Her mind's scars.

 ©2022 by Idowu Taiwo Deborah.

*Her Mind's Scars*

Brought to you by the Christian Writers and Readers Club.

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This woman smiled and she looked beautiful while doing it. She ate and she looked content while doing it. She cared for others and she looked genuine while doing it.

She was so dissociated in thought that for seven years her mind that was part in three had no idea that the life was slowly leaving her eyes.

This woman was stuck in time. Stuck in 2015 where her mother died.

It was like her brain automatically went to survival mode. The brain was so intelligent that it allowed her retain her usual 'light' but unknowns to her, she was already disconnected.

How can one think they were alive while already dying? How can one still be living after continuously drowning? 

The brain kept her body alive but everything that used to make her happy slowly ceased.

And because her mother who died amidst wolves called 'in-laws' was the only cover she had, slowly she found herself in a constant state of need. 

Left with no one but her two elder brothers and twin, they could only console themselves and forge on with life.

She couldn't get the basics but she still held on to God and the loop.

The loop kept repeating itself. It was a viscous miserable cycle.

For seven years she only grew physically but she was stuck with the mind of an 18 year old, always craving things she loved when she was that age and younger. There was no longer any mother or father or relative to beep that timer for new growth.

Being always in seclusion didn't help, having no friends didn't help. Losing her scholarship didn't help, having an illness didn't help, having relatives who were indifferent didn't help.

She was living yes, but she wasn't.

The worst part was how unaware she was of her own spiraling.

Soon the brain's fuel went out and it did a great job for seven years trying to 'fix' things. But it was soon running on smoke and she started to be aware.

She was scrolling through her phone one day and realised,

"I used to smile so brightly?"

The person in the photo was so far removed from the person scrolling. She was starting to see the difference. Her brain couldn't blur the lines anymore. She was starting to see, to remember.

"This used to be me,"

Her brain told her and showed her the difference and after seven years, she woke up.

The brain while running on smoke needed something to shock her back into consciousness before it was too late. 

Thank God she realised on time.

She started making amends.

Throughout the loop, God and church had been the constant in her life.

Even in this state, her belief in God and the foundation she had in morality and love, was only upheld by the default her brain already registered and even the love she gave others was as her result of her brain working on autopilot with her memories and past actions.

But she woke up one day and she started to live.

She had to ponder, she had to retrace her steps. When did it start??

When did her actual light began to dim? The light of her soul?

She remembered as she looked back.

 

It wasn't first obvious when father died four days after her sixth birthday. She realised this was only because her mother did a great job in raising her and her siblings in his absence but as soon as she died on the day she finished waec and not seven days later, her and her siblings were asked to leave their parents house— that was when she knew.

It was as if God knew of the ordeal she would face that was why immediately after that year, God gave her one whole year of happiness. Life then was as sweet as a pineapple. In this year she and her twin got a scholarship to study medicine abroad but would have to have their pre-med in Nigeria.

They did go off to another state in the country to have it and did extremely well, becoming one of the best students that year. They didn't feel their mother's death because they now had a guardian who was actively taking care of them.

They had all they needed, ate and bought all they wanted. They were preparing for medicine, there was a hope and a future.

But soon after the one year of happiness, haven finished their course, a few months later, their sponsor died from an illness.

She didn't know that the depression got worse from here.

The only thing they could do was go back to the house of their grandparents where their relatives had initially dropped them off to.

They left the luxurious home their father built and came to live with their grandparents in the guise of the house being too big and they not being to fend for themselves alone.

The relatives on the mother side only nodded to their whim and didn't do much to oppose out of tradition.

Apparently none of their father's relatives could not take them in themselves. But in their own words, grandparents who raised them will do a great job raising us too.

The siblings lived with their grandparents for three years having no autonomy and having all their parents' property in the hands of their relatives. 

The relatives sold parts of their properties as they wished and used part of it to raise them.

In all these she was in seclusion, having no sense of time and only waiting another whole year to get another jamb form. She went to church at least three times a week because that was all she had.

Always praying, always hoping.

But she has a testimony now and surely her prayers had not been in vain because God heard her. Soon the four siblings fought to get back their parents' properties much to the relative's suprise.

Out of a fake respect to the law since they were all older than eighteen at that point they let them go.

But it was basically the siblings by themselves. Them fighting back and collecting their property meant the relatives would no longer have any hand in their upbringing.

They remained in the first house their father built for three years and that when God began to move.

It was still rough for the first few years. Depending mostly on rent from some of the properties but God indeed was faithful.

Slowly but surely things began to change for them.

Now the older siblings have great jobs and the twins are almost done with uni.

Seven years she shook and seven years it took, to leave the loop.

Things are better now. 

When she smiles now ,the autopilot has nothing to do with it.

After seven years, she lived just like she once did. And it only got better from there.

"Even when you are abandoned by family, God will never abandon you."

Her life became that testimony.

THE END

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