Fèyísará

I am surrounded with friends who love me, but I still feel trapped by this lonely feeling. The mind is like that person who doesn’t want you, but doesn’t want you to be with others. It wraps you up in a cocoon of worry that you become blinded to the love and care waiting on the outside. Your perception is tainted, and it seems everyone knows you are a fraud.

That sunny Monday morning, I moved around school like my body was foreign. It felt as though I was a wandering spirit lucky enough to have found an abandoned body. I moved as though someone would figure me out if I walked too fast. It was in primary five. I have always had a thing for over-sized clothes because I realised early enough there was something to hide about my body. I don’t know why the female uniforms didn’t have pockets, but I would have liked it much if I could hide my trembling hands on those Thursday afternoons during the lunch break. The louder the nagging voice in my head, the more I struggled to cough out my points.

In the same class, I got mixed up in boy drama with one other girl; her love interest who was also new had sent me a love letter shortly after I caught them kissing near the fetid toilet. Having rejected his offer, the following Saturday, he mocked me during the school’s yearly harvest for being poor; others paraded their mint hundred naira notes while I had five naira notes. That night, I slept off thinking there was no way I would ever fit in. I would always be lonely.

More than the discomfort the discovery at the toilet side caused me, it was the realisation amidst lunch breaks that I spent alone and closing period when I noticed her absence that I was losing my only friend which broke my heart the most. I watched as she took the new girl’s hand and ran over to her father’s car to ask if she could come to her house – that used to be me. It didn’t help that the new girl lived in my estate; that I sometimes ran into them at the hairdresser’s place to which I introduced her with her new friend. That I had to quietly retrace my steps on days I saw them sitting on the staircase by Mary’s statue.

 The thing about loneliness and feeling inadequate is that you could have everything and everyone in your corner, but if it is not what or who you want, you feel alone. I will come to get used to it; fighting the need to fit into every hole I see. After the first semester of my Master’s programme, I realised that the fact that there’s a hole doesn’t mean that I could fill it. My sister would later teach me that.

“That doesn’t fit. Don’t force it. See the shape of the hole. It is not the same as the piece you are holding”

“What does it matter?” I asked, rubbing my temples, trying to numb the rising ache in my head.

“We’ve been trying since and it’s just a hole.”

“It’s not just a hole. It’s got to fit in, if not, it destroys the whole picture because it won’t fit.”

 I sat, staring at the complete picture when we were done with the puzzle.

 Everything was where it belonged. Even though I shouldn’t have thought much about it, I wondered if I was that puzzle piece trying to fit into pictures in which I didn’t belong. That night, I cried, mourning the friendships I no longer had. It was my fault. I was too socially awkward not to fall in love with the friends I had.

Nobody’s indispensable, not even me. Along the line, I realised that people won’t always look back at friendships they’ve outgrown, wanting to fight for it. Karma doesn’t work like they think it does and bad people sometimes go-ahead to lead good lives. Like Adam in Eden, looking around and not finding his kind, the maker looked down on me and said ‘Fèyísará’

 I remember getting mad at a friend for not putting up my writings, and when he did, it didn’t stay up for more than five minutes.  The thing about loneliness is that it aggravates your sense of entitlement.

Loneliness isolates you from all reason to make you think there is no need to form relationships with others. It wraps you in a toga of insecurity disguised as self-sufficiency. One which you pull off in the dark of the night, revealing all your fears in the corner waiting to possess you.

When I was fourteen, I spent most of my nights staring at the moon as though it would whisper secrets to me, willing it to be my friend. It was not that I didn’t have friends, but that it felt like they didn’t understand my manner of reasoning. So, I turned up my nose as though I was beyond having a best friend when, in fact, it was the fear of rejection that made me that way. That one is self-sufficient doesn’t mean one cannot ask for help when needed.

Yesterday, I looked up the concept of loneliness and read till I fell asleep. I saw that prolonged loneliness is associated with depression. I started to wonder about depression and how the mind is a funny thing; manipulative and canny in a way that it seeps memories long forgotten in a moment of bliss that forces you to rush into yourself, abandoning all possibilities of a good time involving someone else. It’s why you are up at 2 a.m. overdosing on M&Ms wondering what happened to all your friendships. The mind is awake with you, reminding you of things that could have been while you cry about what would never be.

Loneliness is romantically involved with the mind and I know I should break them up, but I am a hopeless romantic. I cry as the couple make love, envious of what they share, not caring that I’m wasting away. It’s not that I’m antisocial, but I’ve always been afraid of stepping on toes. So, I tell myself that I’m okay with your company, but the truth is, I’m not. Now, the mind has me questioning if I’d choose me if I had to.

You know, loneliness makes you think it is pointing you to others’ perceived isolation of you, when all the while, it’s been telling you to look within yourself. You’ve dissociated from yourself. It’s the reason you think others have done the same. First, you must accept yourself; then other things will fall into place. It is so good at disguises too, because while I am so sure it’s here, taunting me for being antisocial, I summoned it to play the victim. For one who would rather say, it held me captive, or it made me believe this, rather than admit that one was too scared to live

It’s the picture of a girl in her checked blue house-wear, sitting on her bed too afraid to move while curious eyes are waiting to see what she’d unpack. It’s the countless number of times she’s had to call home for new shoes because these pairs wouldn’t stop getting spoilt.  Even the heart-wrenching laughter I release, on nights when raindrops tap on my windows while I scroll through my contact list, is not enough to keep me company

‘How many times are you going to unpack yourself? How long till you have nothing more inside of you?’

It rouses a consciousness that one is alone, in this box, that is invisible to others. In church the other day, the realisation that I am the only one who knows the passcode to my phone raised a fear in me.

‘What happens when you’re knocked out cold?’

‘There’s a fingerprint. They’d use your fingerprint.’

‘Wait… What? Why are you thinking of being knocked out cold?’

One moment I’m being filled up with love, the other moment, I’m running on empty. It’s walking through life feeling like I’m the only one with my kind of problem – childhood memories with a large part of it blurred out without reason, a persistent fit of sadness in one’s throat, refusing to be coughed out. It’s the shudder I get when I first step into the shower before I fold my arms around myself and slide to the floor – letting my tears keep me company.

The maker looked down on me and said Fèyísará so the loneliness will not consume me, but how do I accept the presence of others when my brain makes it hard to even accept myself?

BIO

 

Tutu Adedoyin is a creative non-fiction writer from Ibadan whose works are usually centered around the thought-processes of people as they go through different emotions, as well as realisation they make along the line through childhood recollections. Her creative non-fiction piece about a name being one’s identity was recently shortlisted for African Writers Award. In 2020, her work was exhibited in the mental health awareness exhibition for artists.

Photo by Klaus Nielsen via Prexels