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The last time I tried to kill myself I was twenty-five years old. I stood on a ledge nine floors from the ground, staring into the abyss that was my life. It called to me as it always did, taunting me with memories of all the things I should have, could have or would have done better. Powerless to do much else, I stood there, taking it all in, letting shame and regret weigh me down. Maybe if I stood there long enough the weight would be weighty enoughtto send me over the edge.
I was up to my ears in shit. Nothing in my life was working. It seemed like I was standing still while everyone else and their dead-beat uncle moved forward. Months earlier, a therapist I was seeing had broken the news to me; I was clinically depressed, with signs of dissociative disorder. I’d laughed in her face. Sure, I hadn’t been happy in a long time, but wasn’t that normal? “No it’s not,’’ she’d said with little bemusement. ‘‘Not with the level (of sadness) you’re at anyway. If you’re willing, I can book you in for a weekly session.”
If it were completely up to me, I wouldn’t have taken up the offer. But I felt obligated to do so because of the number of bodies involved. My college professor, out of concern, had called me in to find out why I hadn’t submitted anything for review even as the deadline for turning in my final year project closed in. He worried I wouldn’t graduate. “It would be such a crying shame,” he’d said. I was quiet. I couldn’t find words to express the tangled mess whirling in my mind. He took it for discomfort. He was male and much older. Maybe he wasn’t the right person to handle this. He excused himself, and as he was leaving the room, asked that I wait there. In a bit, I’d learn that he’d gone to call for backup.
Ms P walked into the room and her eyes widened at the sight of me, astounded. For the six years, I’d been in uni, she’d taken me through a number of units and knew me to do well. What had happened? We were now just the two of us in the room, yet I still wasn’t ready to divulge the real issues I was battling. But figuring I wouldn’t get away with silence a second time, I told her about an experience I had had with a man we’ll call Batman. It felt like a cheap move, but it worked. If I told her what had happened between Batman and I, then blamed it for the mess that had become my life, maybe she’d cut me some slack and let things slide.
I’d met Batman months earlier when my loneliness had driven me to Tinder, that godforsaken dating app. I wasn’t looking for a meaningless escapade like folk on the app. I just wanted someone to talk to. Someone I didn’t have to mask my basic state for. Batman fit the bill, or so I thought. He was never lewd or suggestive, but would instead play with my wit and sarcasm, bantering with me like an old flame would. It was thrilling. I wanted to know more. He played soccer, loved the Dark Knight, and couldn’t cook. We chatted on the app for weeks without meeting, until the night I reached out to him looking for a place to spend the night.
It was risky and naïve on my part, but there I was, at 11 p.m. in a loud Buru mathree littered with marauders, drunks and hecklers. He’d met me at his gate, plumper and shorter than I thought. He lived with his mother and sister, and we needed to be quiet walking up the stairs to his room. I didn’t know this beforehand – that he lived at home – but I found slight comfort in the fact that his mother slept right next door. Surely, he wouldn’t try anything I didn’t want to do. But I was wrong. Who’d believe I’d come all that way just to sleep? He certainly didn’t. And saying it the way he did, neither did I. What had I expected?
Truth is, I hadn’t thought that far. I hadn’t thought at all. I’d simply reacted after a silly argument with my sister, in whose tiny studio apartment I was crashing. She had been regretting allowing me into her space and I could feel it choking the air in my lungs with every passing day. It didn’t matter that I catered to myself, cleaned after myself and generally stayed out of her way. We just couldn’t find a way to co-exist in that small space. After the argument, I felt I couldn’t stay, not even for the remainder of the night. Batman could care less, and I didn’t know how to fight for myself. My helplessness failed to escape either one of us.
He moved fast. One minute I was fully dressed, the next a shaft was ruffling through the hairs on my mound. I froze. No one had come this close. I thought about screaming, but he must have seen the thought cross my mind because his hand went straight to my mouth. “Sshh. You be a good girl now,’’ he whispered. ‘‘I’m just giving you what you came here for.”
My recollection of what transpired next is hazy, but I recall wondering what his mother would do if she found out what kind of man her son had become. I even wondered what had happened to make him so pitiless. I remember the sharp pain of his fingers groping their way into me, his weight pressing down on me, and me waiting to hear if his bed creaked with the movement. It was sad that I was losing something I’d treasured for so long in such a crude and meaningless way. I’d resigned to my wretched fate, my mind wandering a less cruel land when suddenly something pulled him off me before he could work himself into me.
“What’s wrong with you?” he’d said, looking appalled.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I thought he might have discovered I was still a virgin and it had put him off, but I wasn’t waiting around to find out. I scrambled up, searching for my pants. When I spoke, my voice was low and level, to avoid provoking him. “I’ll just go,’’ I mumbled. ‘‘My sister must be worried. Don’t worry about it, I’ll call a cab and leave.” I missed a step or two on my way down, but it didn’t occur to me until later what had just happened, what had saved me. My epilepsy. The stress and anxiety of the moment must have short-circuited my brain and triggered a fit. It would have been quite the shock for one who didn’t know to expect it.
I looked up only when I was done speaking. The light in the office reflected off the unshed tears in Ms P’s eyes. I tried comforting her. “No, it’s okay, he didn’t rape me. I got out.” She shook her head and laughed. I was hollow. Perhaps she understood that it didn’t matter so much what happened to you but who you became because of it. Perhaps she could already smell the decay in me. ‘‘I’ll find someone more professional for you to talk to,’’ she’d said. ‘‘I think it will do you some good,” I assured her that I’d be available for any further interventions.
That’s how I ended up spending every Thursday afternoon sitting and talking about my life with a wiry old lady in the vicinity of Nairobi’s Yaya Center. The sessions were pro bono, but the medication wasn’t. The psychiatrist, my therapist’s husband, insisted that I needed the pills to correct the imbalance in my brain. He sounded certain and I needed the hope that things would get better. It had dented my pride in seeking aid from a cousin overseas to pay for the pills, but I didn’t want my family to know. They didn’t have the best reaction to things.
***
I shifted on the ledge, feeling my clothes stick to my skin in the unforgiving heat. The sky was empty, bare, looking like it had been cleaned out, looking like I felt. It was as good a day as any to die. They all looked the same now anyway, these days. Dark. Dreary. Desolate. No colour. No life. No nothing. Just me and my fears. More precisely, just me cowering away in the corner while my anxieties ran amok.
I wondered how my family would react to the news of my passing. For a long time, I’d thought they understood why I made the choices I did, until one day one of them came up to me and wondered, “Why do you like being so rebellious?” It had taken me by surprise. All along, I’d thought I was being true to myself, standing up and expressing who I thought I was. Turns out all they saw was irrationality and defiance. There I was, getting lost in translation. What would they make of this?
I could almost hear my father claiming witchcraft. He pleaded witchcraft for every other thing, it just had to make little to no sense. A stomach-ache; a stolen phone; a naughty cat that kept pooping outside the gate; a T-shirt with unfamiliar inscriptions; weird jewellery; deep-sea diving; loud music… It was ridiculous. More so for a man of the cloth like himself. Growing up where he did, I suppose his claims weren’t completely unfounded. But wasn’t his God the Almighty?
My sister was little more than a stranger to me. A lot of times the only thing we shared was the blood in our veins. I had thought living with her would bring us closer, but it had done the exact opposite. Still, I wanted to believe she would at least feel some regret for not trying harder to understand me. The mere thought brought me some relief.
I had no doubt my brother would be crushed. He made little secret of his affection for me, yet since he brought a girl home, I’d been reluctant to receive or return it. His woman had shown subtle reservation at my reliance on him, and picking up on it, I couldn’t dare cause strife in his life. I hoped he would come to understand how little I wished to cause him any grief.
As for my mother, I knew it would be tough. She’d find trouble accepting it. She’d probably spend days on end tormenting herself over her failure to prevent it. She had always been like that, taking our failures as her own, beating herself up over them. I hated it for her. I hated it so much that I almost resigned off the ledge. In fact, it seemed more merciful to rip off the band-aid rather than drag it out.
“What a shame,” I thought to myself.
I was going out like an abandoned mongrel, an unknown, even to those I cared most about.
I wished that they had realised that despite what it looked like, I never really wanted to be the incompetent and lacking being they all took me for. That I was simply trying hard to escape the deep pit of misery that my life had tumbled into. But nobody seemed bothered to look a little longer, or a little more kindly, or clearly. They didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.
***
I don’t quite remember when or how the cycle of misery started, but I remember feeling small and unseen even as a child. We were a family of five – my parents, my sister, my brother and I – but there were always at least eight of us at any given time. My mother took in two of her youngest siblings and my father brought in his youngest niece. Of the entire bunch, I was the youngest and the least outspoken—the lowest rung on the ladder. My father’s affection often made the ladder obsolete, but that changed when I was five when he’d gotten into an accident and returned to us a quivering shadow of the man he once was.
There was a four-year difference between me and the next person, which meant that while I was walking a path that had already been travelled by those ahead of me, I was doing it alone. They were proper, well-mannered, and excelled regardless of the task. By the time it was my turn to step to the plate, there would already be all these high standards to live up to. I was always playing catch up, always needing to prove myself worthy of my family name. I would meet people outside the house who would marvel at how mature I seemed for my age and would swell with pride, only to deflate when I’d get back home to find the older kids discussing Shakespeare, reminding me that I wasn’t there yet.
After my father’s accident, things at home took a turn for the worse. One day, he’d announced that he’d heard God calling him and dropped everything for theology school. With him and his income gone, the full brunt of the family burden fell on my mother. As time went by, I watched her slowly retreat into herself as she toiled to keep us alive and schooled. It didn’t take long before the bitterness crept in. With it, her soft edges turned rough and sharp. Her temper shortened, and she became worrisome and critical. Nothing was good enough for her anymore.
With the others in boarding school, I was often the only one with my mother. This meant I was the recipient of her frustrations and anxieties, and I hated it. She had good reason to feel how she felt, and I could empathise, but while it must have been cathartic for her, it always left me feeling heavy and useless. I hated that I couldn’t help her. I hated that I often denied myself things in my feeble attempts at lightening her burden, even as everyone else kept turning to her for help. I hated that she could never say no to anyone yet she didn’t extend me the same grace. I hated having to accompany her wherever she went and being called Kibeti Ya Mum, as if I lived just for her. I hated how hard she was on me, keeping me on a tight leash as though ensuring I’d never make her mistakes (or any at all). But most of all, I hated my father for tripping the wire and leaving me behind in his mess.
When he finally came back years later, a Theology degree in hand, I wished he hadn’t. It was like a heavy cloud of tension had followed him home and now all they ever did was fight. Sometimes they were out and loud, but most times it was just this dense passive aggression where they wouldn’t speak or look at each other, and I’d have to act the bridge between them. My dislike for my father grew, as did the distance between us. In my eyes, he could no longer do anything right, even as mother could do no wrong.
I was never good at being social in the first place, but with the way things were at home, I became even less inclined to bring anyone into my world. It was too much of a hassle going through the long list of requirements my mother had for anyone who wanted to be my friend, but also, I couldn’t imagine adding any more weight to my already heavy existence. It didn’t help that I envied children my age for being childish so often and so freely. How did they do that?
Alone, I spent my time either buried in a book, a puzzle, listening to radio or daydreaming about all the things I would get to do once I turned eighteen, the magical age for me. I thought that once I got there, everything would just fall into place and I’d finally be able to live the free life I so craved.
The dawning of high school brought with it the usual adolescent problems, plus a sosa just for me—epilepsy. It began like a joke. I would randomly miss a step or two going up or down the stairs or drop a cup or spoon here and there. Whenever it happened, it would feel like my consciousness had switched off then quickly back on, like a system reboot, and I would usually need a moment to remember where I was and what I was doing. I didn’t think much of it. I assumed it would go away on its own, so I didn’t say much about it. Then one day, a year after its advent, while home for the holidays, I collapsed and had my first full-blown seizure at the breakfast table. My parents rushed me to hospital, worried out of their minds. It was strange seeing them on the same side of something for once.
The diagnosis had not been easy to make. All the tests came back negative. The doctor we’d gone to see was convinced I was faking it all for attention. He’d asked to see me privately, where he needled me with questions, trying to oust me from my pretence. His prescription was stark. “I think you should see a psychiatrist,’’ he’d said, ‘‘and consider living an honest life from now on.” When I left his office, my father had asked, and I’d dutifully repeated what I’d been told. He grew livid as I spoke and stormed back into the office to fight the man. It was pointless and embarrassing, but I thought it nice that my father was finally behaving like one. A different doctor had offered us a second opinion, referring us to the neurosurgeon who’d made the final diagnosis. It was the start of a different type of struggle.
I wished I’d been faking it. “She should stay away from bright flashing lights, loud sounds, heights, water activities, operation of motor vehicles or equipment, sharp objects, tight clothes, stress, sleep shorter than five hours, drugs, alcohol…” I could hear my life skitter away as the bars fell over me one by one. My chest tightened. What life was this? As if that wasn’t enough, I had pills to take twice a day, every day, for the rest of my life, pills which came with serious side effects, most concerning of which was suicidal tendencies. My father was not having it. It sounded like a demonic trap to him.
I’d gone home without the medication, but a couple of pastors had shown up to pray and exorcise me of the devil’s influence. That was the first time I clearly felt like something was irrevocably wrong with me, a feeling that intensified when the seizures came back stronger than before, this time leaving me with significant gaps in my memory. My father’s faith had flickered, and off I’d gone with a bottle of pills, a to-do list, and a negative self-perception.
By the time eighteen came, all I knew was blind obedience, constant self-sacrifice, extreme criticism, isolation, bitterness, envy and paralysing fear. Living was a chore. Something to tick off rather than enjoy. I hated everything about myself, from my body and gender to my personality. They seemed to be the reason why I was always falling short, always apologising, always needing to prove myself. It was with this attitude that I stepped out into the world as an ‘adult’.
Going into campus, my academic performance introduced me to the others. I didn’t speak much but always showed up and did well. There was always someone wanting to borrow classroom notes, copy an assignment, or have me sign the lecture attendance sheet on their behalf. It all somehow made me feel useful, wanted, and so I embraced it with everything I had. It was also the thing that helped me keep showing up for classes I otherwise had no interest in. I had picked my course of study like I had been choosing everything else, nonchalantly.
By the time I turned twenty-one, I was completely fed up with the monotony of things. I woke up, went to school, walked my friends to their buses, then went back to my hostel where I either watched a movie, read a book, slept, or listened to music. I went home on Saturdays and came back on Sundays after church.
Simple tasks like leaving my bed were becoming increasingly difficult. This prompted me to venture a little outside my world. The first thing I found was skateboarding.
I was wandering about Uhuru Park one day, the public park in downtown Nairobi, when I came across a couple of boys skating. They kept falling all over themselves, but like fools, kept getting back up, faces shining with determination, and do it all over again. It was a literal blood, sweat and tears affair, yet they all looked so happy and free. It was alluring. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten so lost in something. I wanted in. I wanted to feel as liberated as they looked.
Naturally, my doctor was against it. So were my parents. It was too dangerous, too boyish, too strange, too useless, too childish. The usual admonitions. This time round though,I didn’t fold like I’d always done. I was a dog with a bone. It was the first time I’d realised the world doesn’t stop just because I defied the wishes of those with some authority over me. This changed everything.
My twenty-second year opened me up to more things that my parents and doctor hated. I found myself adopted by a group of six pretty girls. They did wonders for my ego, my street-cred, and my social life. I was talking more, going out and meeting people, discovering my femininity, and partying. I even got my first boyfriend, a skateboarder like me, and just as lost if not more. We’d emailed each other a lot before we found ourselves at a house party where he’d confessed his feelings for me. I’d responded with a panic attack. He’d tried again a few days later, this time threatening to cut me off if I didn’t give in to his overtures because he didn’t think he could be my friend. He wanted more. I couldn’t imagine not talking to him. We lasted a month, with barely any physical contact.
At twenty-three, I actively smoked weed, pierced my nose, drank socially, spent nights out every so often, and skipped school to sleep or skate. I was always around people, which meant there was always someone I was trying to be somebody for. Things had changed so much yet where it mattered most – me making peace with myself – they stayed the same, maybe even worse. I still thought others better than me and felt alone even amidst crowds. Skating wasn’t liberating anymore, alcohol didn’t agree with me, and most of the attention I was receiving was attempts to get to my pretty friends. Those who spoke to me talked at me, around me, and through me, but nobody ever really talked to me. It was like I was removed from their reach. I was there but I wasn’t. A ghost.
Worse still, my parents no longer trusted me with anything, seemingly having given up hope of anything good ever coming from me. And with me not eating, sleeping, or acting right, my health had slowly deteriorated and we’d been forced to increase my epilepsy dosage, almost tripling it, in pursuit of effectiveness. I was at the hospital so often it felt like I was voluntarily seeking disease. I was emptier than before, and still nobody seemed to notice.
I had moved out of my sister’s after the Batman incident and moved in with my brother. He lived with his girlfriend – the one who wasn’t sure if she liked how much my brother had my back – but we were all friendly enough for it to work. Growing up, my brother would do the most annoying things, like practice wrestling moves on me, but beyond envy for the kind of mum our mother was to him – she spoilt him rotten, that thing they say about mothers and their sons – I thought the world of him. I found some rest in his house.
Everything was going well until I came back late one night to find the lights out. I lit a candle intending to wash up, but fatigue had overtaken me, and I’d collapsed into sleep. The next thing I knew, there were screams, shattering glass, smoke, and a lot of heat. I couldn’t believe my shit luck. I had burnt the house, and despite the strong desire to flee, leaving right after the fire didn’t feel right. I swallowed my pride and endured all the arson ‘jokes’ at my expense. I hung around, humbled and completely at their service, until they were well settled in a different house and my mishap had faded from the tops of their heads.
By my twenty-fourth birthday, I was so overweight, people thought I’d given birth. Something in me had died and I wasn’t feeling things anymore. I’d been trying to fill the growing void inside me with food. My peers all seemed to be progressing along life’s journey nicely, but all I had was a string of misfortunes. I’d performed better than most of them in school, and maybe even had a headstart over some of them, but here I was, doing worse than most.
In addition to the self-hate and streak of mishaps, my purity now seemed like a vain idea after Batman, and I’d become a loose woman. Not the working kind, but the kind looking to feel something, anything. Getting guys wasn’t difficult, but I could never hold them after their four huffs and a puff. They fucked me in their cars, offices, grazing fields, toilets and in dark alleyways. None of them looked at me during or after. I could have been anyone. I was disgusted with myself.
Filled with shame at the thing I’d become, I couldn’t even look in the mirror anymore. I was high all the time, and easy to provoke. When friends couldn’t take it anymore, they called me in to basically say shape up or shape out. “Everyone has their problems, but we deal with them on our own.” I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t know how to shape up, so I faded away. All my bridges were now ash.
At school, all that was left to do was a three-month industrial attachment and the final year project. I’d managed to attend the attachment for a month but slept away for the remainder of its duration. My saving grace was that the industry was government-owned, and nobody cared. The project suffered though. I just couldn’t muster the energy to be bothered. There were two weeks left until the deadline when my professor called me in, and I couldn’t speak, and that’s when he called Ms. P, and what followed was therapy.
However, even that only lasted until my therapist dozed off in one of our sessions. I stopped showing up, eventually sinking back into my depressive hole, a dark, desolate place where things went to die. My days morphed into one long unending day which carried neither warmth, colour, nor life. It was just me cowering in a corner while my demons went berserk.
I have no way of remembering how long I lived like this, but I looked up one day and couldn’t do it any more. This thought led me to the top of a residential building in Nairobi’s South B, where my brother lived. I thought it better to do it there so my body would be quickly identified by neighbours. It also helped that someone was digging up a foundation for a new building next door, a pile of rocks lying around. Falling on those from the ninth floor would surely take me out.
From where I was standing, the task was simple; lean forward. I’d imagined it a million times. I felt reassured about my decision as I watched the doll-sized figures below me scurrying about, completely oblivious. “Inconsequential to the end, it seems,’’ the voice in my head said. I felt incredible shame in going out that way, but I’d done all I knew to do.
I closed my eyes, meaning to take in one last breath, when a thought rang out in my head, clear as day. “Have you really done your best?” My eyes flew open. I hadn’t really applied myself to anything consequential as far as I could remember, or had I? I was always shrinking in defeat, always embracing the next excuse not to. Life had thrown some curveballs my way – adolescent angst, strife at home, tiffs with my sister, the incident with Batman, the fire at my brother’s, and on – but had I really rooted for myself, or had I always found a way to sleep on the job?
A silver of hope shone through the darkness.
But then the voice persisted.
“Don’t be silly,’’ it said. ‘‘There’s too much damage to salvage this. J***!”
I couldn’t. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
The veil had lifted from my eyes. I looked through my mind’s eye and saw I’d been seeking outward validation, waiting for the world to attach its value on me, taking my seemingly unfair share of beatings and deciding it was the end of the road, when in fact there was always a way? Could I really survive these many falls?
Talking of falls, my mind went back to my first day of skating.
My coach had placed a skateboard on the ground beside my feet and asked me to step on it. Reluctant to try and fail, I shook my head dissenting, claiming not to know how to do it. He was adamant. ‘‘Step on it,’’ he’d said. As soon as I set my foot and weight on the board, a brief skid ensued followed by a fall. He laughed. “That’s the worst that could happen,’’ he’d said. ‘‘Now we skate.”
The worst had already happened. Now I needed to live.
If you or someone is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please reach out immediately to www.befrienders.org
