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“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” (Brigham Young)
Education has always been my lifeline. It has always taken precedence over everything else in my life because it determined my value. This premise is very fallacious because human beings are multi-faceted entities thus an individual’s value cannot be summed up to one facet. This may seem very obvious to some of you, but this is something I’ve only recently come to understand. As you can imagine, the acknowledgment of this fact would have saved me a great deal of time, pain and energy, but then again what is life, if not a learning experience? :0)
July 2009 marked the beginning of my self-hatred and the gradual breakdown of my buoyancy. A Tet offensive had begun, and my spirit and soul were collateral damage. My quintessence being was crumbling by the minute.
Kenya has been described as the cradle of mankind but for me, it was the cradle of tokoloshes for many, many years.
My room was filled with darkness and tokoloshes. I tried to distract myself by watching TV series on my laptop, but it was barely making a dent in the darkness, let alone saving me from myself. I was so preoccupied with the release of my first semester results that I was working myself into a severe panic attack. My heart was palpitating, my chest was stiff, my blood vessels were constricted, my vision was blurry, actually it was almost obsolete, my whole body was shaking and I was full of sweat. The battle was between my mind and my mind. The winner would control my body, outer perception, self-worth and resilience.
Any depressed individual can tell you that depression and self-loathing are synonymous. You spend half the time alienating yourself from society and the other half, trying to run away from your mind. Your pride tells you not to infect others with your disease but your heart longs for someone’s saving grace. Depression, as you can imagine, is an uphill battle, couple it with severe anxiety, and you have the perfect cocktail of death.
…
The war had begun. Oxygen was on the offense and had congregated in my nasal cavity. The first military advancement was unsuccessful; to be honest it put the Bay of Pigs fiasco to shame. A new offensive had to be launched to save my body from utter annihilation. Oxygen launched a ballistic missile down my pharynx into my airways. My ribs held a steady defence line, they remained constricted and heavy. As the missile worked its way down my respiratory system, a shadow of excruciating pain covered my body. At this point, any normal person would have passed out. As the missile reached its target, pits of fire ran down my trachea. My trachea was set ablaze and the inferno was so strong, it sent electric vibrations down my spine that resembled the exhaust pipe vibration of a McLaren Mp4-12C. Although my panic attack only lasted a couple of minutes, it felt like I was under attack for a day or two.
For those of you that have never had a pain attack, let’s try a little exercise. Take a very deep breathe, hold it and pinch your nose (Please do not do this for too long, or you’ll harm yourself). Now, close your eyes and imagine you are being forced to fight Manny Pacquiao in a boxing arena filled with thousands of people. You’ve never fought anyone before, so you’re not only an amateur, you’re an amateur whose about to get your ass whooped. Adrenaline has your heart palpitating, your chest is tight and your mind is being suffocated with detestable and violent thoughts. The crowd starts hurling insults at you, the room goes dark and those insults start floating in front of your eyes. You start yelling back, trying to defend yourself but the harder you protest, the louder they get and the more breathless you become. Now, Pacquiao represents your biggest fear and the crowd is your mind. Panic attacks are trigger by different things for different people, the severity and duration of the attack depends on how quickly you’re able to counter your negative thoughts and control your breathing. People who’ve had panic attacks can tell you it truly is mind over matter!
If you had or have been having panic attacks please seek medical attention.
…
As you can imagine, I barely slept the night before the release of the semester results. I only fell asleep at half past two am. I was infected by the one nightmare until half past eight in the morning. I dreamt that I had to go to my department to receive my results that had been published on the notice board. As I stepped out of the elevator, I was immediately surrounded by all the students and my professors of my university. They were all heckling and laughing at me, as my transcript was full of DPR’s. They told me I was a failure; I would never amount to anything and my lack of intelligent was the reason I got raped. Now obviously, none of those students knew my grades, neither did they know I had been raped. In addition, I knew I had bombed that semester, but there was a huge delusional part of me, that was praying for a miracle. I hadn’t managed to write any of my assignments, let alone hand them in. Which meant I had not been allowed to write my exams; but I was still holding onto the illusion that I was imagining this and I had miraculously managed to pass all my exams.
As I said above, July 2009 marked the destruction of my self-worth, what I did not tell you is, it also marked the destruction of my reality. The minute I saw my results in black and white, I began to think of myself as a failure, and therefore began to acted and behaved as a failure. I had been captured by the formidable tide of self-doubt and I was directing my own requiem.
For more of my writing, go to: amandlawethu.org/misbeloved
