End of the Year Review: 2022
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| Photo credit: Valeria Boltneva source: pexels.com |
How was the celebration?
Are you rounding off your Christmas celebrations or are you keeping it till the new year?
And to those that are unable to have any kind of celebration, I am sending you a part of my Christmas cheer.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, prepares you for life.
With that being said 2022 is unexpected, in every way possible and that is an understatement.
Learning to Love in the stillness.
At the start of this year, I referenced something I heard from Khadija Mbowe on YouTube about Love and our relationship with people and ourselves. It was definitely one of those things that sounded so right and I knew I had to find a way to incorporate it into my everyday life. But with the route, the year went and with everything that happened, I found it hard to remember that I have chosen to be intentional with the way I relate with people. By the time the year was wrapping up and I was thinking about the things I would love to discuss, I remembered I had set out to do this. I am happy to announce that I was actually able to do this. Let me explain.
The whole point of Love in stillness is learning to love people and ourselves with a little more grace and space. It is not being too attached to people to the point of being away from them is so painful or being so angry when they have little slip-ups here and there. It is just allowing yourself to sit and tell yourself, maybe I should take my time to process this, maybe it is ok to not understand where this person is coming from, maybe love really does cover a multitude of sins. And how did this play out you might ask, and sure that is what I am here to do, explain it.
For myself, the space I needed to give was the acceptance that I was not doing everything right or as best as I would have loved. It was the ability to laugh at myself and face the fact that loneliness had a way of destroying my mind and it has, it was understanding the world was not going to in any way slow down and deal with someone that was going to keep running scared even when nothing was in pursuit. I wasn’t special, I am still insignificant but I mattered to myself and to a few people and that in itself was ok. So if I needed to take time to breathe, I did. If school was becoming overwhelming, then there is a compulsory break from school every two months. I learnt to love myself in the stillness. I was alone and not alone if only I reached out, I was allowed to take up space, and I mattered to myself, my health mattered to me. Sure, there were times I messed up, in fact, I messed up a lot this year, I was out of my elements, I was far from who I used to be, and I second-guessed myself more than I wanted to but I learnt all that was ok, I was going to love this broken mind of mine, I was going to find the pivot point in all this, God is going to turn this around.
For people though, it was learning to walk away. It was being done trying to prove my love or loyalty to anyone that has questioned it. It was learning that some people won’t be forever and that is going to hurt, but I would be ok. I will survive, my goodness I play that song with so much depth and try not to cry at the end of it.
It was learning to love people with grace and forgive any slight difference in the way they treat me and the way I would love to be treated. So when I don’t get that call, when I send an urgent message and still have no reply after a week, when they make plans and don’t show up, when they don’t understand that I might need a little more care than they have to offer, when they have decided I would never be their cup of tea again, it is learning to let go of the hurt and saying I would love you with grace and in the space that would forever separate us. And it is learning to heal no matter how difficult healing can be.
Content creation and storytelling.
Sometime this year, I put on my Twitter header that I was a storyteller, long before Elon Musk finalised his takeover of the company, long before the news of its impending doom.
This year, I submitted my work to two different companies, actually one is a carryover from last year and it felt so different writing under my government name for another pair of eyes to judge and scrutinise with the possibility of saying my work doesn’t cut it, it isn’t what they are looking for but I did it anyway. It is also the year I did not write as much as I wanted to and I felt bad about it because I didn’t get enough opportunity to work on my writing and become better at it.
Instead, I focused more on using my voice rather than written words and started podcasting and boy do I love being a podcaster. There was the ease of having a mic in front of me and just saying the things that came to my mind, and I lived for it. I loved the fact that my excitement didn’t get lost in translation and even though I made it seem like editing was the worst thing to do, I found it rather benign. I also love to hear the sound of my own voice.
I feel like I can’t end this part without mentioning Dave and Adaobi, who in their various ways, encouraged me to continue creating and telling the stories I wanted to share, for reading all my first drafts and giving me their most honest opinions.
4th MBBS Journey
To anyone viewing my blog for the first time, one of the things I am sure to not speak about is being a medical student because I am terrified of someone knocking at my door and shouting doctor, or you asking me for medical advice.
At the end of our fifth year (4th MBBS class) we are meant to write a professional exam known as the 4th MBBS examination which tests us in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) and Paediatrics. I believe that differs from school to school.
I started my 5th year of medical school last year (5th year is approximately 18 months) with little enthusiasm for the courses that I would be taking and I was also becoming unsure of my decision to remain in medical school. So the 4th MBBS class is broken down into three distinct parts; a) Junior block; where we had lectures and postings for O&G, paediatrics and community medicine, b) Short/ elective postings which were centred around eight units under medicine and surgery and c)Senior block; where we had lectures and postings for O&G and Paediatrics.
I know that Junior block was stressful because this is Nigeria and everything is just too draining but I don’t have any story that made me go, this seems impossible to pass through, save the end of posting test in Paediatrics fiasco which made me rethink the way the system is designed and how students are just going through it.
During my short postings, it was a lot more difficult for me to handle the vastness of everything. I was really struggling with my mental health at this time and I can remember telling my mother at the beginning of the year that I was tired of medical school and wanted to go back home. Although the experience wasn’t all that bad; I loved my time in Accident and Emergency, Radiation Medicine is something that seems right up my alley, especially if I decide to have nothing to do with interacting with patients, Psychiatry department is still one of the most organised departments in that hospital and they pay a lot more attention to the students, for my review on other things that happened during my short postings, you can find it on my podcast.
Senior block on the other hand was the worst thing that happened to me this year. No cap.
For O&G, I was posted to the same firm I did my junior postings, something that wasn’t supposed to happen. We had a lot of procedures we were supposed to witness, tutorials that the firm was supposed to organise for us and outside postings to catch 25 babies (with 5 partograph and case reports included) and it was hell. I was exhausted every single day, and still had no time to rest.
Because of the Monday sit-at-home and the nature of my firm, we had to join other firms in order to get things done, and because of how impossible it was to catch all 25 babies at one hospital in the time given to us, we had to visit other hospitals and find ways to getting someone to sign our baby catching forms. Honestly, I am so sure that a better system can be put in place, and when that would happen is totally in God’s hands. For the tutorials, we had to join other firms, until we were finally able to start our own firm tutorials and God knows how many times I was in the hospital during my O&G postings with no idea of what is going on or where I am supposed to be doing that day.
By the time I started my paediatrics postings, I had lost all the strength I had. So I just did my best to go with the flow. I was in a better unit, and even though I grumbled a bit about the workload in the unit, it helped me a lot. I was able to work on my presentation skills, gain a bit of confidence in making diagnosis and defending my diagnosis, and work on my essay skills.
One of the things that I wanted to have in order to help me with the preparation for my exams was a study group and for whatever reason, it didn’t work out and by the time the exams came I was struggling to study or prepare. Also since I am not living on campus, I was unable to attend a lot of the tutorials that were held, but then again I am not a huge fan of tutorials and I almost always stay away from them. I had no other choice but to depend on residual memories, the things I have seen, the things I have heard and the things I stumbled across whenever I had the strength to read.
The exam period was about 6 weeks including the senior block end-of-posting test and I don’t know what to say about it. One thing I would say is that you can never be too prepared for an exam in the college of medicine. I was seeing things for the first time during my exams. I called my father after my Gyanecology OSCE and told him that if my O&G exams ended that day, I don’t think I have done enough to pass that course. After all my clerking and examination in paediatrics long case, the examiner didn’t spend time listening to my presentation, he wanted me to go to the diagnosis and have a discussion there.
Special shout out to Pappi for the days he drove us to school during the initial part of the exams, to Ebube my exam partner, we caught the bus together for the remaining of our exams day and to Cross for all the days he helped me get back to town. These people made life so much easier for me and without their help, I don’t think I would have been able to even make it through the exam period without breaking down altogether. By the time the result came out, I was shocked and till now, I can’t process the result. I passed both papers but if you ask me, I would tell you that is what is on paper and it is yet to translate into a tangible fact. See, it is just grace.
“What’s the greatest lesson you learned in 2022?”
“Rock bottom has a basement”
And that y’all is the summary of my mental health journey.
I struggled to keep my head above water this year and I failed so many times that I was beginning to ask myself what is the need. I had panic attacks, was constantly in a depressed mood, and had constant palpitations, and insomnia and somehow despite everything God showed off big time.
I got all the help I needed and more, I got support from family and friends, even the once in a while we would chat kind of friendship, and they went out of their way to make sure I was doing alright. Then there is Diri that whose timely thinking recognised my last attempts at screaming for help and completely reshaped the way this year went for me. I mentioned to someone that Diri is the most heartwarming person that I met this year.
I got to visit my parents every two months and they are so vested in me getting better. They are my biggest support. They told me to fall apart and they would be there ready to catch me and put me back together.
I needed to do it to get a hold of myself and because of that some friendships did not look the way they used to and we are still looking for ways to navigate our new realities. There is one in particular that I had no other choice but to end completely. I remember crying about losing that friend in February. By November, after a conversation I told the person, that was going to be about the last time I reached out to him and I went on to delete everything that related to him.
I also made a couple of decisions that served me well but I find it a tad difficult to say I am proud of what I have done. But I know that at the end of the day, I either grow out of it or own it. A friend told me that we shouldn’t be ashamed of the things we have to do to protect our headspace. And I am doing my best to accept that. (P.S. he doesn’t mean violent or criminal activities. T for thanks)
Guess this is an executive summary of my year.
Finally, I am praying for one thing in the new year and that is ease.
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