AS WE DRAW THE CURTAINS CLOSE ON 2022...

 Hey there!

We're wrapping up 2022! It has an almost surreal feeling for me. 

Welcome to today's gist, it's going to be my gratitude journal/my review of this year through my eyes, I hope you stick around.

I remember beginning this year with so much trepidation, and for so many reasons: I was going to begin my final year, there's a lot of anxiety that it comes with. Now, according to the plan (which didn't exactly pan out), I was going to be done with Uni and go to Law School this year, so naturally I was beginning to realize that regardless of what and how I felt, I don dey see the rest of my life for my front and I really had to sit up with my life.

The first thing I had to deal with as I entered this year was the anniversary of my friend's death, and that hit me with new levels of grief: it was terrible to think that an entire year had passed since he left, I remember not sleeping the night before, and I desperately wanted to sleep! I wished I could just sleep the night before and wake up the morning after without having to actually going through the 23rd but that obviously wasn't possible, and I had to go through a reminder of one of the most horrible experiences of my life. Something that experience taught me is the fact that there really is no manual for how to deal with grief, we all just learn to cope with it in our own way, and if we're not careful, it becomes easy to grow negative and toxic coping habits.

While I was trying to get over 23rd January, I woke up on the 10th of February to news that completely shattered my world again, my friend Rahab who had been battling Sickle cell anemia and its demons, passed away on the night of the 9th. The message of her passing was sent to me via text at past 1 am in reply to a message I had sent her praying for her recovery.... I remember that for the next few days, I couldn't really understand myself, I really was fed up! I was losing too many people that I love; and I am someone who doesn't even do well with losing my friends to the end of season, so losing a friend to death was almost more than I could handle. The worst part of losing Rahab was seeing what it did to my sister, my sister is someone who typically is careful with maintaining the equilibrium of her mental health but this time my sister almost lost it! Seeing her go through all that was so heart-wrenching because she's always there for me, and I had to watch her go through all that pain and I didn't even know how to help her... but God was merciful! In fact, I would say He allowed ASUU go on strike in February because He knew neither me and my sister could face school in the immediate aftermath of Rahab's death so when the strike began, I heartily welcomed it, at least for the first month.

Of course, the next thing that happened with me was the eight-month strike action embarked upon by ASUU. I've already said why I welcomed the strike initially, but as  one month became 2, and became 4, I began to get angry. I knew that my going to law school this year was no longer feasible, I sat down at a point to calculate the amount of extra time I had spent trying to get this one degree -between ASUU and Jos Crises, I had spent 24 extra months, that's 2 years of my life! One thing that made this particularly hurtful for me was the fact that I already had my life planned out, for the most part, with timelines for when I expected to finish school, but here was Strike, derailing my plans once again. If there's any lesson God has taught me time and again this year, it is to trust Him and walk along His own plans and timeline for my life.

Fresh into the strike, I had just traveled home, I woke up at past 12 am to my mother's screams -my uncle, her only brother, had just passed away. I say this now and I realize that I haven't quite dealt with this loss because somewhere at the back of my mind, I still feel Uncle Sam is alive because it hasn't even begun to make sense to me that He's gone. I remember telling God that day that I was done! That before He took anyone I love, He should take me first because dealing with grief so continuously was becoming too much for me. While we sat and cried with my mother that night, I looked at my siblings and for the first time, I was struck with fear: I thought to myself "so one day this would be us? Crying that one of us had died?" Until that day, it had seemed inconceivable that one of us would die, but that day it dawned on me that one day we will sit and we would not be complete; selfishly, I prayed to God to let me be the first to go because.... Something that losing my Uncle taught me was that this grief thing? Dem no dey fully understand am, you'd think you've seen the depths of grief but one go hit you one day and all that you'd been going through would almost be like play. But in everything, I can see God bringing comfort to my mother and my whole family, it's in small doses most times, but it's there and we see Him helping us go through each day.

Something I've had to struggle with so much this year was my mental health. I've had so many mental breakdowns that I'm honestly beginning to seriously consider the fact that I might be in need of therapy. These breakdowns have been caused by multiple reasons: grief, the pressure of school, sometimes it's falling into sin... One that really messed with my head was a writing job that I had gotten sometime in July; I had been asked to write a documentary on someone's life, was supposed to produce about 60,000 words in less than 2 weeks and I couldn't. I tried my best but it just wasn't possible. I remember the day I had to speak to the person who gave me the job and tell her I couldn't do it, I went to the front of my house, sat under the tree and cried for a while. It felt like something was wrong with me, especially because the person who gave me the job had somewhat implied that this was something normal for writers,and the thought that I couldn't do it cut me to the core of my being, I remember feeling so down for days that I couldn't even write anything, it was the period I just came on the blog to "check in" and not say anything because I didn't feel like I should even continue writing. I talked to my mentor and my best friend about it and God used them to get me out of the dumps. 

I was looking to make this my last post for the year, but I'm emotionally drained just going through all I've written so far, (and I'm sorry if the tone of this post is heavy) so I'll be making this into a series that I'll write for the remaining days of this year, I hope you stick around with me, and feel free to share your experiences this year also, I would love to hear how your year went.

See you tomorrow.

Love,

Achenyo.