Thought Picnic: Just trying to be human

Usually totally misread

The way it creeps upon you is strange and unsettling; I try to keep constant what I can control, while letting go of the things that seem expendable, as much as possible. I suppose people see in me a disposition that never suggests I could be as vulnerable, so when I do feel it, it is often read as something else.

I was shocked when I was asked if I had an idea to end it all; though I’ve faced overwhelming situations, I have opposed them firmly with positivity and hope. What I want to be remembered for is quite different from what that might suggest. Put that under the rubric of concern, I was advised.

I am aware that I always want to tell a better story. Those who think they know me rarely sense that sometimes I’m not feeling social or wanting to go out. Usually, when I am alone, I am more of a loner, an introvert, even if I express myself too candidly with words, generally well put together.

What I really feel

Yet, to the question about how I do feel in myself, I can never be negative, even if I do not feel the way I want to feel. It’s an intrusive but understandable question, yet even in my relationships, you’d hardly see past the surface; genuine closeness and physical intimacy are needed to see beneath.

By pressing on, I have avoided exposing my vulnerability, lack of desire, or disinterest. That feels like a luxury I can ill afford, given the demands placed on me to respond, engage, reach out, contribute, be present, and consider others' perspectives, often at the expense of myself.

There was a time I could shut myself away completely — curtains drawn, indoors for days, like Miss Havisham, who’s never stopped her clocks — but no one truly understands that need for occasional hibernation. Yes, I do value solitude and being alone.

I have lost my weakness

Much of this stems from repeated experiences of abandonment across different stages of life, including during illness, where my coping mechanism masks deeper suffering. Even my way of recovering downplays the seriousness of what I face; what people see and what is real are often different.

Heck, Akin, you had a malignant cancer diagnosis just over a year ago, and during those critical moments — from diagnosis, decisions, to treatment while working every day — you faced it largely alone.

I didn’t take a break until a month after radiotherapy, as I realised I had exhausted much resilience and needed someone to lean on, despite many challenges and the feeling that seeking help was somehow wrong.

We are never depressed

There’s so much I want to say, but I can’t put it into words. I have weaknesses easily overlooked because of the 'firstborn syndrome' and the idea that I am a pillar of strength. It’s a constant struggle to live up to that myth, as if I’m superhuman, when I am simply human.

We are never truly depressed — this would be an incomplete reflection, and I don’t want to be scrutinised or given poor advice based on assumptions. We don’t all fit preconceptions or boxes, but others rarely understand when someone’s difference doesn’t match their frame of reference.

How many allowances can be made for others? In the depths of the night, I hear a cry: “Please, don’t forget me.” Just as I want to reply, “Hold yourself together,” I realise I have to cater to these pleas — and it’s a pipe dream to think I’ll always be looked after.

I am tired, not of living, but of constantly meeting others’ expectations, which strains my mental resources, making me want to retreat into my own cocoon. Obligations, responsibilities, duties, commitments, demands — all of it. Yes, that sense of depression can creep in strange and unsettling ways.

Lest I forget, Africans are never depressed when you have the weight of expectations pressing down on you.

Thought Picnic: Mostly, one is not alone

The recesses of solitude

The comfort the security of my home provides could easily preclude me from essential socialising with other people and this has been exacerbated from the time of the pandemic when the need to be in an office was first restricted by lockdown and unviable by distance.

The wealth of solitude cultivated from hermit tendencies that have developed over decades probably in reaction to living in rather closely-knit settings became a need for one’s private space and the protection of that apparent luxury of estate.

The exuberance of companionship

It would seem the only time that was shelved was with Brian, my partner because we have striven to create a proper home environment for ourselves with a sense of autonomy and independence that we enjoy. Even though there are times I want to escape from it to have time to myself, it is a learning process.

If anything, I am very comfortable with our domestic arrangements, and it is one I quite so long for as it presents and satisfies that critical need for companionship with the understanding of each other and intimacy that does not exist in any other relationship.

However, getting out of my home to interact with a team of volunteers once a week seems to be quite beneficial too. For indirectly, I have begun to feel a sense of realignment of priorities and an appreciation of the kind of person I am. You realise that you need to be amongst people to use some life skills that never find an airing if you are sequestered in your home or using basic technology.

Working with all I have

Yet, Brian and I have availed ourselves quite fully of whatever means we have to maintain daily and constant communication with the support system it entails that is somewhat unavailable elsewhere. There are times I do feel alone and isolated, and maybe I do determinedly isolate myself too, what I am at least grateful for is there are many, friends, relations, and strangers alike who endeavour to keep in touch with me.

Beyond that, help from unexpected sources, far and near would keenly suggest one is not alone by any stretch of the imagination. You work with what you have and work with what you get for in all that makes up the experience with life, the spirit of encouragement imparted by mother, partner, and friend says there is a better story being written, even now.

Walking in the dreams of your mind

The solitude of the sleepy world

When I dream, the people invited to participate in the dramatic and theatrical expression of my mind as I sleep probably do not know that they are in that script and if they are, they are most likely playing a different perspective from the one that gains my focus.

Even so, when I have dead relatives in living colour conversing contemporaneously until at one point my consciousness interfered and told someone who came to pick me up that they were dead and should not be here. Immediately, they got back in their car and drove off.

The mystery of individuality with the uniqueness it engenders along with the way we believe suggests a clash in many spheres of life, wherein the ideas I may present will elicit the admonition in other words implicitly telling me to come to my senses, yet like Nicodemus in The Chosen, “I have never been closer to my senses.” Even if from an observer’s point of view, I am crazy and bordering on demented.

In my hearing and wearing

I have many friends from whom I take long and considered counsel; their views are sometimes as distant as the east is from the west to what I have going on in my mind. We must at certain times have the courage of our convictions despite the contrary wisdom being proffered.

For all intents and purposes, each man has to walk their own long hard road and climb to subdue their own mountains; the succour and comfort you get along the way is rarely from those walking in the same shoes on the same path. What we endure affects people differently. I know the pain of cancer and probably my pain threshold, but I will not compare my appreciation of pain to that being suffered by another, be it a headache or something considerably worse.

Let me ply my course

When I came to the conclusion that involved the decisions I have made, it would be uncharitable for anyone to think that anything was done without due and considered contemplation. Coming to the harvest to reap knowledge rarely involves knowing who tilled the ground, sowed the seeds, watered the grain, pulled the weeds, and kept away the pests until the crop was ready to be harvested for the barns.

What you see today did not begin in some instant just measure in the few hours past, the crying of the soul, the pain in the heart, the weariness of the bones, the loss of sleep that presages a sense of peace at the point of acting has already taken its tenuous toll. The force of hope trundling on like a perpetual engine fuelled by life and living.

There is at least one who seems to understand where opinion should be silent and support should be unstinting, and for that alone, I am grateful that I am no stranded in the wilderness of threat, danger, and a forlorn absence of direction. The story remains the one you tell of what you have lived.

In the solitude of the solitary

It is just me

It is the silence, the quiet stillness in a place of solitude in the company of just oneself that you find a spectrum of just wanting to be alone and the dread of loneliness. Your thoughts oscillating without any uniformity between a desirous need and an acceptance of lack, it could be disconcerting.

This long weekend presents that very scenario where at one time there was the prospect of receiving guests that was postponed to the next month, at the one time you feel you should jump on a train just to feel the energy of a crowd from afar, the sight of strangers with some purpose giving you a signal that you still exist even if you are not noticed.

It is just so

Then, there is lethargy, an overwhelming sense of inertia, where normalcy is not entirely so, as at least you are somewhat engaged even if you are working from home, but presently you are not. The curtains remain as they always were, undrawn that the outside is a mystery when asked about the weather.

For one Miss Havisham and I can be soulmates on the same voyage, though mine is not out of misery or disappointment and the clocks have not been stopped. It may not be out of commission, quite likely one of omission, as I just allow things to be as they are and trundle on.

I could do some cooking, but it is a table set for one, I could watch television, but the discussion goes on in my mind, I might read something, and the recognition is mine alone, or listen to something on the radio to be taken to a place of nostalgia and new meaning.

It is just there

What I have been blessed with, though I am given the joy of communication, but I cannot use fully for the distance between us. I have to trust myself that I am fine, though I found out at one time that it could mess with my head and set my emotions in flux, I hope I get my funk sorted long before that which warms my heart presents.

For now, I sail, a lonely mariner on a boat in storms, keenly aware of where I am going, but unsure of when I would arrive. An albatross perches on the mast to indicate, I might have a long way to go, but the winds are in my favour, and I should soon reach a safe harbour and that is where I am heading.

Thought Picnic: A clam seeking calm

A fish climbing trees

I find that I could be quite internally irritable, seeking the convenience and comfort of my recluse than engage with anything or anyone. Probably a matter of the temperament and the inclination to withdraw into my own shell like a clam. And like a clam, I naturally do not want to be prised open, for the clam shells open to filter feed and close for protection and security.

Obviously, one is not channelling one’s apparently piscine attributes, it is not like I have taken to water like any of the inhabitants therein. Yet, it is an aspect of my personality that is mostly misunderstood and whilst I could be tempted to make excuses for the how and the why I choose not to communicate, I appreciate that people need to communicate and interact even reluctantly.

Just being human

I wonder if in my phlegmatic state if mind, I have become sclerotic or I am just putting too much thought into this when I should just make allowances within the tolerances of the elements of endurance, I have the capacity for. I sigh in the quest for all the mental energy to contain my circumstances, of commission, of omission, of admission, or immersion in the things I control and those I cannot.

Then, I am not a complex or complicated being, more misunderstood and unknown, to whom aspects of predictability have been ascribed by reason of expectations that are not essentially true. It is not a case of enigmatic, it is one of being human, with all the accoutrements of vulnerability, unreasonableness, irascibility, and occasional sensibleness. This is a work in process with too many imperfections finding a means of expression.

Beyond the fallacy of solitude

At one in two

Sometimes, I just want to be left alone, left to my own thoughts to be by myself. I know this desire is a difficult one especially when in a close relationship. It is a process of reconditioning and adaptation that is not easy but necessary when thinking and acting for two.

Your thoughts and moods are not as personal or private as they once were. Any apparent change in attitude, demeanour, or responsiveness is immediately noticed as you run a barrage of enquiries and questions as to how you feel or what might be wrong with you, with them, or between you both when there really is nothing the matter at all.

Unfortunately, there is never a satisfactory answer to the many questions to which there is an implicit demand for a suitable, adequate, and proper explanation, or it presents a vector of possible conflict. How do you explain when you just feel unperturbed and meh?

Solitude and expression

Then, I guess the concept of solitude is an often-misunderstood subject about individuality, the idea of space and the cultural dimensions that might pertain to it. My blog is both a public journal and a conservatory of thinking that frequently has too much read into what is written. Whereas its fundamental purpose is a forum to document and develop thoughts for possible discussion.

I fear that when my blog is read in this way, it would begin to arrest expression leading to self-censorship and the loss of an outlet for my own catharsis, that is something I would hate to happen on my blog. Its free format for expression and introspection is valuable and useful, retaining this space for it matters much.

Person and personable

Indeed, I am a social being, I love company, companionship, and my relationship, but not to the extent of feeling like one part of conjoined twins fused together at some part of our bodies. By nature, I am also introverted, I do not function well in crowds. Heck! I went to bed early leaving guests to my birthday celebration partying.

This is same person who appears to easily strike up conversations with strangers. There are many facets to personality and individuality, I can be a hermit easily forgoing any human intervention cooped up in my apartment for up to a week without it bothering me, it suits my temperament.

However, the joy, security, and stability of having someone to love, and lean on, is priceless. I cherish it, I honour it, I will continue to nurture it and build it into an enduring treasure of life, may it prosper and grow, I love you, Brian.