The thing about depression in an African home is that you can never say it out loud. It's not something you give life to, you don't speak it, you don't breathe it, you don't dream it, you don't even think it. You swallow it with your eba and gulp it down with water, you bury it and burn it the way you burn used sanitary pads. Having depression in an African home means that you need to find a realistic reason to explain why you can't possibly make your lower limbs move faster when your father asks you to get him some water or when your mother asks you to fetch a broom from the kitchen. You'll learn to blame your incessant migraines on physical stress and you eventually learn to stop talking about them because you really can't be stressed everyday, can you? As for your highly irregular sleep pattern, you learn how to deal with it and not let it affect your duties, because how could you possibly explain that during the day, your brain wants nothing more th
Sometimes I feel like I am watching my life happen but not actually living it. Like events are happening to me but I'm not really in the moment. Like I am composed of two separate entities, one to act and one to observe the actions. At other times, I feel like time is not really moving, like people are moving but time is not. At times like this, I feel like I do not really own my body ...and therein lies the problem with being able to exist outside of yourself.