Time and Life

So I stopped writing for over two years for one reason or another. Within this period a lot of things have happened. Which may or may not be attributed to this self imposed break from writing.

So I got engaged around October 2017, and had my introduction around March 2018. Prior to this time, I was already having arguments with my dad about my partner’s religion,and our way of keeping things to ourselves and not keeping him informed about our plans. What happened was, we registered for marriage classes without informing him and then things blew up when the church announced our wedding plans during Sunday mass (they announced our banns two days after we registered for the classes). Imagine the bewilderment on my parents faces lol. I hadn’t informed them because I can be a very private person. I thought it’ll be better to inform them when we were about to fix a date or start the wedding preparations proper.

So these made my dad really upset and he began to make a big deal out of it. Asides that, things started to go south. Our plans to get married just stopped working. After the introduction in March 2017, we moved in together. I got tired of the constant nagging of my parents and we thought it’ll help my mental health as I was gradually slipping into depression and becoming suicidal. In all of these my partner was amazingly supportive. God bless him.

Things got better for a while. I was happy for a while but overtime, I started feeling anxious and depressed again. I kept worrying that people were gossiping about me staying with my partner even though he had not married me. I just kept imagining stuff. It was horrible guys. My head just kept playing tricks on me. In September 2018 we had our registry. I thought everything will be fine now that we were legally married. I thought wrong. I started thinking “he needs to pay my bride price” “my parents have to bless our union”. I still wasn’t satisfied. On the 31st of December 2018, we had our traditional wedding. My husband paid my bride price and our parents blessed our union. We were so happy. After a few weeks though I began to feel guilty. We needed to bless our union in the church. God is angry with us.

Note that during these phases of being unsatisfied, I was really sad. I smiled a lot, but deep down, I felt incomplete. I thought myself unworthy to put myself out there. I has zero zeal to write or speak publicly. I had zero zeal to socialize. It was like an intermission. Like I put everything on hold till everything was perfect to my own standard. Sigh. Mind you, on the day of my traditional wedding I found out I was two weeks pregnant. It was a planned pregnancy so we were very excited. On Monday, 4th of March 2019 we had our white wedding. I made sure it was simple with no stress. I just wanted my wedding blessed in the church so I wasn’t really bothered about the society’s standard of what a white wedding should be like. We had the mass, and then went home to have lunch with the few friends and family that attended. The total guests were between 30-40. I was happy.

The next couple of weeks though we argued a lot. I guess the thought that we were now permanently tied to each other scared me. Made me feel cornered sort of. I’m used to walking away at the slightest inconvenience. I’m used to having a second option. And then boom, I’m tied to this one man and there’s no where I can run to. This thought usually came up when we had arguments. Over time though, I got over it. After a few months of adjusting, I came to terms with the fact that this is the “always and forever” we always spoke about. And we adjusted. And then we fell in love all over again.

As my body changed and my bump grew, I began to pray for the pregnancy to be over. I didn’t have the motivation to wear make up all through my pregnancy. I always looked unbothered and tired. I kept counting the months, waiting expectantly for my baby to quickly arrive. I also had very few maternity dresses. I was so unbothered. Kept counting down to nine months. I was also anxious though. Very anxious about our finances and wondering whether we made the right decision.

On the 6th of September 2019, our baby Elnathan Ebubechukwu Arinze came. We were so excited. I had a traumatic delivery experience which I may write about some other day but I was so excited that our baby was finally here. Immediately after I came out of the theatre, my husband was there smiling though with a very worried expression in his eyes. They told him to come and carry his baby and he reluctantly removed his gaze from me towards the baby, and back. He continued holding my hand while talking to me and asking if I was okay. The nurse insisted he come look at the baby and then he reluctantly left, carried the baby and then hurriedly came back to look at me. He said thank God the baby came out fine, now the main focus is my wife. I need her to be fine and healthy. I felt really loved.

The days, weeks after we came back from the hospital was traumatic. The baby refused to sleep at night, slept and woke up every hour. It was crazy. I went fast into postnatal depression. I nearly went mad. My baby was so demanding. He breastfed as long as he was awake, and at night, he woke up every hour to breast feed. Sometimes too, he breastfed all through the night. It was crazy. And then I had put on so much weight, with a very big stomach. I felt horrible. My grandma told me to bear it, as the excessive feeding will reduce when he turns three months at most. And it did to an extent. But I was still sad. You know, when you have your life all planned out and you enjoy your own space, its a totally out-of-space experience to be so tied to another human being. You can’t take walks, you can’t go to church by yourself, you can’t lock yourself inside to listen quieltly to music or watch a movie. You practically can’t do anything without a tiny mouth screaming at you for breast. I nearly went mad. I was so depressed and upset. Sometimes I was bitter and envied my husband. I envied how he slept through the baby’s cries sometimes, how he went to work and came back to meet a clean happy baby not knowing what I went through while he was away. But what will I have him do, he doesn’t have breast. He can’t breastfeed. Although he was actually really supportive, I was too bitter to appreciate it. I was too tired. At some point, I started sleepwalking and sleep talking. It was caused by the mental stress and sleep deprivation I was going through. In all of this though my landlady was supportive. She sometimes helped me care for Ebube while I slept and then when i went back to work she cared for him while I was away. I’ll forever remain grateful to her. When I went back to work the mental stress gradually reduced and I began to feel better. Especially after I stopped the exclusive breastfeeding.

Ebube is seven months old now and I can’t help smiling when I think back at these experiences. I kept waiting for him to grow up. I kept waiting for him to laugh, to blab, to grasp things, to sit, to stop exclusive breast feeding, to crawl, to start eating solids, to stand etc. I kept waiting instead of savouring each and every special moment, documenting and appreciating them. Two years have passed and I put my life on hold waiting for the perfect moment. The perfect moment to start writing again, the perfect moment to start updating my social media accounts, the perfect moment to start living up to my potential.. The thing is, as time keeps going, life keeps happening whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So its best to savour each moment as they come and stay productive while at it.

Today I had to sit down and think. What is my purpose on earth, and why have I not stayed true to that purpose. Whether you move or you sit still, life keeps happening and time keeps going. What you do or don’t do will not affect the speed of time. It will only affect the outcome of the future. So there is no perfect time to do some thing. You can only try to do things the right way. And it is foolish to allow your emotions affect your productivity. For two years I achieved nothing because I was occupied with being sad and waiting for the perfect time. How foolish of me.