28

If you had asked me what turning 28 would be like a decade ago, I’d have answered you with clarity and ambition. I knew what I wanted! I was going to graduate law school at 22, go to Kenya School of Law at 23, then I always said I’d get pregnant immediately after so that when my career got so busy and successful, I’d remain grounded and I’d not lose sight of what is important to me…..

What I did not know then, was that no matter how much I planned, I was not in control of any of it, so when my life went nothing like I had imagined, I panicked, I lost the motivation and most of all, I was broken.

If even God Himself had appeared on my front door and told me that on my birthday in 2019 I’d be attending a friend and university classmate’s funeral, I would have had my doubts. Yet, it is all I will remember of my 28th birthday. He was young, he had just found the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with and most of all, he was thriving in his career, yet on my birthday, we were celebrating his life well lived.

I seriously don’t get it sometimes, life.

My life has been a roller coaster of emotions, traumas, small victories and big ones too and the thing nobody tells you is that everything changes you. Well, they might tell you that part, but what I have a hard time dealing with is who I become after it is over. Many of us are walking around with our shame, traumas, anger and pain because we don’t remember who we are without them. Many people are hurt and they won’t let go because they don’t remember who they were before they were hurt or how to live without it.

After it is all over, you are a new person and maybe you are a better person, but then you have to take time to learn this new person and nobody prepares you for that. I have been an advocate of vulnerability and will always be, but even I have a hard time dealing with that. So, many of us keep telling our stories, we move on but the demons are still within us, if provoked, they come out to play and no matter how hard you try to forget them and succeed at discovering this new person, sometimes, they pull you in and you go back to that person. The one full of anger, hurt and broken.

As a 28 year old who is just trying to figure it all out, I just want to say, that I am struggling. I won’t sit here and pretend like everything is OK because I don’t think I am even the same person before my birthday, because before that day, I had forgotten, for a hot minute, what it’s like to experience loss. So, I am struggling and on some days, it takes its toll on me. In fact, a while back when I experienced an anxiety attack, I called a friend to help me get through it because it not being my first, I knew what I needed to do. I didn’t even tell my sisters about it until a few days later. The first one I ever experienced around last year, I did not tell anyone, not even the person I’d subconsciously called as my distraction.

I don’t know how many of you are getting by, but if you are struggling, it is OK too. I have said it here before, feel every emotion, let it hurt if it hurts, then slowly work on the healing.

You will change, that’s for sure, but that does not have to be a bad thing. I’m evolving every day. I am learning. I am work in progress and I working on being OK with that. Most of all, I’m fighting my way up because I refuse to drown in all of it.

Today is Mental Health Day. Every 40 seconds around the globe, someone commits suicide because of mental health issues be it depression, anxiety, stress etc and in Kenya suicide is the second leading cause of death among the youth in the age bracket of 15-29.

We can stop that, let ourselves be seen and be heard because as I’ve written here before, it is OK not to be OK.

Goodnight World and happy belated 28th to me.