3CB

I was at my workmate’s desk, looking at some copy, so I didn’t hear the bump. I saw everyone run to the window, trying to find out what was going on. Some people wondered whether a car had rammed the barrier, and a few theories were thrown around before the resident office grinch yelled that someone had just killed himself.

We thought he was joking, so we went to see for ourselves. The man was lying face down on the pavement. He was moving, so we thought he might still be alive, but someone went and touched him, and told us he was dead. There wasn’t a lot of blood, because nobody had moved him yet. He looked almost asleep, or maybe just passed out.

Some of my workmates went down to take a better look. Some took photos and videos, but were so shaken afterwards that they needed a drink. Others were crying. One person was furious, thinking the man might be a terrorist, while someone else wished he had picked a different building.

The body lay there for a long time. In fact, it’s still lying there. We found out the man’s name, and more people start crying. No one at the office is concentrating right now. They’re shaken. They don’t understand why anyone would want to take their own life. But I do, because I’ve been there. More than once.

My workmate is shocked that I look so … serene. I don’t know if that’s the right word. Right now, what I feel is … nothing. I understand that a man is dead, and that people are upset, and angry, and terrified, but I don’t feel much of anything.

The suicide itself isn’t a shock to me. I’m more bemused by the reactions of everyone else. I’ve always thought suicide is the business of the person who died, and to some extent, his loved ones. So I find it odd that acquaintances are so vested in it. There are very heated discussions around me right now, all about why no one should kill themselves. I guess self-inflicted death affects more people than I thought it did.

I considered taking a closer look at the body. I’ve heard people say suicide victims are deluded and that they think death is heroic and easy. My favourite ex described death to me in vivid detail once. He’s in the military, so he’s seen a lot of it first hand, and he was trying to shock me out of a suicidal stupor. It didn’t really work, so he broke up with me instead. He said he didn’t want to be around the next time I tried something that stupid.

Today, I thought maybe if I saw how terrible that body looked today, it would stay in my mind and snap me out of my next depression. But I couldn’t make myself do it. It just felt … wrong somehow. I felt that looking at him just to soothe my demons would be disrespectful. So when the ambulance finally came and turned him over, I didn’t look.

It’s been over an hour, but some of the people in the office are still shaky and teary-eyed. I find that strange. I suppose the average human loves life, and that seeing someone throw theirs away is disturbing. For me, it’s not death itself that stops me, it’s the fear of what would happen to my baby girl once I was gone. The thought of her sorrow, confusion, and tears keeps me from doing anything stupid. I don’t know what drove that man off our office building, but I hope that wherever he is, his soul is at peace.

In the movies, you always see your life flashing before your eyes, but all I saw was black. It’s been seven months since my last serious accident, and that time, I blacked out and woke up to find my daughter in screaming hysterics. This time, my daughter wasn’t with me, though she was in my thoughts.

We had a … disagreement … this morning, but we had kissed and made up by the time I headed for work. I had a lot on my mind, and I guess I wasn’t really paying attention to the road. I’m generally pretty paranoid about cars after the accident in February, and it sometimes takes me half an hour to cross a highway. But I guess I was distracted, because I don’t really know what happened. One second I was on the pavement with a million worries, the next I was squashed between two matatus at Commercial.

I was crossing in front on a white Nissan when a large red 40-seater tapped me with it’s side mirror. I half spun and ended up wedged between the two vehicles. I remember covering my head with my arms, and squeezing my body to make myself as tiny as possible. Then I heard the makanga from the red 40-seater yelling at me to be more careful. He said ‘Hivyo ndio vile watu hukufa.’ That’s how people die.

I must have been shaking, but I didn’t dare stand there in case another matatu showed up, so I kept walking like nothing had happened. I wanted to find a corner where I could hug myself and cry, but I knew that if I dared, I’d never stop, so I looked straight ahead and kept walking, hoping nobody could see the tears, telling myself I just had to make it to the office bathroom then I could cry as much as my make-up would allow. I got into a connecting matatu and zoned out all the way to work.

Every morning before I leave home, I ask for protection for myself and my loved ones. So when I was safely on the curb, I felt a flash of anger that God hadn’t protected me. I wondered what I had done to deserve almost being squashed so early on a Monday morning.

I wondered what would have happened if I had died. Someone might have grabbed my Ideos, but without my unlock code, they’d have no way to use it. Someone might have taken my wallet and found 200 bob and an ID photocopy. They might have looked at my business cards and called my office. Maybe.

My baby would have woken up tomorrow morning to find me not in bed. She would have dialled my number and found me mteja, then maybe she would call my brother to ask if he knew where I was. They might check the directory for my office number. Which reminds me, I should probably make sure my people have my office number, now that I don’t even have it myself.

They might have asked about me on Twitter, or maybe headed straight to Central, or City Mortuary. And of course, some angry City Council worker would be furious about cleaning my icky squishy mess, and who knows if the smears would be identifiable.

I stopped my train of thought at that point, because it’s dark ideas like these that cause accidents in the first place. If you believe in the power of the mind, then you know that focusing intensely on a [positive or] negative event can make it happen. At least that’s what they say in The Secret and Pranic Healing and stuff like that. Of course, if you’re rational and have been through landmark, then you go by the exact opposite notion – that things are exactly  what they are, no hidden agendas or interpretations.

I’ve never believed that anything is random, so I blame myself for the incident. I’ve been depressed all weekend, and my mind has been full of negative thoughts, and maybe that’s what caused the accident. I’ve been dwelling on fear, the kind of fear that has me so paralysed that I did nothing all weekend.

I’m afraid of what my life means, because I feel like it means nothing at all. I’m afraid that despite all the drastic changes that I’ve made, I’m not where I want to be, and I don’t know how to get there because I don’t know where ‘there’ is. I’m afraid that I’m doing everything wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it because I don’t know what the ‘right’ way is. And I’m afraid that if I keep walking around lost in such thoughts, I’ll get myself knocked over again.

I have an analytical mind. When I have an issue, I dissect it until I figure it out, get a headache, or black out from mental exhaustion. But I’m afraid to analyse fear because it only leads to more fear, and ends up with me being squished between matatus. A few months back, I had three motor accidents on three consecutive days. My teacher thinks it’s something to do with karma, and I’m just glad I wasn’t driving.

It frustrates me when I can’t figure things out, and now I’m afraid to think about this at all in case I pull a Wile E. Coyote and draw a boulder over my head instead of a 40-seater matatu. I’m afraid of worrying because it makes the stuff I worry about come true, and I’m angry at myself because I don’t know how not to worry.

I’m grateful to God for saving my life today, but I’m pissed off because I’m not entirely happy with the life that I’m living, and I don’t know what part I’d like to change. I feel awkward because everyone thinks my life is perfect, but in my own eyes, the balance feels all wrong and I don’t know what to do to make it right.

Conventional advice says to let go and let God, but I don’t know how to do that either, and I really need to stop worrying or the next thing that tries to squish me might be an elephant, an aeroplane, or a giant bug. But one good thing has come out of it. Writing this post, I’m reminded of the one thing that brings me unfettered joy – telling a story.

I play with words for a living, and that has taken a lot of the fun out of writing for me. I have moments of excitement when I get a brief right, or when I cash my paycheque, but the giddy excitement, the feeling of blurred time, the absolute bliss – that got lost once I made writing my 9 to 5 thing. So maybe the only thing I really need to change is to spend more time with stories.

When I read a book, a poem, or a blog, I get so absorbed in it that I forget where I am or what I’m doing, and I like to write stories that affect people the same way. I want my words to move the people that read, to make them smile, or cry, or understand themselves better, or take a chance on someone else. I want my words to make a difference, just like the words of the authors I love to read. So maybe I should just do that instead of magnetically pulling random killing machines in my general direction.

For quite a while now, I’ve been praying for answers to questions that I didn’t even know how to ask. They say God works in mysterious ways, and it’s funny that in almost taking my life – or perhaps … in saving my life – the universe has just told me the very thing I desperately needed to know. Thank you Archangel Michael, and most of all, thank you Abba.

♫ Hurricane ♫ 30 Seconds to Mars ♫

I hear a lot of people saying we should think outside the box, and a few saying there has to be a box. As for me, I’m all about boundaries and constraints, seeing as my spirit animal is either a weevil or a goldfish. I guess that’s why I like this phrase so much, the one about everybody needing a fishbowl.

I heard the phrase on a TED talk by Barry Schwartz. First, I like that he’s in a t-shirt and shorts. I miss being the girl that would give a TED talk in shorts … Anyway, Barry argues – quite convincingly – that the more choices we have, the more miserable we are. According to him, the secret to happiness is low expectations.

In the past 24 hours, I’ve listened to that talk so many times that if it was  CD, it would probably have scratches by now. I suppose it was a message that I badly needed to hear. He says, among other things:

• (a) We value things depending on what we compare them to.
• (b) The more options we have, the more likely we are to regret our decisions.
• (c) Options can sometimes lead to inaction, because excessive freedom creates paralysis.
• (d) When your expectations are too high, you compare what you get to what you expected. Then you end up disappointed, even if what you got was really good.

I’ve been feeling really down for a few weeks now, and I can’t quite figure out why. After all, I’ve recently acquired a few things, things I’ve wanted for a long time, things I was sure would make me ecstatically happy. And yet I’m not. I’ve made some drastic changes in my life too, changes designed to make my lifestyle more acceptable. To me. But they haven’t. So I’m sitting on a rock in the proverbial thinker’s pose and asking, ‘What now?’

I suppose that’s why Barry’s talk made so much sense to me. He explains that the reason we all need a fish bowl is that when we have too many choices, it’s easy to blame ourselves for making the ‘wrong’ one. If I have 50 pairs of shoes to pick from, I could spend hours or even days, because I want to be sure I pick just the right pair.

And even after I finally pick one, I spend my journey home second guessing myself, wondering if maybe one of the other pairs wasn’t just a little bit better. When I get home and the shoe pinches, I’ll blame myself for picking the wrong pair. It’s buyer’s remorse to the power of fifty.

Given my temperament, the issue of my shoes proceeds to self criticism on everything from poor taste to intelligence, and soon escalates into serious depression. Conversely, if the shop had just one pair of shoes, then when they give me blisters, I simply blame the shop and life goes on, no antidepressants required.

I suppose the reason I’m not happy about all my new toys is that I over-estimated the amount of pleasure they would give me. Barry explains that lots of times, we compare what we have with our expectations, and what we have falls short, so we end up disappointed even if what we have is perfectly fine.

Then when we try to explain why we’re disappointed when we should be happy, we blame ourselves and end up depressed. Never mind that the expectations were simply too high to begin with. Like Barry says, ‘With a thousand pairs of jeans to choose from, dammit, one of them should have been perfect.’ And if what you’re expecting is ‘perfect’ then ‘good’ just isn’t good enough. So you end up with an entire generation that has more choice than ever before … and higher incidences of suicide.

A while back, director Tony Scott jumped off a bridge and died. My workmates were perplexed about why such a successful man would commit suicide. I said the better off you were, the more likely you’d want to die. Depression is a disease, just like cancer or HIV, except that it doesn’t harm your body. It harms your mind and distorts your thinking. When you’re depressed, it doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It only matters what you tell yourself.

We’re all searching for something, whether it’s fame, riches, companionship, love, a cabin in the middle of the Amazon, or the flexibility to sit in lotus position. Most of us believe that when we find that special something (or someone), we’ll be happy. For the average person, if this doesn’t happen, they look for something else to do the job. For a depressive patient,  if they have everything they could ever want yet they’re still unhappy, they get convinced they’ll never be happy, so they might as well end it.

For some patients, the pattern is slightly different. There’s a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So what drives some depressive patients to the edge is the repetitive process of improving and relapsing. You get to a point you just don’t want to try anymore, so you make it all stop. I know. I lost a good friend that way, and I’ve been there myself. More than once.

So, given the space I’m in right now, Barry’s talk was something I needed to hear. I needed to accept that I over-estimated the amount of pleasure I would get from achievements, successes, promotions, documentaries, a new wardrobe. I thought I would be happy once I had them, but I’m not. And now I’m sitting here and wondering, ‘What next?’

I don’t read the Bible nearly as much as I used to, but I found an interesting verse yesterday. It’s somewhere in the gospels, apparently, and it says, ‘Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles; it takes away today’s peace.” That fits in with the same conventional wisdom I’ve heard over and over again: Detach. Be still and know. Just let go. Stuff happens when you’re not looking. Let it be. Don’t worry, be happy. And on and on and on. Thing is … nobody ever tells you how.

I was in a particularly dark mood this morning when it came to me that I should stop blaming myself for being depressed. I should just accept that I am depressed. Instead of spending so much energy trying to figure out what’s upsetting me, and how to fix it, I should just acknowledge how I feel and leave it at that. After all, it is what it is. I guess that’s what it means to let it be. Surprisingly, I felt marginally better in that moment – until I forgot to ‘let it be’ and started worrying again.

In a way, Barry’s theory is simply an old adage: don’t judge; don’t compare; the grass isn’t greener – you’re just looking at it from a different angle. But, again, nobody actually tells you how. I wonder if anyone can write a wiki article titled ‘How to stop worrying.’

I tried talking it over with a friend, and he suggested I fix it horizontally. Apparently, good lungula solves everything. As long as you get tested and use protection. Otherwise, you’ll have a whole new set of problems to resolve. I haven’t tested that theory yet. Maybe someday I will.

For now, I’ll listen to Barry. He points out that focusing on your high expectations stops you from enjoying the good things that you do have, because you’re so fixated on how much better that other stuff is, the stuff you didn’t choose. So to be really happy, you have to first lower your expectations so that you can be pleasantly surprised, and then live in the moment and stop looking at the stuff that you’re not doing. Sounds easy enough. When you figure out how to do that, let me know, because I could use a few lessons.

♫ So gone ♫ Lemonade mouth ♫