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Some mornings, getting out of bed feels like carrying ten bags of cement. Other mornings, you float through space, watching your life pass by from a distance. You are struggling to dig your way out of a bottomless pit. The more you dig, the deeper you plummet. A crashing descent into a bottomless vacuum.

You try to hold on to the rails of euphoria. One hit, two hits. You puff in and out to grasp at a distant hope. To find meaning in the smoke around you. You try to read the signs, but the fog keeps you in bleakness. Blue pills, syrup and methanol, to numb your senses to the hollowness.

Maybe if you shut down you could find some succour. The pills and syrup percolate through your bloodstream. You drift away. But not for too long. Reality always lingers. If euphoria is your escape from reality, then dysphoria is the air you breathe.

The cloak of emptiness cleaves to your skin like tissues gluing parts of your body together. It becomes the very essence of your existence. The whole world shrinks through your pigeonhole. Living becomes a distant memory. Becomes a portrait you stare at from afar. You want to run away from everything. Run away from life.

Have you ever been too tired to live and yet too scared to die? Too young to give up hope and too old to dream? Each new day fills you with despair. A helplessness that gnaws at your lungs. You are choking.

You struggle to breathe. You are conscious of each breath. Of each heartbeat. You become conscious of your vanity. Your whole existence wrapped in a blanket of ennui. Living becomes a Sisyphean charade. What is the point of living to die? You try to pull the trigger but courage takes a leap. You realize that dying isn’t any easier than living, but you know this: living is torture, dying is a latent horror.

 

 

About the Author:

Victor Enite Abu is a drama minister. He resides in Ota Ogun State.