said.
You're right. Taking your own life is simply selfishness. And we Nigerians have to learn to take mental illness more seriously. We tend to think that if someone isn't tearing off their clothes and eating garbage, they're fine. We have to look beyond the obvious.
I heard more information about this girl's story (story 1 is the correct story, and the fiance dumped her when he found out that her womb was removed. Also, she had tried to commit suicide before and her family was watching her closely after that. The suicide occurred the one day she was alone), and after some deep thought, this is what I realized. This girl was clinically depressed (i.e. she had a mental illness, and she wasn't thinking straight), so we really cannot blame her for what she did. She was sick. Just as we can't blame someone for feeling cold when they have a fever, we can't blame her for thinking life wasn't worth living because she wasn't thinking straight. It was simply a manifestation of her illness. She couldn't think of what it would do to the people who cared about her. She couldn't just 'snap out of it', the same way someone with malaria can't just snap out of it and make himself feel better.
What happened to the girl was nobody's fault. Her fiance ended things because he realized he couldn't marry someone who couldn't give him children. I'm not saying that is admirable, but it's better not to get married than to end up resenting the person you married. Another woman might have been able to get over it. This woman didn't. It's not her fault because her mind just couldn't handle it, and it's not her family's fault because they tried their best to protect her from herself.
Like I said before, this should tell us to start taking mental illness seriously and creating the proper facilities to handle such things.
I hope her family can find comfort and peace in these dark times. May God help them.
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