Mental Health Awareness Week: An Account From One of the Brightest Minds in the World on Overcoming Depression

When I started at Imperial, I opted to commute from home because I thought that it would be cheaper and I could save money but the 1hr 15 minute commute took its toll on me. It meant that I couldn’t participate in a lot of the clubs and activities that happened after 7pm at uni because I had to be home before 8pm. How this curfew came about I don’t know, maybe it was all is my mind, a mindset that I’d continued on with from sixth-form. I’d say that I had a strict mother, I could never go over to a friends house much less sleep overs for fear that I’d become a lesbian.  My mum would always say to bring my friends over to our house instead, and I’d look around the house and decide that’ll never happen. I once asked if I could go to the movies with a girl who’d invited me from school and the response I was met with instantly killed every thought I had about having a social life.

So here I was walking down the halls of Imperial, watching people take part in evening dance classes and wishing I could attend but also realising that if I attended I’d be home too late late (10 pm lol). And it was moments like this that made me strongly consider living in uni accommodation.

I finally decided to get a room starting at the second term of my first year and I used the excuse of my commute to convince my mum. She was all for it but I’d have to come home every weekend from Friday night and go back on Monday morning. Looking back I don’t understand why I agreed to this but I guess it’s because I respected/feared my mum and I didn’t have any close friends that could talk me out of it. At this time, my mum had started a church with a pastor she’d met and they both helped me through the packing process and drove me to my new abode.

I was never really religious growing up. I believed in God and knew there was a guy called Jesus who is apparently is his son who died for us, but that’s all the knowledge I had. This is the knowledge base that most African children have.. plus “obey your mother and father.” My mother also wasn’t really into it until she met the pastor which rekindled her fire and the whole household had to get involved. On Sundays I was in charge of the food, the inventory, the setup and the offering. My sister was in charge of not looking grumpy. I enjoyed playing church but over time, I began to ask myself if we were really helping anyone and I grew tired of empty promises.

That’s the backstory, I’ll now get to where it all went wrong. It was my first night sleeping in my new room in uni accommodation. My mum had dropped me off and I finally had my room to myself. I remember thinking that this was where my life would start when in fact it was where my nightmare started.

On my first night sleeping in my new bed, I was introduced to sleep paralysis. I’d have a nightmare I was being chased and I knew it was a nightmare and I was trying to wake up but I couldn’t move or speak. Then I’d wake up but I’d still be dreaming, yet thinking I was awake until it dawned on me that it was still a dream. I called my mum, she prayed for me and I thought it would be okay after that but every time I went to bed or had a nap it would happen again. I started sleeping with the lights on and when that didn’t work I was just afraid to sleep. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it and the nightmares were starting to wear me down.

I had always liked to dress up and look nice. I’d plan a whole week of outfits the Sunday before the week started and would be excited to wear every single one, but as the days went by I started wearing the same jeans and top each day. I had started to dread going home on the weekends because I always felt worse and more drained when I left on Monday than when I came on Friday. I guess I should have realised that something was wrong when I started getting angrier in general, but it mostly manifested to my younger siblings.

I’d wear my fake smile to everyone but feel like my heart was breaking. Some weekends I didn’t even bother with the fake smile, but what’s funny is that my mum never noticed or realised that something was wrong.. or maybe I didn’t notice that she noticed.

It got to a point where I was always angry and hurting and I felt locked up inside myself. Almost like I couldn’t move or be me. I was a prisoner in my own body. To make it worse, I felt that I had no one to talk to because everyone thought I was okay and I wanted everyone to think I was okay. I thought I was okay. I was the smart one, the intelligent one, the one going to Imperial to study Molecular Biomedical Engineering. The one who got straight As and took care of everyone else. Maybe everyone thought I was grumpy because I had lots of uni work to do but no one ever challenged my mood.

Depression isn’t something that’s spoken about in an African household and mental health is a taboo — something that doesn’t exist and if it’s troubling you too much, pray to Jesus about it and he’ll take care of it.

I stopped attending lectures after sometime because I was always falling asleep in them. I was always tired even when I drank a double espresso with red bull. I’d stay in my room all day trying to stay awake but failing miserably. I started getting anxious as well. I got scared of speaking to people to the point where the toilet was located outside of my uni room but I was too scared to go to it in case I met someone on the way there and they decided to say hi. I’d hold it in until I couldn’t anymore and then listen at the door if anyone was coming and run for it.

After a couple of weeks stuck on my room, I realised that I needed help — help that my family couldn’t provide and so I went out in search of a campus Christian society and I found one. You can tell that I still didn’t know I had depression. If I knew, I would have reached out to a well-being advisor but I didn’t even know what depression was let alone what help was available.

The nightmares eventually stopped after attending a few of my mother’s ‘prayer meetings.’

I’d say that the nightmares ending helped a bit, but the damage was already done. I had depression and I still didn’t know. At this point I was a walking zombie.

The thing that helped me greatly is that I knew I shouldn’t be alone, so I tried to surround myself with people. People who didn’t expect me to be perfect, but who genuinely cared if I was okay. I found this through a new church where someone spoke to me and let me know that I could beat this depression if I wanted to and that they could help me by being there for me.

I was still in denial up until I failed my third year of uni. Whilst speaking to the well being advisor, she said “you obviously are depressed”. And I wasn’t trying to look depressed that day. I was trying to be strong, and so it dawned on me in that moment that I wasn’t okay and I hadn’t been okay for a while.

The well being advisor asked me what I thought triggered the depression, but when I tried to come up with a list to explain why it all happened, I couldn’t. We decided to settle on the fact that it was my move to my uni accommodation, as that seemed like a big change in my life.

When I thought about it later, I concluded that it was because I was always living in fear.

Learning from it all, I’d say that even if you are going to one of the best unis in the world or you are working in one of the best companies in the world and you believe that everyone expects you to be perfect, it’s okay if you’re not and if you need help. You should always ask for help especially when it comes to your mental wellbeing because the more you hide and try to fix yourself, the more you break.