Feeling some kind of way

As a Nigerian man who has lived all of his life in the country, I remember I used to watch foreign movies and laugh at scenes that had to do with depression and people wanting to take their lives because they were depressed. To me, I always thought all of that was white people problem because never have I heard of a black African man wanting to take his life because he was feeling depressed. We Africans love life so much that killing ourselves was the last thing on any of our lists.

_{Photo by Kristina Tripkovic}

But then the older I got, the more stories I heard about people jumping over bridges to kill themselves, but you see, no one called any of these things depressions and I believe that was because our understanding on depression still was a weird one. We just couldn't wrap our head around how being down and sad would prompt anyone to go take their own life.

I remember how we would insult people and call them fools whenever we heard that someone killed themselves because of one life problem or the other, problems that we felt could have been solved if they had given themselves more time and hope to solve it, mental problems.

But you see, it didn't take long for me to finally see the light and understand that yes, there are certain things capable of making a man kill himself, things like depression. And that was when I kinda entered something that I call phase 2.

You see, after my generation got woke and we all realized that depression was indeed a thing that was in existence, we all soon started "feeling depressed" not because we actually were depressed but because we felt depression was cool. And that was phase two, the part were we labelled everything as being depressed, even the tiniest of moodswings were considered to be us being depressed and that was because we saw depression as a white man sickness and anything being done by foreigners at the time were considered to be cool stuff.

I think even I got the depression virus because I remember at one time, that I had told my friends that I was feeling depressed, when in reality it was nothing but a mere moodswing. Luckily for me, I now know better because depression is a real thing and there are people out there who really need help overcoming it.

Do I think I've been depressed in the past? Honestly I really don't know. There have been days where I felt like shit and felt like giving up but I always found a way getting back up on my feet. Was that me feeling depressed? Maybe or maybe not. But if there was one lesson I learnt from the whole experience, it was that depression is real and not something to be joked with. There's nothing cool about pretending to be depressed and when next someone opens up to us about being depressed, we should take them serious and try to help out because although we might not know it, we might just be saving a life.