1.
In all the years I have spent in this world, I have learned that the body remembers more than we like to admit. It is the body that keeps emblems of the things we have been through in our memories, the way a flash drive keeps important files and documents from being erased. Each time a trigger occurs, the body is the first to remember. The first to respond.
In 2024, I spent most of my days in the emergency wards of different hospitals in Lagos, battling with my sanity. It was in December that I was finally transferred to the Federal Medical Center in Ondo State, certified that I was struggling with severe depression. It was my body, whose skin had been severely pricked by injections, that reminded me that I was still human.
I had been admitted to the psychiatric ward with others like me whose lives were falling apart due to drug abuse. Often, one of the nurses would say to me, “You seem special. But I am only wondering why you are here?” There was another who was very unkind to me. Always blaming me for spoiling my life, reminding me that I had graduated top of my class in university, that I was very brilliant, and what was I doing with marijuana? She always spoke like this to me when her colleagues were not around. It was as if she knew that what she was doing was unprofessional. I always held their gaze, shook my head, smiled, and looked away in shame. I had nothing to say to them. But if I could have spoken, perhaps I would have told them that depression can drive someone to the worst places in life. I would have told them that if they understood what it meant to carry such a cross on one’s soul, perhaps they would know that sometimes the only relief a depressed soul gets is from the leaves of marijuana. But I stayed quiet and said nothing because I did not know how to tell my story. I stayed quiet because I was ashamed of my actions.
We wore uniforms identifying us as victims of depressive disorders, and I hated that we wore those uniforms. We were three, and we shared a bathroom among other things. Time passed like it didn’t matter. Like we had nowhere to go and had nothing to do. The nurses who gave us our medication often repeated the same words to us: “Eat. Sleep. And use your medicine.” They reassured us that in no time, we would be discharged and would have our lives back as if nothing had happened. They told us that once we get discharged to go back into society, we can tell people that we had gone on a mini vacation. But I was quiet most of the time, only speaking when I needed food to fill my hungry stomach, all the while thinking about how I would face a world that had witnessed my unraveling.
It was my sister, who was also a nurse and a staff member of the Federal Medical Centre, who mostly visited me, and always by her side was our lastborn. While I was in the hospital, I was overwhelmed by the feelings of emptiness. I missed affection, and my body felt the pangs of loneliness. I wanted to escape the hell that was the four walls of the hospital ward. I found respite in my sister’s visits. She would make vegetable soup and semovita and garnish it with beef and smoked fish, and would bring it for me, making sure I ate and finished the meal. She didn’t trust that the hospital meals gave me enough nourishment. In the four weeks I spent there which felt like forever, she made sure to visit me at least once a week. If she didn’t bring home-cooked meals for me, she would bring fresh fruits. Well-cut and refrigerated.
I tried to evaluate my life. What life’s choices have led me to a point where I began to question reality? In my attempt to come to an answer, I decided to start from the beginning. When I looked back, I realised that my past experiences had mostly marred me. My childhood, which was meant to be the best years of my life, was nothing close to being stable. I knew then that memory is a very fleeting thing because one cannot exactly recount one’s experiences as they had happened. One can remember the events, the words spoken and exchanged, the feelings experienced, but only in fractions and fragments because memory doesn’t come to us exactly as they occur. So, when we remember things, we remember in parts. It is the present that is our most vivid moments in life, but even to talk about the present, one has to rely on memory.
2.
When I was four years old, my body experienced a violation. It was carried out by someone whom I no longer remember and who had died shortly after. This person had touched me in places that a child should never be touched. At the time, I remember experiencing the feelings of being wronged but having no voice or power to stop it. Memory is sometimes brutal because there are things that one would rather not remember, even if they come in fragments, because an account of one’s life is often steeped in uncomfortable truths. But the body never forgets, no matter how much we try to bury the memories.
If the body were a house, my doors were broken long before I knew how to lock them. When we talk about trauma, we talk about it as though it were a wound reopened each time we remember. But a wound implies something that can be stitched and healed from. What happened to my body at four caused a wound that my body could not heal. It shifted the foundation of my entire life.
I knew I had always struggled with depression for as long as I can remember, but I have not been able to get diagnosed. Not until 2024, when I almost committed suicide. It was the weight and compilation of all the traumas I have ever had to face that led me to that decision. Life was no longer worth living.
I remember I was involved in a road accident at fifteen. It was the first time my body experienced its first fall. It was a mini accident on a motorcycle I had boarded. I had an eerie feeling that morning that I shouldn’t board it. But I was late for the thing that I was going to do, so I stopped the bike man, ignoring the discomfort in my belly. On our way back, he sped like a madman, and in a split second, we ran into another motorcycle. And because he was speeding, he couldn’t hit the brakes on time. I fell and cut the toenail on my left foot, the big one. But I don’t remember if I hit my head or not. It was one question the doctors kept asking, because three days later, my seizure began. My body shook violently with raging fever. My chest heaved in rapid motions, up and down, up and down. My mother rushed me to the hospital when she found out, not knowing what was wrong with me, thinking I was going to die. At the then General Hospital, Okene, I was rushed to the Accident and Emergency ward, where the nurses on duty did not know what was wrong with me but knew what injections would calm me down. Later, I started taking Largactil and Artane. These medications made me drowsy and sleepy, so much that sometimes I was unconscious for hours, days even. That when I woke up, I would have no memory of what had happened all the while I was gone.
Much later, the seizures stopped. But they would come from time to time. Soon, I went to see a renowned doctor in Okene, who told me I had Psychosomatic Non-Epileptic Seizure disorder. He told me to stop taking Largactil and Artane and placed me on Sodium Valproate, which he instructed me to take every day for three months. But I couldn’t keep up because I did not like the idea of taking medication every day.
When my seizures returned the next year. I went to see a doctor at Federal Medical Center, Lokoja. I was told to do an X-ray and was diagnosed with asthma because I had also complained of hyperventilation when I ran. So, I started using asthma puffers. One gaseous. The other, powdered.
The following year, I was in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, when my oldest sister, who was pregnant with her lastborn and whom I had gone to spend my holidays with, rushed me to the emergency ward after my seizure broke out. I had a splitting headache, and my body was raging with fever. There, I saw a female doctor who was dressed in the most fashionable way for a doctor, who had the sweetest Hausa accent I had ever heard, her English fluffy and well accentuated. She checked my body, checked my vitals, and asked if I knew what was wrong with me, to which I had shaken my head in ignorance. Later, I was placed on Tegretol and discharged. Tegretol made me drowsy and sleepy, and days passed by slowly. So slow that I did not know what happened in between, what was said, or who visited during the days I was on the medication.
The year that came after, I was in 100 level, preparing for my exams, when my seizure came again. I was, once again, rushed to the emergency ward of Unilorin’s clinic. There I was placed on drips and injected multiple times, and my days were a blur. There I wished to be seen and held, but more held than seen. My family was miles away, and all that connected us was my phone. Soon, I got better and was discharged after seven days. In the following years, I did not experience the seizures and I was happy that all was well with my body.
All was well indeed until the robbery that happened in 200 level. It was a Thursday evening, and I had just finished writing my first semester exams. I was happy, getting ready to travel home the coming Saturday. I was going to visit ShopRite and buy ShopRite bread for my mother. I had also saved up some money from my monthly allowance throughout the semester—starving myself to get through—to buy myself some clothes. It was fifteen thousand naira that I had saved, and that evening I withdrew it from one of the ATM’s in school and carefully tucked it in my pocket.
When the robbers came, about four or five of them, I do not exactly remember, they met me sitting outside my apartment, my Unilorin tablet in hand, exchanging movies with my neighbors. Movies that would keep us busy during the holidays. I was most excited about going home, for I dearly missed my mother and I most especially missed her food. The robbers rushed in through our gate, bundled me first, then slapped me on my face. I fell to the floor and lay flat on my stomach. I tried to hide my tablet, but one of the robbers came to me, pointed a gun at my head, and gave me another slap. It was the first time I would ever come face-to-face with a gun. I thought he was going to pull the trigger. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t want to die, at least not at that moment. At least, not in that way. Anxiety sat heavy in my throat. I wanted to scream and shout and cry, but I saw myself responding to their instructions instead, unable to do anything. The gun was still pointed at my head when they took my tablet, my phone, and the fifteen thousand naira in my pocket. With everything they took I felt like a part of me was being pulled out. It was when they left that the tears came. It was then that my body decided to do something. I ran out, trying to chase after them. Shouting and crying, but the darkness of the night swallowed them. I couldn’t sleep in my room that night because the memory of what had happened was fresh in my mind. I was afraid, my head was replaying everything, and my body was refusing to make peace with the event. I borrowed a phone and called my mom; my tears were loud when I told her I had been robbed. She tried to calm me down.
3.
While in Owo, I tried to write about my life experiences. To excavate my body and find out where it hurts the most. To unbury all the unfinished pieces of my life and bring out the rot. I asked the nurses for a pen and a book, but my request fell on deaf ears. Perhaps they thought I wanted to harm myself. And they would be right to think so because before I arrived at the hospital, I had tried to take my life. My thoughts at the time I tried to commit suicide were uncoordinated, all pushing me to do one thing. To jump over the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge. Thank God I didn’t, because much later, when I started to get better, I began to appreciate the intricacies of life. The beauty of the full moon. The warmth of the early morning sun. The taste of my mother’s meals. The love and kindness I experienced from my family and strangers. The desire to be more in life. The desire to write a book. To do something that would outlive me. The comfort that came with odourless fresh air. And the zest to live life, over and over, and over again.
Much of what happened in my attempt to take my life is still a blur. I remember walking to the bridge, crying and breaking down at intervals, my nose dripping mucus, each step heavier than the previous as though my body was pulling me back. I saw people watching me from a distance, and I thought they must have been thinking I had gone mad. Thinking and pitying me for whatever it was that was happening to me. My phone rang multiple times, and I ignored it. I was determined to end it because my life had been nothing but chaos, and I wanted the chaos to end. But I suddenly felt like I hadn’t planned my suicide well. I had forgotten to write my suicide letter, so I turned around and walked back home, crying still. Shivering from the early morning cold. It was one of my friends who had come to visit that opened the gate for me, and he had been very unkind. And I hate so much how, in writing about him now, I have to refer to him as a friend. I do not blame him for his unkindness. For if he had been in my position and I in his, I do not know if I would have been unkind to him, too. No one was raised with the slightest hint of how to manage a suicidal person. But isn’t it common sense? That the only response one can and should give a suicidal person be rooted in kindness? Our friendship ended shortly after, and I was grateful for it.
Later, when I no longer wanted to take my life, I booked to see a therapist. I had stopped eating. I wanted to quit my job. I was a mess. I lost a lot of weight, so much that my ribs were visible. The first therapist I saw was a man recommended to me by another friend whom I no longer speak to, who abandoned me in my time of need. Of the many things I learned during my unraveling, I learned that it is only when you are at your lowest that the demons with whom you have long loved and respected come out exposed. It is in your dire time of need that they abandon you, leaving you for the vultures to pick at your remains. I hate that I have to write this, to say that this person whom I have dearly loved and respected abandoned me. Left me to rot in my chaos. The truth, all along, was that they only wanted to be my friend when they saw that I had a promising future. And people who only want you when you are good, who are only attracted to you when they see a flicker of a promising future, one full of light, are hypocrites. They would leave as soon as they see your darkness creeping out, not wanting to associate with the messiness. Never really seeing you, never really seeing the anatomy of your body. But truly, who is it in this world that is full of light? Who is it in this world that does not have darkness in them? I do not wish for anyone to experience the things that I have experienced, but what happened to me can happen to anyone.
I stopped seeing the therapist after our first session because there was something off about him. The second therapist I saw was a woman and was quite expensive, so I used most of my savings to book my sessions with her. I was getting better, or so I thought. Until one day, while finishing a project on my laptop, I looked up and saw my reflection in the mirror looking back at me. I dissociated: I had an out-of-body experience where the person looking at me was me, but at the same time was not me. When I spoke or did something, my reflection would stay still, staring at me, not mimicking my actions. I was scared shitless. This was the beginning of my unraveling. The beginning of my fall. When I told my best friend, S, he told me I needed to see a doctor.
My HMO allowed me to see a professional doctor at Evercare Hospital in Lekki. The first doctor I saw was Doctor Kufre. I remember marveling at his name, thinking of how I could use it in a story I would possibly write in the future. I remember wanting to ask him what his name meant and where he was from, but I didn’t. He had these soulful eyes that stared into my soul and he listened to my story with rapt attention. I remember the shock on his face when I told him about my dissociation. I remember him telling me that what I had was Schizophrenia and that I needed to see a psychiatrist. So he referred me to his colleague. When I got home, I searched for the signs and symptoms of Schizophrenia on the internet, afraid that I was losing my sanity.
The second doctor I saw was the first psychiatrist I ever saw. She was kind, and she listened attentively. She told me to tell her everything that has happened to me. She told me to start from the beginning. I started with the molestation at four, then the seizures at fifteen, then the robbery at seventeen, and on and on I went till I told her I had a marijuana problem, that smoking weed gave me respite, made me happy, made me forget about my problems. For over three hours, I recounted the traumas I have had to face all my life. When I was done, she assured me that I did not have Schizophrenia. That I was manifesting the symptoms of severe depression. When I asked about the dissociation, she said it was normal for people who were severely depressed. She asked if my reflection said or did anything other than stare plainly at me. I answered no. She then placed me on antidepressants, of which she made sure to ask if it was what I wanted. That I could be on them for years. I told her that I wanted to get better, even if it meant taking these antidepressants for years. I just wanted to be well. But she warned me, seriously, that for my medication to work, I needed to stop taking marijuana.
The first two weeks of taking my antidepressants, I felt nothing. It was in the third week that I felt calmer. My head, clear and empty without disorienting thoughts. I started to write more. Think better. I felt smarter. It felt as though my body was starting to build its own locks. Learning to drive away the demons that had invaded the rooms of my soul. In those weeks, I completed the first draft of my debut short story collection and sent it to my publisher. And soon, I started drafting my debut novel.
But I didn’t stop smoking. I couldn’t stop. Not because I didn’t want to stop, but I didn’t know how to.
4.
Lagos is a city that doesn’t know how to hold a falling body. It would twist and turn and break your soul if you let it. It does not give room for a soft landing. If you suffer from severe depression in Lagos and you do not have grit, it will pull you out like an unwanted plant, like a weed. It will push you into the streets.
After a few months of being on antidepressants and smoking more marijuana, I started to go to raves. I would go on the Jumia app at the end of every month to shop for party outfits. I kept my hair at the time, full enough that I braided it into different styles that suited my face.
At the raves, I was cloaked by the absence of performance. I freed my body and soul, always high as a kite, and became one with the music. I would trail my body with my hands, bend my waist this way and that way, all the while longing for affection. All the while filling my empty soul. I danced a lot. With a lot of people. Some, I kissed. Some, I rocked. And some I ran away from.
Then one day, I went to one of the raves and forgot myself. It was in August, and I had taken Gummies. Something that was stronger than the normal marijuana I was used to and my body let open all of its doors. I do not remember much of what happened that night. I kept blanking out and waking up to streaks of neon, violet, red, and blue lights. The music, deep in my soul. Deep in my body. It was the one night in all my life that I do not have a full grasp of. When I try to remember, even as I write this, what comes to my memory is a blur.
When morning came, and the rave was over, I found myself alone at the venue. The people I had gone with abandoned me. My phone was dead, and so was my power bank. I couldn’t order a ride home. I was dizzy. I found my way to the express, evading Lagos street boys who saw me and wanted to take advantage of me. Perhaps to rob me. Perhaps to confuse me and steal my things. I found my way to the express, and found myself at Evercare Hospital. There, I felt safe in the familiarity of the air freshener and the vicinity. I booked to see my psychiatrist, but she wasn’t available until next Thursday. I had a nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong. I just couldn’t place what it was.
Outside, I saw an empty Uber car. I don’t remember exactly what I told him, but I saw myself enter the car, and he drove me home. I plugged my phone into his car and charged it enough for me to transfer his bill to him. It was when I got to my apartment that I realized that my keys had been missing. I was utterly disoriented. I started hearing voices. And feeling all sorts of emotions: pain, anxiety, anger, sadness, loss, loneliness. All came crashing into my body. This was my final fall. My neighbors came to my rescue when they saw me disoriented. When they asked what was wrong with me, I could not speak. I did not know how to speak. But I could type. So they gave me their phones, and I typed my answers to their questions. They asked what was wrong.
The government is after me.
“What did you do?”
I didn’t do anything.
They too became disoriented. In a bid to help me get into my apartment, the locks to my house were broken. I got in and frantically removed my clothes and shoes, and my legs ached from all the walking. I then put on my wine-colored hoodie, a birthday gift my ex had gotten for me a couple of years back. It was the closest thing to red that I owned. I felt safe in the hoodie. Because it held sentimental value and because I felt like the redness of it signified that I was in danger.
Much later, my best friend came to get me and drove me to the hospital.
At the hospital, I kept falling in and out of consciousness. When I was conscious, I only wanted to do one thing and one thing only. To wash my hands. I kept washing and washing my hands. Thinking that my hands were not clean, even though they were.
Unfortunately, my psychiatrist was not around. The doctor I saw kept asking if I had taken anything. But I only remembered drinking alcohol, and I remembered that I had not taken my antidepressants that day. I felt as if my soul was trying to detach from my body. During all of these, it was my friend, the one who left, that I kept seeing in my head. He kept appearing and disappearing. It was as if my body was mourning the separation; for even then, in all of the chaos, it was him that I wanted to see. For I dearly missed him.
The doctor on call referred me to another hospital. Admitting that I needed to be admitted. But my HMO did not cover admission, and I had to pay out of pocket, and I had no money. I blanked out again. When I was unconscious, I remembered feeling like my family was in trouble. I remembered seeing my mother’s house on fire, and everyone was inside, and I needed to rescue them. It was this, my zeal to rescue my family, that kept bringing me back to consciousness. Much later, when my soul started to settle down in my body, I remembered feeling happy, flushed with all the childhood memories I shared with my mother. I crawled into a human ball and felt like I was reborn. I felt safe.
The doctors confirmed that I had low blood pressure. I felt like I was going to die. So I was given normal saline. But still very much disoriented. Later, much later, I was transferred to Federal Medical Center, Owo. Closer to family. Closer to my sanity. And there, I regained my life. A second chance to live again and live well. And life was no longer bleak. I am rebuilding my life, now sober and careful with the choices I make. I rose from the great fall. I rose from the ashes.
About the Author:
Mustapha Enesi is an award-winning short story writer exploring memory, displacement, the tensions between tradition and modernity, and the quiet devastations of family life. His debut short story collection, I Cry at the Feet of My Other Body, was published in 2025 by Witsprouts. He is Ebira, writes from Lagos, Nigeria, and is an incoming MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of Mississippi.