What did you do with your depression? by Chimdike Nwokeukwu LLB (Wales)

Posted by: stiphbami in State of Mind Dec 12, 2014

We can’t count how many smiles and hugs are shared around the world everyday. How many warm pats on the back or how many handshakes are shared. Likewise you can’t count how many hearts are gutted by frustration, fattened with pain and swollen with depression. Nobody chooses this to befall them but as I write I can’t stop thinking of how depressed people cope everyday. This may not be a speedy solution but it is indeed a wise way to look at it. I think if you hold on to the depression, not as a fear or a shadow, but as a proof of that ONE thing u don’t want to be, my guts tell me you will make the end of that story a fairytale. And the beautiful thing about the way God made us is that everything is an answer to everything. If humans just listen and observe. Life is a beautiful concept. Life is the most amazing thing about life. There’s something intriguing about everything. Even your mere ability to lift a cup from a table and drop it back.

The beauty of a solution is the problem; The beauty of a story-end is the story-detail. When whatever makes us depressed comes calling, it eats up the heart, drowns the mind and shrinks the body, makes you deaf to salvation’s loud cry for objectivity. But if you take your mind out of self pity and pain as much as you can, yo will see yourself from another man’s eye. Or even from God’s eyes. It might take some time but at some point you’ll breathe, you’ll see, you’ll feel, and you’ll find understanding even in your hurt. There’s usually the fear or sometimes even certainty of death or failure. But the thing is that even when you’re thinking of it, you forget you’re still breathing at that moment. A moment that may have defined your very existence.

The morale of the whole story is that it’s okay to be worried, it’s okay to cry, honourable to mourn, normal to be afraid, devastated and whatever else. But what makes all these things bad most times is that human beings don’t understand that answers lie in those emotions. The pain of depression that killed ‘Mr A’ could have been the turning point for ‘Mr B’.

Fear is as much of a tool as is bravery. When you’re too brave and confident, you forget that fear exists. And being brave doesn’t mean that if I pour a gallon of gas on you and strike a match, you won’t turn to dust in minutes. So it’s okay to fear when you have to. But finding the balance between fear and courage makes you find wisdom, experience, success and indeed, fulfilment. If God really exists and he loves us, he won’t bring upon humanity things that would destroy us. It simply means everything we see and feel has a role to play in everything we are or we become.

So hold on to your fears and your depression, decide what to do with it. Decide to use them, not as tools that define you but as tools that explain and emphasise who you are or want to be. They are nothing short of a reminder of the brutal reality that accompanies our existence sooner or later, which is that life doesn’t come easy.

The paradox is that though difficult, it is also simple. If you don’t like being fat, shed some damn weight. Give it all it takes. If you don’t like being slim, eat more. If you can’t do anything about it, then spend the rest of your life loving and appreciating yourself because it is that indepth happiness and fulfilment that radiates in your smile and the way you carry yourself such that genuine people come to love you for who you are. To hell with what the fake people like or don’t like.

So let this be a good morning to a new brand and an awesome personality that is YOU!

by Chimdike Nwokeukwu LLB (Wales)

Chimdike Enyinnaya Nwokeukwu is the first son of Abia based lawyer and politician, Elder C.A.N Nwokeukwu. He is a Law graduate from the prestigious University of Wales. He is an orator per excellence and has engaged in the art of writing since his childhood days. Chimdi released this article as his way of contributing to the lives of those broken down by depression as his own quota towards community development. He is also an excellent keyboardist, singer and songwriter.