Family Love Saved My Life

FAMILY LOVE SAVED MY LIFE

So why do I say family love saved my life? What does that even mean, right? Let me start by saying that, I love my family. Every single thing. The kind of bond that we share. I love my siblings to death. I feel like anybody that meets us always think that are a sibling cult, but I don’t really care. The relationship we have is uniquely designed.

Trigger warning…the following blog contains mentions of attempted suicide. If this may be a trigger, please don’t read any further.

What Defines Success?

From a very young age. I found it really difficult to be able to define success.

I felt like the definition of success for me was already jacked up from childhood to teenage-hood and a little part in adulthood.

There was no such thing as therapy

When I was a child, I was bullied about my weight. People will always say that I was fat, and I needed to lose all my weight. In Nigeria, they do not say things nicely I guess that has helped my take criticism easily, but it also broke me in my younger days.

There was no such thing as therapy. My parents don’t really believe in something called therapy. I do understand that God is the ultimate healer. But yes, certain times in life, you don’t want to talk to your husband, you don’t want to talk to your siblings, you don’t want to talk to parents, you don’t even want to talk to family members or friends. You want to talk to an unbiased individual that would understand where you’re coming from, but I did not have that, so I had to figure out a way to deal with all my negative emotions myself.

I didn’t want to bring shame

It was this late afternoon. My parents were in the office. They had gone to work, and it was just me and my siblings in the house, we were all upstairs in the parlor aka living area and suddenly I ran downstairs grabbed a knife and then ran upstairs and went to the study (Family workspace) and locked myself and cried so hard until I had no more tears to shed. I turned off all the light and prayed to God and asked him to be with my family as I take my life, so I do not bring them any more shame with my weight struggles.

My brother saved my life

My brother started looking for me.

Suddenly he noticed that I was not there with them, so he kept searching all around the house. Then he decided to check our family chapel and I was not there.

He heard me weeping and he said “Nneoma, what are you doing in the room, what is wrong?” I said, “oh nothing I will be down soon just give me a minute.”

After waiting outside the room for about 5-10mins I still did not come out. He banged on the door and said, “you better come out of here or I will call everyone upstairs “and I was like oh “let me just do something really quick and I will open up.”

He banged even louder on the door, and he said, “Nneoma please do not do what you are about to do, just come outlet talk about it.” I hesitated so much because I really did not want to deal with any more weight insults by anyone, family or not. All this while he did not stop banging down the door, he kept going.

God brought me back to focus on him

Eventually, I had to open the door so that he could stop banging down the door because my head hurt from so much crying and hurt even more from him banging down the door.

As soon as I opened up, he came inside the study and saw the knife and he was like “were you trying to take your life?” I said, “yes so that this emotional roller coaster will be over.” He said, “which roller coaster, and I said, “all this insult about weight loss” and he said “that is not why you should take your life. You will get there eventually; it is just a matter of time.” In that moment, I felt God telling me through my brother to not give up, but to focus on him in everything I do.

As a teenager and now an adult, I have had so many episodes as well but that is a blog for another day!

To be continued……..

Mommi Nneoma