Body

Encumbered by; enamored with the sack of flesh with which you were adorned at birth.

I’ve been accused of being many things in my life; quiet has never been one of them. Disruptive, chaotic, boisterous, but never quiet. That’s how you’ll know how much light has gone out from me, that I’m a hollow shell of a person who once was; laughter is gone from the halls of my life. 

When Niyi saw me after his 5-year stint in Canada, he was visibly shaken. The awkward jokes and smiles that did not reach his eyes told me everything I needed to know. He felt sorry for me. He’d asked me why I was quiet. 

Before he left for Canada, he’d asked me to marry him. I’d said no. I loved him but it wasn’t right. I wasn’t ready. It couldn’t have been him. I had lofty dreams that were well within reach; I resumed fashion school in Rome in six months, plus, I’d always dreamed of a glorious love and well, we were far from glorious. We’d been together five years and what held us together through the final two was the normalcy of being together. 

The six months never came. I began to feel not-very-alright one random day three months after Niyi left. I was all cried out because you cry, even when you ended the relationship. Because you loved them and you miss them and “what next?”

You’d always contemplated pain offhandedly, with the disposition of one who had never known enough of it to give it any actual, proper thought. You had the luxury of detachedness. You'd been depressed most of your life even when you were all smiles and witty anecdotes, so you knew how it felt to be in pain, mentally. You’d never truly known physical pain until you entered this phase of your life, your roaring 20s, marred by illness. The physical debilitation just worsened your mental health. The pit you used to occasionally manage to crawl out of widened until there was nothing but pit. 

When the pain started, you didn’t understand what it was. You’d thought pain to mean another thing entirely, something more cutting and definite, but your pain was epitomised in one word, “discomfort”. You felt out of place in your body, like your thoughts and feelings were parasites feeding on a decomposing host. Nothing else mattered, nothing else could matter. It was just pain and the endless droning of time and the television that never seemed to air anything worth watching. Life carried on outside the walls of your hospital room. 

Your friends went out and sent you snaps of themselves enjoying life; doing what you so desperately wanted to; living. You’d cut them all off, not because they’d wronged you but because you couldn't help but feel jealous and angry, resentful at life and by extension, them. They had to go for being oblivious to the horror you were facing, offering shallow platitudes while being unable to hide their discomfort at being in your presence as you withered away. You brought them face to face with their mortality as you confronted yours, so it was best that you deleted all your social media while you fought for your life. 

How does one even fight in the face of such helplessness? I discovered, shockingly, that you cannot simply will yourself to be well. Longing and misery and mental fortitude will not save you, one can only hope. 

Your body failed you and rejected itself and you lay curled up in a foetal position night after night wondering what you did to be so unfortunate. You could never have imagined the unholiness illness would inflict upon you, on the inside and the outside. 

Life was *finally* starting to make sense and take shape and then, next thing you know, six months have passed since your body last felt like your own, your vessel, even though it feels like time refused to move while you were sick. As life fades from you, you heave and cry because you told yourself, “as long as I’m well before school starts” and you'd missed your self imposed deadline for wellness. Fashion school was gone; you wanted to die. You never used to miss your self imposed deadlines. 

I loved myself when I was me. Couldn’t walk past a mirror and not stare at myself. Mimi once said I was vain to the hearing of my other friends who *unanimously* agreed. I wasn’t mad; anyone who looked like me would be at least a little vain. I can't remember the last time I looked at myself and it's probably for the best. 

You died unceremoniously. No lucid moment of inspired revelations for you, just non-existence. You were, and then you weren't. You died quiet and the way you saw it, you might as well not even have lived at all.